Are the users of "Intercity" TOCs primarily long distance travelers or commuters?

[Bletchleyite]

Take EMR for example. The industry has just spent a fortune on electrifying to Corby, which has essentially got commuters off the Nottingham and Sheffield EMR services. In some ways this is simply a natural rebalancing of the fact that the commuter area has shifted outwards, and that the Midland commuter boundary at Bedford was always a bit closer towards London in mileage terms than other NSE routes (Bedford is distance equivalent of about Sandy on the adjacent GN route). Getting commuters off the Sheffield and Nottingham services has brought a number of benefits operationally, one of which is you no longer need a 10-car train leaving London which then has to run all the way to Yorkshire.

Exactly. The Corby situation is an example of bringing roughly what the WCML has in terms of segregation of commuter and IC flows to the MML, and very sensible it is too! Before neither was served particularly well.

But this solution simply isn’t viable everywhere, the amount of work required for the Corby service has been massive.

True, but in my view worthwhile.

With this being the case, compulsory reservations simply aren’t a good idea.

I think that's a separate discussion entirely However I doubt anyone would propose it on commuter services.

 

[coppercapped]

It does, though, because long-distance travellers need comfort, high luggage space and catering, but short-distance commuters need as much capacity as possible.

Is this really the case or are you stating it as if it were a fact? In any case I suggest that the premise is false.

The term 'commuter' is a borrowed Americanism which referred to ticket prices being 'commuted' or reduced to a less severe level. In the UK such people used to be called 'season ticket holders'.

Not all short distance passengers are season ticket holders[1] travelling only with a brief case, newspaper, umbrella and bowler hat; some season ticket holders may be carrying luggage in the sense of rucksacks, bags, cases or bicycles. Short distance passengers may be occasional travellers and be travelling for a variety of reasons and carrying, or not carrying, items of luggage such as bicycles or baby buggies.

Not all long distance passengers are carrying luggage or need or want to eat or drink. Some may be doing it regularly several times a week[1].

It maybe that the exposure to the world of computer software (as is the case for many people posting here) has resulted in them seeing the world as binary - it's on or off. You are for us or against us. But the world at a human level is not binary, it is analogue. There is a continuous spectrum of situations, desires, needs and answers.

Pigeon holing all these things under one of two headings means that not only will neither of the groups you identify be properly satisfied but also all those who fall outside these definitions will be ignored completely.


[1] Although some may be travelling between, for example, Chippenham[2] and London which I do not consider to be, in UK terms, short distance.

[2] Chippenham is in an odd position. I understand that roughly equal numbers of people travel west to Bath and Bristol in the morning peak as travel east to Swindon, Reading and London. What would be the most suitable service for a place such as this? An 'Inter-City' service or a 'commuter service'?

Combining them results in inefficiency and poor compromise - for instance, running an 11-coach train all the way from London to Scotland just to provide for London-MK passengers, and you have reduced comfort so you can cram those passengers in.

Combined use of this kind just results in the worst of both worlds - like Switzerland's awful IC2000 Dosto stock with no legroom and narrow seats.

56 minutes is probably long enough to be a long distance journey, to be fair to you. However, most of those heavy commuter loads under discussion for the UK aren't. Euston-MK and Paddington-Reading are both about half an hour. Coventry-Brum is even less than that. These are precisely the journeys that should be on local trains.

 

[cactustwirly]

The fastest LNR service is 35 minutes, the second fastest about 40. "Local train" doesn't have to mean "all stations stopper". For Reading I'd envisage a 4tph 12-car service of Paddington-Slough-Reading only, for instance.



See above.



There is a reason - more efficient rolling stock usage and better tailoring the product to the users' needs rather than a poor compromise.

By running your proposed 4tph service to Reading, you'd have to cut intercity services from the timetable to provide the line capacity for it.
That is obviously more of a compromise than running intercity services to Reading.
Worth mentioning that just as many people travel from Reading to the West, than Reading to London. So the service pattern works well and providing a separate service to "commuters" would be detrimental

 

[Master29]

"It depends" is the full answer really.
Thinking locally to me, GWR's intercity service is absolutely used as a commuting service between say Bristol and Bath. Even though there are other local services too, the intercity services provide most of the seats between the stations especially in rush hour.

