If you had £500m to spend on closed Northern rail lines

[Ianno87]

Referring to Post #4, astronomical prices, how about this, referring to Skelmersdale. QUOTE In September 2017, Merseytravel and Lancashire County Council committed £5 million into a study to investigate the possibility of re-opening the station. UNQUOTE. £5M just to talk about it and nothing else.

Talk about it / Design it up, take it right through the consents process to be a shovel-ready scheme.

Potatoe / Portarto I suppose....

 

[HSTEd]

If we can't do these things more cheaply then we really are stuffed.....

 

[The Planner]

I'm talking about finding/making a Manchester facing platform for the service to terminate at.

Yes, but what I am saying is that the work being planned at Crewe is not making any provision for that service, and they won't chop into a resignalling project as soon as its finished. Unless it can shoehorn itself into platform 1 then its going to struggle.

 

[JKF]

For a Leeds-centric view, I’d go for Ripon, (old) Pudsey with re-quadrupling from Stanningley into a Leeds and reopened/new intermediate stations (Armley, Wortley) for a metro-type service, maybe Leeds New Line to Cleckheaton etc., Wetherby possibly by new build line through built-up north-east Leeds rather than through fields to Cross Gates. However suspect I’ve already blown the budget on the first two suggestions alone...

 

[Bevan Price]

True that the proposed line would be entirely new, rather than a reversal of a Beeching/Marples closure. The old railway to Skelmersdale (which the good Doctor did close) ran from Ormskirk to the area now known as "Old Skem". Large parts of the trackbed are still intact, particularly near the village of Westhead which is about halfway between Ormskirk and the "centre" of the new town. The old route wouldn't be much use for most of modern Skelmersdale.

Skelmersdale is a perfect example of 1960s short-termism. The railway was closed just as the new town was being built, and anyone who's visited Skem will see how car-centric it is. It also wasn't included in Merseyside, despite most of the new residents being relocated from the Liverpool area.

Sklmersdale lost its passenger services in about 1955 - long before Marples & Beeching, but closed to freight in/about the Beeching era.

 

[Bevan Price]

I think my first choice would be to restore a rail service for Leigh (Lancs.), but it would be expensive. A road occupies the formation west of Leigh, the viaduct through the town centre has gone, then the misguided busway occupies the formation between Leigh, Tyldesley & Ellenbrook, with parts of embankments removed to allow buses to cross other roads "on the level", rather than by bridges. Then the M602 covers the trackbed near Eccles. It might be easier to do a new connection from near Ellenbrook, via ex-NCB trackbeds to the ex L&YR line near Walkden. rather than trying to reinstate the old route to Eccles Junction.

 

[apk55]

I think my first choice would be to restore a rail service for Leigh (Lancs.), but it would be expensive. A road occupies the formation west of Leigh, the viaduct through the town centre has gone, then the misguided busway occupies the formation between Leigh, Tyldesley & Ellenbrook, with parts of embankments removed to allow buses to cross other roads "on the level", rather than by bridges. Then the M602 covers the trackbed near Eccles. It might be easier to do a new connection from near Ellenbrook, via ex-NCB trackbeds to the ex L&YR line near Walkden. rather than trying to reinstate the old route to Eccles Junction.

My own suggestion of extending the Eccles tram line to Worsley could be extended further to Leigh.

Another suggestion is Manchester Airport Western link. A line from the Airport to join the Mid Cheshire line near Mobberley. This would have the advantages of
Faster service from Northwich/Knutsford to Manchester
New service Airport Northwich Knutsford Runcorn Liverpool
Principal North Wales Coast service could use the line offering a faster service to Manchester as well as the airport.
It could also save on capacity at Manchester Piccadilly as all these trains would be the existing service extended.

I also still go along with my original suggestion of reopening the Middlewich line. While the track may not be in good condition even a total relaying would still be cheap compared to a new build. No land acquisition would be required (except perhaps for station access) and the fact that it still a working railway means that planning and protest issues will be minimal

 

[Killingworth]

There's every reason to think the quoted cost is significantly underestimated.

If costings for SELRAP suggested £104m in 2016 they are well out. The latest suggestion for the Hope Valley scheme is £165m and that's for two loops, rededoubling less than a mile and building one new platform. Tripling that £104m may well be more realistic.

