How to increase passenger numbers?

yorksrob said:

I don‘t know. There still seems to be a reasonable amount of capacity in most areas in the off peak.

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Because nobody wants to travel then!

LE Greys said:

In an ideal world, I would love to see that. It could even be done, if EC took over most of the former-LNER branch lines from Peterborough northwards (basically, some parts of EMT, the former Northern Spirit and so on). However, the problem of IC passengers being able to travel more cheaply by ticket-splitting would still exist, as would the perception that these IC passengers are being used as a cash cow (thus speaks someone who used to do 900 miles on EC every month or so since 2004, virtually never using another TOC except in the holidays).

And quite frankly, if the government is going to subsidise something, they should do it out of general taxation rather than taking advantage of a convenient profitable route within the industry.

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There are some profitable services within existing TOCs and some unprofitable ones.

Are you saying that some commuters are being used as a "cash cow" and we should reduce their fares (rather than use the profits from commuter routes to keep services at unsocial hours running)?

At the moment, profitable services (and, by extension, profitable TOCs) are used to keep the overall subsidy down on other routes (since the railway overall will not be profitable). That makes sense to me.

455driver said:

Because nobody wants to travel then!

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Exactly - Isn't that why we're trying to increase usage then
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LE Greys said:

And quite frankly, if the government is going to subsidise something, they should do it out of general taxation rather than taking advantage of a convenient profitable route within the industry.

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Well, I can see your point.

But I think the railway gets on ever more slippery ground the more subsidy that comes from general taxation.

You could argue that it's unfair that passengers on profitable routes should have to subsidise those on unprofitable ones. But then again, I would argue that someone using a profitable railway route is more likely to use an unprofitable connecting service than someone who never uses the train at all.

I remember seeing the second Sir Bob Reid being interviewed and being rightly quite proud that our railway used less from general taxation than our European equivalents.

tbtc said:

There are some profitable services within existing TOCs and some unprofitable ones.

Are you saying that some commuters are being used as a "cash cow" and we should reduce their fares (rather than use the profits from commuter routes to keep services at unsocial hours running)?

At the moment, profitable services (and, by extension, profitable TOCs) are used to keep the overall subsidy down on other routes (since the railway overall will not be profitable). That makes sense to me.

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How much you think it makes sense depends on how much money you have paid out because of this. Please remember that this is essentially what brought down GNER at a time when the WCML was in the middle of a huge upgrade. It created an appearance that the ECML was being used to fund an upgrade for the old enemy in Euston, which is most likely highly inaccurate, but that's what it looked like. A slightly safer statement would be that they are being used as a stealth tax. I'm going to try to run down the average per-mile cost for every TOC and compare that with premium payments per year to see if there's a correlation.

tbtc said:

There are some profitable services within existing TOCs and some unprofitable ones.

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Their was something in Rail magazine a few weeks ago saying how much Northern Rail got in subsidy percentage wise, think it was 69% or something, one has to ask the question why Northern is getting so much when their trains are full to bursting most of the day in the major cities in the North ?

sheff'd victoria said:

Their was something in Rail magazine a few weeks ago saying how much Northern Rail got in subsidy percentage wise, think it was 69% or something, one has to ask the question why Northern is getting so much when their trains are full to bursting most of the day in the major cities in the North ?

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Full trains don't necessarily mean profits, especially given the lower fares that Northern tend to have compared to the rest of the UK. Having shorter, older trains probably doesn't help either; diesel is only getting more expensive and you can't cram as many people into a 2 car Pacer than you can a 12 car Desiro formation!

NSEFAN said:

Full trains don't necessarily mean profits, especially given the lower fares that Northern tend to have compared to the rest of the UK. Having shorter, older trains probably doesn't help either; diesel is only getting more expensive and you can't cram as many people into a 2 car Pacer than you can a 12 car Desiro formation!

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I dont call £15 for an hours journey cheap

I agree with your last point, mass electrifcation is needed to bring down the costs and have longer trains to cope with demand

sheff'd victoria said:

I dont call £15 for an hours journey cheap

I agree with your last point, mass electrifcation is needed to bring down the costs and have longer trains to cope with demand

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Try doubling that for an hour's journey down here.

The TOC wants its profit, so the government has to cough up if the fare box isn't generating enough income, as per the cap and collar arrangements. Hopefully Northern won't have a steep fare rise once they finally give Pacers the boot!

sheff'd victoria said:

Their was something in Rail magazine a few weeks ago saying how much Northern Rail got in subsidy percentage wise, think it was 69% or something, one has to ask the question why Northern is getting so much when their trains are full to bursting most of the day in the major cities in the North ?