I'm guessing that Bath Spa is one of the busiest 2 platform stations in the country.

 

[zwk500]

I'm guessing that Bath Spa is one of the busiest 2 platform stations in the country.

We've had a thread on this, Colchester was the busiest outside London (for passenger entries/exits).

 

[JonathanH]

We've had a thread on this, Colchester was the busiest outside London (for passenger entries/exits).

Chelmsford? Colchester has more than two platforms.

 

[zwk500]

Chelmsford? Colchester has more than two platforms.

Trivia : Busiest Two Platform station

What is the busiest stations with only two platforms in terms of passenger entries and exits? I have the feeling Chelmsford is the busiest out of them with 8.606 million entries and exits, but if there is anymore or if I'm totally wrong, I would love to hear them!

www.railforums.co.uk

Chelsmford, Yes. Apologies.

 

[JonathanH]

Chelsmford, Yes. Apologies.

Chelmsford being one of those stations which only gets an 'Intercity' service at off-peak times of the day. Not sure what this discussion makes of that. Should the 'Intercity' trains all be non stop to Colchester all day because Chelmsford is only a 'short hop' from London or is it helpful to have the extra stops to encourage off peak travellers?

 

[Killingworth]

Interesting to see the EMR Liverpool - Norwich service cited, supposed to be 4 car 158 but far too often only 2. I use it quite often in both directions from Sheffield. Inter-city in that it serves Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Peterborough, Ely and Norwich.

Commuters between Liverpool-Manchester and Manchester-Sheffield and other places too (a group used to travel regularly Manchester-Grantham to the Woodland Trusts head office), but a good mix of users through the rest of the day. TPE 185s certainly carry, or did carry, a lot of commuters between Sheffield and Manchester.

Hope Valley was raised earlier, where 3 operators between Sheffield and Manchester compete on speed and price. Northern stopping services carry a lot of commuters at both ends, but inter-city standard they are not. A few do travel all the way for a cheaper fare. On Saturday mornings they can carry quite a lot of through leisure traffic because their fares may be a third or a quarter of the prices of the fast services in the same hour.

Crosscountry certainly carry a lot of commuters between Sheffield and Leeds.

The railway relies on all classes of traveller. After Covid the commuter market is going to look very different, holding up well in some places and greatly reduced elsewhere. The inter-city element may be most at risk.

 

[tbtc]

One aspect of that reduction would be that it would make room for reinstatement of the Northern stopping services that used to run, of course.

I note no answer to which longer distance Paddington services you're wanting to scrap to make way for four Reading services per hour...

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, there are specific issues.

Take EMR for example. The industry has just spent a fortune on electrifying to Corby, which has essentially got commuters off the Nottingham and Sheffield EMR services. In some ways this is simply a natural rebalancing of the fact that the commuter area has shifted outwards, and that the Midland commuter boundary at Bedford was always a bit closer towards London in mileage terms than other NSE routes (Bedford is distance equivalent of about Sandy on the adjacent GN route). Getting commuters off the Sheffield and Nottingham services has brought a number of benefits operationally, one of which is you no longer need a 10-car train leaving London which then has to run all the way to Yorkshire.

But this solution simply isn’t viable everywhere, the amount of work required for the Corby service has been massive. With this being the case, compulsory reservations simply aren’t a good idea.

The Sheffield - London services have been non-stop south of Leicester for some time now (over ten years?) - with the Corby services always stopping at a few intermediate places, so nothing has changed for Sheffield or Corby passengers

The only difference (with the new timetable) is that the "slow" Nottingham service will no longer stop at Wellingborough/ Bedford/ Luton Airport Parkway, but both Nottingham services will stop at Kettering (as well as the existing Market Harborogh stops), so that's the two Nottingham services changing from a total of five stops per hour south of Leicester to four stops per hour south of Leicester, nothing major (if it was a proper splitting out of services then the actual "InterCity" trains from Nottingham would be non-stop south of Leicester rather than all stopping at Market Harborough and Kettering - but then if was InterCity then it wouldn't stop at places like Beeston either)

It maybe that the exposure to the world of computer software (as is the case for many people posting here) has resulted in them seeing the world as binary - it's on or off. You are for us or against us. But the world at a human level is not binary, it is analogue. There is a continuous spectrum of situations, desires, needs and answers.

