According to Modern Railways mag this summer XC were not rostering their full compliment of HST and at least three were idle every single day.
Of course they can make more money by running overcrowded four coach dmu on 700 mile journeys and they can lease out their HST units and also make more money.
Arriva must have friends in high places and contribute funds to our governments election campaign to secure a two year extension to their franchise when their performance is so poor.
They don't have to provide more rolling stock only more seats.
Current voyager units are more like cattle trains than modern rolling stock. I presume that Arriva will be putting even seats in somehow to their appalling trains.
How many of you on this forum every have the misfortune to travel on XC? How many of you have seen the disgracefu conditions that passengers are supposed to endure?
How many of you have tried to sit in the seats of a voyager on a long journey?
If Modern railways are correct in their assertion that at least three hst units are idle very day. When will XC be rostering them? Will there be any extra trains this Xmas?
I had the misfortune last Xmas to take a short journey on XC wh n I've never seen such disgusting travel conditions. There were ladies with prams being forced to stand in the lavatory ( not literally) because there wasn't anywhere else on the silly four coach dmu between Newcastle and Reading.
Arriva must indeed have friends in high places when they can easily get another two years extension to their franchise without having to provide any extra rolling stock. When They can squeeze even more people into already overcrowded coaches without the government caring.
He who pays the piper.
How many of the shareholders of Arriva have lowered themselves to travel on the trains that make them even richer.
Don't tell me that they don't make money from our trains. Why else would they run them?
There's more than one way to milk a cow.
I don't apologise for my vitriol as it appals me to see public money wasted, and the passengers so openly abused.
There is more to caring about trains than taking down numbers.
Problem is, much of your vitriol is completely inaccurate. And oddly enough lots of us do use XC services and are well aware of where there are problems thanks.
What will they do at Christmas? Probably put four HSTs in traffic on the busiest days without making a big song and dance about it and use the Voyagers that frees up to lengthen some other services, just like they do every Friday and Sunday of every week.
Midweek and Saturdays, three sets are indeed not in service for several days a week at present, but one of the five XC sets is undergoing programmed maintenance at the depot each day, so can't be used anyway... see
http://www.railforums.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1478545&postcount=4
But if you really think that running a couple more HSTs every day, with the extra mileage/maintenance that requires, will make much difference on XC, you are dreaming. Fundamental change will have to wait until the next contested franchise - and that is all down to the Government, as is what rolling stock XC gets to use.
And do you actually know who owns Arriva these days? It doesn't look like it.
Sir Tom Cowie (well-known donor to the Tories) may now be life president of Arriva, or something like that, but the sole shareholder in Arriva these days is a certain German railway company - DB - which is in turn solely owned by the German government.
I'm not aware that the German government has been contributing funds to the Conservative Party via DB/Arriva, or have the rest of us missed something?
I'd agree back then, but if XC were able (I know) to extend their entire fleet to say 8-car and up the quality of the interior to say DB ICE standards, I think they could fill them all easily enough. When you get severe overcrowding, you get suppressed demand, particularly on many short-medium distance XC journeys where the car is an attractive alternative.
Well DB doesn't always manage to fill ICEs in the middle of the day in a lot of places, whatever the interiors look like, and XC overcrowding is at its most severe around the major cities along the route in the peaks, where the train is an attractive alternative to the car.
That will not change if you put on bigger trains with fancy interiors - increasing capacity on the network around the likes of Bristol, Birmingham and West and South Yorkshire, both in terms of enabling extra local services to run and lengthening them may ease the pressure a bit, but the odds are that if XC was running bigger trains, whatever the frequency, they would fill up just fast at those busy times of day.
What XC really needs is more trains, of five or six coaches, allowing more coupling/uncoupling to form long trains in the core areas of the routes, or to the South West on summer Saturdays, not a lot of long trains, with a big operating cost, that you are never ever going to fill for large chunks of the time at the quieter extremities of the network. I wonder why XC has been so reluctant to deploy all its HSTs all of the time...?
As controversial as it might be, I would suggest something like (considering the NE-SW axis as an example):
-A very considerably stripped back long-long distance XC operation, say 1tph Plymouth-Edinburgh calling only at major/hub stations (perhaps as few as Exeter, Bristol, Birmingham, Derby, Sheffield, Leeds, York, Newcastle), using proper full length (even loco-hauled) trains, relatively free of 'commuter' traffic
-The frequency lost at intermediate stations provided by shorter/medium distance local services* (1-2tph), enabling much better mapping of capacity to demand for commuter flows across the day by shortening/lengthening trains as required without the liability of carting this round all day over a long distance
Yes, it will mean that Steve and Janice won't be able to get a direct train from Burton-on-Trent to Alnmouth (or wherever) twice a day, but will create a network that works for the majority (i.e. Birmingham commuters), not one that seems to be designed for the minority resulting in compromises for the majority.
One train per hour (however big it is)? Maybe look at overall XC (and the network generally) passenger numbers in 2001 and where they are now before saying stuff like that.
I doubt that a call every two hours most of the day at the likes of Burton and Tamworth is exactly a massive inconvenience to passengers travelling between big cities - nor is offering people the chance of a WCML connection at Tamworth.
Nor would any future version of XC be allowed to ignore the Cheltenham/Gloucester area, with about 240,000 people living there. Commuters tend to divide between Bristol and Birmingham - and in the Birmingham direction Worcester is a far more important flow and is already segregated out of the XC equation anyway. Or should Cheltenham/Gloucester passengers all have to use already overcrowded 170s on Birmingham-Cardiff instead or squeeze into a GWR 150 to reach Bristol?
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