Commuting from Norwich, there aren't many free seats from Colchester, my feeling is that the recovery to 100% on particular days is not far away as passenger numbers keep growing although as you say the flows are different. I think the narrative is beginning to change in the media back to overcrowding and then the pressure to increase services once again.
Or even as far as Swindon on one (London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads) service that I was on, about 12 to 18 months ago..
And it being one of the most reliable TOCS in the country.
That begs the question of the methodology used for the statistics. If a passenger, say, has a ticket from Darlington to Peterborough, and a ticket from Peterborough to Kings Cross, in terms of percentage of usage on a given section of route that still only amounts to one passenger, but as you saying it would be counted as two?
One would hope the statistics quote journey numbers on booking reference from start to end station, ignoring splits and changes of train for pre-booked tickets.
What I mean is, even laving aside split ticketing, one passenger travelling from Darlington to Peterborough, and another from Peterborough to London, is still only an increase of one on any given section of route. If more passengers taking shorter journeys were hypothetically taking place, but the actual increase on any given section of route was a small number, to count all of those passengers individually, and say 'business is booming. We need more trains' would be misleading,
I suggest reading the report linked in post #49 which explains some of the methodology around the published numbers.
Not sure how you path these unfortunately? Yes EMUs should operate between Coventry and Manchester but people still want to travel across Birmingham, not all board and alight there.
But no extra length overall especially at peak times. 24m at 10 coaches against 20m at 12 coaches?
Perhaps but I would argue spending less on roads - especially new roads rather than existing roads before anyone screams what about the pot holes. Even if cars go electric they still take up the same amount of road space as petrol ones and arguably electric cars may actually be heavier than petrol ones so may cause more pot holes.
Have I read this right two fast trains and one of them has 700 to 800 standing and one with little standing?
although there has been some gain in seating with the 720s over the 317/321/360/379 fleets that went before, the big capacity gain has been the 745s over the 90/DVT stock. Crazy to think now that some sets only had 5 standard class carriages.
There's definitely been a build-it-and-they'll-come situation. The Stadlers are light years ahead of the Mk3s it's incentivised more to use GA especially on weekends. That morning 08:57 Norwich - Liverpool St that runs non-stop from Ipswich used to call at Chelmsford and Colchester but I regularly saw it too busy to board and leaving people behind with 745s this last couple of years before they added the fast Ipswich 720 to make up the calls.
Let’s not go down this pot hole too far!
Government income from motorists - exclusively because they are motorists, and in addition to the taxes they already pay - includes all the VAT on motor vehicles, fuel, parts and accessories, servicing and MOTs plus the 12% Government impost on insurance policies. It amounts to a gigantic sum.
Seems like the spread of calls needs adjusting so each one is around 550 standing - more comfortable around personal space
Probably due to being 6 car Class 321 equivalent minimum. Clearly 321s could be in 4, 8 or 12 formation. 720s only in 5 or 10 formation.
A lot of road expenditure comes from local or devolved governments though, not the DfT.
Accounting for externalities complicates things. Rail expenditure includes the cost of a driver, whereas on roads you drive yourself. That's a loss of productive time when you could have been doing something else.
These are all good reasons for either imposing road user charging or subsidising public transport (in principle the former seems preferable but is difficult politically). But such considerations don’t imply unlimited subsidies for rail and they also suggest much more spatial differentiation than at present, where some rural rail journeys are very heavily subsidised and the associated external benefits are very limited.
Usually half hourly service in the mid to late afternoon to London.
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
www.realtimetrains.co.uk
Even office commuting is now approaching consistent only on three out of seven days. There's not a lot of consistency with anything any more.
Considering XC are quite happy to sell advance tickets for peak time services between Wolverhampton & Birmingham, they are probably doing down the TPE method of "sell as many advances as possible", even if said advance ticket is a token amount less than the flexible ticket.
Three out of seven isn't bad actually given that most people haven't commuted to offices for two of those for a very very long time.
Also, XC keep all the money from such a ticket. The walk up ticket will be split between operators.
boring and reliable.