Pigeon holing all these things under one of two headings means that not only will neither of the groups you identify be properly satisfied but also all those who fall outside these definitions will be ignored completely

I think you may have hit the nail on the head here!

 

[miklcct]

Is it just possible that it is better here than in other countries?

The big advantage of combining the various flows is that frequency increases. Take Cornwall, for example. There are now 2tph along the length of the county, making rail a much more viable option for travel between the various towns in Cornwall. If we had a continental-style system where certain trains were designated as Intercity, and so required reservations / were pick up or set down only or similar, then the resulting hourly(ish) frequency wouldn't be nearly as useful.
For Reading etc, is it really that bad that long distance travellers have to put up with commuters standing in their carriages for the first/last half hour (even for down departures, the fact that most long distance pax either get to the station before their train is on the board, or have a seat reservation means that they are much more likely to get a seat than a commuter who just gets on the next train seconds before the doors close). The advantage is that commuting to Reading by rail is far quicker and more convenient than if all 80x departures were pick up/set down only, and there is capacity on the line for things like Bristol going to every 15 minutes.

I would argue that all of this far outweighs the slight loss in ambience of not having dedicated Intercity stock.

The first feeling of what I get to the UK is that it has the worst rail system in all the first-world countries I have visited. Other countries such as Finland and Sweden have a dedicated inter-city stock and a dedicated commuter system sharing the same track. The commuter services operate in the same way like a metro system, with 15-minute headway of less near the city centre and 30-minute headway in outer suburbs, with line numbers / letters and defined stopping patterns shown on the route map. If you want a faster service, you can hop on a long-distance service, possibly with a reservation and that ticket entitles you to change to the commuter service in a defined region.

If the 2tph along the length of the county means only 1tph in minor stations, that service is basically useless.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The first feeling of what I get to the UK is that it has the worst rail system in all the first-world countries I have visited.

I'd not say that, there are some things we do very well.

What is firmly my view, though, is that we have an obsession with high frequencies to the exclusion of all else. There are places on the network where this is the only way to achieve the required capacity, primarily London commuter services. But elsewhere, things like cramming extra TPEs in with relatively short trains (5-car is still pretty short by international standards) rather than by lengthening trains and platforms (or using selective door operation where appropriate) mean we have little choice but to have messy stopping patterns and poor connections to fit everything in.

A concept I like is the Swiss one - half-hourly and hourly services that are actually designed to connect, using very long trains to provide the requisite capacity and portion working where appropriate. I'd rather see double 80x on the TPE core than any more frequency increases, plus Northern local stopping services using long EMUs to provide the very high commuter capacity where needed. And infrastructure designed around connections between such services, such as enabling cross-platform interchange by rebuilding stations to fit.

 

[BayPaul]

The first feeling of what I get to the UK is that it has the worst rail system in all the first-world countries I have visited. Other countries such as Finland and Sweden have a dedicated inter-city stock and a dedicated commuter system sharing the same track. The commuter services operate in the same way like a metro system, with 15-minute headway of less near the city centre and 30-minute headway in outer suburbs, with line numbers / letters and defined stopping patterns shown on the route map. If you want a faster service, you can hop on a long-distance service, possibly with a reservation and that ticket entitles you to change to the commuter service in a defined region.

If the 2tph along the length of the county means only 1tph in minor stations, that service is basically useless.

I agree that higher frequency would make sense (as I suggested in your Bournemouth thread), but I don't see a major reason that the higher frequency needs to be on dedicated commuter stock. I would also agree with you that a 1tph service is fairly pointless for short distance journeys.
Our rail network is far more complex than those in Sweden, so I don't think their system would work better here. Certainly when travelling from Copenhagen - Gothenburg a few years ago I was surprised by how poor the service was, with only a couple of (slow) intercity services per day on the Malmo - Gothenburg corridor, and an irregular commuter service with a similar stopping pattern, so if anything it felt like the issues were similar there.

