[telstarbox]

Originally Posted by NSEFAN

As Operation Princess demonstrated, a better service pattern = more attractive service = more custom. This concept also holds true for branchlines, as shown by the Truro-Falmouth branch 2 tph scheme. BR tried removing services to save money on rural lines, and ended up killing a lot of their business.

And if you kill off a rural branch line, you also lose the passengers who connect onto the mainline, as they'll just do the whole journey in the car instead.

[Zoe]

Originally Posted by telstarbox

And if you kill off a rural branch line, you also lose the passengers who connect onto the mainline, as they'll just do the whole journey in the car instead.

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable so I think some people that would have switched to car ten years ago will still use the train even if they have to travel by bus to the main line station.
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Originally Posted by HH

based on ICWC the much heralded new timetable freedom is just smoke and mirrors

The DfT have specified a minimum number of station calls each day. I can't find anything in the ITT that says that the bidders will not be allowed to make any additional calls and when asked about Nuneaton, Philip Hammond even said this when asked about additional calls at Nuneaton:

Originally Posted by Philip Hammond

We will not mandate the new franchisee to do what he describes, but we will make it possible by relaxing the rigid timetabling and specification imposed in the past. We will also give operators an incentive to do so.

[jcollins]

Originally Posted by Zoe

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable so I think some people that would have switched to car ten years ago will still use the train even if they have to travel by bus to the main line station.

An added bus journey will stop making advance fares and timings unattractive.

Let's look at Lostock Gralam (Cheshire) to London:

An advance single via Chester starts at £13.50, in comparison to the £8.20 fare for a Lostock Gralam to Chester single, so very good value for money. The journey time is around 3 hours.

Now let's imagine you have to go to Crewe by bus first. The bus journey involves using 2 operators out of Warrington Borough Transport, GHA and Arriva North West - so a day ticket for both services is not available and would probably come to around £5 single. The Virgin advances from Crewe start at £8 but if your bus is late or cancelled you'd have to buy a new ticket at £66.40 (an added risk which doesn't apply for a connecting train.) A 7:20 departure from Lostock Gralam on the bus would get you to Crewe for 8:55, which would allow you to get the 09:29 London train arriving at 11:49 taking you 1.5 hours longer.

[Zoe]

But if you can't afford a car, what else can you do other than get the bus to the main line station?

[jcollins]

Originally Posted by Zoe

But if you can't afford a car, what else can you do other than get the bus to the main line station?

Most advance fares are sold to leisure travellers so I'd expect Intercity travellers to fall significantly and National Express services to increase in popularity, with National Express serving more destinations.

[Zoe]

Originally Posted by jcollins

Most advance fares are sold to leisure travellers so I'd expect Intercity travellers to fall significantly and National Express services to increase in popularity, with National Express serving more destinations.

Assuming these stay affordable, the cost of fuel is likely to increase for all road users. In the future it's possuble that rail will be the only form of transport the average person will be able to afford for intercity journeys.

As for people abandoning the railways due to missing connections from bus to rail, wouldn't it be possible to set up an integrated transport system where a bus could be included as part of an advance fares so you would be covered if there were delays on the bus?

[jcollins]

Originally Posted by Zoe

the cost of fuel is likely to increase for all road users.

Electricity and diesel prices are likely to increase as well and if bus ticket prices become unaffordable as you suggest then how will people afford to get to an Intercity station by bus?

As for people abandoning the railways due to missing connections from bus to rail, wouldn't it be possible to set up an integrated transport system where a bus could be included as part of an advance fares so you would be covered if there were delays on the bus?

Too many people would have to cross council/regional boundaries to reach their nearest Intercity station. These have been a barrier to through ticketing back to when there were first generation trams and trolley buses.

[Zoe]

Originally Posted by jcollins

Electricity and diesel prices are likely to increase as well and if bus ticket prices become unaffordable as you suggest then how will people afford to get to an Intercity station by bus?

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.
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Originally Posted by jcollins

Too many people would have to cross council/regional boundaries to reach their nearest Intercity station. These have been a barrier to through ticketing back to when there were first generation trams and trolley buses.

There is very little interest in sorting it out right now but in the future with people likely to use public transport a lot more than they do now this may well change.

[yorksrob]

Originally Posted by tbtc

Simply pretending that there are no acceptable cuts (even on branches where it’d be cheaper to put everyone in a taxi) is naive.

I wouldn't say there are no acceptable cuts. Rather that there are no acceptable cuts to the network (with the exception, perhaps of stations like Newhaven Marine which don't really serve any purpose)

I'd be interested to know which branches have so few passengers they could fit their passengers into a taxi. Aside from ones which have been deliberately run down to be of very little use to the area (such as the Brigg line) all of the branches I've used have been very well patronised. Yet I just get the feeling this will mean nothing to McNulty and his ilk.

