Alliance Rail GNWR Services Approved

[Camden]

For which you need more trains and more track - are you willing to stump up the more money?

Reducing London to Manchester and Birmingham IC to two trains an hour each would need fewer trains, and free up track capacity to be used by whichever trains actually needed it. Using altered stopping patterns to alleviate isolated crowding is also another. Of course lengthening trains beyond key platform lengths is a cost, but hardly an insurmountable challenge (given that completely rebuilding Euston while keeping it operational seems to be no sweat).

 

[The Planner]

Presuambly you are only talking off peak?

 

[Camden]

Presuambly you are only talking off peak?

Nope. A 20 minute service is an incredibly generous provision, a 30 minute one no less so. Isolated crowding on one or two services can be resolved in other ways.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nope. A 20 minute service is an incredibly generous provision, a 30 minute one no less so. Isolated crowding on one or two services can be resolved in other ways.

I have wondered if 2tph off peak and 4tph peak (in the direction of peak flow) might be better.

 

[The Planner]

Disagree, you need 3tph minimum in the peaks. Moot point anyway as you will never get less than 3tph before 2026.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Bristol will be getting 4tph in a couple of years.
Leeds is also due to go 3tph.

 

[Stats]

Bristol will be getting 4tph in a couple of years.
Leeds is also due to go 3tph.

Not quite, Leeds will be getting 5tp2h; Newcastle and York, however, will be going 3tph, track applications permitting.

 

[Camden]

I have wondered if 2tph off peak and 4tph peak (in the direction of peak flow) might be better.

I'm sure there would be a myriad of better configurations to accommodate passengers, but I just find it ridiculous that such emphasis is given to this one service, despite its obvious impact on line capacity.

An 11 carriage Pendolino has (I believe) 589 seats. There are 47 trains a day from Manchester to London. That's 27,683 seats each day. Yet only 3 million passengers a year. Less than a third of those seats. That's Manchester, and Birmingham has even lower figures.

Of course people are also travelling to/from other destinations but these are the key drivers.

When tough choices have to be made, I think it's wrong for this factor to seemingly be excluded from the rationale as to who gets services and how many, with this premium but un-necessary service sailing half-empty past people waiting for a train they can fit on to.

Clearly two trains an hour all day is still over providing for both Manchester and Birmingham, but rather more appropriately providing for them and really rationalising that used up line capacity because maintaining a frequency of 20 minutes on a line like that is no mean feat. With declassification of first class, I doubt the trains would even need to be extended to cater for peak.

 

[The Ham]

I'm sure what you say is correct, but there's one large flaw there in that not everyone's onward journey is by Tube. Only around 50% of those arriving at Euston use the Tube for their onward journey. Rail/Bus/Taxi is around 23% and Walking is 20%. Whether a full 50% of those using this service would find the Tube more convenient from Queens Park is, I would suggest, questionable. The other problem is the almost complete lack of facilities at Queens Park, not even toilets. I wonder if any are planned? When people arrive at Euston at least there is a large choice of facilities, especially if you arrive from an early-finishing meeting which I often do. And when the WCML goes belly up, well, you get the drift. I'm going to stick with my gut feeling; if the service runs to Queens Park it will fail (within 2-3 years), if it runs to Euston I rather suspect it will be a huge success.

Lets take the number of people who use Euston in a year (circa 40 million) allocate half of them as arrivals and half of that figure as people who use the tube (circa 10 million). Let's then say that 0.1% of those would find it more useful to go to Queens Park and can get to a station which the service runs from and that is still about 450 people per service which is being proposed (i.e. more than the number of people which a 6 coach train is likely to be able to hold).

Therefore I doubt it will be too much of a problem.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I'm sure there would be a myriad of better configurations to accommodate passengers, but I just find it ridiculous that such emphasis is given to this one service, despite its obvious impact on line capacity.

An 11 carriage Pendolino has (I believe) 589 seats. There are 47 trains a day from Manchester to London. That's 27,683 seats each day. Yet only 3 million passengers a year. Less than a third of those seats. That's Manchester, and Birmingham has even lower figures.

