Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

[21C101]

The real basket cases are all in Wales and Scotland. Messing with those would be a sure-fire backing for independence. It'd be easier to close the WCML politically (not that that would happen).

You wouldn't do it in Westminster. You would put the devolved governments in the financial position where they either closed them or they closed hospitals.

In much the same way that the BBC were put in the position where they, not the government, had to abolish free licences for over 75s.

It's supposed to be back in December. But are the existing two overcrowded?



Certainly the way to do it without substantially affecting the service. Absolutely better than closing stuff.

It wasn't that long ago that it was one an hour...

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Union Pacific?

All the big US freight railroads (UP, BN and others) are profitable, and are investing vast sums in upgrades and renewals.
They have a huge transcontinental container business unknown in Europe.
The same is true of Canadian Pacific, increasingly a cross-border operation.
But coal could be an achilles heel from decarbonisation, like it has been here, but on a much larger scale.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the peak fares are removed all day on Friday (eg AM and PM) rather than on other mornings.

Yes, you're right. Still apply Mon-Thurs though.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Perhaps later evening trains from kings cross could all go via Leeds to Newcastle and Edinburgh once leeds to Colton junction electrified? Slower journey, but more likely to fill train.

I do like this idea.

 

[JonathanH]

I do like this idea.

You do realise that they already have rolling stock which could divert via Leeds on its way to Newcastle if necessary?

 

[dk1]

Perhaps later evening trains from kings cross could all go via Leeds to Newcastle and Edinburgh once leeds to Colton junction electrified? Slower journey, but more likely to fill train.

Bimodes could do that now but as it adds so much time & would be extremely unpopular it’s best to use the direct route.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

You do realise that they already have rolling stock which could divert via Leeds on its way to Newcastle if necessary?

Yes - I am just thinking where else this could happen. Doing stuff like this has to be better than huge staff cuts.

London - Birmingham - Liverpool etc rather than just London-Liverpool

 

[dk1]

Yes - I am just thinking where else this could happen. Doing stuff like this has to be better than huge staff cuts.

London - Birmingham - Liverpool etc rather than just London-Liverpool

Sounds horrendous & will add lots of time. Liverpool trains are well loaded much of the time & so much so a half-hourly service is planned. Overcrowding would be a thing at many times of the day. Don’t think there are many plans to cut traincrew let alone huge cuts. We where not even permitted to participate in the recent Voluntary Severance scheme.

 

[The Ham]

For those who don't think railways benefit them, I'll ask you a question which is likely to carry more people the busiest bit of the M25 which sees AADT (2 way daily traffic) of 200,000 vehicles or a railway line operating for 16 hours a day (06:00 to 22:00, so probably longer but with let frequencies towards the outer edges) with 17tph (so loads less than say Thameslink) and with an average loading of 550 passengers?

It's a bit of a trick question, as on the numbers the answer would be about the same (assuming 1.5 people per vehicle).

As such even small reductions in rail use would likely have a big impact on road congestion.

How much of a drop in road use is there between term time and school holidays? 25%, 35%, what?

Actually again it's quite a lot lower than most think, it's about 10%.

Now given that rail accounted for about 10% of miles traveled, adding that to school holidays would make it comparable to term time, add it to term time and the roads would grind to a halt.

It's the same with cycling, car drivers benefit from everyone who cycles rather than drivers.

Therefore, regardless of if you use rail or cycle you still benefit from it. The problem with cutting rail services is that either you accept that you've got to provide subsidy to it or you've got to plan to close it down.

Whilst over the last decade the Net subsidy had been running at about £4bn to 5bn of you excluded the cost of enchantments from that you typically had a value of noticeably less than £1bn.

As such, for the next few years, unless the enhancements lead to significant savings (either in cost and/or carbon) then chances are they could be put on hold for a while and the Net subsidy cost probably wouldn't be so that much more.

If there's other cost savings which don't harm services too much, for instance a rolling out of more remote ticket sales machines (a member of staff in a central monitoring location and instruct the TVM to produce the required tickets, but can cover several stations) alongside don't things to encourage an increase in rail use. Then the overall picture could be not too bad.

