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Any problem with or on a bus on a road is much easier to reach than on a broken down train miles from anywhere on a railway line. The advantages of trains over buses on lines like this are not great, except for rail enthusiasts - like me!
I'm sorry, but this just isn't true. Almost everyone prefers a train over a bus, though a decent quality coach (e.g. National Express spec) might sway them back. Bus travel is not a quality experience pretty much anywhere in the UK - though notably the Far North services are coaches.
Incidentally, the North Coast 500 is bringing masses of cars, camper vans and caravans to the narrow roads and spreading tourists' £s over a much wider area than the railways ever can. Those roads are effectively being subsidised too, but for far more people in far more places.
A tourist tax is the answer to this sort of thing. Then they do pay their way. Fortunately, the UK does seem to be waking up to that option. How you do it for campers though I'm not quite sure, but you can certainly whack a couple of quid a night on hotels and campsites.
The Whitby line is a strange one ... it clearly does have value for the intermediate stations, which have much higher ridership than most stations on the Far North Line and can't easily be served by a fast bus (which is why the line remains in place) ... but I really don't understand the number of people who use the train for the end-to-end journey from Middlesbrough to Whitby, when the bus is faster, more frequent and cheaper.
Trains are more comfortable than buses? Some of those people are actually travelling from further afield so it they are arriving at Middlesbrough by train, it makes sense to continue their journey by train?
And while the frequency could be improved, it's hard to see how you could cut 20 minutes off the journey time to make it comparable with the X93 bus unless you miss out all the intermediate stops that are the only reason the line exists at all.
Well you could probably shave 6-8 minutes off the journey just by building a chord to avoid the reversal at Battersby. Add battery trains with faster acceleration as soon as the technology is mature enough and - with 16 intermediate stops, even if you only saved 30 seconds per stop that gives you another 8 minutes. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some potential to get a few minutes by improving line speeds in a few places too, once you have faster accelerating trains.
In the longer term, Middlesbrough to Nunthorpe is urban in nature, so could possibly justify being electrified and some doubling to allow a half-hourly metro service. You could then possibly save another 5 minutes by separating the services and running the Whitby services non-stop between Nunthorpe and Middlesbrough (It's currently 14 minutes to go 4.5 miles, stopping at the 3 intermediate stops)
We do, regularly. We're actually somewhat unusual in being a one-car household despite living in a rural area, which means we need to use the (surprisingly good) bus service as well as trains. My personal travel habits are identifiable on the origin-destination data for my local station.
But sometimes the train doesn't do what we need it to do, and the option of driving is incredibly useful. If we still lived in the Highlands, it would be absolutely essential.
I'd very much like to see trains kept in rural areas. But we can't go around expecting the network (and travel habits) to be frozen in aspic. And unfortunately decades of underinvesting have left us in a situation where battery-electric buses are a serious threat to rural railways - and even some main lines.
That didn't need to be the case, but we are where we are. Sticking our heads in the sand won't make the economic system change, or make electric buses go away. We need to be thinking about how to preserve the best features of railways and mitigate the worst features of buses.
The next best option is probably to have bus services defined in the same way as rail services, operated in an integrated way, and locked down so the operator can't mess around with them in hopes of making the EBITDA graph go up.
I'm glad to hear that you do use the train service. You rightly say that sometimes the train doesn't do what you need it to do. For a lot of people, sometimes the car doesn't do what they need it to do. Both are needed.
Battery trains are coming along just like buses. These will be the future of long rural lines, have no fear.
As for the network being set in aspic, I would rather see it grown, so that it can become even more useful as a network.
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Respectfully, you do seem to be implying that everyone who wants the railways to save money believes that the railways must run at a profit. I doubt many people who read this forum think that! But there is a limit. It is one thing to subsidise a line with an hourly service to towns of a few thousand people. It is another thing to spend tens of millions of year on a line with a handful of services a day, serving the most remote communities in the country, and following an extremely slow route.
The bigger point is that if you start lopping off bits of the network here and there, you will end up losing vastly more than you gain (if anything).
All this self flagellation will gain nothing for railway passengers. Can you imagine the RAC foundation offering up roads that could be done without ? No. They understand the value of their network. So should we.
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Any talk of 're' opening and 'reversing' damage is still backwards-looking though. There are entire towns that have never been on the rail network. If we only look at lines previously closed, how can we adjust to the new travel patterns?
All rail proposals should start first with 'what should a rail service to Town X look like?', then ask 'what infrastructure would be needed to provide that?' and only then should it consider if old trackbed might be useful.
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Below 1tph, its arguably better to have a completely irregular frequency but have trains targeted to serve key journey generators.
