144’s are not suitable for the modern railway. Look at 144012. It had so little capacity due to the PRM mods and it doesn’t matter what you do on the inside, it still rode badly. A class 600 will ride well and will have more seats than a 144.
153’s are being replaced by 156’s so there’s an increase there.
144's would be fine to strenthen services already run with "suitable" stock. People seem to forget that that crowding is one of the greatest factors making a service not suitable or inaccessible to people.
It's not surprising that many people say the same thing.
If we look again at the fact that 135,000 passengers could all fit into the summer holidays, then in such a scenario then there would only ever be eyewitnesses of how busy the summer services are and no one giving evidence of the totally empty trains.
As such it's not that everyone doubts you and the others who have similar experiences, rather it's that such observations are always likely to be skewed towards reporting of the busiest services.
On a slightly different example, not all XC Voyagers are busy, it's just that the busiest ones are used by most people and so are likely to report busy trains.
If the busiest 1/3 of XC services carry 2/3rds of the passengers, then we'd expect to see 2 reports of busy services for every one where it's reported as not busy.
If we used those reports we'd think that we'd need to lengthen trains on 2/3rds of trains, however only 1/3rd need extra capacity.
I don't doubt what you say, and I'm not sure that there's anything that can be said to counter it, except to say that if lots of people are saying that services are overcrowded at various times, then it is a problem.
Pre Covid there were undoubtedly quiet trains on Cross Country and TPE, yet I don't think anyone would have denied that those services had an overcrowding problem.
Those 185 passengers a day look "ropey" to you because you seem to be choosing (only) a day where there's school kids but yet the full amount of day trippers that you get in the summer holidays!
"A day where there are school kids" There are a high proportion of days where there are school kids, and you don't need the full amount of day trippers that you get in the summer holidays to have busy services. I've been on those trains on week days and in winter, and those numbers of thirty passengers seem more suited to those times than the summer season where passengers are much higher. And that's without even contemplating the school traffic.
What you fail to acknowledge is that, if there are 135,000 passengers a year (thirty something passengers per train on average) and some individual services with over 135 passengers then that means that there must be a lot of other services where the passenger numbers are pretty low - but you don't seem to want to acknowledge this - there are a lot of midweek days in winter when passenger numbers must be "sub optimal"
The key is that I'm highly sceptical about the £135 passengers a year to begin with. As I have said above, I have been on mid week and winter days and
for those
the 30 passengers per train (excepting the school trains) seems about right. But definitely not as an average.
But at the same time, on most routes you will get counter-peak flows, mid day services and early mornings which will drag passenger loadings down. This is not generally accepted as an excuse to sit back and allow heavy overcrowding at the busier times. Even if nothing is done, it is at least acknowledged as a problem.
Well, if the average passenger numbers on a train at Whitby are thirtysomething and passenger numbers at Whitby are double what they were in the early 1990s, and those passenger numbers in the early 1990s were spread over significantly more trains then doesn't that suggest that the line was ripe for service reductions back then?
That's not what I'm saying and you know it. The doubling has been over the network as a whole where services have been maintained and improved. The potential for the Whitby line has undoubtedly been restricted by the destruction of it's all-day service and will have prevented the route from enjoying the sort of resurgence that other routes with maintained services will have experienced.