On the fact of ahigher than expected fall in rail commuting and little sign of our rebounding from 70%; it should also be remembered that one thing which wasn't anticipated was the quite so significant fall in people working, I suspect that anyone who was thinking of retiring over the next 2 years and maybe even up to 5 years if they were put on furlough (and if they were made redundant almost certainly did) would have thought very hard about going back to work with many deciding to retire. As almost whatever industry you're in there's a shortage of staff, be that hospitality, engineering, lawyers, lorry drivers, etc.

The impact of those retiring would have been made a bit worse by the fact that it's harder to attract EU candidates.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Yes but the problem is that SWR didn't need all those new 701s after all, and that is repeated over many TOCs.
The deals with the Roscos were also for extended franchise periods which now looks like the wrong thing to have done.
TOCs that went for new diesels to replace life-expired 14x/15x (eg Northern, TfW) had no choice but to stump up the higher leasing charges.
TPE went for the crazy three-fleet solution and now face paying to keep Mk5s in the sidings indefinitely.
Some TOCs had good reasons to buy a new fleet (eg Merseyrail) but still have to find the funds to pay for them out of reduced revenue.
The problem comes when the "low hanging fruit" of off-lease stock includes that for which there is no realistic alternative (ie most of the DMU fleet).

As i said earlier in the thread TOCs have to spend £3B/pa on leasing charges and you can see the impact new stock (welcome though it is) is having on the bottom line when LNERs bill is now £333m/pa and TPE new three fleet solution is costing £147m although i suspect that still includes the 185's. So the bill will only go up more as the Aventras (or the Eventually ) come into use. Off hiring the ex BR stock won't neutralise the new build costs.

 

[infobleep]

With only 2% of domestic travel being by rail in the England in 2019, I would imagine that electric road vehicles will be sen as the way to spearhead a green travel agenda. With such a low market share of overall travel, other than high-speed intercity services and commuter networks around a few major cities, passenger rail transportation could easily be dispensed with altogether in most areas.

What about people who don't drive, how do we cater for them? Bus services aren't as good I find.

 

[The Ham]

With only 2% of domestic travel being by rail in the England in 2019, I would imagine that electric road vehicles will be sen as the way to spearhead a green travel agenda. With such a low market share of overall travel, other than high-speed intercity services and commuter networks around a few major cities, passenger rail transportation could easily be dispensed with altogether in most areas.

2% of trips but about 10% of miles traveled.

However it should be noted that EV's only broadly match the average of rail, however that assumes that you use rail as much as you do a car, which almost no one would. In which case the note walking/cycling of short distance travel rail users do the lower the average personal emissions get.

 

[Starmill]

Don’t think there are many plans to cut traincrew let alone huge cuts. We where not even permitted to participate in the recent Voluntary Severance scheme.

There are, but they're really cuts in projected growth. Some train operators are in a fortunate position where the music has stopping with them having recruited the crews necessary for additional work which will now not be introduced. They have in been allowed to keep these extra crews but over time numbers will again fall.

 

[dk1]

There are, but they're really cuts in projected growth. Some train operators are in a fortunate position where the music has stopping with them having recruited the crews necessary for additional work which will now not be introduced. They have in been allowed to keep these extra crews but over time numbers will again fall.

It will but I don’t envisage anything too harsh. It should all sort itself out.

 

[Robertj21a]

Lies, damned lies and statistics...

The 2% value takes no account of the distance travelled on each journey. Once you do that, it's actually 10%. But even that's not a true valuation of rail travel because you're comparing it against travel that could never possibly be done by rail - bin collections, nipping to the shops, visiting your maiden aunt in a village with no railway. As soon as you narrow it down to journeys within areas that actually have a useful railway service and strip out the irrelevant road journeys, it turns out that railways are very useful indeed. And when you think about how inefficiently our railways are currently used, with mixed-use killing capacity, there is huge potential to increase the passenger-mile share to 20 or even 30%.

Of course there are many, many journeys which rail is not suited for, and those need electric road vehicles. But going "full Serpell" is not the answer.

Really ??!!

- 'Huge potential to increase the passenger mile share to 20 or even 30%......'

Care to explain how that could realistically be achieved?

 

[Bald Rick]

Perhaps later evening trains from kings cross could all go via Leeds to Newcastle and Edinburgh once leeds to Colton junction electrified? Slower journey, but more likely to fill train.

