Controversial railway opinions (without a firm foundation in logic..)

[mrcheek]

A vending machine and one of those Costa coffee machines you get in petrol stations would do really

I think that would work. Scan your First Class ticket for a freebie!

 

[hux385]

A vending machine and one of those Costa coffee machines you get in petrol stations would do really

I would love it if this was available on most regional/rural trains, it would be an absolute gamechanger in terms of passenger experience. The only worry would be the current rules on hot drinks dispensing on trains, which often need a paper bag to prevent spillages and burns? If this could be worked around it would be fantastic though!!

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Good way to push passengers back to using cars, coaches or even planes on long distance services.

Quite the opposite. You don’t have to book your car in advance. One of the reasons the railways struggle to attract people away from cars is because walk-up-and-go prices have been ratcheted up beyond reasonable levels and the perception is that you have to book months in advance to get a remotely reasonable deal.

 

[Kite159]

Quite the opposite. You don’t have to book your car in advance. One of the reasons the railways struggle to attract people away from cars is because walk-up-and-go prices have been ratcheted up beyond reasonable levels and the perception is that you have to book months in advance to get a remotely reasonable deal.

And do you think if they got rid of advance tickets the cost of the walk up fares will drop to be more reasonable?

 

[jfowkes]

Here's one of mine: Most if not all the stations on the Marston Vale should be closed or bypassed to permit faster, more frequent running of regional EWR etc. services.

 

[Drogba11CFC]

Half the people who smugly bang on about how we should all support the strikes are either virtue signalling or sticking the boot in. And I'll bet a great many were very, very pro-lockdown.

The number of people who, in anecdotes, regularly display their ignorance about train driving has increased at a suspiciously large rate recently.

 

[The exile]

My controversial opinion is that there are lots of internet edgelords posting on this forum.

Meanwhile in the real world, great swathes of the population don't use a train from one year to the next, and the public perceives rail travel to be slow, unreliable and horribly expensive.

In the real world plenty of people don’t use schools, the health service or plenty of other things from year to year either…

 

[Doctor Fegg]

And do you think if they got rid of advance tickets the cost of the walk up fares will drop to be more reasonable?

I was under the impression this thread, in the Speculative Discussion forum, was started expressly for ideas “without a firm foundation in logic”. So, yes, that is what I would like to see.

If the thread has magically transmogrified into “please supply a detailed business case for every single idea which you think is achievable under a government of car-crazed Tories and their cheerleaders in the Daily Mail and Telegraph, given the funding profile of DfT and the dead hand of the Treasury” then clearly I’d have written differently.

 

[Pdf]

The government should treat road and rail the same economically with similar expectations of return per pound of "subsidy" put in. This should be achieved by increases to fuel tax, tolls, and mileage charges (including to freight). If the government feels that this would put too much cost on the consumer, rail fares should be reduced until the subsidy per passenger-mile is similar to what the road network is getting.

 

[PGAT]

In a similar light to the comment above, mass transport via road is FAR more inefficient than rail, and therefore all funding should be allocated to maintaining the bare necessities, as well as leftovers going into the railwau

 

[Thirteen]

I think the railways should have little to no national Government involvement similar to Japan. Don't get me wrong, I think TfL do a great job for London as do Scotrail and TfW but I hate that it's political football a lot of the time.

 

[nw1]

1) The British railway is actually good in comparison with other European railways on almost any metric

Even the swathe from Belgium down to Austria (basically BE, NL, DE, CH and AT)? I've visited that area several times, though never lived there - and I get the impression, from my visits, that they do timetables (the "Taktfahrplan"), connections and integration with buses much better than we do. It's not perfect (delays and cancellations still occur, of course) - but it seems much more planned and integrated than our haphazard post-privatisation system.

I do think BR had some continental characteristics in the past (early InterCity in the 70s and early 80s, or around the late 80s, early 90s with NSE, RR and IC) but no longer.

Then there's the whole S-Bahn concept, which exists for even smallish cities. We can only dream of a Solent S-Bahn !

 

[Wolfie]

My controversial opinion is that in terms of comfort, the EPB has never been bettered for a suburban commuter train.

Also, VEP's could be perfectly pleasant to travel on (if not overcrowded).

I remember EPBs being replaced by 319s on the Catford loop line in the late 80s. My only regret about a much needed modernisation/old junk heap removal was that 8 carriage plus trains were replaced by 4 carriages.

 

[Bald Rick]

The government should treat road and rail the same economically with similar expectations of return per pound of "subsidy" put in. This should be achieved by increases to fuel tax, tolls, and mileage charges (including to freight). If the government feels that this would put too much cost on the consumer, rail fares should be reduced until the subsidy per passenger-mile is similar to what the road network is getting.

I don’t like to break this, but the Governement expects a higher return per pound from roads than rail (consdiderably so), and subsidises rail on a far higher basis per passenger mile. If rail was subsidised at the same rate per passenger mile as road, most of the network would close.

Even the swathe from Belgium down to Austria (basically BE, NL, DE, CH and AT)?

Yep - I’ve got a friend out there at the moment touring all those countries except Austria, and he has suffered delays and cancellations everywhere. Even some bus replacements have not turnEd up.

 

[DarloRich]

Some train spotters make good railway employees! Some.

First class is ridiculously elitist and should be banned.

Student railcards should be deleted.

Here's one of mine: Most if not all the stations on the Marston Vale should be closed or bypassed to permit faster, more frequent running of regional EWR etc. services.

No problem. I agree but not my station obvs.....................

 

[Bletchleyite]

Then there's the whole S-Bahn concept, which exists for even smallish cities. We can only dream of a Solent S-Bahn

There are effectively some. Merseyrail is one, as are the Snow Hill Lines, as sort of is Castlefield (though a flawed one), as is London Overground, as sort of are the Valley Lines.

