Locally managed trains a failure?

markymark2000 said:

Shall we build a train station every mile then so people can walk to their closest station. Even TFL aren't that deluded. If we need stops so close, we are missing a Moreton West stop on Millhouse Lane and Smithdown Road station needs reopening. It isn't feasible to have stops so close, so often. Merseyrail is painful enough to travel on with the stop start without putting in more stops. Based Some stops on the national rail network are close. I get that. Maghull North was not specifically need though and buses were available linking to Maghull station every 30 minutes.

Money is spent so thoughtlessly with Merseyrail/Merseytravel. They are forever complaining of no money yet are more than happy to fund developments with more than 300 homes to have a train station. Don't tell them about the gap between Upton and Heswall stations, They will be up for another 2 stations between there if we need stops a mile apart!

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I think you're vastly missing the point that Merseyrail is for the most part a metro service, it's not particularly designed to cater for long distance journeys, though I admit it does have some long end to end journey times.

A bus connecting into a 15 minute service, every 30 minutes won't be appealing to many, but opening a station people can walk to, which has a 15 minute service (Turn up and go in most peoples eyes), suddenly appeals. Plus it leaves room for more housing to be built with good public transport links.

Quite frankly the rest of your opening salvo was quite bizarre, I wouldn't say the DFT particularly manage the railways well.

yorksrob said:

Yes, it's amazing how Scotland just seems to have gotten on with it's five electrified routes between Glasgow and Edinburgh, yet the DfT is still procrastinating about electrifying one route across the Pennines (including the supposedly 'unelectrifyable' Standedge tunnel and the current fetish for bi-modes).

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It's also how amazing the terrain is between Edinburgh and Glasgow and the Leeds/Manchester equivalent - it's not flat in the central belt but getting between the Forth/Almond valleys and the Kelvin/Clyde valleys doesn't require anything like the tough terrain of the Pennines.

Your point about Scotland being able to tackle "unelectrifyable" infrastructure may be valid if they'd put wires over to Fife, but (despite the frequent service) it's not viable to electrify the Forth Bridge (in the same way that it doesn't seem simple to deal with relatively narrow Victorian tunnels under big hills).

markymark2000 said:

There were a lot of complaints on the Merseyrail & Merseytravel twitter about the Kirkby services

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There's complaints about *everything* on Twitter though - that's no judge of typical experiences.

markymark2000 said:

Shall we build a train station every mile then so people can walk to their closest station

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Why not?

It's their trainset - if they decide that they want something part way between regular trains and trams then that's their decision - frequent local stops would be fine as long as you have fast accelerating EMUs capable of providing reasonable journey times into the city centre - the market for expresses from Southport/Kirkby/ Ellesmere Port etc may not be significant enough to take priority.

Eccles1983 said:

I've got to say, TfW is not a local ran thing. It's ran by its own government.

And the hand it was dealt was awful. The state that arriva left it was bordering on criminal. A fleet with virtually no prm mods completed

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It's a heavily subsidised franchise that was always scheduled to finish before the PRM deadline, so it really depends on what Arriva were required to do - if there was no requirement for them to take units out of service to ensure that they were compliant (for the next franchise holder) then I don't think you can blame Arriva - the blame is surely on the paymasters for the franchise, who should have got Arriva to ensure that the upgrades were done under their watch.

Grumpy said:

In its first 20 years the PTE achieved a lot of what you mention but following privatisation of the bus fleet, and loss of key staff, it just became a typical local government rest home. Six station openings in the last quarter century isn't much (and two of those were a mistake).

Similarly whist some on here approve the extension of the Knottingley-Wakefield trains to Leeds and the Huddersfield-Wakefield trains to Castleford I would suggest these changes support the OP's point. Running the Huddersfield trains to Castleford rather than Westgate has significantly worsened the Hudderfield-Kings cross rail journey-yes you can change at Leeds but fighting your way onto a packed TPE connection is hardly appealing. Meanwhile the diverted units are largely carrying fresh air to Castleford. Extending the Knottingley-Wakefield service to Leeds via Westgate has taken up allegedly scarce paths again to carry fresh air.

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I feel that a lot of the love for WYPTE/Metro on here is fairly nostalgic - most of the good achievements were pre-privatisation (the cheap wooden stations etc).

