cactustwirly
Established Member
This argument is statistically ridiculous- you’re not comparing like-to-like. Leeds and Edinburgh may skew the stats wildly, but you can’t just ignore them and say all is fine and dandy whilst you happily include Sheffield (lots of Northern/XC/TPE passengers) and Derby (EMT locals and XC)! There is patently not enough info in the usage stats to gauge this...you would need stats on how much each route is used.
This is very true...it’s often cheaper and quicker to go via Donny/Tamworth than go MML - EMT are managing to lose out to competition on a franchised railway, which is about as close to a monopoly as governments will allow.
Yes in an ideal world I would have the usage stats for just the IC services, but it isn't, and Leeds has a disproportionate usage compared to all of the other stations.
Yes Derby and Sheffield have connecting services, but so does Leicester, Peterborough and Doncaster!
But my point is that, Leeds has a much denser network of lines, which makes it much more difficult to determine usage of LNER services.
Same with Edinburgh, which has lots of Scotrail services, and the train has a much smaller modal share to London than all the other cities, which makes the usage stats useless in this case.
All I'm saying is that the usage figures gives us a rough idea about the usage of both the ECML and MML for intercity travel, and that the MML is relatively close to the ECML figures, even though one is the premier route, and the other is considered a 'rural backwater' in comparison.
However the usage figures show that apart from Leeds and Edinburgh, the MML is just as important as the ECML in the places it serves, arguably the MML should be higher as Nottingham, Leicester, Derby etc have a much higher population than Peterborough, Doncaster etc.
If you read the EMT franchise thread it's clear that some people think that the, MML isn't a 'proper intercity' route. It should be a thought as a major intercity line just like the ECML, WCML, GWML etc, and therefore it should get the same level of investment as the other lines, such as proper length trains, electrification, proper Sunday timetables etc.
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