Certainly - but the mantra that railways have faded into irrelevance is also completely untrue. It's just that we're travelling more than ever and private cars account for virtually all that growth. All too often some anti-rail (or anti-anything-but-cars) campaigner uses these kinds of statistics to argue that they prove that other modes are unnecessary.
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Rail accounts for only 2% of all trips made
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quantinghome
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Car market share has been pretty static since the mid-80s, and overall distance travelled by car has been static for a while now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42182497
By contrast rail has growing rapidly for 20 years.
you might make car use in cities and large towns difficult. But in the country and small towns there are not enough people to make buses sustainable. So people have to drive. Local buses in Skipton are very thin on the ground, and its a long hilly walk to the railway station or bus station from some parts. And from nearly villages like Embsay and Carleton
And if you make car use difficult in towns, people from the country will think 'they dont want me and my car, i will go elsewhere' so depressing the economy.
National policy for walking (note there's no requirement to provide cycle provision) between home and the nearest catchment school is (each way) 2 miles for under 8 and 3 miles for those aged 8 and over (a rule set in the 1940's when road traffic was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than it is now).
This can lead to children being to required to cross very busy roads with no support:
There's often other problems which the children have to face, such as:
- no footways
- narrow footways
- walking next to high levels of pollution
- walking through woods, heathland and other unpaved, often isolated, routes
For urban areas these can sometimes be avoided by taking an alternative route, however this isn't always the case and in rural areas there tends to fewer options.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
Indeed, but your linked graph illustrates my point. To show them on the same scale as car use, the rail and other lines have been flattened out so much that the increase is barely visible at first glance. On looking more closely, it does confirm that the passenger-km gained by rail roughly balance out those lost to buses, so total public transport usage is pretty much static.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
It's a difficult balancing act. In the 1950s few people had cars and there would have been comprehensive bus services in areas like this. Bus use and provision has declined partly because of car availability but also because government policies have ignored or disadvantaged bus travel. That part could be remedied as seen in other countries which take buses seriously as part of an integrated network, where car ownership is high but there is a public transport alternative for many journeys even in rural areas. Then those people who still need to drive have less congestion to put up with.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Car traffic in inner London moves typically at 10-15mph on average at best, so that's 2.25 miles *furthest*, probably quite a bit shorter. No way would that take you an hour and a half, probably less than an hour. Perhaps you should actually walk it to see!
People used to walk that distance with small children all the time as recent as the 1980s. People have, if I'm going to be frank, got quite lazy with two-car households being the norm.
Personally if I lived in central London I would not even consider car ownership, it would be an encumbrance.
Robertj21a
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If it's 9 minutes away by car in Inner London then there's no way it's going to take 1.5 hours to walk it !!
School kids walk 2-3 miles to and from school all over the country (not at lunch time too of course) - surely, it's even easier in London ?
.
Richard Ingram
Member
I would say getting milk and visiting your sister would count twice, since one trip is home to shop for milk, and one trip is shop to sister to visit. I think the single main purpose is to define the point at which journey's are split up, not to discount journeys from the stats. Personally I think number of trips is a very bad metric, as the flexibility of walking and driving mean they are used for lots of small trips, while other modes may make many more single trips of significant distance. I think passenger miles is the best comparison.
squizzler
Established Member
Exactly: if the same metric was applied to food it would be concluded that biscuits are the main constituent of many people's diet because it's what they eat for morning and afternoon tea breaks.
bramling
Veteran Member
I do think the latter accounts for quite a bit. In my road there’s now households with over 6 cars. During the daytime in the week there’s a lot of journeys made “because I can”, like driving to a cafe or to a location to walk the dog.
Round here this all seems to have exploded in the last few years as the area has seen a hefty influx of ex Londoners who claim to have moved out of London due to costs, poor living standards and/or fed up with foreigners. Evidently this leaves a bit of spare cash in the back pocket to go out and buy a fleet of SUVs to drive 1 mile to Waitrose!
squizzler
Established Member
If you want plane travel to seem more relevant, and rail travel less so, perhaps we should have measured each modes significance in terms of contribution to global warming gasses?
Surely park and ride is the answer.
Allowing people to drive a short distance to the station then board the bus or train into the city. If you make it convenient enough I genuinely believe people will use the bus or railway instead or together with their cars. The main problem with peak time rail and bus services to and from Manchester is overcrowding, I don’t see how you can even talk about attracting more people onto the public transport network at peak time without adding capacity.