Of course people are also travelling to/from other destinations but these are the key drivers.

When tough choices have to be made, I think it's wrong for this factor to seemingly be excluded from the rationale as to who gets services and how many, with this premium but un-necessary service sailing half-empty past people waiting for a train they can fit on to.

Clearly two trains an hour all day is still over providing for both Manchester and Birmingham, but rather more appropriately providing for them and really rationalising that used up line capacity because maintaining a frequency of 20 minutes on a line like that is no mean feat. With declassification of first class, I doubt the trains would even need to be extended to cater for peak.

How many of those 47 services are outside of the main daily flow (i.e. 7am to 7pm) as a train that arrives into London at 6am is of no use to someone who is wanting to arrive into London at a reasonable time?

Likewise, there will be a lot of people who are arriving into London during the morning peaks whilst very few people are leaving London at that time.

You can't just spread passenger loadings over the whole day and assume that it will allow enough capacity for the whole network.

 

[Camden]

You can't just spread passenger loadings over the whole day and assume that it will allow enough capacity for the whole network.

Of course no you can't do that, but I think you have to agree less than 33% of those seats taken from Manchester throughout the day doesn't point to a service that makes a pendolino every 20 minutes a "must have".

You could even be innovative with service patterns to provide a quality service in the peaks with fewer trains, for example two trains an hour each from Scotland, Liverpool and Manchester passing through Crewe to produce six trains an hour. Should a peak service from Manchester be overly crowded, bear it for 30 minutes and change at Crewe for the Scottish one 10 minutes behind. A crude but obvious example.

Another example is for more services to run "fast", with the reduced frequency allowing space for local services that people actually want to use, which can also take people from small towns to major hubs more frequently.

I think it would be an interesting thing to model the effect on the west coast main line capacity of running two trains an hour to Manchester and Birmingham rather than the three run now.

 

[rebmcr]

A lot less than 33% of the Standard-class seats from Manchester have power sockets, though. If the service were reduced that number would drop even further.

 

[Camden]

A lot less than 33% of the Standard-class seats from Manchester have power sockets, though. If the service were reduced that number would drop even further.

The reasoning is compelling! However how about declassify first class for you, and then you can have a power socket and a table lamp!

 

[Philip C]

And it doesn't make sense to me to have trains at MKC being in hot demand and comparable short supply while three long trains an hour rush up to Manchester half empty throughout the day.

HF is a luxury the country can't afford right now, and the result is government ministers saying we need to spend £47 billion on HS2. Nope. What we need is for long distance destinations to have a sensible half hour frequency, with adequate length trains and all trains having sensible stopping patterns.

------------------------------------

You could even be innovative with service patterns to provide a quality service in the peaks with fewer trains, for example two trains an hour each from Scotland, Liverpool and Manchester passing through Crewe to produce six trains an hour. Should a peak service from Manchester be overly crowded, bear it for 30 minutes and change at Crewe for the Scottish one 10 minutes behind. A crude but obvious example.

Your stream of logic is leaving me dizzy. If trains to Manchester and Birmingham are over-supplied does that include those which make calls at Milton Keynes? If so then why are you seemingly unhappy with six trains per off-peak hour which do the Euston to MKC run at an average speed in excess of 70 mph (three of them at an average of 99.5mph) when these include some which are under-utilised?

Given that these Manchester and Birmingham trains calling at MKC are "half empty" it seems to indicate that they might better stop at stations less well provided than MKC. Perhaps the Manchester train which currently calls at MKC could call at Nuneaton, Tamworth or Lichfield instead. After all you seem happy enough that peak travel from Euston to Manchester may involve connection at Crewe, so why maintain through services from MKC?

Your little plan for Manchester trains running via Crewe is also less than wonderful for those headed to Stoke or Macclesfield; perhaps the planners knew what they were doing after all?

Frankly MKC is remarkably well provided at present - if you want a Reading style service, then living in Reading might be the best option!

