Back in the 1970s (! nearly half a century ago!) I worked a Flexitime 9-day fortnight. We had a rota giving every so often a four-day weekend- so good we hardly needed to ever take leave! The employer's aim was to stagger arrival and departure times and thus take pressure off roads and buses.
Intensification 'issues' at Cockfosters come to mind; and 'urban village hubs' on East-West Rail. NImbyism is alive and well.
True, but capacity is being cut to match. If it is cut to match the average loading, then it won't cope on the days when everyone happens to be going in to the office at the same time.
Surely the service gaps are suppressing demand.
Nationally possibly; in NSE land certainly; in Regional Railways and Intercity land on the other hand demand often far outstrips supply.
Nah, they'll spend a fortune preparing for the work, then at the last minute they'll finally pull the plug with all of the money down the drain and no work for the skilled staff who need to be kept if you don't want it to cost a fortune when everything starts over in five years' time.
This isn’t to say that Fridays aren’t popular though. The 1703 from King’s Cross is regularly full & standing.
That's often true for houses but most flats are built on brownfield sites further into town centres where the land values make more sense. Planning policy generally supports higher density and lower parking provision in town centres.
Yes it was definitely seven diagrams, the cycle was 1006 KGX-CBG, 1155 CBG-KGX, 1336 KGX-PBO, 1515 PBO-KGX and so on. The down platforms between Royston and Cambridge have been extended so, if Thameslink had not happened, it seems reasonable to assume that they would all be eight cars now. The class 317s had a mod so that the rear set could be locked out on the morning peak trains and unlocked at Royston.
So another example of a government minister making a bold generalised statement in the House of Commons without bothering to check said statement against actual facts available from their own department. It's no wonder people are so cynical about politicians.
Most of the Northern network is still not electrified unfortunately…!
Have you read the quote above, or just the title?
Its not all he said though is it?
The reality is season ticket income is running at less than 50% of what it was pre 2020 and that was a significant source of income whether people chose to travel everyday or not. Now i would say from my local station plenty of passengers have time shifted when they travel and on what day they travel so now buy daily tickets which contributes to the numbers and mustn't be ignored. The industry could do more to match resources to demand but that would cost more overall and as we know the majority of operators simply don't have the rolling stock available to strengthen services. To my mind what we need is passengers pressurising their MPs as that is surest way to get back to DfT that votes are at risk if they don't respond.
I think it is going to take a lot for railways to become an electoral issue again. MPs can respond with information about reduced passenger numbers, the support being given to the industry, and the need to manage costs. All fairly easy stock answers.
To be honest we don't know what the future holds. If you look at the railways in general they have always gone in peaks and troughs of being "busy" and then running virtually empty. People commuting and then not commuting, I think anyone saying that this is the new normal needs to get a grip on reality. Situations and companies change over time, we could see more working from home or we might see a return to the office in 10-15 years time.I've just heard the Transport Secretary saying in answer to a question in parliamant this afternoon (around 16.12) that he doesn't think commuter rail will be coming back post-pandemic- at:
Time to expect increasing timetables to facilitate leisure travel (esp weekends and off-peak) and fewer 'rush-hour commuter trains'; that should take pressure out of the system- fewer traincrew needed at peak times; fewer trains stood in sidings most of the day.
Many season tickets for longer distance journeys were (and still are) sold at a significant discount to the daily return price. Consequently on some flows there isn't a lot of space to allow for pricing between the day return and the season ticket. The railway doesn't appear to need to reduce its yield if it is filling up trains with its reduced timetable.
I have to agree that we know not the future- even tomorrow. However ... in a world of finite resources, someone has to try to plan for this uncertain future, or a range of possible futures, assessing likelihoods, etc. As said elsewhere, officials advise and politicians decide. Someone has to decide whether and when to order new trains for instance, to scrap, cascade, refurb, increase /decrease maintenance/ renewals/ improvements, etc .. Someone has to bid for budgets against Treasury 'Dead hand'.
I expect to see increasing attention being given to, for instance:
Season tickets may be down, but other fares are up so it's not all one way. Remember that season tickets are subsidised so someone purchasing three Anytime Returns in a week will be paying close to the same amount as a weekly on many routes. In fact, on some longer-distance routes if you make one return journey a week at peak times you will be paying the same as you would if you bought monthly seasons.
The train that North Wales MPs get to London on a Monday is being cut by Avanti from May, which should concentrate minds.
There was a big boom in leisure travel post pandemic, probably people catching up with all the things that they couldn't do during lockdown but commuting levels are never going to return to what they once were.
It's easy to quote particular locations at certain times of day but there will be other locations and trains that are far quieter than they once were and as mentioned in another post season ticket income has fallen considerably, certainly I know of many people who don't do the daily commute anymore and maybe go into the office once a week.
Indeed, in the context of the quality of the service at TransPennine Express it's amazing they're doing as well as they are. Of course a small number of people with inter-available tickets may actually be using Northern or others in reality where the model allocates them to TPE, but this is a far smaller effect than it would have been in the past, because now more people will have a Northern only option. I don't think these figures are adjusted to account for the Elizabeth line central section not having been open in 2019 however.
Or parking perfectly compatible rolling stock off lease because they won't pay for it in order to meet the budget squeeze in the case of CrossCountry. Nothing typifies Hunt and Sunak more than that niggardly attitude to services.
They aren't even good at cutting costs. Short term, maybe, but long term XC would be better off with IETs.
TfL has a policy that the day cap is always 1/5 of the weekly Travelcard ticket price, which means people can save money if not commuting 5 days per week if the commute involves Zone 1.