Extending the Huddersfield service to Castleford looks more like a case of "since the Huddersfield - Wakefield service was split from the Grand Tour*, it's been too awkward to maintain reliability with a single unit, given that it takes twenty four minutes to cover the fourteen mile journey... so, if we are going to have to find a second unit to maintain the hourly service then we might as well extend it somewhere, there's no scope at the Huddersfield end, so might as well dump it at Castleford out of the way".

Extending Knottingley - Wakfield to Leeds is a double edged sword. Pontefract had a terrible service when it just got an hourly Leeds train, so doubling that frequency is welcomed, but an extra 75mph path and another short DMU on the Wakefield Westgate - Leeds line seems a bit of a waste

(in fairness, SYPTE haven't achieved much in a similar time period, so I'm not saying that "my" PTE is any better, just that the appreciation of West Yorkshire's PTE seems to be more about trading on past glories than any twenty first century achievements)

* - the Grand Tour being the name for the convoluted Manchester Victoria - Bradford - Leeds - Selby - Leeds - Bradford - Huddersfield - Wakefield diagrams, which meant that a three coach 158 was trundling along the quiet Huddersfield - Wakefield section whilst a single 142 was overloaded at Manchester Victoria

Grumpy said:

In its first 20 years the PTE achieved a lot of what you mention but following privatisation of the bus fleet, and loss of key staff, it just became a typical local government rest home. Six station openings in the last quarter century isn't much (and two of those were a mistake).

Similarly whist some on here approve the extension of the Knottingley-Wakefield trains to Leeds and the Huddersfield-Wakefield trains to Castleford I would suggest these changes support the OP's point. Running the Huddersfield trains to Castleford rather than Westgate has significantly worsened the Hudderfield-Kings cross rail journey-yes you can change at Leeds but fighting your way onto a packed TPE connection is hardly appealing. Meanwhile the diverted units are largely carrying fresh air to Castleford. Extending the Knottingley-Wakefield service to Leeds via Westgate has taken up allegedly scarce paths again to carry fresh air.

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To be fair, six new stations in the County over the privatised era is probably a much greater rate of reopenings than that achieved on the regional railway that is predominantly held back by the DfT.

And whilst one might disagree with the recent changes to services based around Kirkgate (I fully understand that Huddersfield residents have lost a London connection) one can hardly accuse the PTE of not taking an active role in developing passenger services.

The new Knottingley - Leeds trains seem popular when I use them, and even the Hudds-Cass stoppers are gradually increasing in popularity. This Saturday there were 9 other people on that train at Normanton heading for Huddersfield. Not vast numbers, but out of little acorns......

Grumpy said:

In its first 20 years the PTE achieved a lot of what you mention but following privatisation of the bus fleet, and loss of key staff, it just became a typical local government rest home. Six station openings in the last quarter century isn't much (and two of those were a mistake).

Similarly whist some on here approve the extension of the Knottingley-Wakefield trains to Leeds and the Huddersfield-Wakefield trains to Castleford I would suggest these changes support the OP's point. Running the Huddersfield trains to Castleford rather than Westgate has significantly worsened the Hudderfield-Kings cross rail journey-yes you can change at Leeds but fighting your way onto a packed TPE connection is hardly appealing. Meanwhile the diverted units are largely carrying fresh air to Castleford. Extending the Knottingley-Wakefield service to Leeds via Westgate has taken up allegedly scarce paths again to carry fresh air.

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I would suggest that the two services mentioned may well take time to build up but in the case of the Knottingley service it gives people of villages such as Featherstone a direct connection to Leeds for the first time in a long while. Some of their tax money is going to the PTE so why shouldn't they get some benefit from it. It is not going to be possible to connect everywhere to everywhere else but as Leeds is the biggest employment source in the area then direct services to there is to be welcomed.

tbtc said:

It's also how amazing the terrain is between Edinburgh and Glasgow and the Leeds/Manchester equivalent - it's not flat in the central belt but getting between the Forth/Almond valleys and the Kelvin/Clyde valleys doesn't require anything like the tough terrain of the Pennines.

Your point about Scotland being able to tackle "unelectrifyable" infrastructure may be valid if they'd put wires over to Fife, but (despite the frequent service) it's not viable to electrify the Forth Bridge (in the same way that it doesn't seem simple to deal with relatively narrow Victorian tunnels under big hills).



