Well, you've certainly always been opposed to my view, which remains the case, that the IETs should not be carrying commuter traffic and a dedicated 12-car fast commuter service should operate instead.
I have given comprehensive answers to your view before, but for the sake of new readers I shall repeat them as such assertions made with no evidence should not be unchallenged.
For the sake of this argument I assume that in the medium term (two to three years) traffic will return to pre-corona virus levels.
It is clear that capacity is constrained between Reading and London, as it is on many other routes to the capital. In this sense I have no objection to increasing capacity between Reading; all I ask is that suggestions for this increase take at least some account of the existing factors on the ground. Simply proposing, presumably additional, dedicated 12-car trains is a very, dare I say it, Trumpian, simplistic solution.
Some data. The 2011 census showed that 42,309 persons commuted into Reading from other local authorities in the UK and 32,960 persons commuted out of Reading to other local authorities in the UK by all modes. These numbers only cover ‘for work’ travel - leisure travel in all its forms is not included - and show that there is a net inflow of people to work in the Reading local government area. Restricting the mode to rail only the census showed that 6,415 persons commuted into Reading from other local authorities in the UK and 6,283 persons commuted out of Reading to other local authorities in the UK or abroad. So the rail flows are balanced. These data may be found on the ONS website
here.
To these rail ‘travel to work’ figures must also be included ‘leisure’ travel and all those changing trains. The ORR data show that more than 4 million people change trains at Reading every year which is the equivalent of well over 100,000 per day; over a 16 hour period that is some 6,000 per hour. Because of the high train frequencies there is no pronounced peak in these interchange flows, although obviously more people per hour change trains during the rush hour than during the rest of the day. A proportion of these will be continuing on to Paddington - but they are not ‘Reading Commuters’ as they do not originate in Reading.
To cope with this traffic most eastbound trains call or terminate at Reading in the morning as do, obviously, the westbound local services from Paddington and Waterloo and the trains from Gatwick and Guildford. In the evening westbound trains from Paddington call at Reading not only to return people home from London but also to pick up those working or interchanging at Reading for their destinations further west.
There are three major difficulties in introducing a dedicated Reading to Paddington shuttle both mornings and evenings:
- There is limited capacity on the Mains between Reading and London and such fast shuttles cannot run on the Reliefs because of the four essentially ‘all stations’ Crossrail trains per hour scheduled for the peaks from Reading and all the additional services joining at Airport Junction. As si404 pointed out earlier in post #150 the 2019 timetable has 16 trains per hour west of Airport Junction on the Mains all running at 125mph, on average one every 3 minutes and 45 seconds. I have no idea how many per hour you are proposing but even adding one more would be very difficult without impacting reliability especially, as I suspect, you are proposing the use of trains made up of three Class 387 units. These have a top speed of only 110mph and pathing these amid 125mph IETs will be challenging to say the least.
- It would not be feasible to make more paths available between Reading and London or platforms at Paddington for the ‘Bletchleyite Shuttles’ by terminating expresses originating in the further reaches of the GW empire at Reading. Try explaining that to a passenger from Newport or Worcester.
- To ensure the architypical Reading Commuter’ uses only the ‘Bletchleyite Shuttles’ there would have to be a way of separating the pedestrian flows in the station from the gatelines to the trains. Short of a significant rebuild I cannot see how this can be achieved. Currently Up Main express trains for London use the island platform 10/11 almost exclusively and only 10 can be used easily for reversing moves off the Down Main. This will block 10 for longer than a simple station stop and if it is occupied when the Down shuttle arrives all the Down trains behind the waiting shuttle - one every 3 minutes and 45 seconds don’t forget - will be held until the platform is free.
Connectivity, most importantly with HS2.
Again a buzzword.
The main driver of the redevelopments at OOC driven by the development corporation are the earnings originating from the mixture of offices and housing planned there - all of which will be made more attractive by the HS2 station and the connection to the West London, Richmond and Underground lines in the area. As a local distribution hub and as a way to improve connections from (mainly) the Birmingham area to Heathrow (there being no Birmingham to Heathrow flights at all) as well as removing some of the pressure from the inner-London connections at Euston the OOC station has a lot going for it. The remaining GWR outer-suburban trains and Crossrail will offer excellent connections for local traffic and those working in the offices.
For longer distance traffic on the Great Western routes the calculations are different. Admittedly there may be some passengers from, for example, Plymouth who would have a faster journey to Manchester or Newcastle by changing at OOC but these are edge cases. The question to be answered is how many of them will there be and does the benefit to them outweigh the dis-benefits caused to all the other passengers who wish to continue to Paddington and find that their journey is slower. There is no reason for GWR Main Line passengers to change to Crossrail at OOC, there will be a perfectly good station at Paddington and it won’t be so far to walk. It will be pointless - and I suggest counterproductive - to stop trains originating or terminating in South Wales, Bristol, Cheltenham, Worcester or Oxford at OOC as the journey time to Birmingham will be longer than the direct route. This makes a total of nine trains per hour. If these have to stop simply because the other trains stop is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.
SNIP
This is another question Ive raised on this forum when the "oh, it was faster 50 years ago" and don't get an answer or view on. Unless people are comparing completely the same thing and taking into account modern factors then its irrelevant. How much faster should we be achieving over those timescales? 5 minutes quicker, 10? How quick should services be compared to now in 30 years?
You have comprehensively missed the point. It is not ‘how fast should the journey be?’ but ‘why should a journey in ten years time be slower than was possible in 1976, over 50 years earlier?’ Your argument is illogical - why should ‘modern factors’ make things slower? In almost every other human endeavour ‘modern factors’ make things lighter, faster or cheaper. What excuse have the railways to be different?