[jonmorris0844]

Originally Posted by Zoe

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable

Let's not start that again. Yes, cars may one day become unaffordable - even modern electric vehicles - but for now, you can easily afford to use a car. I know you don't drive, but many other people do - and will for a long time. I can still afford to run my gas guzzler (just paid £270 to renew the VED this week) and I'm sure the insurance renewal coming through in the next few weeks will have gone up, but it's not yet unaffordable that I'm forced to ditch it and only use public transport.

There are many cars that are cheap to buy, insure, with various service packages and if you pick the right engine you might get 50-90mpg. Electric cars will soon be cheaper and more viable, with longer ranges and faster charging times.

People might need to accept that the high performance cars are going to be out of their reach, but that has always been the case. In many cases, car prices are artificially high to protect a brand. There's scope for these car makers to cut their margins a little if they have to.

As a result, if rail travel gets more awkward or expensive, I do believe they will still take to the car. The Government should be trying to make sure that doesn't happen.

Originally Posted by Zoe

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.

Actually, while weight would be an issue, a coach could hold considerably more batteries than a car - and potentially have a much larger range.

But we're a little way off that happening yet as battery technology isn't quite there (power to weight, and charge times). It will get there.

[jcollins]

Originally Posted by Zoe

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.

What about Hydrogen fuelled coaches? Yes that's a number of years off but so are all Intercity services running on electric power. In the short term we've still got Intercity 125s in operation for the foreseeable future.
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Originally Posted by yorksrob

I'd be interested to know which branches have so few passengers they could fit their passengers into a taxi.

I think even the weekly Stockport-Stalybridge would over-fill a normal sized taxi but an Optare Alero would cope.

[SS4]

Originally Posted by jcollins

What about Hydrogen fuelled coaches? Yes that's a number of years off but so are all Intercity services running on electric power. In the short term we've still got Intercity 125s in operation for the foreseeable future.

It raises the question of where we get the hydrogen from though. At the moment most comes from natural gas via steam reforming.
It can be produced by the electrolysis of water but that requires a lot of power either nuclear or hydroelectric would be the best sources for the job using current technology.
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I wonder how Parliamentary services are affecting the figures. I'd imagine TOCs would love to close some of those routes but they're not allowed.

[Zoe]

Originally Posted by jonmorris0844

Let's not start that again. Yes, cars may one day become unaffordable - even modern electric vehicles - but for now, you can easily afford to use a car. I know you don't drive, but many other people do - and will for a long time. I can still afford to run my gas guzzler (just paid £270 to renew the VED this week) and I'm sure the insurance renewal coming through in the next few weeks will have gone up, but it's not yet unaffordable that I'm forced to ditch it and only use public transport.

There are many cars that are cheap to buy, insure, with various service packages and if you pick the right engine you might get 50-90mpg. Electric cars will soon be cheaper and more viable, with longer ranges and faster charging times.

Let's not start making assumptions over if people drive or not, we had a very long discussion on this topic in another thread. It's going to be some time before electric cars fully take over and fuel may become too expensive before then. People with high wages may well be able to afford cars but I doubt many on the average minimum wage job will be able to. You may not think that some new cars are very expensive to buy but they will still be out of the range of quite a few people. When you have rent/mortage, gas, electricity, phone and other costs to pay out of your wages, you are simply not going to suddently find £5000 for a new car. I know of people that until recently used their car for almost everything but when it became life expired they simply couldn't afford another car and so switched to public transport.

Yes, rich people will continue to use cars but they will be out of the range of people on low wages and so these people are not going to suddently switch to car if train services are cut as they won't be able to afford to. I am not suggesting that train services should be cut, just saying that doing so is not likely to result in as large a shift to car as it would have done previously.

[HSTEd]

The operating costs of most branch lines are not that high, hardly any track maintenance, in many cases no significant signals (one train working and a ground frame at the entrance to the line) and so on.

The only major things that can be cut are staffing and rolling stock.

The development of low cost electrification systems for branch lines (including the proposed neutral sections under low bridges rather than raising them) will reduce the rolling stock costs in my opinion.

If changing does not discourage passengers perhaps we could break Intercity trains at convenient points? Perhaps we could run a London-Crewe shuttle that could connect with Manchester-Crewe, Glasgow-Crewe and Liverpool-Crewe?

[gordonthemoron]

or London-Edingburgh to conect for Glasgow/Aberdeen/Inverness?