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Northern gets a lot of additional subsidy from TfGM and WYPTE.

sheff'd victoria said:

Their was something in Rail magazine a few weeks ago saying how much Northern Rail got in subsidy percentage wise, think it was 69% or something, one has to ask the question why Northern is getting so much when their trains are full to bursting most of the day in the major cities in the North ?

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I daresay the image that outdated and unappealing stock like Pacers give the travelling public hardly endear rail travel to them. Mass electrification and a stock modernisation plan (4 carriage EMU similar to the 350?) instead of handing off old trains like the red-headed stepchild the DfT treats it would greatly increase public image and perhaps use by passengers as a result.

sheff'd victoria said:

Their was something in Rail magazine a few weeks ago saying how much Northern Rail got in subsidy percentage wise, think it was 69% or something, one has to ask the question why Northern is getting so much when their trains are full to bursting most of the day in the major cities in the North ?

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NSEFAN said:

Full trains don't necessarily mean profits, especially given the lower fares that Northern tend to have compared to the rest of the UK. Having shorter, older trains probably doesn't help either; diesel is only getting more expensive and you can't cram as many people into a 2 car Pacer than you can a 12 car Desiro formation!

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sheff'd victoria said:

I dont call £15 for an hours journey cheap

I agree with your last point, mass electrifcation is needed to bring down the costs and have longer trains to cope with demand

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£15 is a bargain for some Intercity journeys that take an hour!

In all serious, the Northern franchise has...

the problems of generally running short trains (takes just as many staff to run a 30m Pacer as it does to run a 200m train)
generally running diesel trains, having to run a number of services to please "Stakeholders" (which means running some "box ticking" services to please political paymasters rather than using stock where its commercially needed)
heavily reliant on PTE income and grants, which means little commercial incentive to improve services in some areas
having well documented probelms with revenue collection (no DOO, Guards have to operate the doors, often having to go to the rear doors at each stop, so a lot of tickets go unchecked)
having to run a fair number of "odd" routes (Ellesmere Port, Brigg, Denton, Pontefract Baghill) and infrequent ones (Whitby, Bishop Auckland, Hope Valley, Morcambe)
playing second fiddle to the "big boys" on a lot of routes, so can't get the paths that they want, plus little incentive for Northern to improve some flows when they'll only get a fraction of the ORCATS pot

...basically, its a muddle.

EMUs will help (in the "Lancashire Triangle" and on the "Transpennine" route), but a lot of the problems will still be there longer term.

tbtc said:

£15 is a bargain for some Intercity journeys that take an hour!

In all serious, the Northern franchise has...

the problems of generally running short trains (takes just as many staff to run a 30m Pacer as it does to run a 200m train)
generally running diesel trains, having to run a number of services to please "Stakeholders" (which means running some "box ticking" services to please political paymasters rather than using stock where its commercially needed)
heavily reliant on PTE income and grants, which means little commercial incentive to improve services in some areas
having well documented probelms with revenue collection (no DOO, Guards have to operate the doors, often having to go to the rear doors at each stop, so a lot of tickets go unchecked)
having to run a fair number of "odd" routes (Ellesmere Port, Brigg, Denton, Pontefract Baghill) and infrequent ones (Whitby, Bishop Auckland, Hope Valley, Morcambe)
playing second fiddle to the "big boys" on a lot of routes, so can't get the paths that they want, plus little incentive for Northern to improve some flows when they'll only get a fraction of the ORCATS pot

...basically, its a muddle.

EMUs will help (in the "Lancashire Triangle" and on the "Transpennine" route), but a lot of the problems will still be there longer term.

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As it has been pointed out the problem with Northern is the stock, that is why I was moaning about £15 for a ticket to Lincoln on a bouncy railbus.

One question that I must ask is do people on here think Northern Rail is too big, by that I mean the area it covers, should it be cut into a West & East T.O.C ?

sheff'd victoria said:

I dont call £15 for an hours journey cheap

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sheff'd victoria said:

As it has been pointed out the problem with Northern is the stock, that is why I was moaning about £15 for a ticket to Lincoln on a bouncy railbus

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Sorry, your previous quote didn't clarify that the quality of the stock had a bearing upon the "value for money"