£500m doesn't go all that far once the detailed work is all added up. What that says about any major construction project needs to be understood, particularly with schemes like platforms 15/16 at Piccadilly which would cost a lot more than that figure.

 

[HSTEd]

This is what happens when you no longer have a design team and track crew sitting in a messroom waiting for something to happen.

The magic of contracting and the free market.

 

[quantinghome]

If costings for SELRAP suggested £104m in 2016 they are well out. The latest suggestion for the Hope Valley scheme is £165m and that's for two loops, rededoubling less than a mile and building one new platform. Tripling that £104m may well be more realistic.

£500m doesn't go all that far once the detailed work is all added up. What that says about any major construction project needs to be understood, particularly with schemes like platforms 15/16 at Piccadilly which would cost a lot more than that figure.

That was exactly my point. The presence of an old railway alignment along a route doesn't actually reduce costs that much. Land needs to be purchased, earthworks need to be regraded or in some cases rebuilt, bridges replaced with new, then formation, rails and signalling. Even reopening an mothballed line such as on EWR costs a huge amount of money.

However I think £500m would get you Piccadilly platforms 15 and 16 based on comparable sized projects.

 

[tbtc]

If is *has* to be spent on re-openings and it *has* to be spent in northern England (and, presumably, for argument’s sake, the OP isn’t intending the answer to include reinstating lost bits of infrastructure like redoubling the chord at Dore and building platforms on the Hope Valley line and the Chesterfield line, but actual proper “reopening a whole line” schemes?)…

…then that rules out a lot my own personal infrastructure priorities (doubling existing lines, electrification, conversion of some lines to Light Rail, removing bottlenecks, extending current platforms, putting some stations onto loops to permit overtaking, building new alignments into the heart of New Towns like Skelmersdale/Washington, building separate High Speed lines…).

However, I’d like to have some kind of threshold, e.g. whilst we are lumbered with lots of backwater branches, that require high subsidies, we should try to ensure that new lines run without on-going operational subsidy – I’m not expecting them to be *profitable*, I’m not expecting them to pay off the building costs over five/ ten/ twenty years, but if it’s not going to be able to bring in enough money just to cover the staff wages/ fuel/ ROCSO lease and other on-going costs then heavy rail isn’t the answer – consider improving the buses etc.

So, bearing the above in mind, I’d put the priorities in the following kind of (reverse) order

• Worst case: anything that runs through the middle of nowhere or is focused on reconnecting smaller rural places (e.g. Keswick) and/or cases which involve the phrase “putting the town on the map” and/or corridors with very little commercial public transport (if it’s not viable to run an Optare Solo then it’s certainly not going to be viable to run a hundred and fifty seat train that requires at least two members of staff, signalling, lots of diesel, huge infrastructure investment…)

• Second worst case: anything where “diversionary resilience” is a big part of the business case (i.e. even the supporters of a scheme accept that it’s fairly week, so needs to rely on being “useful” a few weekends a year when a nearby line is closed for engineering works) << there’s some benefits to such schemes, but there’s no point worrying about “useful” schemes when we could be spending the same money on “essential” schemes

• Poor cases: routes like Colne – Skipton and Woodhead are “solutions in need of problems” << there’s obviously some benefit to these schemes but at huge costs – and they often require huge sums of money to be spent on other things too (e.g. there’s no point in doing Woodhead unless you quadruple the line through Tameside and build a new station at the Sheffield end… there’s no point in doing Skipton to Colne unless you are doubling the line through to Burnley and electrifying all the way to Preston) and there’s no way that I could prioritise them, given that we’d be spending huge sums – there’s always Opportunity Cost (and we could build a couple of passing loops on the Hope Valley line and double the frequency of services from Leeds/Bradford to Burnley/ Blackburn for a fraction of the price)

• Weak cases: Lines that link two smaller places (e.g. the proposal to re-link Barnsley to Doncaster or Bradford to Dewsbury, which sounds good in theory but isn’t of sufficient importance IMHO) or lines that provide a “parallel” route to an existing one (York – Beverley – Hull is often brought up as one of Beeching’s biggest errors – whilst I can sympathise, it’s not as if York – Selby – Hull is anywhere near capacity)

• Middling cases: Leamside – I can appreciate the idea of re-opening it but I don’t know what the main purpose would be – is it a fast route to remove Long Distance High Speed services from the slow alignment through Durham (and therefore permit local services stopping at Chester le Street and maybe a station in southern Gateshead)? Or is it a “slow” route to take freight away from the line through Durham (and therefore free up passenger capacity)? It wouldn’t serve much of Washington that well (if we are talking about “re-openings”, for the purposes of how I’ve understood this thread?) so building a parallel line to the ECML doesn’t seem to offer a lot of advantages.

