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Britain’s Worst Connected Big Cities By Rail.

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Roast Veg

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Running the Independant's formula against 21 equally arbitrary cities in the UK shows that Sunderland and Bradford take the bottom spots, suffering from the large cities nearby taking the majority of London services. Hull and Swansea are also poorly connected as they are on the fringes of the country geographically.

You can see my working here: https://pastebin.com/raw/7n6jTMbW
 
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AndyHudds

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Having travelled from West Yorkshire to Leicester numerous times by rail I can confirm for the relatively short distance it is a real pig to get there by rail, Nottingham is not much better. Tickets from Huddersfield to East Midlands destinations stop you travelling via Leeds compounding the situation which means the laborious journey must be made via Sheffield to both Nottingham and Leicester ok got to through Sheffield anyway but the omission of Leeds makes things chuffing awkward.
 

urbophile

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I was surprised Liverpool wasn’t higher up the list.

Only a few decades ago, Liverpool had services to Scotland, North and South Wales, the South Coast and the South West. There was even a sleeper to London. All gone now. And now the Norwich service is threatened too.
Scotland is coming back shortly. North Wales promised soon too; maybe even south-ish Wales. But it could be better I agree.
 

Ken H

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Scotland is coming back shortly. North Wales promised soon too; maybe even south-ish Wales. But it could be better I agree.
In the days of cl33 loco hauled Cardiff - Crewe trains, when they extended them northwards, didnt some go to Liverpool Lime St rather than Manchester Picc?
 

jkkne

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but does anyone want to go to Bradford? In any event i disagree. Sunderland has a worse service than Bradford. I bet the real answer is Wells or St Davids.

At least Sunderland has the Metro and Northern offering fairly short transfers to Newcastle.
 

Djgr

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They covered this at length on BBC Breakfast this morning, they were live from Liverpool and kept saying how Liverpool is one the worst connected places in the UK.

In reality they are 8th in a list of just 12 places.

They have London Trains, are on the TPE route so have links across the north, and locally have Merseyrail, so it’s hardly as bad as they were portraying.

Well I'm not sure how relevant Merseyrail is for this discussion, unless Chester is thrown into the cities.

To be honest saying Liverpool has trains to London and a few Northern cities so what are they moaning about is more than a little insulting.
 

anme

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The worst served city is probably London. For London, the most important connections are to other major world cities, but in terms of capitals, London is only directly connected to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels by rail.
 

MarlowDonkey

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They had an interview on Channel 5 news. As well as the Leicester point, it was noted that Par in Cornwall had a lot of connectivity, defined as through trains. That's going to apply to all the Cornwall and Devon stations that have both Great Western Railway longer distance services and Cross Country services. It's an accident of geography in a way, given there's only one line west of Exeter.
 

BigCj34

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The worst served city is probably London. For London, the most important connections are to other major world cities, but in terms of capitals, London is only directly connected to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels by rail.

All the relevant capitals within a 4 hour journey have direct services. Unless Luxemburg needs a direct Eurostar? All other capitals are too far to justify, next closest I can think of is Berlin which would take 8 hours on present infrastructure.
 

Eric

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Bradfords problem - well one of them is that the stations are termini which makes the advantages of through trains nonexistant. It can seem quicker to get a bus to Leeds and then go from there it feels.

It's quicker on the X63 to Huddersfield by bus than the train.
 

73001

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Well I'm not sure how relevant Merseyrail is for this discussion, unless Chester is thrown into the cities.

To be honest saying Liverpool has trains to London and a few Northern cities so what are they moaning about is more than a little insulting.

The survey includes whether the main station is connected to a tram or metro type network. As Merseyrail is probably one of the best metro type networks in the uk I expect it gives us a point in the survey.
 

Envoy

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They had an interview on Channel 5 news. As well as the Leicester point, it was noted that Par in Cornwall had a lot of connectivity, defined as through trains. That's going to apply to all the Cornwall and Devon stations that have both Great Western Railway longer distance services and Cross Country services. It's an accident of geography in a way, given there's only one line west of Exeter.

One main line going west of Cardiff - where the population is greater than Cornwall’s - yet no Cross Country trains to Birmingham and beyond whilst Cornwall has services to Scotland - even though they take the longer route via Newcastle rather than going west coast from Birmingham northwards. (Perhaps First should be allowed to extend their West Coast Franchise south westwards from Birmingham & provide competition for XC)?
 

ivanhoe

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Well I'm not sure how relevant Merseyrail is for this discussion, unless Chester is thrown into the cities.

