Department for Transport launches CrossCountry franchise consultation

[4-SUB 4732]

Having a browse now, and the following springs to mind:

- They decide not to let EM into New Street, then decide XC should run an hourly Stansted to Birmingham via Leicester so making the '170 service' an island. EM should run the services Birmingham - Stansted, Nottingham - Norwich, Leicester - Birmingham slow and Nottingham - Birmingham via Derby in my mind.
- They have the gall to suggest chopping Bournemouth off the ICXC network map. Terrible.
- They suggest getting rid of Cornwall, which I can understand save for perhaps keeping Newquay in the summer as a Plymouth extension a few times a day.
- Cutting ICXC down to 1tph from Newcastle to Birmingham etc by cutting one train back to York. This has a benefit for TPE with their hourly Newcastle and hourly Edinburgh but arguably if the capacity only exists for 6tph then surely it should be ICEC that cuts back to York as now?
- I support chucking Aberdeen in, as well as Glasgow. A simple hourly Edinburgh - Bristol / Plymouth / Bournemouth / Reading would suffice.
- One would have to argue that if capacity exists with other trains, especially at peak times, for some ICXC trains not to stop at stations (Macclesfield springs to mind) then it would be a positive.
- I agree that the ITT should have all routes as originating at Birmingham, and the pathing being hourly all day on each relevant route so that the operator can 'pair up' two ends.
- Not entirely sure where ICXC can extend to, at least on the 'Voyager' network. Perhaps amending the Birmingham to Cardiff 'slow' to run to Bristol and having a proper Intercity service to Cardiff or even Swansea would help; or perhaps they should have a half-hourly service to Exeter. Who knows? I can't think of logical extensions in the North West unless WMT relinquish one Liverpool path to ICXC to use as a Birmingham to Manchester 'stopper', and then have Intercity services to Manchester via Stoke and Liverpool via Crewe.

 

[Mojo]

Do you think Birmingham to Nottingham and Leicester should move to the West Midlands franchise?

Yes; although how would the Cardiff to Birmingham route be serviced (at present 1tph operates as a through train between Cardiff and Nottingham via Gloucester & Birmingham)?

Should the once or twice per day destinations be pruned from the network? Examples being Guildford, Bath Spa, Aberdeen, Cardiff via Bristol, Bournemouth, Cornwall too. Expected that local operators will fill in the gaps

The Bournemouth service operates hourly, and I think this is a very useful and busy service all year round, particularly in the summer months. Similarly for Cornwall, although this is obviously served less frequently but still served more than "once or twice a day."

Given desire by other operators to run more services on the East Coast beyond Newcastle, should XC stop running one of the services as far? DfT envisage 2 hourly extensions to Glasgow to remain.

If this meant capacity increases elsewhere, yes; but only if the connections work well at Newcastle/Carlisle. The journey times are so slow I cannot imagine that many customers use the through trains, especially given that the West Coast route is the best past of an hour faster from Birmingham.

Tamworth is a key connection with WCML semifast services. That one should not be removed. It should probably get an "u" and "s" to stop it being used as a Birmingham commuter service, though.

Which journey opportunities did you have in mind? Looking at the typical daytime services; only one of the InterCity services (ie. the Voyager/HST operated services) per 2 hours calls here, with some extras at certain times.
- from the South heading South it is not a valid connection due to the timetable; and in any case journey opportunities could just as easily be served changing at Birmingham
- from the South heading North it involves a 50 minute wait; and in any case connections are also available at Birmingham to all major destinations
- from the North heading South it involves a ~halfhour wait; which I concede may be useful for a very limited number of destinations that are not particularly noteworthy, however customers could possibly travel via Birmingham, or Leicester and Nuneaton (ex MML), or wait for one of the halfhourly Regional express services (ie. the Turbostar operated services)
- from the North heading North; it involves a ~21 minute wait; however again it does not particularly serve any major destinations, so customers could travel on one of the halfhourly Regional express services, or travel via Birmingham, or Uttoxeter from Derby

I would bin Tamworth and Burton upon Trent except perhaps in early mornings/late evenings (both to still be served by the halfhourly service from Birmingham to Nottingham), Macclesfield, Dunbar and Chesterfield.

