NSEFAN
Established Member
Conversely, carting around fresh air and running extra tph for the sake of 20 minutes strikes me as a waste of resources, especially at a time when the railway has to be seen to be saving money.
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Could a re-cast of services between Reading and Paddington provide more capacity?
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coppercapped
Established Member
Is that a serious suggestion?
If you are referring to people travelling to Maidenhead from London, then if they double back via Reading then you've just about doubled the journey length.
It's 24 miles from Paddington to Maidenhead and 12 miles from Maidenhead to Reading and another 12 miles back...
Bonkers. Try doing the arithmetic before posting.
Oh! Don't the commuters ever shower...?
HSTEd
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Distance travelled is of no consequence!
All that matters is journey time.
And if I am bonkers so is the National Rail website because its currently telling me that a valid journey is literally to double back via Reading! 21:54 change at Reading.
If we had high speed trains running every 4 minutes or so between Reading and London, then its entirely possible that for some journeys doubling back via Reading would be preferable if people didn't want to sit on a Crossrail train all the way to Paddington.
An EL train takes 38 minutes between Maidenhead and Paddington. EL to Reading and GWR back to Paddington takes exactly the same time, plus the time needed to change at Reading. And the need to change at Paddington takes it up at least 48 minutes. With EL trains every 15 minutes from Maidenhead, that means the best case is a 5 minute saving
Why would anybody risk travelling 12 miles in the wrong direction, and then 12 miles back, with all the potential of the operation going pear shaped further away from their destination, in order to save 5 minutes? Only a few optimists!
One other major difference between Reading and Milton Keynes is that passengers from various small stations (eg Mortimer and Earley) need to change there to get to Paddington. Your proposal would also force them onto the dedicated reading services. The current system is much better, the frequency of the fast trains giving real quality connections i.e. If the branch train is delayed, there will still be another 80x along in a few minutes, and coming out from London, you can pick a service with an ideal connection time.
As many people have said, recasting the timetable won't add any more paths, so implementing this plan would actually make the quality of the intercity service worse, as frequencies would need to drop to make room for your services. As GWR services are often pretty full West of Reading, this means more people will be standing from Taunton and Swindon, a very unpleasant experience.
And yet people fly from London to New York via Amsterdam all the time!
To save themselves money, not time. It's much more of a pain, and only happens to fill capacity on flights
Sonik
Member
I'd say too that the clear majority of traffic on Thameslink is commuters into London from surrounding areas, whereas GWML (additionally) has other significant travel destinations spread over the route and it's feeder lines (e.g. Reading, Slough, Heathrow) which makes optimization of service provision much more difficult to quantify. The GWML/M4 corridor is the most economically productive area outside London, a geographic situation that is unique in the UK and travel patterns along the route reflect that.
Also what percentage of Heathrow travelers have a final origin/destination actually in London, and what percentage is simply transiting to get to/from somewhere else? OOC and EL obviously add a lot of new options here. And HS2 will make it just as convenient for many to use Birmingham or Manchester instead, which could well result in some redistribution of available flights to those airports.
So I still think there will likely be opportunities to provide a different distribution of services once EL and OOC are fully operational, but it's not yet apparent what that might look like.
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miklcct
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Will it just be better to configure the 80x stock to be a commuter-style 3+2 seating? Although they are intercity services, Reading - London commuters form a significant portion of the passengers using such services so trains should be designed for their needs.
JamesRowden
Established Member
They already have an outer-suburban interior except for the luggage racks and the end doors. I think that the 26m long carriages mean that the interior is not as wide as stock with 2+3 seating.
I think that middle distance commuting is the demand that has dropped the most post Covid, so the opposite plan to yours would make much more sense. Cut peak services (to save money and remove unused peak capacity) and make the interior and off-peak timetable more attractive to non-commuters (including those travelling between Reading and London).
No
The Reading issue is massively overstated in my opinion. I have used the line from the West of England very regularly for 30+ years including a horrible bit of daily commuting to London. Some trains can be uncomfortably busy, however generally it is only for 24 minutes to Reading, so absolutely not worth ruining the trains for the rest of their journeys. 2+3 is really not appropriate in any train
TT-ONR-NRN
Established Member
Genuinely hard to tell whether this is a joke or troll post, or whether you seriously think "commuter-style 3+2 seating" is suitable for 3 hour journeys to Swansea/Plymouth and 5 hour journeys into Cornwall.
cactustwirly
Established Member
I think the solution is to reintroduce the Bristol super fasts, which will take some Bristol passengers off the existing services.
In my expensive these are extremely busy throughout the day, including west of Reading
In my expensive these are extremely busy throughout the day, including west of Reading
miklcct
On Moderation
At least this should be done on the Oxford route.
gabrielhj07
Member
I very much doubt that you could squeeze 3+2 seating into an IET, even if you wanted to, and certainly not with the current Sophia seats. Doing this would result in less flexibility, as a set number of units would effectively be restricted to Oxford services, unless GWR want to take the mick and run them to Penzance.
In terms of density, the airline seats with hardly any pitch carry quite a few people already.
In terms of density, the airline seats with hardly any pitch carry quite a few people already.
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Doctor Fegg
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You mean the route where half the trains continue past Oxford to Worcester, Malvern and Hereford?
No. No, it shouldn't. 3+2 is entirely unsuitable for 3hr20 journeys to Hereford via Oxford. We had that with the 165s/166s and it was lousy.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Hardly any pitch? They're one of the few UK trains where I can fit in every seat.
I agree 3+2 is a non-starter in a 2.6something metre wide body.
TT-ONR-NRN
Established Member
The current commuter services operated by 387s don't even have 3+2 seating. Rather they're 2+2 with tables and armrests.
Absolutely no.
3+2 is an inappropriate layout and the fact that many recent new builds have removed it speaks volumes. 2+2 with large standing areas is much more preferable.
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