Or just run a shorter train....

There are, but they're really cuts in projected growth. Some train operators are in a fortunate position where the music has stopping with them having recruited the crews necessary for additional work which will now not be introduced. They have in been allowed to keep these extra crews but over time numbers will again fall.

Depends on the TOC, and also the age profile of train crew. I’d be surprised if there were any redundancies in train crew grades. But there may well be a slackening off of recruitment.

 

[matacaster]

Or just run a shorter train....





Depends on the TOC, and also the age profile of train crew. I’d be surprised if there were any redundancies in train crew grades. But there may well be a slackening off of recruitment.

Ah, but if you run a full length train via leeds, you save costs of running individual trains and their crews. Obviously it would only work if the trains can end up in correct place for next day's service.

 

[Bald Rick]

Ah, but if you run a full length train via leeds, you save costs of running individual trains and their crews.

You’d save some crew costs, that’s it. Partly offset by extra mileage / fuel on the longer train going via Leeds.

 

[HSTEd]

You’d save some crew costs, that’s it. Partly offset by extra mileage / fuel on the longer train going via Leeds.

Wouldn't it be better just to split the train at Doncaster?

 

[Class 170101]

Removal of certain services whilst not renumerating in themselves may well drive demand downwards. Where I live the local bus service over many years has got more frequent, run earlier in the morning and later in the evening. I imagine it is doubtful that the earlier and later services make money in themselves but as an overall package serve to encourage demand on other services and thus make money overall. The same applies to trains. Remove the early morning and late night services and watch overall demand fall as a result. This may suit those who appear to work for Network Rail who seem quite happy in my experience to want to withdraw early morning and late services for a bigger maintenance window, but remember this, if you remove those services (especially the evening ones) you will disportionately affect leisure users and these are the people the railway must seek to attract to fill the gap left by the reductions in commuters and the elasticity in demand is greater for leisure than commuting.

On the subject of NR it needs to seek to reduce its insatiable appetite for track access for maintenance and renewals. At the end of Control Period 5 the ORR (as I recall) was suggesting NR was less efficient at its end than it was at the start of CP5. Many weekends of disruptive blocks is highly likely to reduce and deter demand of the very people we need to convince to choose rail, the leisure user. If anything it might be better to have fewer weekends but more lengthy blocks eg rather than say Newport to Hereford and Hereford to Shrewsbury on separate weekends just block the whole lot for one weekend.

Whilst perhaps fewer but longer trains may be cheaper to run remember what happened with Virgin Cross Country they reduced a full length train hourly service to a shorter train length but more frequent service and demand was unexpectedly greater than just the hourly service before.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

On the subject of NR it needs to seek to reduce its insatiable appetite for track access for maintenance and renewals. At the end of Control Period 5 the ORR (as I recall) was suggesting NR was less efficient at its end than it was at the start of CP5. Many weekends of disruptive blocks is highly likely to reduce and deter demand of the very people we need to convince to choose rail, the leisure user. If anything it might be better to have fewer weekends but more lengthy blocks eg rather than say Newport to Hereford and Hereford to Shrewsbury on separate weekends just block the whole lot for one weekend.

Totally agree but the processes and paperwork that you need to get on the track consume so much time that mid week night blocks are already pretty inefficient and are largely used for urgent interventions only. This is why there has been an uptick in the number of weekend disruptives especially on LSE commuter routes but with leisure traffic now becoming the dominant source of revenue there needs to be reassessment about the right balance between weekdays and weekend access. Personally I see blockades as better approach but only if they result in longer periods of disruption free operation afterwards but that needs a complete mindset change and would take some time to implement but I suspect without GBR and some new strong leadership for the industry nothing will change.

Ultimately this is just one of many issues created by Covid but if the industry doesn't get hold of these wider issues and come up with its own plan to save costs the DofT aka HMT will do it for them.