 

[Bletchleyite]

- I agree that the ITT should have all routes as originating at Birmingham, and the pathing being hourly all day on each relevant route so that the operator can 'pair up' two ends.

One thing worth considering might be to have all the core hourly paths arrive at and depart from New St at the same time (waiting there for whatever the minimum connection time is), which would allow you to operate a 2 hourly pattern - paired one way one hour, paired the other way the next. That would give you an alternating direct and connectional pattern which would offer maximum flexibility for those who prefer frequent/connectional and those who prefer infrequent/direct.

You could of course put extras on top e.g. Manchester-Intl.

So the basic pattern would be:
Even hours at New St: Manchester-Reading / Edinburgh-Plymouth
Odd hours at New St: Manchester-Plymouth / Edinburgh-Reading
(or of course vice versa - and with any extensions as appropriate)

If they'd fit the ideal would be to use one platform for this, with one train at the A end and one at the B end, making the interchange really easy.

 

[CC 72100]

A few thoughts:
- Cardiff is probably worth serving in a greater capacity than the token one a day, which as stated above is mainly because it provides capacity into Bristol in the morning

It basically plugs a gap where there would normally be a GWR class 2 service that leaves Cardiff on the hour - if there was a suitable GWR replacement (would have to be 4 car or above, so 2x165 or 165+166 judging by their future fleet) then the XC could be happily withdrawn with no real adverse affect.

 

[TheDavibob]

Were WMT to pick up local services to Leicester and Derby/Nottingham, would that allow them to completely eliminate turning their trains in New Street [via combination with Shrewsbury and Hereford services]? I'm not quite sure how the service numbers play out (and how they will play out with their plans: an extra stopper to Shrewsbury and whatever the heck the current plan is with Camp Hill). This is, of course, entirely without consideration of stock or precise timetabling.

 

[mrcheek]

I don’t understand why almost all the suggestions to improve the crosscountry franchise involve reducing and cutting services. Surely virtually all the issues affecting Crosscountry could be solved simply by increasing capacity on its services and increasing the number of train sets.

presumably, they could increase capacity on the core if they got rid of all the un-necessary extensions

 

[InOban]

Some interesting ideas. I'm afraid my regular use of XC predated operation Princess, when we need to travel between my parents in Edinburgh and my wife's in Derby. But I digress

There were suggestions before to drop Aberdeen, but at that time Scotrail didn't have any dmus to replace the xc services. When the refurbished HSTs arrive, and the IEPs, I can't imagine anyone choosing to use a voyager, and the LNER services can carry the remaining oil traffic. Maybe a morning ECS working to start from Dundee. A midday service seems an extraordinary waste of resources.

The Glasgow service is important, linking to the whole northeast. It actually carries a surprising number of local passengers, who are continuing from Central. (It also has cheap advance fares).

The imminent arrival of TPE will create overprovision between Newcastle and Edinburgh. Maybe they should provide the Glasgow service, to Leeds, and XC should alternate, and travel via Doncaster, saving 20 minutes.

 

[DenmarkRail]

I thought I'd go mega unrealistic and suggest that XC's current Penzance to Plymouth, and Manchester should move to GWR...

Yep

 

[Bornin1980s]

I don’t understand why almost all the suggestions to improve the crosscountry franchise involve reducing and cutting services. Surely virtually all the issues affecting Crosscountry could be solved simply by increasing capacity on its services and increasing the number of train sets.

Although I do agree with the comments about people using Crosscountry services for short distance journeys. I travel from Aberdeen to Penzance every day and it really annoys me when you see people using these services between places like York and Bristol. THESE SERVICES SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR SUCH SHORT JOURNEYS!

For 'improve,' read 'reshape!'

 

[jhy44]

From a purely selfish perspective, I'd rather more XCs avoided Leeds and went direct between Sheffield and York - going via Leeds adds a lot onto the journey time and causes a lot of overcrowding on the trains, as people use it to do York-Leeds or Leeds-Wakefield rather than long-distance journeys

I know you've already caveated this by admitting it's a purely selfish point of view; but Leeds is really the main destination north east of Birmingham. It's the largest city in the NE, has two very large universities; a huge banking centre; a massive Civil Service & Government hub, if anything it needs MORE services. 1 tph Bham - Leeds is an overcrowded Scandal.

