TO1
Government should be aware that the railway plays an important role in reducing road congestion and enabling employment and leisure opportunities in the PTE areas. This is vastly helped by the fact that fares in these areas (in which incomes are also generally lower than in other areas of the country) are competitive with other forms of transport. A former secretary of state once complained that the railways were a "rich man's toy", however, it is my experience as a regular commuter and leisure traveller by rail in the North, that this is not the case around the cities of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, due mainly to competitive fares. Infact, the Government ought to consider whether fares outside the PTE areas are too high to allow rail to play its full social and economic role in these areas.
To give an example, I regularly travel from Wakefield to London, and using advanced purchase tickets can obtain a return journey for as low as £21. However, I also regularly travel to Whitehaven, a shorter distance on non-InterCity rolling stock, yet even with the complications of split fares, it is impossible to get this return journey down to less than £40. The railway should be doing more to attract people to services outside TPE areas by more competitive pricing structures (it is worth noting for example, that many of these routes don't even offer an off-peak fare).
TO2
In this question, you cite the example of "fewer calls at low use stations". Most of these stations are already unstaffed and are situated in between larger settlements. The train would still have to run between the larger settlements, so the only cost saving would be an extremely marginal saving on fuel associated with not having to decelerate and accelerate at the station. Missing out these stations would make them less useful to their communities as passengers need to be able to make a day trip, for the train to be a viable option, i.e. there need to be services in the early morning and late evening. I therefore contend that this approach would be entirely counterproductive.
Other cuts to services would be equally counterproductive. For example evening and morning services need to be maintained as a priority for rail to be a viable alternative (i.e. to allow people to do a day's business using the railway network), and in many cases should be improved. As an example, I often catch the last Hallam line train out of Leeds at 22:37. This is already too early, and is frequently more crowded than my morning commute, and I have observed similar situations on other evening services. Making cuts to services in rural areas would also be entirely counterproductive and should be resisted. I have travelled on trains on the Whitby branch that have had all seats taken as well as very well loaded services on the Bentham line and believe that we should be improving the current inadequate timetables on these services.
I believe that the whole approach implied by this question, of concentrating resources on a few heavily used routes to the detriment of the social railway would be disastrous for rail in the north and a throwback to the failed policies of the Beeching era. The Government should instead procure an all-purpose light weight DMU that can be internally configured for either longer distance rural, or shorter distance urban journeys, and can be built in enough numbers across the UK to achieve economies of scale whilst providing for pacer replacement, and passenger growth.
Government should also recognise that users of rural railways in the north, contribute to new trains through rolling stock leasing charges (even though many of these routes dont tend to benefit from new rolling stock) as well as capital investment in the network through track access charges, even though these routes tend to have minimal signalling etc. It is therefore over simplistic and wrong to suggest that passengers in the North alone receive subsidy and should be singled out for cuts.
NTP4
Options for North trans-pennine should consider the impact on local connections and transport opportunities to other areas. For example, the present TPE service allows passengers from Leeds to reach Whitby with one change at Middlesborough. Care should be taken to ensure that such connectivity isn't compromised by any proposed changes.
STP1
The Government should give serious consideration to longer term solutions to issues on this route. In particular, they should consider the potential benefits to reopening the Peak district route between Peak Forest and Matlock (via Bakewell) to passenger and freight services. This could potentially have a number of benefits for the area including:
Allowing North West/East Midlands passengers to be carried via Bakewell, therefore releasing capacity on the Hope valley route for local services and passengers travelling from Manchester to Sheffield and places further East
Providing faster journey times and improved connectivity between the North West and the East Midlands
Provide an alternative passenger route between Manchester and London
Provide increased opportunities for tourism within the Peak District national park and improvements to connectivity in the National Park area (as referenced in the 2004 study)
https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/images/derby-mancester-rail_main_report_full_tcm44-21359.pdf
Provide an alternative route for freight traffic to relieve congestion on the Hope Valley route into the future.
In particular, the Government should note that the 2004 study on reopening the Peak district route only considered possible local benefits of such a reinstatement, and that consideration should be given of how all of the above local, regional and national benefits can be combined to provide a business case for reopening this line (thus providing additional capacity on the Hope valley route)
STP4
When investigating options for serving Cleethorpes, serious consideration should be given to running a worthwhile daily service via Brigg that will encompass stops at Gainsborough Central, Kirton Lindsey and Brigg stations.
NTSR1
I am not convinced that there is a great amount of benefit to having fewer stops at smaller stations. I do not believe that this approach would yield much money in terms of savings (see my response to TO2) and believe that this would create a very large dis-benefit to users of those stations in return for a very small benefit for passengers passing through.
In my experience, services on the Whitby branch are very busy and could benefit from better frequencies, particularly at weekends. I believe that connectivity between Cumbria and Yorkshire could be improved by having better connections and later last departure times at Carnforth and Carlisle. At the moment, the last service from Carlisle to Leeds via Settle on a Saturday leaves at the same time that the northbound service from the Cumbrian coast arrives (18:07). Small adjustments such as this could provide considerable improvements for travelers.
All local services from stations such as Leeds should run to at least 23:30 24:00. As I have mentioned previously, the last train from Leeds on the Hallam line leaves at 22:37 and this is frequently as crowded as my morning commute. Having such an early last train also means that many residents of West Yorkshire cannot take full advantage of the cultural life of West Yorkshire as many plays and gigs in Leeds end at 23:00 or later. This will inevitably depress Leeds aspirations to become a world class city in terms of culture, which is a shame, particularly since Leeds has just invested in its music arena.
NTSR3
I believe that the Government should understand that leisure travel is an important source of revenue for the railway and that this by its nature tends to be at its heaviest at weekends. To this end, I believe that Sunday services on most routes should be improved to provide a weekend service more suited to leisure activity.
NTSR4
I do not believe that there are any routes where a weekend service offers poor value for money. Railway routes require a considerable amount of maintenance and in order to obtain the best value for money for the local community and taxpayers more widely, they should provide a benefit to the local economy throughout the week and not just for weekday commuters. Moving to a week day only service, greatly underestimates the use of the railway for leisure, shopping and other activities that benefit the economy. The Government should heed the experience of Network SouthEast during the 1980s, which reduced subsidy by progressively moving away from a business model that was overly reliant on week day commuting. By reducing weekend services, the Government would effectively be moving back to a model that was overly reliant on week day commuting and has been proven to lead to high subsidies.