 

[Andrew1395]

Well I hope the government don’t turn back the clock to 1993 at my local station. That would mean the loss of fast trains to London (bar three peak hour services Monday to Friday). The core slow all stopper back to three trains an hour, half hourly on Sunday. No staff presence including security staff after 19.00. None at all on Sundays. No customer information systems; a long line PA will do. No daily cleaning, bar emptying of litter bins once a day. No doubt cut backs on the sort of capital spend that saw the pot holed compacted ash car park resurfaced, cctv installed, help points, benches, a tanked subway that was previously doing an impression of a sewer after every bout of heavy rain.

of course we would still have 60 plus trains to London everyday four or five carriages compared to the old three car, so actually a lot more capacity but framed in a lower quality railway.

I can see lots of ways diluted quality to save money could be achieved with core services retained. What was the number of trains in 1994/5 about 17,000 a day. So losing 3,000 could be achieved Across the network. Here is one for starters, Half hourly to Birmingham and one an hour via Northampton.

How palatable that would be to Tory backbenchers is another matter, but no doubt number 10 won’t mind.

 

[The Planner]

On the subject of NR it needs to seek to reduce its insatiable appetite for track access for maintenance and renewals. At the end of Control Period 5 the ORR (as I recall) was suggesting NR was less efficient at its end than it was at the start of CP5. Many weekends of disruptive blocks is highly likely to reduce and deter demand of the very people we need to convince to choose rail, the leisure user. If anything it might be better to have fewer weekends but more lengthy blocks eg rather than say Newport to Hereford and Hereford to Shrewsbury on separate weekends just block the whole lot for one weekend.

It will go the opposite way due to safe track worker and reduction of red zone. Work is already being done at looking at blockades (and plenty are done as it is). Lose longer Saturday night/Sunday mornings and you will need more if added to midweek nights as you lose the efficiency as you cannot do as much. If GBR is happy to offset higher NR costs against more revenue then that is fine but I suspect it will be do it at the same or less cost and increase ridership.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Wouldn't it be better just to split the train at Doncaster?

You need another crew to dispose of the detached portion .......

 

[dk1]

You need another crew to dispose of the detached portion .......

One portion Leeds the other Newcastle I think was the suggestion.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

One portion Leeds the other Newcastle I think was the suggestion.

Wrong terminlnology - sorry - you need another crew to take the second portion forward to destination. (and possibly a shunter / station staff to supervise / despatch) the portions.

(one of the reasons why reducing train lengths off peak in the past was done way with , as an 8 reduced to 4 say , needs a crew / driver to dispose of the detached sets if going to sidings or a depot)

 

[Taunton]

*OTT is as you say often even more useful for the live track diagrams - I use both that and RTT depending on situation.

It is extraordinary that the railway, spending considerable sums (billions?) on the "digital railway" cannot provide such information to train crews, but these two sites, which I believe are run by enthusiasts from outside the industry, can do so.

Reminds me of a generation ago when in a control room the large and poorly formatted rolling stock manual stayed at the bottom of the pile on the desk, while the Ian Allan spotters' book, much more succinct, was on everyone's desk and in constant use!

 

[Goldfish62]

It is extraordinary that the railway, spending considerable sums (billions?) on the "digital railway" cannot provide such information to train crews, but these two sites, which I believe are run by enthusiasts from outside the industry, can do so.

Reminds me of a generation ago when in a control room the large and poorly formatted rolling stock manual stayed at the bottom of the pile on the desk, while the Ian Allan spotters' book, much more succinct, was on everyone's desk and in constant use!

I have on more than one occasion shown a guard what's going on on RTT and Open Train Times when there's been disruption and the train crew have been given no information.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I have on more than one occasion shown a guard what's going on on RTT and Open Train Times when there's been disruption and the train crew have been given no information.

If I recall rightly there's a display at Bedford showing a screen from OTT. I've seen them elsewhere, too. RTT a bit less useful as you'd need a bit of technical knowledge to put it in a container that auto-refreshed.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It is extraordinary that the railway, spending considerable sums (billions?) on the "digital railway" cannot provide such information to train crews, but these two sites, which I believe are run by enthusiasts from outside the industry, can do so.
Reminds me of a generation ago when in a control room the large and poorly formatted rolling stock manual stayed at the bottom of the pile on the desk, while the Ian Allan spotters' book, much more succinct, was on everyone's desk and in constant use!

The recent NR presentation on planned changes at Crewe for HS2 was illustrated using "Quail" maps (now TrackMaps) as a basis.