In an ideal world; the 2tph XC heading NE from Birmingham would be two units coupled together leaving Birmingham every 30 mins; it would divide at Sheffield, one to Leeds (terminating) one to Doncaster - Newcastle - Edin. Best of both worlds then, Bham-Leeds becomes 2tph and Bham-Newcastle is the faster via Doncaster route 2tph.

On a side note, EMT really should extend 1tph from Sheffield to Leeds, that 1 XC service is the only fast train that journey has and it gets BUSY OH DEAR LORD.

 

[Ianno87]

My view on the 'extremities' - either with new/additional stock develop them into proper hourly services (where a decent business case exists) without detriment to core capacity or drop them entirely.

 

[tommy2215]

Having just read through the consultation, its just a diatribe on towns like mine that rely very heavily on the XC service it gets.

 

[infobleep]

If they dump Guildford then there goes the cheaper purchase tickets to Oxford and possibly other stations.

Also I can't see Great Western Railway adding in another service from Guilldford to Reading. It departs Guildford at 6.04. Maybe in the evening they would but currently it's non stop, do they want a non stop service to Guilldford? The non stop works because it's a long distance service.

I'll admit I don't use the service so often because it's often cheaper to go via London, which includes having to help clog up the tube with luggage.

The current North Downs trains are all that luggage friendly either or at least not the one I'm currently on. Still it has more seats.

 

[DarloRich]

I would bin Tamworth and Burton upon Trent except perhaps in early mornings/late evenings (both to still be served by the halfhourly service from Birmingham to Nottingham), Macclesfield, Dunbar and Chesterfield.

The key with Tamworth is that it allows for easy connection with the LM network without going into Birmingham and in particular into the faster Crewe - Euston services. For lots of us price and speed/time are the key drivers in travel. There are often cheaper tickets on the Crewe services than on the Birminghams. Time wise Tamworth is 49 minutes from MK while New Street is something like 1hr 25m/30m from MK via LM. When you are heading a fair distance north that extra time is a real pain especially on a Friday night after a long week at work

( I know that price isnt a key driver for many here but in the real world it is very important. The connection at Tamworth is always very busy and I would like to see that improved.)

 

[ivanhoe]

Again, from a selfish perspective, I would like the Stansted, Leicester Brum, Nottingham to Brum via Derby to revert to EMT. IveI never felt easy with XC running the Brum trains from Leicester . It would also give the 170's a raison d'etre to exist outside of its current island with perhaps reintroduced Lincoln to Brum direct services via either Leicester or Derby. Feel it is a possibility with an expanded EMT.

 

[XCTurbostar]

Yes; although how would the Cardiff to Birmingham route be serviced (at present 1tph operates as a through train between Cardiff and Nottingham via Gloucester & Birmingham)?

I completely disagree with the option to change the Birmingham to Leicester route to WMT. As a commuter from Hinckley. It makes no sense at all to have a service by the West Midlands Franchise considering my station is in the East Midlands and is operated by East Midlands Trains.. My council (Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council) has no influence over the WMCA and is therefore significantly disadvantaged.

 

[mpthomson]

I don’t understand why almost all the suggestions to improve the crosscountry franchise involve reducing and cutting services. Surely virtually all the issues affecting Crosscountry could be solved simply by increasing capacity on its services and increasing the number of train sets.

Although I do agree with the comments about people using Crosscountry services for short distance journeys. I travel from Aberdeen to Penzance every day and it really annoys me when you see people using these services between places like York and Bristol. THESE SERVICES SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR SUCH SHORT JOURNEYS!

At the risk of falling victim to a wah, I'm not quite sure why you're describing York to Bristol, a 220 mile drive taking roughly 4hrs or a 3.5-4hr rail journey 'short'. I'd say that these are exactly the sort of journeys XC should be catering for and there isn't another way of doing it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At the risk of falling victim to a wah, I'm not quite sure why you're describing York to Bristol, a 220 mile drive taking roughly 4hrs or a 3.5-4hr rail journey 'short'. I'd say that these are exactly the sort of journeys XC should be catering for and there isn't another way of doing it.

I think he was joking, certainly that's how I read it.