There's complaints about *everything* on Twitter though - that's no judge of typical experiences.



Why not?

It's their trainset - if they decide that they want something part way between regular trains and trams then that's their decision - frequent local stops would be fine as long as you have fast accelerating EMUs capable of providing reasonable journey times into the city centre - the market for expresses from Southport/Kirkby/ Ellesmere Port etc may not be significant enough to take priority.



It's a heavily subsidised franchise that was always scheduled to finish before the PRM deadline, so it really depends on what Arriva were required to do - if there was no requirement for them to take units out of service to ensure that they were compliant (for the next franchise holder) then I don't think you can blame Arriva - the blame is surely on the paymasters for the franchise, who should have got Arriva to ensure that the upgrades were done under their watch.



I feel that a lot of the love for WYPTE/Metro on here is fairly nostalgic - most of the good achievements were pre-privatisation (the cheap wooden stations etc).

Extending the Huddersfield service to Castleford looks more like a case of "since the Huddersfield - Wakefield service was split from the Grand Tour*, it's been too awkward to maintain reliability with a single unit, given that it takes twenty four minutes to cover the fourteen mile journey... so, if we are going to have to find a second unit to maintain the hourly service then we might as well extend it somewhere, there's no scope at the Huddersfield end, so might as well dump it at Castleford out of the way".

Extending Knottingley - Wakfield to Leeds is a double edged sword. Pontefract had a terrible service when it just got an hourly Leeds train, so doubling that frequency is welcomed, but an extra 75mph path and another short DMU on the Wakefield Westgate - Leeds line seems a bit of a waste

(in fairness, SYPTE haven't achieved much in a similar time period, so I'm not saying that "my" PTE is any better, just that the appreciation of West Yorkshire's PTE seems to be more about trading on past glories than any twenty first century achievements)

* - the Grand Tour being the name for the convoluted Manchester Victoria - Bradford - Leeds - Selby - Leeds - Bradford - Huddersfield - Wakefield diagrams, which meant that a three coach 158 was trundling along the quiet Huddersfield - Wakefield section whilst a single 142 was overloaded at Manchester Victoria

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You misunderstand my point. It's not that the Scots are good at electrifying "unelectrifyable terrain", it's that I think that all this stuff about Standedge being unelectrifyable is complete drivel, put about the DfT to try and support its lousy decisions. There is nothing in Standedge that hasn't been tackled in lots of electrified tunnels before, and as for the houses at Mosley, its inconceivable that there isn't a workaround.

In terms of WYPTE's past glories, there may be an element of truth in this, but only in so far as the first twenty years of privatisation have been a massive dissappointment for the whole regional railway. Yes it might be doing less stuff than the age of the wooden platforms, but the key is that it's still doing more proportionally than the DfT on the regional railway over the same timeframe.

I'm a regular user of Merseyrail and it is frustrating during rush hour when the trains can get dangerously overcrowded. And when there's a points/signal failure or whatever the Northern and/or Wirral lines go completely pear shaped and it can take hours for a normal service to resume.

But in general it's a very good service, with trains every 15 minutes on the Northern Line. And if you live close to one of the stations on the network, especially on the Northern Line, you can be in the city centre within 10-20 minutes (depending on what station you use), whereas the bus would take 25-50 minutes, mostly stuck in traffic jams!

I'm not yet convinced about the new trains that Merseyrail are going to introduce. They are going to be 4 carriages long (as opposed to the current 3 carriage 507's and 508's, unless 2 units are joined together) but will have less seats and more standing room!

markymark2000 said:

Shall we build a train station every mile then so people can walk to their closest station. Even TFL aren't that deluded. If we need stops so close, we are missing a Moreton West stop on Millhouse Lane and Smithdown Road station needs reopening. It isn't feasible to have stops so close, so often. Merseyrail is painful enough to travel on with the stop start without putting in more stops. Based Some stops on the national rail network are close. I get that. Maghull North was not specifically need though and buses were available linking to Maghull station every 30 minutes.

Money is spent so thoughtlessly with Merseyrail/Merseytravel. They are forever complaining of no money yet are more than happy to fund developments with more than 300 homes to have a train station. Don't tell them about the gap between Upton and Heswall stations, They will be up for another 2 stations between there if we need stops a mile apart!