Most German ones are better, but not all. Stuttgart for instance is just based around half hourly services on each branch.

 

[xotGD]

All Inter-City trains should be loco hauled, not multiple units.

All trains should have opening droplight windows.

There is way too much fixation on electrification - it causes years of inconvenience for minimal benefit.

BNS is an acceptable initialism for Birmingham New St. Anyone who pretends that they think you are referring to Barnes should be forced to travel by Pacer for all eternity.

 

[yorksrob]

I remember EPBs being replaced by 319s on the Catford loop line in the late 80s. My only regret about a much needed modernisation/old junk heap removal was that 8 carriage plus trains were replaced by 4 carriages.

I remember avoiding that line due to the less comfortable rolling stock, once it had gone over to Thameslink.

 

[eldomtom2]

Any talk of "Net Zero" or any environmental stuff bar very low hanging fruit for public transport should banned for the next 10 years. As long as they remain a junior partner to cars , any expense spent cleaning up the railway is just pushing people back to cars and undoing any gains.

Busses even more so, if you can buy a diesel for half the price of electric and double the amount of busses, or raise driver salaries with the saved money , do it, with mabye some exceptions to inner London where buses do actually make substantive contribution to air quality.

This isn't to say electric trains and busses don't have a role, but the business case questions should be "will this save money" , "will this allow more capacity" or "will this improve reliability " not " will this reduce the carbon output of the public transport sector?" Which itself is a pretty small proportion of British carbon output

We need to wean ourselves off our dependency on oil, and furthermore what will drive people to cars is them being electric when trains and buses aren't.

 

[Trainguy34]

BNS is an acceptable initialism for Birmingham New St. Anyone who pretends that they think you are referring to Barnes should be forced to travel by Pacer for all eternity.

I don't mind pacers, would be interesting when I'm going from London - Edinburgh.

 

[eldomtom2]

I don’t like to break this, but the Governement expects a higher return per pound from roads than rail (consdiderably so), and subsidises rail on a far higher basis per passenger mile. If rail was subsidised at the same rate per passenger mile as road, most of the network would close.

How is the return from roads calculated?

 

[renegademaster]

We do not need to continue making ourselves dependent on oil, and furthermore what will drive people to cars is them being electric when trains and buses aren't.

I'm not worried about being "dependent" , once the demand from cars withers away, we'll probably be able to run what we need solely from the North Sea. Yes I know that will run out eventually, I said for 10 years , not forever.

Most normies don't care deeply about environmentalism. If they did, most cars now would be electric, at least for the middle class and above, and the government wouldn't have to resort to banning new ICE cars in 2030.

Regards to comfort, you can barely tell the difference once inside between modern DMUs and EMUs. When I was on a bimode IET I didn't even notice when we left the wires(at Swindon I think)

 

[HarryF]

The entire UK-wide timetable needs re-writing with longer dwell times at most stations.
Alternatively, passengers who get on, then do something to block other passengers boarding (faffing with luggage etc) are fined the cost of the delay minutes and any delay repay owed to other passengers as a result of the delay to the train.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Anyone with a “Sword” badge should be ignored. They’re not rail staff. They’re police interview rejects who badly want to have some power

 

[Ken H]

There are effectively some. Merseyrail is one, as are the Snow Hill Lines, as sort of is Castlefield (though a flawed one), as is London Overground, as sort of are the Valley Lines.

Most German ones are better, but not all. Stuttgart for instance is just based around half hourly services on each branch.

I think you can look at the network in West Yorkshire and Gtr Manchester and its not bad as an S Bahn. OK more should be electrified.
But Leeds and Manchester are so close that the 2 networks are 1 really. So you have long routes like Calder Valley with commuter flows at both ends which makes life more difficult.
Add in that areas like Lancashire, parts of N Yorks (Selby, Harrogate/Knaresborough, Skipton) are part of the Leeds travel area but in another authority

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Train companies should remove all technology like WiFi and charging points from trains and instead promote rail travel as a form of "digital detox".

Instead of spending the entire journey hunched over their mobile phones passengers should be encouraged to engage in more healthy activities such as enjoying the view out of the window, reading a book or maybe engaging in mindfulness exercises.

 

[xotGD]

Train companies should remove all technology like WiFi and charging points from trains and instead promote rail travel as a form of "digital detox".

Instead of spending the entire journey hunched over their mobile phones passengers should be encouraged to engage in more healthy activities such as enjoying the view out of the window, reading a book or maybe engaging in mindfulness exercises.

That would require the seats to be aligned with the windows!

 

[D6130]

That would require the seats to be aligned with the windows!

I can just about remember that being the case in the days of my youth!

 

[mrcheek]

With the exception of the badly designed 185s, any passenger without a First Class ticket who so much as breathes in the vicinity of the First Class section, should be removed from the train immediately. Without it stopping.

 

[Trainlog]

Train companies should remove all technology like WiFi and charging points from trains and instead promote rail travel as a form of "digital detox".

Instead of spending the entire journey hunched over their mobile phones passengers should be encouraged to engage in more healthy activities such as enjoying the view out of the window, reading a book or maybe engaging in mindfulness exercises.

Can definitely agree to this to some extent, i like to look out the window on the train and its sad when one person can take up a good table with a window seat and do nothing but look at their phone the whole journey - worse if its a line with great views and your stuck in an aisle seat and you wanted to look out the window.

However this idea does backfire especially if you are travelling at night with little to look outside the window at, and i definitely think charging points with a plug and USB should be standard on any national rail passenger train as you need to charge your phone even if you are not using it. However, i do think that heritage railways should add this as part of the novelty of travelling on their lines - as going on those lines is to enjoy travelling behind a vintage steam loco or diesel whilst watching the views go by.