 

[nuneatonmark]

Your stream of logic is leaving me dizzy. If trains to Manchester and Birmingham are over-supplied does that include those which make calls at Milton Keynes? If so then why are you seemingly unhappy with six trains per off-peak hour which do the Euston to MKC run at an average speed in excess of 70 mph (three of them at an average of 99.5mph) when these include some which are under-utilised?

Given that these Manchester and Birmingham trains calling at MKC are "half empty" it seems to indicate that they might better stop at stations less well provided than MKC. Perhaps the Manchester train which currently calls at MKC could call at Nuneaton, Tamworth or Lichfield instead. After all you seem happy enough that peak travel from Euston to Manchester may involve connection at Crewe, so why maintain through services from MKC?

Your little plan for Manchester trains running via Crewe is also less than wonderful for those headed to Stoke or Macclesfield; perhaps the planners knew what they were doing after all?

Frankly MKC is remarkably well provided at present - if you want a Reading style service, then living in Reading might be the best option!

If you speak to the people that the MK rail users group it's not really the London services they complain about it's the reduction in services going north. It is certainly true that MKC has much better fast services than Rugby, Nuneaton, Lichfield and Tamworth. The regular lack of toilet availability on the Crewe to London LM services is just one reason why these services should not really be the main off-peak service for the Trent Valley stations. 350s should not be used as Inter-City trains. If there was a will I am certain that stops for those three stations could be incorporated into a new timetable without the world ending as the DfT seemed to think it would.

 

[MK Tom]

If you speak to the people that the MK rail users group it's not really the London services they complain about it's the reduction in services going north. It is certainly true that MKC has much better fast services than Rugby, Nuneaton, Lichfield and Tamworth. The regular lack of toilet availability on the Crewe to London LM services is just one reason why these services should not really be the main off-peak service for the Trent Valley stations. 350s should not be used as Inter-City trains. If there was a will I am certain that stops for those three stations could be incorporated into a new timetable without the world ending as the DfT seemed to think it would.

That's very true yes. There's very much a desire to get away from 'London London London' and make MK somewhere that's more connected to the rest of the country.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Frankly MKC is remarkably well provided at present - if you want a Reading style service, then living in Reading might be the best option!

Given how bad (overcrowding, delayed etc) the service at Reading appears to be, I can't see why in a million years I would want to swap the service at MKC for it. Indeed, there's a strong argument for making Reading more like MKC, not less like it.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

If you speak to the people that the MK rail users group it's not really the London services they complain about it's the reduction in services going north.

If they do (and I must admit the MK Rail Users Group annoy me at times, because they have a bad habit of looking a gift horse in the mouth, as it were) they are way wide of the point. MKC has 3tph north, one to North Wales, one to Brum and one to Manchester, with the Brum extended to Scotland. Connections to other destinations are acceptable, and you can choose whether to take the slower Scottish service via Brum at xx13 or gain time by connecting at Crewe from the xx40. And you've got the option of very cheap slower LM services if you want. Oh, and on VT you've got no evening peak restrictions.

I really don't see any problem with it at all - and I think it's rather better than the previous irregular and not very memorable hotch-potch. As a regular user both towards London and away from it, I am generally happy with it, and to be honest think the RUG should stop whining and start assisting passengers to get the best out of the service.

 

[TUC]

Would operating into Queen's Park mean that Alliance would miss out on a large part of the share of ORCATS revenue from tickets into Euston/London Terminals?. If so, that could significantly affect the viability of the operation.

 

[Chester1]

Would operating into Queen's Park mean that Alliance would miss out on a large part of the share of ORCATS revenue from tickets into Euston/London Terminals?. If so, that could significantly affect the viability of the operation.

Queens Park will be considered a London Terminal for ticketing, its not like its Tring or MK., its in London and I think in Zone 1. I suspect that Virgin or a new franchise holder will switch ticketing further away from open tickets and towards advanced tickets to limit the affect on ORCATs revanue.

 

[po8crg]

350s should not be used as Inter-City trains.