The Bentham and S&C lines seem to be edging towards a service every two hours or thereabouts. This seems to be vastly superior to a sporadic service. The improvement to the Bentham line is notable.
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However big the health budget, it will never be able to do everything, and will have to make choices. Just like the railways have to. In France, some rural branch lines have closed in recent years, but you could hardly accuse France with its massive TGV network or being anti railway.
The X99 service is even more sparsely operated than the train. 3 services on a weekday, 2 on a Saturday with last southbound departure from Thurso before midday! The journey times benefits between Inverness and Thurso are not as noticeable as from Wick. Of course public money could improve this frequency and hours of operation.
I think this coach-stitution policy would have more support if first of all express routes not served by rail were clearly embedded into the network with branding, mapping, high quality branded halts, long-term commitments etc so they are widely known not just to a lucky few and people gain confidence that the removal of a few edge cases won’t be a hardship. So for Stranraer a coach service from Carlisle station to Stranraer and Cairnryan via the A75 and selected towns would be a good first step followed by one up the A77 to Ayr.
Reading back through the thread, so much of the discussion focuses on the Far North line and the fact that the X99 is faster than the train, and provides a similar service. Much discussion on viability, cycle carriage, and a lit on decarbonisation.
Worth considering that Ember are recruiting in Thurso right now to launch their own electric coach service, and they also carry cycles. Yet to be seen if the route can survive the options of rail and 2 bus services.
And must be remembered when looking at current usage figures that market on intercity and long-distance coaches in Scotland is that concessionary card holders (disabled, over-60 and under-22) will get free travel on all bus and coach services within Scotland, irrespective of distance, but not free rail travel. Without this distinction, it may not be true that both Far North Line and X99 (and soon Ember) could operate on the same route. Both are receiving a considerable amount of subsidy currently.
Ember's success, and now Citylink's use of electric coaches in Scotland now also means decarbonisation can no longer be used as an argument to keep low usage rural rail lines open
To offer free travel on one long distance mode and not the other is clearly a distortion of the market. I bet Dr Beeching's spirit wishes he'd thought of it.
Because trains offer a much higher quality environment than buses. Yes, even a knackered 150 vs. a brand new bus. That only ceases to be the case when the bus is a decently specified coach. Also trains tend to have toilets and buses tend not to.
You can put nice seats in a bus (e.g. the Transdev Ripon services) but it's still a bus and will still buck, rock and sway along the route unless it's a high quality dual carriageway.
I've stopped using the Oxford-Cambridge X5 now it's just a double decker bus. The journey is tiring and uncomfortable and there are no toilets. Even were it slower (and it won't be, but even if it were) East West Rail is going to be hugely superior even if it's going to cost far more than 3 quid.
You can't polish a turd. Well, you can use high quality coach style vehicles as tend to be used on regional bus services in mainland Europe (either with wheelchair lifts, or "Interdeck" style with the driver and a wheelchair position in a low floor "foyer" and the steps past that), but typically in the UK it's either train or low quality bus - very rarely is a quality bus option offered - though to be fair the Wick/Thurso buses are really coaches. And fancy seats don't give a quality journey experience - you need to go for a much higher quality vehicle.
(This probably again comes down to "we could do it properly, but we never do in the UK, so save the railway!)
Buses have the advantage though of directly serving more places where people actually want to go, town centres, hospitals etc
The train might be a nicer journey, and average a higher speed, but if I have to walk 1 mile at one end, and 0.5 miles at the other end up a hill, that time and comfort benefit is significantly reduced.
Buses have the advantage though of directly serving more places where people actually want to go, town centres, hospitals etc
The train might be a nicer journey, and average a higher speed, but if I have to walk 1 mile at one end, and 0.5 miles at the other end up a hill, that time and comfort benefit is significantly reduced.
Buses have the advantage though of directly serving more places where people actually want to go, town centres, hospitals etc
The train might be a nicer journey, and average a higher speed, but if I have to walk 1 mile at one end, and 0.5 miles at the other end up a hill, that time and comfort benefit is significantly reduced.
I think anyone not wanting those walks would just drive. The majority of bus users are either non-car-owners, holders of passes or going somewhere where the car is not pleasant to use e.g. a big city - in rural areas if you take the trains away most will use their cars, and most people will have cars in places like Wick.
True, but you can’t really have an alternative ambulance service. You can have an alternative public transport route between Inverness and Wick/Thurso.
I mean this is part of why I have a tough time believing the far north lines are so expensive. If they are really costing the better part of £100m a year to operate and are bringing in maybe £10m a year in fare revenue how are they surviving?