Allowing people to drive a short distance to the station then board the bus or train into the city. If you make it convenient enough I genuinely believe people will use the bus or railway instead or together with their cars. The main problem with peak time rail and bus services to and from Manchester is overcrowding, I don’t see how you can even talk about attracting more people onto the public transport network at peak time without adding capacity.
Yes. But my local station charges a shedload of cash for parking. We have 3 buses a day from where i live so not help there.
So locals dont use the train. Once you are in your car its easier to just carry on to your destination.
I got a train just after 11 the other day. Rammed. But Northern thought a 2 car 158 was enough. So £7 to stand by the doors listening to the drivers AWS going ping.
Just not enough train so often.
Killingworth
Established Member
It's true, some Northern services are short formed, but a 153 alone to Lincoln would not be normal, a 158 from Leeds being the usual stock on that route. However, I too was crammed onto a single 153 from Rotherham to Sheffield on 7th November, a service from Hull that is pathed as "Class 150/153/155/156 (Sprinter) DMU". It certainly needs 2 coaches.
Before DMUs arrived the Hope Valley stopping services I now use most were normally made up of 3 coach compartment stock. Then first generation 101 units, followed by Pacers. Ever less space! Now ever more passengers. We need guards to cram everyone in, as here at Dore on the first day of Saturday trains for many months.
At Piccadilly a train announced as 4 carriages for Wigan arrives as a single 150 already full to overflowing. The station staff have to order people away from the train, catch the next one! The guard looked, and was, overwhelmed, and the turned away passengers added to the crowds on platforms 13 and 14.
This is the modern railway with only a 2% share. Increasing that to 3 or 4% is a challenging prospect, but currently the lack of space is ensuring that won't happen.
(All 3 trains pictured above were late, partially due to overcrowding prolonging station stops.)
Out of Sheffield to Dore there are 3 gaps of 2 hours or more in the weekday service. I can walk the 4.5 miles in 70 minutes. The bus alternative requires about 25 minutes. I can do it from my home by car in 20 minutes, door to door. The train takes 6 minutes, but without greater frequency, space, reliability, parking space and convenience of the stations to my starting and finishing points the car wins almost every time.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
This kind of thing is truly ridiculous, and for the local stuff requires one of two things - massively longer trains (as I say I reckon 8x20m/6x23m on everything through Castlefield during the day is what to aim for, with nothing shorter than 3x23m at any time).
But if that isn't ever going to be affordable, there needs to be serious consideration given to changing the layout of trains to make standing less uncomfortable. The LU S8 layout with some facing and some longitudinal would be worth a serious look.
But if that isn't ever going to be affordable, there needs to be serious consideration given to changing the layout of trains to make standing less uncomfortable. The LU S8 layout with some facing and some longitudinal would be worth a serious look.
One of the downsides of the current industry structure is that fares are regulated (after a fashion) but station car park charges are not. TOCs have seen this as a revenue opportunity, and have jacked up station parking charges to an extent that they can start to exceed short distance rail fares. They have also given enforcement out to draconian parking companies (who in turn offer the TOCs a cut for the contract), who are happy to stick you for a £100 fine if you come back on a later train than you first thought. Once that happens you never use the facility, or the station, again.
3141
Established Member
Agreed, either the car must take more than 9 minutes for the journey or a fit adult would take less than 1.5 hours to walk it. But suppose the walk takes only one hour, that's still four hours to walk it there and back twice. And pedestrians have to wait at junctions just like cars. On two of the journeys the adult will be accompanied by children, who generally walk more slowly, or get distracted by something interesting and slow things down. I think Taunton had a good point, but exaggerated the statistics.
Although "the school run" has become something of an object of hatred and contempt, many people do it because they have to get children to school AND then go somewhere else, like work. So we're back to the definition of a "trip", and such journeys apparently wouldn't count because they have more than one purpose. Plus, as someone has pointed out, people do many short trips, going round to the shops or whatever, which very few of them would do by train because there isn't a railway to the shops, so the 2% figure isn't actually representative of the many different types of journey that we make.
Although "the school run" has become something of an object of hatred and contempt, many people do it because they have to get children to school AND then go somewhere else, like work. So we're back to the definition of a "trip", and such journeys apparently wouldn't count because they have more than one purpose. Plus, as someone has pointed out, people do many short trips, going round to the shops or whatever, which very few of them would do by train because there isn't a railway to the shops, so the 2% figure isn't actually representative of the many different types of journey that we make.
