Bletchley to Bedford is an inconvenient truth for the people wanting to link radial routes - the various lines between the WCML/ MML/ ECML between the Gospel Oak - Barking line and the Birmingham - Derby line have pretty low numbers - Watford Junction to St Albans is a relative backwater, Bletchley to Bedford was okay with an hourly 153 (before getting 230s), even Birmingham to Peterborough is only an hourly Turbostar (half hourly as far as Leicester)... which makes me think that any plans for other "east-west" lines are going to be struggling for numbers.
Things like Northampton to Leicester sound good in theory but it feels more like an "hourly Sprinter" route to me.
However other radial routes can do very well, as an example Reading to Redhill/Gatwick is 2tph and can be fairly busy 3 coach 166's in the peaks and even off peak aren't that quiet. With 3tph due to happen soon (although was announced about 3 years ago and is yet another case of us taking a long time to get on with a rail improvement which is needed).
Ah but that goes through a fairly urban area some may reply, this is true. However it also has a second line which duplicates (either serving the same stations or stations within a few miles of each other) bits of it at 2tph and even those services are well used, although do not appear quite as busy as they are 4 coach EMU's.
In fact there's probably a fair case for connecting between the SWML and the line through Camberley to improve the interaction between the main line and the radial routes as neither have a good connection (the Reading Redhill line requires a 15 minute walk across Farnborough whilst the Gatwick services don't call at Farnborough North). Such a link would require a grade separated junction and could allow a new service to run Basingstoke to Ascot as a stopping service.
This would increase capacity for the local communities without a very large cost. Probably the cost of the junction would be circa £100 million, and to provide a half hourly service would require 4 extra EMU's. This could also serve (with a few miles of extra electrification) the new development of Manydown to the West of Basingstoke, which (with a expected population of 8,000) could fairly easily see rail usage of about 500,000 a year.
If you assume it'll add 10% to other stations (excluding Basingstoke, even though you'd be doubling the frequency at many stations and by at least 50% at others) that's another half a million to million passengers a year. To break even, assuming £110,000 per coach in least costs and other costs being about 3 times your lease costs, that's an average ticket cost of £3.50 to £5.50 per passenger (£7 to £11 return) which would be fairly high for local travel.
However it's not unlikely that passenger numbers could be higher. For instance if it's 2 million passengers a year that's down to £5.30 return. Also the costs could be a bit high, in that typically total TOC costs are the times that of the lease costs, however with (as an example) no extra stations some of those costs would already be covered.
Agreed - sadly the shady politicians know that "lets re-open some lines that closed fifty years ago" will play well to the nostalgic types, the baby boomers, the people who thought everything was better back in the good old days, the kind of people who they want to get to vote for them - I agree that population centres have changed, demand has changed, we should be building a railway fit for 2050 rather than one hidebound with where a Victorian entrepreneur built a line in the 1850s.
That's nothing new, Ronald Reagan was using it as a policy when he was appealing to those who were young in the 50's and 60's to get elected in the 80's. It's very easy to point to someone's youth and say "wouldn't you like it is life was more like it was when you were in your teens/early twenties?" As more often than not people would say yes, for the simple reason that their life was much simpler then and they tend to be less aware of what's going on around them and even if they are how many 15 year olds would be that interested in the ins and outs of whether doing X or Y is a good thing or not (as an example the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan under Tony Blair).
Yet ally most people of they would like life to be like it was in the 90's and those aged 30 to 40 would probably agree that life was better then, whilst if you ask about the 80's those aged 40 to 50 would agree that life was better then. However ask older people and they'd highlight the recessions that happened and suggest that the 70's or 60's would be a better time to be alive. All would say things like, life was simpler then there wasn't the ability to be contacted all the time, there wasn't the worldwide problems that we have now and children could be children without having to grow up too fast. All I'd say is the ignorance of teenage life significantly colours your view of what life was really like.