 

[DaiGog]

it took lounger than i expected for Birghton to appear in this thread but it was coupled with a desire to return XC trains to almost every city in the UK, even if only once a day so extra points for a bingo! A far more sensible approach his to cut the extraneous towns and cites out and concentrate on the core NE/SW section of the network. Maximise capacity and frequency on this section where the real money is.

Where I was going with this is returning CrossCountry to its traditional role of provider of the longer-distance links, rather than the glorified commuter TOC it has become. It has severe capacity constraints owing to short trains, which in turn pushes the leisure fares up. Thinking purely commercially, you would concentrate on the core (Reading - Manchester and Newcastle - Bristol, loosely) but a truly "cross-country" operator should be providing these through links which have been cut back in recent years, from the likes of Brighton / Liverpool / Aberdeen / Carlisle / Penzance, just once or twice a day for the leisure market.

 

[mallard]

I do like the idea of tranferring BHM-NOT/BHM-LEI to WMT (if they're not going to "East Midlands Railway"; the brand name to be used by the next EM franchise according to the ITT)...

A follow-on order of a few extra Cl196 units should be able to cover it and it offers the possibility of reducing congestion around New Street and improving connections by combining them with the Hereford and Shrewsbury services. Leicester-Shrewsbury and Nottingham-Hereford would make sense.

 

[XCTurbostar]

I think there is little chance of it being an East Midlands operated route now because clause 5.8.40 in the East Midlands Franchise ITT states "If a Bidder wishes to propose extensions to the geographic scope.. The geographic scope of the franchise must not be extended to Birmingham New Street."

 

[swt_passenger]

I thought that XC/DfT had already consulted on 'dumping' oddities like Guildford and Bath back in 2016, for the Dec 2017 timetable that was spiked following objections mainly from Scotland, and er Paignton? Why does it all have to be consulted again? We seem to have far more consultations than actual timetable changes...

 

[swt_passenger]

So the basic pattern would be:
Even hours at New St: Manchester-Reading / Edinburgh-Plymouth
Odd hours at New St: Manchester-Plymouth / Edinburgh-Reading
(or of course vice versa - and with any extensions as appropriate)

There are four trains per hour in each direction currently though, what you suggest is probably reasonable but needs to repeat on a half hourly cycle, rather than odd/even.

 

[swt_passenger]

If they dump Guildford then there goes the cheaper purchase tickets to Oxford and possibly other stations.

Also I can't see Great Western Railway adding in another service from Guilldford to Reading. It departs Guildford at 6.04. Maybe in the evening they would but currently it's non stop, do they want a non stop service to Guilldford? The non stop works because it's a long distance service.

In the overall scheme of things your cheap fares are inconsequential. If XC wanted they could offer advance plus connections from Guildford via Reading anyway. As has been discussed in previous threads there might soon be 4 tph SWR and 3 tph GWR as far as Wokingham, the XC southbound fast path may not be possible by then anyway...

 

[XC victim]

I really cannot understand why everyone is being so negative about the CrossCountry franchise. It is a very important franchises that serves many big cities like Birmingham, Bristol, Reading, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Oxford, Sheffield, Coventry, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Leicester, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. And links them other parts of the country. Surely we should be looking to expand and improve services instead of cutting them back.

Surely more trains and greater capacity it can keep everyone happy by serving both leisure and commuter markets and continue to serve places like Guildford, Bath, Wakefield, Tamworth, Burton, Macclesfield and Leeds.

Over the years the crosscountry network has been cut back enough. It is time we actually acknowledge it for the important franchise it is and consider the poor passengers who have had to put up with a second rate service for too long.

 

[ainsworth74]

I do like the idea of tranferring BHM-NOT/BHM-LEI to WMT (if they're not going to "East Midlands Railway"; the brand name to be used by the next EM franchise according to the ITT)...

A follow-on order of a few extra Cl196 units should be able to cover it and it offers the possibility of reducing congestion around New Street and improving connections by combining them with the Hereford and Shrewsbury services. Leicester-Shrewsbury and Nottingham-Hereford would make sense.