I'd not say that, there are some things we do very well.

What is firmly my view, though, is that we have an obsession with high frequencies to the exclusion of all else. There are places on the network where this is the only way to achieve the required capacity, primarily London commuter services. But elsewhere, things like cramming extra TPEs in with relatively short trains (5-car is still pretty short by international standards) rather than by lengthening trains and platforms (or using selective door operation where appropriate) mean we have little choice but to have messy stopping patterns and poor connections to fit everything in.

A concept I like is the Swiss one - half-hourly and hourly services that are actually designed to connect, using very long trains to provide the requisite capacity and portion working where appropriate. I'd rather see double 80x on the TPE core than any more frequency increases, plus Northern local stopping services using long EMUs to provide the very high commuter capacity where needed. And infrastructure designed around connections between such services, such as enabling cross-platform interchange by rebuilding stations to fit.

Personally I disagree. I think we should try for a 15 minute frequency as far as possible on all metro-style systems, and between fairly nearby cities - such as Manchester - Leeds for example. Only in this way can rail compete with road. Like you, I believe in connections - rather than trying to fit everywhere - everywhere service patterns, I would prefer to go clockface with connections. The nice thing about high-frequency is it 'solves' the connections issue - no need to hold a connection, or try to link services together - if your train is delayed, the maximum delay to the next service is 15 minutes.

 

[miklcct]

When I see trains in this country only have 6 cars, I am thinking WTH?! Are there so few people travelling by train?!

If we use 9 or 12 cars at a reduced frequency for all long-haul services, maybe the timetabling can be easier to fit services of various speed into the tracks, with half-hourly express service on major corridors and hourly service on minor corridors, and fit in local trains into the remaining capacity for commuter use.

However, this will need passing tracks in minor stations such that express services can pass them at full speed, while allowing local services to operate.

And in Bournemouth, I disagree with what you called high-frequency with only 2-3 tph in major stations and 1 tph in minor stations, making the service useless for commuters.

 

[BayPaul]

When I see trains in this country only have 6 cars, I am thinking WTH?! Are there so few people travelling by train?!

If we use 9 or 12 cars at a reduced frequency for all long-haul services, maybe the timetabling can be easier to fit services of various speed into the tracks, with half-hourly express service on major corridors and hourly service on minor corridors, and fit in local trains into the remaining capacity for commuter use.

However, this will need passing tracks in minor stations such that express services can pass them at full speed, while allowing local services to operate.

And in Bournemouth, I disagree with what you called high-frequency with only 2-3 tph in major stations and 1 tph in minor stations, making the service useless for commuters.

In normal life in Bournemouth, the London trains are 2tph and 10 carriages, so reducing the frequency and increasing the train length isn't an option. And I agree 4tph is a minimum for high frequency. But as you say, achieving this would cost a huge amount in infrastructure costs to add in passing loops.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Personally I disagree. I think we should try for a 15 minute frequency as far as possible on all metro-style systems, and between fairly nearby cities - such as Manchester - Leeds for example. Only in this way can rail compete with road. Like you, I believe in connections - rather than trying to fit everywhere - everywhere service patterns, I would prefer to go clockface with connections. The nice thing about high-frequency is it 'solves' the connections issue - no need to hold a connection, or try to link services together - if your train is delayed, the maximum delay to the next service is 15 minutes.

To be fair I can see that 4tph is a good fit for TPE as there are 4 north TPE destinations. However 6 is unnecessary, so 4 and a proper local service would be best.

Self contained metro systems like Merseyrail where all trains are all stations I'm fine with 4 or even 6 if there's the demand. It's mixed traffic railways where it gets complex.

Interestingly "option 3" for Manchester, the one most people here favoured, was based around half-hourly services.

But fundamentally if you're running short trains around the best way to add capacity is to lengthen them, not to squeeze more trains in.

 

[jfisher21]

So where you are going to find the paths to add these extra services in?

Maybe allow set down at reading on the fast Oxford and slow Bristol trains and make reading pick up only for all the other high speed swrvices.