Andrew1395
Member
It's not just about the share of all journeys by rail, but who in society are making those rail journeys. I would most adults in the uk never make a rail journey. So as well as growing the proportion of journeys by rail, the aim should also be to create an industry that is able to broaden the number of people making 2 or more rail journeys every year.
bramling
Veteran Member
Or, a variation of this theme, one is being picked up at the station by a relative and the train is late, thereby exceeding the 20 minutes free period allowed, and getting picked up by an ANPR camera, as are now becoming common. Again, once bitten twice shy.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Eh? I have not seen any station car park where the ticket was not for a full day until close of service. And most offer app payment where you could extend if you returned a day later.
Actually not. I know my numbers. And why would a "fit adult" be walking to a school on their own (unless a teacher of course). Clearly some here have never walked with a 6 year old.Obviously you have not been to Sheffield. Although, to be fair, you can pay on exit.
bramling
Veteran Member
At one time tickets expiring at midnight was the norm. Of course in those days it wasn’t really an issue as no one enforced things at that time of night so staying until close of traffic wasn’t a problem in practice.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The move to camera enforcement does require this kind of situation to be sorted out, and there are inconsistencies - the RingGo app says Chiltern tickets expire at midnight, but then has text clarifying that they are in fact until 0430...
squizzler
Established Member
AS I read it, a massive increase in trip share is a piece of cake, just wheel out some longer trains and they will come. That, and liberalise the fares structure to get bums on seats when they are available.
The modal share is - according to a previous post - 11% of miles travelled. Increase proportion of trips to 3% as the lower range that you suggest is doable and we are already where Switzerland is at just over 17%.
Killingworth
Established Member
However we have a triple challenge on this.
We can order more trains, that's fairly simple but it takes years before they arrive.
We need more platform space to accommodate the longer trains, particularly difficult to construct in congested city centres.
We need more track and improved signalling to squeeze extra traffic through congested choke points, necessary to deal with conflicting fast and local stopping services.
Oh, and this all needs cash and political drive to achieve.
In the meantime we face increasing congestion inside aging rolling stock on the increasingly congested tracks trying to squeeze into restricted platform space.
There are no quick, simple and cheap ways to resolve this. Running railways, safely, is a very expensive business.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
But in the North we actually don't. Platforms are, for historical reasons, far longer than they need to be in most areas. Significant improvement could be brought on by simply ordering rolling stock.
underbank
Established Member
How about looking at things differently. Most of the talk here is about longer trains, more seats, etc., to get even more people onto the already popular/congested routes. Same over on the HS2 thread. I.e. all geared around services that are already well used.
How about looking at areas/services which aren't well used for rail travel due to inadequate timetabling, inconvenient (or no) station locations. What about areas where there is perfectly good infrastructure but poorly timetabled trains? How about looking at areas where most people don't use trains and ask why? What would make them use trains? Look at where, for example, you have two towns, just 20 miles apart, but each on a branch line (both branches coming off a main line), with no direct trains (yet a direct train is possible as the tracks are there), and having to make two changes at a main line station to get from town A to town B which makes a 25 minute car journey into a 90 minute train journey (where less than 30 minutes of that is actually on a train, rest of time is waiting at the 2 stations to change).
Train travel seems to be all about just maintaining diagrams/services from a historical perspective, i.e. what we do today, and no "blue sky thinking" about new routes that could simply and easily be added which have the potential of increasing passenger numbers. Yes, I know there are lots of places that are already "full" with existing services, but there are also lots of areas that aren't.
How about looking at areas/services which aren't well used for rail travel due to inadequate timetabling, inconvenient (or no) station locations. What about areas where there is perfectly good infrastructure but poorly timetabled trains? How about looking at areas where most people don't use trains and ask why? What would make them use trains? Look at where, for example, you have two towns, just 20 miles apart, but each on a branch line (both branches coming off a main line), with no direct trains (yet a direct train is possible as the tracks are there), and having to make two changes at a main line station to get from town A to town B which makes a 25 minute car journey into a 90 minute train journey (where less than 30 minutes of that is actually on a train, rest of time is waiting at the 2 stations to change).
Train travel seems to be all about just maintaining diagrams/services from a historical perspective, i.e. what we do today, and no "blue sky thinking" about new routes that could simply and easily be added which have the potential of increasing passenger numbers. Yes, I know there are lots of places that are already "full" with existing services, but there are also lots of areas that aren't.
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