I must admit I think this would be a logical change to make. They surely sit fairly comfortably within the West Midland Trains franchise and you can reduce the number of trains terminating at New Street (surely a good thing overall?) by linking them with existing WMT services. I suppose that does introduce performance risk by chaining two services together but it's not going to be particularly dramatic I'd have thought and there's going to be options on route to try and recover the service (for example terminating a late running say Hereford to Nottingham service at Derby to pick up its return path from Derby with onwards passengers conveyed on EMT).

I would leave the long distance Turbostar routes with CrossCountry personally however but they will need new or additional rolling stock in the coming franchise. I suppose what would be nice in this hypothetical is if the service transferred to WMT using existing stock sub-leased from XC with that then released back to XC when a tag on order of 196s (considering they're supposed to replace 170s in that franchise it seems logical) for WMT came into service allowing XC to boost capacity on the long distance Turbostar routes without actually needing any new stock for the franchise.

However that would require an awful lot of coordination, some re-writing of an existing franchise agreement and some money being spent which I'm not sure will be forthcoming.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

Purely selfishly speaking, I would support the transfer of the Turbostar services (well, except BHM-SSD) to the West Midlands franchise. Not only is CrossCountry fundamentally an Intercity operator for whom such services are misfitting, but by necessity they must set fares on these routes at a high level, and increase them a lot each year, to remain viable within the subsidy/premium constraints imposed by the DfT on all Intercity operators.

More regional operators like the West Midlands franchise are under less of a budgetary constraint because the DfT purse-strings are loosened for them; they can afford to offer more affordable walk-up and AP tickets. Plus they get lots of PTE subsidies which XC and the like don't (at least not to the same extent).

Quite aside from this, I would agree that joining up terminating services at New Street is likely the best thing that can be done to reduce delays caused by the lack of platforms, short of building some more. This will almost certainly not happen unless the services that are joined up belong to the same franchise.

 

[gimmea50anyday]

Think IMHO XC could and should be a much bigger franchise than it currently is and return to its true intercity roots (and routes) that theoretically gave at least one train a day not requiring a change of train or avoided london. Now appreciating certain parts of the network are full and will have difficulty re-incorporating former XC services, serving locations such as brighton, weymouth, blackpool as morning and evening arrivals and departures and combining parts of TPE specifically liverpool/manchester-edinburgh/glasgow via both East and west coasts along with scarborough and cleethorpes, Liverpool/cardiff-Norwich and restoring the traditional switching sides cross that alternated routes thereby providing better connectivity across the country. Clever coupling and splitting of services would help with this, say for example an 8 car leaving bournemouth splitting at birmingham with edinburgh ECML and Glasgow WCML portions combining at York and preston with TPE services from liverpool and manchester. Or alternatively 4 cars each from bristol and brighton combining at birmingham and through to edinburgh to split for glasgow and aberdeen. (For examples, 4 car is too small in todays railway) The tips of the network dont need clockface departures and there will still remain an essential core. Commuter flows cannot be avoided neither but at the same time XC could serve a far wider network than it currently does.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There are four trains per hour in each direction currently though, what you suggest is probably reasonable but needs to repeat on a half hourly cycle, rather than odd/even.

In that case yes (I thought. probably incorrectly, that the base pattern was hourly with extras laid on top).

 

[Doctor Fegg]

The consultation has an interesting question about "churn" when boarding/alighting from stations.

IME most of this is caused by passengers hunting for their reserved seats, particularly infrequent leisure passengers of the sort who've always made up much of the XC customer profile. This crowds the aisles and causes queues in the vestibules and out onto the platforms.

Bletchleyite's idea of "unmarked seats in reserved carriages" is interesting, but I suspect what would happen would be that passengers would either get on at the nearest door, and trog slowly up the train to find the carriage ("what carriage are we in now, dear?"); or that they'd trog slowly up the platform to find the right carriage ("is carriage A that way? I can't see a letter. This one says '1'...") while staff are frantically blowing a whistle. Neither of these are good.

I'd suggest an alternative. First, just don't provide seat reservations as standard, even with Advance tickets. Offer them optionally (potentially at a fee of £1 or so). Second, reduce the reliance on Advances, and offer a better range of walk-up fares (at the least, introducing an Off-Peak and Super Off-Peak split) without reservations. Oh, and get rid of that horrid on-demand Advance system which just exacerbates the churn issue, as the unseated walk-up passenger has to go hunting for a new seat.