I mean this is part of why I have a tough time believing the far north lines are so expensive. If they are really costing the better part of £100m a year to operate and are bringing in maybe £10m a year in fare revenue how are they surviving?
I mean this is part of why I have a tough time believing the far north lines are so expensive. If they are really costing the better part of £100m a year to operate and are bringing in maybe £10m a year in fare revenue how are they surviving?
The government had decided over many decades that that is worthwhile expenditure. Simple as that.
We can debate whether it is, but let's not delude ourselves that cutting it will result in 90m to spend elsewhere. It'll just be a 90m reduction in what gets spent on the railway.
In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
Also I cannot imagine the total overall subsidy for the Scottish highlands is more than £1bn or so - and compared to that £90m is also a lot of money.
Like look the net subsidy on the sleeper is like £30m/year (or 50%) and it specifically benefits the MPs and their staff, and it benefits the upper classes going shooting in the highlands and it makes it possible for businesspeople in the highlands to do business in London without it taking 2 working days.
The government had decided over many decades that that is worthwhile expenditure. Simple as that.
We can debate whether it is, but let's not delude ourselves that cutting it will result in 90m to spend elsewhere. It'll just be a 90m reduction in what gets spent on the railway.
Bingo. And the replacement bus service would just be whatever the commercial bus operators come up with - i.e. basically the present X99, maybe with a journey or two added. Or in many other cases, nothing at all.
Wales does seem to be nudging slightly closer to Swiss style integration, interestingly (though the quality is still lacking). If they go much further on it I wonder if they'll start to ask the questions, particularly if they are basically just given the rail subsidy their rural lines get to spend as they wish.
Curiously in some ways things used to be slightly better integrated, for instance there was an evening Conwy Valley round trip worked as a permanent rail replacement bus back in the 90s. Rather than closing lines entirely, running some services as buses might offer savings at quiet times on selected lines. For instance, should the Conwy Valley in winter perhaps be a morning and evening commuter round trip with a train and buses for the rest of the day, maybe except Saturday and Sunday? Would adding a trip up the valley as far as Betws at say 2100 on a Friday evening increase weekend tripper business?
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In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
I think anyone not wanting those walks would just drive. The majority of bus users are either non-car-owners, holders of passes or going somewhere where the car is not pleasant to use e.g. a big city - in rural areas if you take the trains away most will use their cars, and most people will have cars in places like Wick.
The entire population of Caithness, including Wick and Thurso, in 2022 was 25,347 and forecast to fall by 18% by 2040. Maybe 15,000* live in Thurso and Wick. Trains are infrequent. The default method of transport for most journeys beyond walking distance must be by car, some of which are quite old and rusty thanks to the salt spray in the air by the coast.
I used to be happy walking 2/3 a mile down hill to my local station on an unmade and unlit path through the woods for an hourly train taking 7 minutes into the city centre (but nowhere near where I worked). Getting back up took a few minutes longer. A weekly 9 mile jog to work was fine in good weather.
I'm increasingly with the majority who take their cars the 2 miles by road to reach the station taking almost as long as walking. It's 1/3 of a mile uphill for a bus that runs every 15 minutes and takes 35-40 minutes into the city centre.
40 years ago I recall advising students to do without a car for as long as possible. Managing without is bearable in inner city areas. Having access to one in country areas is now essential. It might be more useful and economic to provide dial a ride mini buses or taxis to replace some subsidised timetabled public transport - subject for another thread.
*In passing I noted that my ward in Sheffield has a greater population than Wick and Thurso combined - proving absolutely nothing except that local people probably know best!
In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
Also I cannot imagine the total overall subsidy for the Scottish highlands is more than £1bn or so - and compared to that £90m is also a lot of money.
Like look the net subsidy on the sleeper is like £30m/year (or 50%) and it specifically benefits the MPs and their staff, and it benefits the upper classes going shooting in the highlands and it makes it possible for businesspeople in the highlands to do business in London without it taking 2 working days.
Considering the sleeper effectively duplicates several other services (within and without the railway system) providing quality public transport to remoter areas with fewer choices is a more important use of funding.
In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
Also I cannot imagine the total overall subsidy for the Scottish highlands is more than £1bn or so - and compared to that £90m is also a lot of money.
Like look the net subsidy on the sleeper is like £30m/year (or 50%) and it specifically benefits the MPs and their staff, and it benefits the upper classes going shooting in the highlands and it makes it possible for businesspeople in the highlands to do business in London without it taking 2 working days.
Considering the sleeper effectively duplicates several other services (within and without the railway system) providing quality public transport to remoter areas with fewer choices is a more important use of funding.