• Ideal world cases: I’d be all for running through large urban areas that would benefit from mass transportation, like the huge tract of north eastern Leeds that used to be on the line to Wetherby – but there are no paths over the viaducts through central Leeds, so it feels like a non-starter – same with commuter-belt places like Otley (which would need paths into Leeds over the congested lines through the western throat) - see also anything that involves running additional paths through central Manchester – nice in theory but there’s just no space to accommodate them (and, if there were magically space into central Leeds/ Manchester then there’s a long list of other lines with a claim to new paths) – some things are better left to Light Rail (which isn’t as hamstrung by signalling/capacity problems through a central core)

• Close But No Cigar: lines where we need to run an increased service to existing places before we should worry about extensions – e.g. I can see the appeal of the Middlewich line but we’re struggling to find the stock/crew/paths over Stockport Viaduct (and into Piccadilly) for existing stations on the Mid Cheshire line, so I’d rather that we focussed resources on those stations before we added more complications (spending hundreds of millions of pounds on creating more branches for services out of Piccadilly to serve will come at the cost of potential improvements to stations which have been underserved for some time)

…so IMHO that leaves shortish simple extensions...


2. Second best case: An electrified Alnmouth to Alnwick would be a good way of extending the current hourly 75mph DMU paths from Newcastle to Morpeth, Alnmouth is in good commuter territory for Newcastle – you may be able to swap one 75mph DMU path for two 100mph EMU paths along the ECML, so provide a better frequency to Cramlington/ Morpeth. Alnwick is also the kind of place that will attract some people in the opposite direction, given that the Castle/ Gardens are within walking distance of the town centre

1. Best case: Ashington/ Blyth: Look at what works. Copy it. Towns with insufficient employment that have good bus frequencies to the nearest big city, encouraging existing people in the town to commute, encouraging people living in the city to move out to the town to take advantage of lower house prices, a reasonable distance away at which rail can compete efficiently. Ebbw Vale’s adaptation into a post-industrial town turned it into a commuter place for the nearest big city… the same could be said of Ashington/ Blyth – Arriva certainly run plenty of buses per hour into Newcastle, you’ve got a good distance for a commuter railway, it seems exactly the kind of territory where heavy rail should do well (same as Portishead to Bristol, Renfrew to Glasgow and other potential re-openings around the UK)

Beyond that… I’m struggling to think of any decent/ realistic “re-openings” in northern England (I do have a list of other improvements that could be made to the network – but politicians know that few people get interested in practical things like improving capacity at pinch points or permitting longer trains to run or electrification that permits faster acceleration… and large numbers of people get interested in re-opening quaint old lines)

 

[Killingworth]

T

2. Second best case: An electrified Alnmouth to Alnwick would be a good way of extending the current hourly 75mph DMU paths from Newcastle to Morpeth, Alnmouth is in good commuter territory for Newcastle – you may be able to swap one 75mph DMU path for two 100mph EMU paths along the ECML, so provide a better frequency to Cramlington/ Morpeth. Alnwick is also the kind of place that will attract some people in the opposite direction, given that the Castle/ Gardens are within walking distance of the town centre

1. Best case: Ashington/ Blyth: Look at what works. Copy it. Towns with insufficient employment that have good bus frequencies to the nearest big city, encouraging existing people in the town to commute, encouraging people living in the city to move out to the town to take advantage of lower house prices, a reasonable distance away at which rail can compete efficiently. Ebbw Vale’s adaptation into a post-industrial town turned it into a commuter place for the nearest big city… the same could be said of Ashington/ Blyth – Arriva certainly run plenty of buses per hour into Newcastle, you’ve got a good distance for a commuter railway, it seems exactly the kind of territory where heavy rail should do well (same as Portishead to Bristol, Renfrew to Glasgow and other potential re-openings around the UK)