To be honest saying Liverpool has trains to London and a few Northern cities so what are they moaning about is more than a little insulting.
Oh come on, Liverpool is not a railway backwater. Direct trains to nearly all of the Northern Cities on at least an hourly basis, whilst two an hour to Birmingham, one an hour to Nottingham and of course London.Plans for Scotland,Cardiff in the next couple of years. Now if I lived in Bradford, I’d have a right to moan.
 

Julia

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but does anyone want to go to Bradford? In any event i disagree. Sunderland has a worse service than Bradford. I bet the real answer is Wells or St Davids.

Too many years of watching "Pointless" clearly... I'll add Armagh to that list.
 

70014IronDuke

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The Independent has today published a list of Britain’s worst connected cities by rail - with Leicester & Cardiff at the bottom of the list.
https://www.independent.co.uk/trave...ster-birmingham-rail-best-worst-a9061091.html


The only true Inter City style service that Cardiff (& Swansea/Newport) have with any other city is to London. The direct services to Southampton & Portsmouth are now served by commuter style class 165/166’s. Services to Gloucester, Birmingham, Derby & Nottingham are served by 2 or 3* coach class 170’s and those to Manchester via the direct Marches route are served by 2 or 3* coach 175’s. * if you are lucky.

Surely, the south Wales conurbation should have direct Inter City Trains to Newcastle via Birmingham and to Edinburgh via Hereford and Crewe?

Back in the day, that is 60s and 70s, Cardiff did have "Inter-City" services via Chepstow to Gloucester, Brum and ... not sure, maybe Leeds/Sheffield/York. (I suspect it varied between timetables). But not very many - I think only 4-5 a day, hauledClass 46s and 8 or 9 Mk1s. (I'm sure someone with a timetable of the day will give more details.)

But frankly, while short and not officially "Inter-City" trains, the hourly Cardiff-Nottingham trains offer a far better service to the Welsh capital than anything that was around in those times.
 

urbophile

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The worst served city is probably London. For London, the most important connections are to other major world cities, but in terms of capitals, London is only directly connected to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels by rail.
And Edinburgh. And Cardiff.
 

Roast Veg

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Bradford wins this hands down. 7th biggest city and terrible rail service
Hull, Sunderland, and Bradford all score low on this test. Perhaps not coincidentally all served by open access operators.
 

Camden

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Liverpool is the only large metropolitan entity, though, which for its location is very poorly connected. Glasgow is equivalent, but it's much further away from other main population centres.

Bradford is merely a borough in the Leeds' area, which is getting HS2 and HS3. Despite having a proper and large metropolitan area, Liverpool is perpetually and increasingly obviously arbitrarily excluded from these, which I'm guessing is the main thrust of the TV report.
 

Ken H

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Liverpool is the only large metropolitan entity, though, which for its location is very poorly connected. Glasgow is equivalent, but it's much further away from other main population centres.

Bradford is merely a borough in the Leeds' area, which is getting HS2 and HS3. Despite having a proper and large metropolitan area, Liverpool is perpetually and increasingly obviously arbitrarily excluded from these, which I'm guessing is the main thrust of the TV report.
Hull and Liverpool are stuck out at the edge. there are no trains through Hull or Liverpool. Which is why they have worse services than Crewe, Carlisle or York
 

Camden

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Hull and Liverpool are stuck out at the edge. there are no trains through Hull or Liverpool. Which is why they have worse services than Crewe, Carlisle or York
Hull has a fraction of the population and is of no relevance to the discussion.

Liverpool is a major metropolitan city a mere 15 miles from the WCML trunk, as is Manchester, which is a) why the line was built that way and b) why it should by rights be able to have excellent, rather than poor, connectivity.

The lack of HS2 track is an appalling determination.
 

frodshamfella

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I was surprised Liverpool wasn’t higher up the list.

Only a few decades ago, Liverpool had services to Scotland, North and South Wales, the South Coast and the South West. There was even a sleeper to London. All gone now. And now the Norwich service is threatened too.

Also compared to those times Liverpool is a much busier tourist destination, so you would expect better connectivity. I know the Halton Curve is there now and Scottish services due, but none the less
 

Djgr

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Also compared to those times Liverpool is a much busier tourist destination, so you would expect better connectivity. I know the Halton Curve is there now and Scottish services due, but none the less

Liverpool is in no way comparable to Hull (for example). It has a much larger student population and is a massive tourist hub these days.

To throw some figures out-

Hull has a student population of around 20,000. Liverpool's is around 70,000.
A well known review site has 72 places to stay (hotels mainly) in Hull and 390 in Liverpool.

Since I started my interest in railways Liverpool has lost direct services to Scotland (Edinburgh and Glasgow), the Lake District, Wales (Cardiff), Bristol and the West Country, Oxford, Reading, Bournemouth and the South Coast and probably to Gatwick and Brighton (though my memory is flaky here).
 