I wonder what changes would be needed to the Sleeper to make it self-fund to free up more money? People don't seem to be particularly price-sensitive (aside from the seated accommodation which is very cheap) so could the fares be cranked up? After all the commercial OeBB Nightjet services charge much more for the premium cabins.
Probably worth a thread in its own right, will create one shortly.
We all like the Sleepers as a bit of a railway curiosity, but both do seem to be rather a money pit. Could either or both of them be made self-funding? The main options for this would seem to be increasing fares - OeBB's Nightjet charges much higher fares comparatively and the market doesn't...
To offer free travel on one long distance mode and not the other is clearly a distortion of the market. I bet Dr Beeching's spirit wishes he'd thought of it.
Oh, he'd thought of it (or something similar, two subsidised state-owned parcels services competing with private industry) and thought it was complete nonsense to have market distortions.
It might be more useful and economic to provide dial a ride mini buses or taxis to replace some subsidised timetabled public transport - subject for another thread.
DRT is largely ineffective and rather a money pit, at least in terms of the rather bad UK implementations of it. The German Anruf-Sammel-Taxi concept where it's run in marginal time by taxi companies (so the cost is near-zero if nobody requests it) seems more viable. And if it's being requested every time, it might as well be a scheduled service.
Oh, he'd thought of it (or something similar, two subsidised state-owned parcels services competing with private industry) and thought it was complete nonsense to have market distortions.
This is already done in some areas - the preferred term is Demand Responsive Transport.
In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
Also I cannot imagine the total overall subsidy for the Scottish highlands is more than £1bn or so - and compared to that £90m is also a lot of money.
Like look the net subsidy on the sleeper is like £30m/year (or 50%) and it specifically benefits the MPs and their staff, and it benefits the upper classes going shooting in the highlands and it makes it possible for businesspeople in the highlands to do business in London without it taking 2 working days.
Exactly. it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask whether the subsidy on such services is good value. Spend £90m (or whatever) on remote highland services or spend £90m to improve Edinburgh and Glasgow commuter services, where the vast majority of people actually live.
Of course there's a political aspect to this as well. Just as much of Scotland has a resentment about "Westminster", cutting money from the Highlands might then create resentment against Holyrood!
Exactly. it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask whether the subsidy on such services is good value. Spend £90m (or whatever) on remote highland services or spend £90m to improve Edinburgh and Glasgow commuter services, where the vast majority of people actually live.
The ultimate conclusion of that, though, is something looking rather like Serpell. So where does the line get drawn?
Should all English transport subsidy be put into Merseyrail, Metrolink, Birmingham local services and TfL plus the ECML and WCML, with everything else left to the bus bandits? It would benefit the majority of people in the UK to do so.
In central government terms sure, but the overall pre-Covid subsidy of the Scottish rail network was like £350m, so compared to that it is pretty high.
Also I cannot imagine the total overall subsidy for the Scottish highlands is more than £1bn or so - and compared to that £90m is also a lot of money.
Like look the net subsidy on the sleeper is like £30m/year (or 50%) and it specifically benefits the MPs and their staff, and it benefits the upper classes going shooting in the highlands and it makes it possible for businesspeople in the highlands to do business in London without it taking 2 working days.
Why not? Bus drivers do it, they handle wheelchair passengers by themselves too.
1000s if not hundreds of thousands of small business retail workers do it, including me in the past.
See the hype curve; autonomous cars were coming, they were going to be massive and change everything and they were going to happen tomorrow. Since then many of the participants have run out of money but in the background autonomous cars are taking rides in the millions per year. It is a matter of time rather than a matter of if they happen, we are in the middle of that curve. Video conferencing hasn't killed trains but it has changed what we use them for.
I'm sure many people were scoffing at the impact of video conferencing in 2019, the technology was ready for about a decade before everyone started using it at work, it was feasible for about the last 20 years or so and possible for decades before that point . It was the social change that took the time, but when it did the switch over was very rapid, the knock on changes of people moving due to remote working are likely to take years to play out.
On autonomous cars were are probably where video conferencing was in the mid to later 2000's, it works, but its not widely available. The next stage is it working pretty much everywhere which is a 5 year timeframe, then probably a further 5 years or so before a detectable number of people start giving up their cars. The about another 10-20 years as most people give up their cars, and another 20 or so years before all the drives and car-parks go and the new patterns of urbanisation that no longer needing to store a car become apparent.
eVTOLs are flying around, some basic ones are taking passenger flights but the really interesting longer range ones are already in the certification/industrialisation phase. The timescale for eVTOL is actually pretty similar for self driving cars because they don't have some of the social change elements being essentially a new mode of public transport.
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