Beyond that… I’m struggling to think of any decent/ realistic “re-openings” in northern England (I do have a list of other improvements that could be made to the network – but politicians know that few people get interested in practical things like improving capacity at pinch points or permitting longer trains to run or electrification that permits faster acceleration… and large numbers of people get interested in re-opening quaint old lines)

2. Getting into Alnwick would be a challenge as the grand old station is now isolated beyond the dualled embankment of the A1 Alnwick by-pass and is the very successful base for Barter Books. However, the Aln Valley Railway is well on the way to restoring its track from Alnwick Lionheart, beside the A1, towards Alnmouth, see; https://www.alnvalleyrailway.co.uk/index.php Diverting the two stopping trains a day beyond Alnmouth from Chathill to Lionheart wouldn't inconvenience many - but might still cause a local fuss! Give Alnwick at least 4 services a day and that might be recompense. Still gives pathing difficulties on the ECML without a new passing loop somewhere?

1. Should be as good as a done deal, yet I'd bet it won't be operational before 2025, and possibly as long as 2030!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure I agree over Keswick. Getting cars out of the National Park is a priority, the Windermere branch does well (so far as hourly-service dead end branch lines go) - so this one really should have a decent case. There is a reasonably frequent double decker bus service proving the demand.

 

[njlawley]

I think my first choice would be to restore a rail service for Leigh (Lancs.), but it would be expensive. A road occupies the formation west of Leigh, the viaduct through the town centre has gone, then the misguided busway occupies the formation between Leigh, Tyldesley & Ellenbrook, with parts of embankments removed to allow buses to cross other roads "on the level", rather than by bridges. Then the M602 covers the trackbed near Eccles. It might be easier to do a new connection from near Ellenbrook, via ex-NCB trackbeds to the ex L&YR line near Walkden. rather than trying to reinstate the old route to Eccles Junction.

Being my home town, I would love to see Leigh (GM - sorry! ) back on the rail network. It has been looked at, and would have involved a spur off the Chat Moss line, from somewhere around the old Kenyon Junction. A station would have been built to the south west of the A572/A579 junction, opposite the fire station. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be feasible to get it any further to the town centre alongside the A579, due to the Sports Village development, otherwise a station could have been built on the south side of the A578.

However, the old Tyldesley Loop Line is still a usable option because the old course hasn't been fully built on - you could get this as far as the A572 roughly 1/3 of a mile south of Leigh Bus Station, but would probably need to be single tracked north of the A572/A579 junction.

An older plan would have involved a road down to Kenyon Junction, with a Parkway station opening there and a bus shuttle to/from the town centre.

Taking the Busway, although a train line would have been a great idea, it would have required some considerable infrastructure replacement. One point in particular would be where the Busway crosses the A5082 in Tyldesley. The old bridge over the footpath would have been too narrow, and with housing close to the bridge, would have required considerable reconstruction. That's why the bridge was filled in and the Busway built on the level. Likewise, where the Busway crosses Astley Street about 3/4 mile to the west, nothing at all remained of the old railway crossing, and the embankments were shallowed when the trackbed was converted into a bridleway. Then again, Astley Street was completely re-profiled there so that the Busway crossing was on a flat level (that part of Astley Street is - well, was! - on a long, gradual slope).

 

[Bletchleyite]

The problem with the Busway is that the other end of it doesn't really go anywhere where it'd be particularly easy to actually join it to a railway line - any thoughts on where you'd do it? It'd be a lot easier to convert it to trams and just run them down the roads where the buses go.

 

[njlawley]

Something along the lines of this had been mooted as an option, particularly if tram-trains were used.

 

[Bald Rick]

The SERLAP report of 2016 quoted £104m. NO reason to suggest thats tripled in the last 3 years.

If never ceases to amaze me that people think that ‘their’ project will be cheaper than all the others.

East West Rail from Bicester to Bletchley is running at well over £30m a mile, on what is essentially a mothballed railway. If you think that’s expensive, Oxford to Bicester was £26m a mile, at cash prices (average late 2014), for a railway that was already there. Allowing for inflation just to today, that’s £30m/mile.

I’d love to hear how Skipton - Colne, or indeed any new railway on a long since abandoned alignment, could cost less than a third of this rate.

I'm not sure I agree over Keswick. Getting cars out of the National Park is a priority, the Windermere branch does well (so far as hourly-service dead end branch lines go) - so this one really should have a decent case. There is a reasonably frequent double decker bus service proving the demand.