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Crikey, most UK cities would bite your hand off for a local rail network like Merseyrail!

Sheffield, Leicester, Leeds, Bradford, Bristol etc...

markymark2000 said:

Shall we build a train station every mile then so people can walk to their closest station.

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Yes, about that (and some of them are indeed that close - Aughton Park and Town Green to name one such pair and there are quite a number of others similar). It's a metro system. It's supposed to stop frequently. The key is connectivity and frequency, not speed.

Yes, bus connections are important (and not as good as they should be) but they are primarily for places not served at all, not to avoid building stations which are very much needed - Maghull to Town Green was one of the biggest gaps.

As for Upton and Heswall, they are on the diesel operated Wrexham-Bidston line, so they aren't really relevant to that discussion, that's a lowish frequency regional line, not a metro. Instead of looking at that, look at the West Kirby line - Manor Road and Hoylake are about 1km apart, and Moreton and Leasowe about 900m. You could probably justify a Moreton West though as that's quite a long gap, particularly if there was to be more development to the north of the line.

Edit: I later noticed that the two Bootle stations are about 600m apart.

tbtc said:

It's their trainset - if they decide that they want something part way between regular trains and trams then that's their decision - frequent local stops would be fine as long as you have fast accelerating EMUs capable of providing reasonable journey times into the city centre - the market for expresses from Southport/Kirkby/ Ellesmere Port etc may not be significant enough to take priority.

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Southport and Chester/Ellesmere Port are a bit of a drag, but in reality most people will go for frequency over speed (2tph fast, 2tph slow wouldn't be as good for most people, and with 2-track lines with no overtakes that's the best you are likely to do), and won't even consider driving in if they're near a Merseyrail station.

Expresses on the Kirkby line would be an utter waste of space. On the Ormskirk line I have wondered if they could justify going to 6tph but turning 3 round at Maghull (as north of there it's a bit quiet) but building Maghull North has probably kiboshed that for good. They could skip-stop Aughton Park and Town Green (almost nobody travels by train between the two) but what would be the point in the complication for a gain of about 2 minutes?

tbtc said:

It's a heavily subsidised franchise that was always scheduled to finish before the PRM deadline, so it really depends on what Arriva were required to do - if there was no requirement for them to take units out of service to ensure that they were compliant (for the next franchise holder) then I don't think you can blame Arriva - the blame is surely on the paymasters for the franchise, who should have got Arriva to ensure that the upgrades were done under their watch.

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All of which is true but the issue here might be that while the ATW franchise was a DfT one, the TfW franchise was largely, but not entirely, a Welsh Governement one. In those circumstances there was no real peal pressure on either the original franchiser or the franchisee to hand over to their succesors in good order.

Personally, I think TfW are making a pretty good fist of things in difficult circumstances. In the short term, they seem to be throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Llandudno said:

Crikey, most UK cities would bite your hand off for a local rail network like Merseyrail!

Sheffield, Leicester, Leeds, Bradford, Bristol etc...

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But when Light Rail/trams are also included-broadly comparable in usability with Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow.

markymark2000 said:

There were a lot of complaints on the Merseyrail & Merseytravel twitter about the Kirkby services.

As for Maghull North, of course it is used but it will be taking from the original station given they are only 5 minutes drive apart. It was generally a waste of money and the funds would have been better spent on improving the existing station.

The original post is not meant to be a rant and is based on regularly using TFW and Merseyrail. Scotrail and WMR is based on posts on threads on THIS FORUM!

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As a now resident of Maghull, I can tell you that both our stations are very well used.

LMS 4F said:

I would suggest that the two services mentioned may well take time to build up but in the case of the Knottingley service it gives people of villages such as Featherstone a direct connection to Leeds for the first time in a long while. Some of their tax money is going to the PTE so why shouldn't they get some benefit from it. It is not going to be possible to connect everywhere to everywhere else but as Leeds is the biggest employment source in the area then direct services to there is to be welcomed.

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In the case with Featherstone, its direct connection to Leeds is one of the improvements to the line ever since the station (along with Streethouse and Pontefract Tanshelf) opened in 1992. The other being a Sunday service which the line didn't have.