The 350/4s which were specified to be used as such work OK. Certainly better than the other 350s do. They're not really suitable for a front-line service, but for a mainline train that has a lot of stops (and therefore gains from minimizing dwell times), they work reasonably well.

Just wish they had vestibule doors outside of first class so you don't freeze when it stops at Penrith in winter.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I suspect that Virgin or a new franchise holder will switch ticketing further away from open tickets and towards advanced tickets to limit the affect on ORCATs revanue.

Can't see how - the big revenue is on things like Manchester-London FOR and SOR/SOS tickets, and that can't be moved to advances.

If GNWR knows what they're doing (and they're Alliance: they do), then they'll set TOC ONLY FO/SO tickets at a useful (20%+) discount from the Virgin/Virgin & connections tickets, so anyone travelling on Alliance will get a TOC ONLY ticket and they will still get an ORCATS share from the ANY PERMITTEDs - even though those passengers almost all ride Virgin.

The trains certainly provide a useful service for Blackpool... but the funding model is a massive ORCATS raid.

 

[Aldaniti]

Subjective, I know, but despite not being very keen on Virgin's trains, I wouldn't even consider travelling from my home station (in the North West) to Scotland (or even Carlisle) on TPE's 350's. I might have used them to travel to Manchester, but you can never get on the bloody things. :roll:

 

[TUC]

Would operating into Queen's Park mean that Alliance would miss out on a large part of the share of ORCATS revenue from tickets into Euston/London Terminals?. If so, that could significantly affect the viability of the operation.

Queens Park will be considered a London Terminal for ticketing, its not like its Tring or MK., its in London and I think in Zone 1. I suspect that Virgin or a new franchise holder will switch ticketing further away from open tickets and towards advanced tickets to limit the affect on ORCATs revanue.

IsQueen's Park on the list of London Terminals stations? If not, how would it be counted as such for ORCATs purposes without other TOCs agreeing- and what incentive would they have to agree to that?

 

[Stats]

Everybody keeps referring to GNWR, but everybody seems to have forgotten these services will be operated by, and trade as, Grand Central.

 

[The Ham]

Of course no you can't do that, but I think you have to agree less than 33% of those seats taken from Manchester throughout the day doesn't point to a service that makes a pendolino every 20 minutes a "must have".

You could even be innovative with service patterns to provide a quality service in the peaks with fewer trains, for example two trains an hour each from Scotland, Liverpool and Manchester passing through Crewe to produce six trains an hour. Should a peak service from Manchester be overly crowded, bear it for 30 minutes and change at Crewe for the Scottish one 10 minutes behind. A crude but obvious example.

Another example is for more services to run "fast", with the reduced frequency allowing space for local services that people actually want to use, which can also take people from small towns to major hubs more frequently.

I think it would be an interesting thing to model the effect on the west coast main line capacity of running two trains an hour to Manchester and Birmingham rather than the three run now.

You didn't answer my question about ow many of those 47 trains are outside of the key 7am to 7pm "day" when the vast majority of people travel.

Also I assume to get your figure of more than 9 million seats (so that 3 million passengers is less than 1/3 of the total number of seats) you have used the same 47 trains a day for each and every day of the year. Which would be a little off, given that the number of trains is less on a Sunday (and most bank holidays), non existent on Christmas Day and Boxing day and have limited appeal when there is engineering works.

Based on a letter published here:
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/...ic-case-for-HS2/McLoughlin-hollick-141208.pdf

The AM peak (3 hour) loading was 57% from Manchester to Euston, if we were to reduce the frequency from 4tph to 3tph (peak hour frequency) this would reduce spare capacity from 43% to 24% (even allowing for all seats being standard class). If we then assume 3 years of growth (to when the new service is due to start) at 2.5% that spare capacity falls to less than 19%.