We’ve had this debate before, and recently. People want their cars in the Lakes to go and visit different areas. For those that don’t, there’s the bus. Now the bus service could be better in some areas, but on Penrith to Keswick it’s pretty good. And the road is very good. Many threads ago I think I worked out that for less than the operating cost of running an hourly train, you could run a much more frequent bus service from the station forecourt at Penrith to central Keswick (as opposed to the station, which would have to be a little way outside town), with a similar journey time, that would be much more useful to everyone except the handful of people who don’t like buses. And save the country half a billion quid.

 

[tbtc]

I'm not sure I agree over Keswick. Getting cars out of the National Park is a priority, the Windermere branch does well (so far as hourly-service dead end branch lines go) - so this one really should have a decent case. There is a reasonably frequent double decker bus service proving the demand.

It's an hourly bus service - there are much more frequent bus corridors that we could be looking at if that were an issue. If "getting cars off the road" is the metric that you want to use then surely there are better places for that - and urban air pollution is a lot worse, so more in need of improvement.

Keswick isn't a huge place - busy in the summer but a line needs to attract passengers all year round.

Windermere - Kendall - Oxenholme - Lancaster is at least a reasonable amount of population on the one corridor but Keswick isn't that close to anywhere of size (which, if we are talking thirty million quid per mile, is a bit of a problem) - do you really think many people would commute from Keswick to Penrith/ Carlisle (or places like Manchester?) on a daily basis?

But, it's a small place in the Lake District, so people will prioritise it over everyday humdrum urban projects I guess.

 

[Killingworth]

It's an hourly bus service - there are much more frequent bus corridors that we could be looking at if that were an issue. If "getting cars off the road" is the metric that you want to use then surely there are better places for that - and urban air pollution is a lot worse, so more in need of improvement.

Keswick isn't a huge place - busy in the summer but a line needs to attract passengers all year round.

Windermere - Kendall - Oxenholme - Lancaster is at least a reasonable amount of population on the one corridor but Keswick isn't that close to anywhere of size (which, if we are talking thirty million quid per mile, is a bit of a problem) - do you really think many people would commute from Keswick to Penrith/ Carlisle (or places like Manchester?) on a daily basis?

But, it's a small place in the Lake District, so people will prioritise it over everyday humdrum urban projects I guess.

I travelled across the Lake District from Workington to Keswick and Penrith in 1958 in a new DMU watching the line ahead - it was great for a trainspotting enthusiast, but there were few other passengers. There's a lot of line to reinstate and bridges to be rebuilt before any trains could ever run again.

I took the bus from Penrith to Keswick last year and confirm it's quite quick and comfortable. Without heavy freight loads as justification a rail link would be a nostalgic extravagance. The 555 from Keswick to Carnforth is a good scenic ride.

 

[Ianno87]

Could I suspect that bus use in the Lakes is heavily propped up by free concessionary passes?

 

[The Planner]

East West Rail from Bicester to Bletchley is running at well over £30m a mile, on what is essentially a mothballed railway. If you think that’s expensive, Oxford to Bicester was £26m a mile, at cash prices (average late 2014), for a railway that was already there. Allowing for inflation just to today, that’s £30m/mile.

I think East West is a bad example to use, yes, Oxford Bicester was already there, but it was still effectively a brand new railway. The costs of redoubling the Cotswolds or Evergreen 2 etc may be a better comparison.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I travelled across the Lake District from Workington to Keswick and Penrith in 1958

The situation in 1958 was rather different to now, though, so that's not really a valid comparison.

 

[Killingworth]

Could I suspect that bus use in the Lakes is heavily propped up by free concessionary passes?

Most rural bus use is heavily propped up by concessionary pssses, as it is outside commuting hours in urban areas! It's a fact, beyond a suspicion, but that subsidy is for a far more flexible service than heavy rail can provide. Slower, less smooth but buses get into villages and suburbs that rail can't easily reach.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Most rural bus use is heavily propped up by concessionary pssses, as it is outside commuting hours in urban areas! It's a fact, beyond a suspicion, but that subsidy is for a far more flexible service than heavy rail can provide. Slower, less smooth but buses get into villages and suburbs that rail can't easily reach.

The problem (paradox, if you will) is that that slower and less smooth nature may not be a great issue to those who have passes (and thus often lots of time) but it kills the service for the paying, non-retired passenger.

