Whilst there's been the obvious "fanboy"/ "hater" stuff about a brand as divisive as Virgin/Stagecoach, one point not mentioned previously (?) is that the "paint it red" stuff presumably means that the "all future franchises will be a base layer of grey with only a small logo for the operator" stuff was a load of enthusiast hot-air?
Another "myth", up there with "one company won't be allowed to run the WCML and ECML franchises"?
The BBC briefly mentioned the competition issue. I'm not wholly convinced. East Midlands Trains competes against Virgin West Coast between Manchester and London, even though Stagecoach is a shareholder in both companies
What share of the Manchester - London market does EMT have?
Read the DfT statement. East Coast Rewards is being replaced by a lousy Nectar scheme. At the moment, if you spend £220 on the East Coast Trains web site, you get a standard class ticket. With Nectar, you are going to have to spend £250 a year to get £2.50 off your Sainsbury shop.
Which is better ? £2.50 off a Sainsbury's shop or a free standard class ticket on East Coast Trains ?
#keepeastcoastrewards
Because I tweeted the DfT who said "new operators will honour the existing scheme for a period and have plans to introduce their own excellent reward scheme"
And when you read the Stagecoach press release
http://www.stagecoach.com/media/news-releases/2014/2014-11-27.aspx
"new Nectar loyalty programme"
So that's it. DfT are scrapping the East Coast rewards scheme and replacing it with lousy Nectar points. They could have insisted that the future operators retained East Coast rewards scheme. But chose not to.
The current East Coast rewards are good if you are a regular passenger buying a lot of full price tickets on long journeys.
But the casual user (or people who buy cheaper/ shorter distance tickets) may already be getting Nectar points through Sainsburys/ eBay etc, so find it more benefit.
I don't think that forcing the next operator to maintain the existing rewards scheme is a great idea though - otherwise where do you draw the line?
So Stagecoach have all London to North routes in their pockets
Apart from London to Sunderland, London to Bradford, London to Hull, London to Crewe? (and the Sleeper from London to Edinburgh/ Glasgow/ Aberdeen/ Inverness etc)
But there ARE going to be bi hourly to Lincoln
Hadn't picked up on that - cheers for confirming
This rush to privatise a successful state-run organisation is however annoying, but that's the system I suppose.
Is it really a "rush"?
At least we'll see Megabus.com tickets on the EC hopefully...
Good point.
Plus maybe there's scope for more Megabus Plus services (or changes to existing ones - which'll mean fewer passengers at East Midlands Parkway!).
Maybe this is for a separate thread, but there's maybe scope for things like a faster version of the Go Ahead 50 (South Shields - Nissan - Washington - Durham) or links to poorly served places like Peterlee - Darlington?
Stagecoach's 909 used to be used for through tickets from GNER to Scunthorpe / Grimsby/ Hull (since GNER preferred to sell tickets with coach links, rather than their passengers using "provincial" trains) - maybe there's scope for more "Humberside" links?
Not bad really, just gone 12 and the biggest gripe I can see on this thread is about losing EC rewards.
BUT WHAT COLOUR WILL THE TRAINS BE!!!!111!!!!
I also find it odd that people are talking about a 'rush to privatize' and 'Tory ideology'. Have people forgotten that ICEC was supposed to be re-privatized by the end of 2010 under Labour's plans? DOR have had control of ICEC for longer under a Conservative government than a Labour government ever planned! Very odd.
True.
They've rushed to get it through before the General Election, so that a new Government can't overturn the decision. It's been rushed through to spike any new government's desire to nationalise
Rushed through after only four and a half years of the current Government? Breakneck speed!
I'm skeptical that the dividends to the Government are affordable, it smacks of the same desperation that sunk National Express
People are going to complain regardless.
- New ECML franchise will pay significantly less than £200m/ year in premium to the Government (the amount that DOR was paying annually) = "the Government have sold it too cheap, it was politically motivated, we'd be better off with a nationalised railway that would have meant more money kept for the Government"
- New ECML franchise will pay roughly £200m/ year in premium to the Government = "there was no point in franchising it to the private sector since we are going to be no better off - we could have kept it nationalised and done just as well"
- New ECML franchise will pay significantly more than £200m/ year in premium to the Government = "they've overbid, they are bound to go bust and hand the keys back, the only way they can do this is by cutting everything back to the bare minimum, ramping up every fare and abandoning all maintenance"
...basically, people are going to complain about the process regardless of whether the new franchise appears to be better value for money/ worse value for money or the same value for money as the current set up.
And you'll probably see people complaining about how a "desperate private company has overbid" at the same time as others complain that we've "sold it off too cheaply".
This may well spell the end of megabusplus - the current routes at least. Why would they run 1-3 a day from Bradford/Hull/Huddersfield once their direct trains start.
True.
Though, in fairness to Stagecoach, they are quite good at competing with themselves.
I remember a few years ago when doing Edinburgh to St Andrews, I had a choice of:
- Premium: National Express/GNER train to Leuchars and connecting Stagecoach bus to St Andrews - through ticketing available
- Standard: Normal Stagecoach coach service
- Economy: Stagecoach Megabus (using a twenty year old double decker) for a quid
...there's still a chance that they'll use Megabusplus to offer dirt cheap fares from Bradford/ Hull to compete with the GC/HT tickets (and force DB/First to compete toward the bottom end of the market) whilst using their 800/801s for the premium end of the market.
Maybe they'll know from existing market research whether the existing Megabusplus passengers will be prepared to pay a higher price for a faster journey, or whether there's space at the bottom of the market for a budget operation.
Rush to proceed with competitions in the wake of the ICWC debacle, rushed ICWC contest that resulted in the mess in the first place - there is tonnes of circumstantial evidence but I don't have secret transcripts of a Tory strategy meeting or anything
They've negotiated lots of franchise extensions over the last couple of years - if the Government were desperate to set up lots of longer term franchises then they could have done so before now (and had plenty of time to release the ECML franchise before now)
Lets see how much of the planned c.£3.5bn actually make sit way back to the government
Enthusiasts would have complained if it were a tiny amount of premium.
Enthusiasts are complaining that it's a high amount of premium.
Basically, enthusiasts complain.
The Huddersfield line capacity is a concern, TPE already seem to struggle. Northern have DMU's sat on the through line quite a lot (P2?) so I suppose there is some room at Huddersfield. It must be a five car service to Huddersfield as I don't think you can get a bigger IEP into Dewsbury.
I don't know what time this service will run (timed to give a good morning arrival in London, or a good arrival in Leeds), but a five coach IEP would mop up a lot of capacity on the Huddersfield - Dewsbury - Leeds corridor if it was timed to arrive in the morning rush hour (e.g. an 08:00 rush hour arrival in Leeds, meaning a relatively business friendly 10:00 arrival in London).
), but they are only available to a couple of destinations, and - as far as I can tell - a long time in advance. I've never seen them for sale on any railway site - only on 