Therefore if we didn't want lots of empty seats we should have left all the 390's as 9 coach trains; as then a train which is 57% full (11 coaches) would be 76% full (9 coaches), rather than increasing seating capacity by about a third. However, if passenger growth continues at the 5% that it has been running at in recent years that spare capacity is used up (even allowing for the trains being 60% full) in 10 years (remembering that we've had 3 of those years since the 390's were finished being extended in 2012), even if growth starts to fall and runs at an average of 3% for 15 years it will use up all that new capacity.

Just out of intrest 15 years from 2012 is 2027 which is a year after phase 1 of HS2 is due to open, a coincidence? I don't think so.

 

[najaB]

Queens Park will be considered a London Terminal for ticketing, its not like its Tring or MK., its in London and I think in Zone 1.

It looked like Zone 2 when I had a look at the TfL map. Though I believe there is precedent for stations being moved between zones.

 

[Camden]

You didn't answer my question about ow many of those 47 trains are outside of the key 7am to 7pm "day" when the vast majority of people travel.

Also I assume to get your figure of more than 9 million seats (so that 3 million passengers is less than 1/3 of the total number of seats) you have used the same 47 trains a day for each and every day of the year. Which would be a little off, given that the number of trains is less on a Sunday (and most bank holidays), non existent on Christmas Day and Boxing day and have limited appeal when there is engineering works.

Based on a letter published here:
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/...ic-case-for-HS2/McLoughlin-hollick-141208.pdf

The AM peak (3 hour) loading was 57% from Manchester to Euston, if we were to reduce the frequency from 4tph to 3tph (peak hour frequency) this would reduce spare capacity from 43% to 24% (even allowing for all seats being standard class). If we then assume 3 years of growth (to when the new service is due to start) at 2.5% that spare capacity falls to less than 19%.

Therefore if we didn't want lots of empty seats we should have left all the 390's as 9 coach trains; as then a train which is 57% full (11 coaches) would be 76% full (9 coaches), rather than increasing seating capacity by about a third. However, if passenger growth continues at the 5% that it has been running at in recent years that spare capacity is used up (even allowing for the trains being 60% full) in 10 years (remembering that we've had 3 of those years since the 390's were finished being extended in 2012), even if growth starts to fall and runs at an average of 3% for 15 years it will use up all that new capacity.

Just out of intrest 15 years from 2012 is 2027 which is a year after phase 1 of HS2 is due to open, a coincidence? I don't think so.

I think the Lords response to HS2 was spot on. I'm not going to sit here arguing pedantry, it's obvious that two places getting trains every 20 minutes when other destinations are in much hotter demand is not an optimal use of the line.

It looked like Zone 2 when I had a look at the TfL map. Though I believe there is precedent for stations being moved between zones.

I'll be interested to see how they plan to use QP as a terminus, and I'm not sure how popular getting on the Bakerloo will be with people if it is.

 

[najaB]

I'll be interested to see how they plan to use QP as a terminus...

"This is Queens Park where this train terminates. Change here for Bakerloo services to Central London..." doesn't seem that hard really, it's only 15 minutes to Oxford Circus.

 

[ainsworth74]

"This is Queens Park where this train terminates. Change here for Bakerloo services to Central London..." doesn't seem that hard really, it's only 15 minutes to Oxford Circus.

"and London Overground services to Euston." Is what I'd tack onto the end of that.

 

[swt_passenger]

I'll be interested to see how they plan to use QP as a terminus, and I'm not sure how popular getting on the Bakerloo will be with people if it is.

Maybe they'll just do what has been explained a few times earlier in the thread, i.e. the trains will arrive in the up slow and layover in the up loop just beyond the station?

 

[MK Tom]

Everybody keeps referring to GNWR, but everybody seems to have forgotten these services will be operated by, and trade as, Grand Central.

Er will they? Where has it said that? The Alliance Rail website even has a mock up of a Pendolino in GNWR livery.

 

[asylumxl]

Er will they? Where has it said that? The Alliance Rail website even has a mock up of a Pendolino in GNWR livery.

The application to the ORR has it written in black and white that they will operate under the Grand Central brand to take advantage of the brands good image and high customer satisfaction ratings.