 

[Killingworth]

The situation in 1958 was rather different to now, though, so that's not really a valid comparison.

That's true, the Lake District National Park has reduced the number of car journeys by residents, but the space has been more than made up by masses more tourists. Everywhere. However rail to Windermere barely scratches the surface of relieving that pressure. It hasn't the capacity to do that.

I note the role of rail in the Peak District. It isn't capable of relieving more than a small proportion of demand, even if services were reliable, which currently they're not. I could be taking the train to Glossop about now for a meeting. By driving I can leave in an hour and have flexibility for my return. (Bus isn't an option.)

 

[Bald Rick]

I think East West is a bad example to use, yes, Oxford Bicester was already there, but it was still effectively a brand new railway. The costs of redoubling the Cotswolds or Evergreen 2 etc may be a better comparison.

I’d say the best benchmark for building a new railway is the actual cost of building a new railway! (Noting that Oxford Bicester was already there, which made it easier in some ways. The only added difficulty was dealing with the passengers who used it).

Now someone will pipe up and say that land costs are more in Oxfordshire than ‘the north’. Well it is, but in the total costs of a new railway in (mostly) open country, the actual difference in the cost of land is a rounding error.

 

[Bald Rick]

Could I suspect that bus use in the Lakes is heavily propped up by free concessionary passes?

When I’ve used buses in the Lakes, there are a decent number of paying punters. Particularly on the longer distance routes, like Windermere- Ambleside - Keswick and Keswick - Penrith. On the latter route the concessionary pass holders are tending to head into Penrith town centre itself.

 

[ainsworth74]

Guisborough

This would be my suggestion as it's been a personal bugbear for a little while. Sadly though the site that I would have put a new station which would have been ideal has now been covered in houses

I was also amused that the local rag appears to have picked up on the story but believes that the £500m is just for re-opening the Guisborough branch!

Half-billion pound plan could see trains running from Guisborough to Middlesbrough

Boris Johnson has announced a half-billion pound plan that could see a rail connection from Middlesbrough to Guisborough for the first time in decades.

Both Guisborough Railway Station and the entire Nunthorpe to Guisborough branch line have been closed since March 1964.

...

But now, with a General Election just weeks away, the Tories have announced a £500m 'Beeching Reversal Fund' which could see the Middlesbrough to Guisborough line reopened.

A statement from the office of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, said the plan is to "re-connect towns and villages to the rail network" with an "additional option" of a new service from Middlesbrough to Guisborough.

"For too long, towns and villages in the North East have been overlooked and left behind," Mr Johnson said.

...

Link

However, I’d like to have some kind of threshold, e.g. whilst we are lumbered with lots of backwater branches, that require high subsidies, we should try to ensure that new lines run without on-going operational subsidy – I’m not expecting them to be *profitable*, I’m not expecting them to pay off the building costs over five/ ten/ twenty years, but if it’s not going to be able to bring in enough money just to cover the staff wages/ fuel/ ROCSO lease and other on-going costs then heavy rail isn’t the answer – consider improving the buses etc.

That does seem a very reasonable threshold to set personally! If a re-opening cannot cover its operational costs then is it really a good use of anyone's money?

 

[Kingspanner]

That does seem a very reasonable threshold to set personally! If a re-opening cannot cover its operational costs then is it really a good use of anyone's money?[/QUOTE]

Well, it depends if covering costs is your only concern. It often is, even if only because it lends itself to being measured. But what about social amenity, economic stimulus, or environmental benefits to name but three other considerations that might come into play on an infrastructure project.

 

[option]

Most rural bus use is heavily propped up by concessionary pssses, as it is outside commuting hours in urban areas! It's a fact, beyond a suspicion, but that subsidy is for a far more flexible service than heavy rail can provide. Slower, less smooth but buses get into villages and suburbs that rail can't easily reach.

The problem (paradox, if you will) is that that slower and less smooth nature may not be a great issue to those who have passes (and thus often lots of time) but it kills the service for the paying, non-retired passenger.

It's not necessarily that much slower if you look at actual end-to-end journeys, where the bus can get closer to your home & your destination.
Take the Keswick line as an example, & just look at how many places it wouldn't really serve, especially if it was Penrith-Keswick-Cockermouth-Workington.