61653 HTAFC

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Having travelled from West Yorkshire to Leicester numerous times by rail I can confirm for the relatively short distance it is a real pig to get there by rail, Nottingham is not much better. Tickets from Huddersfield to East Midlands destinations stop you travelling via Leeds compounding the situation which means the laborious journey must be made via Sheffield to both Nottingham and Leicester ok got to through Sheffield anyway but the omission of Leeds makes things chuffing awkward.
How is the connection into the Nottingham train at Wakefield Kirkgate these days? This time last year I was regularly doing Batley to Nottingham (but generally using a 2-5 MCard as far as Wakefield or the boundary), and found it worked heading TO Huddersfield/Mirfield, but the outbound was better via Penistone.

It's quicker on the X63 to Huddersfield by bus than the train.

Does that service still sit in the platform at Halifax for a while? It used to wait for 11 minutes, this was slightly shortened when Low Moor opened.

Back on topic, Gloucester is pretty poorly served for a county town (at least in name). Not quite as big as Bradford or Sunderland, but a large number of intercity services miss it by not much!
 

Djgr

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How is the connection into the Nottingham train at Wakefield Kirkgate these days? This time last year I was regularly doing Batley to Nottingham (but generally using a 2-5 MCard as far as Wakefield or the boundary), and found it worked heading TO Huddersfield/Mirfield, but the outbound was better via Penistone.



Does that service still sit in the platform at Halifax for a while? It used to wait for 11 minutes, this was slightly shortened when Low Moor opened.

Back on topic, Gloucester is pretty poorly served for a county town (at least in name). Not quite as big as Bradford or Sunderland, but a large number of intercity services miss it by not much!

Weren't Gloucester's woes self inflicted, as the city lobbied to get the through station (Eastgate) closed in the 1970s in order to bring about road improvements?
 

urbophile

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Since I started my interest in railways Liverpool has lost direct services to Scotland (Edinburgh and Glasgow), the Lake District, Wales (Cardiff), Bristol and the West Country, Oxford, Reading, Bournemouth and the South Coast and probably to Gatwick and Brighton (though my memory is flaky here).

In those days it was quite normal for many such destinations to be served by two or three (or fewer) trains a day. Is it because timetable planners now prefer regular clock-face timetables, that a destination is either given an hourly or half-hourly service, or none at all? It's all very well to say 'change at Birmingham', but even if (a big if) that means a connection on the same platform, it is a serious deterrent to the elderly or infirm, or people with heavy luggage.
 

marko2

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but does anyone want to go to Bradford? In any event i disagree. Sunderland has a worse service than Bradford. I bet the real answer is Wells or St Davids.

The people of Bradford might want to go someplace else - perhaps for employment. If you count the nearby towns, it's a surprisingly large conurbation.
 

tbtc

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I do enjoy these threads and the chance for people to grumble about how their local place is so much more important than the rest of the world may think it is.

Realistically though, there's never going to be a fully level playing field. Some places might be large but are on the fringes of the country (Liverpool, Swansea etc). Some places might be large but lack significant business/tourist/ long-distance-student market that makes rail travel more important (Bradford, Sunderland etc). Some places may be large but are within spitting distance of somewhere even larger/more important (Bradford, Sunderland etc). And some places are smaller but happen to be on the way to bigger places so punch about their weight (Doncaster, Crewe etc).

(also, you can get into a lot of hair-splitting about whether somewhere like Salford is a whole separate place, or about the merits of a city with generous boundaries like Sheffield versus a city with tightly drawn boundaries like Nottingham)

Based on the above, I think that the place with a legitimate grievance would be Leicester. It's not a stuck on coast (with a small hinterland), it's not in the shadow of somewhere larger on a main line (e.g. Gloucester is close enough to Cheltenham), it does have a reasonable long-distance student market (though less significant for finance/tourists). Leicester has even lost its direct hourly service to a nearby city in recent years (Coventry), so I think that the people of Leicester are the ones worthy of any gripes on this thread (though, predictably, other cities seem to shout louder!).

Is it even always desirable to improve the connectivity of everywhere to everywhere else? A box-ticking exercise based upon an obsession with giving places as many places as possible will just end up with a mess like the Northern Rail network. I'm not bothered about Sheffield getting a new hourly service to Bradford (but I would be bothered about getting a better service to Leeds, where I can connect to Bradford). Same with Cardiff (which would benefit a lot more from improved services to nearby cities like Swansea/ Bristol) than whether it has a direct train to Leicester or Newcastle. Simply ticking a box for ever one of the other cities on a list of twelve that your conurbation has an hourly service to is a pretty arbitrary way of assessing things - I think that links within a commutable distance (say an hour's travel) is significantly more important.
 
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