Very true. What it really needs is a new fleet of bi-modes, perhaps 7-car Class 800s (with say 1.5 cars of 1st) or 8 or 9-car FLIRTs if those are successful.
Then some Voyagers could be used to make the "pseudo-XC" services a proper length, and the 170s go to another operator who needs them e.g. Northern or Chiltern.
By just getting all the 222s from EMT, then XC could reform the 22x fleets to form longer units.
A future fleet could look like:
- 7x9 coach trains (formed of 222s to replace the 5 HSTs and pairs of 22x's)
- 21x7 coach trains (formed of either 221s or 222s to replace the 5 coach 221s)
- 22x5 coach trains (formed of 220s to lengthen those 220s)
- a minimum of 7x5 coach trains (new 80x units to replace part of the 220 fleet or any of the 221s due to some 222s being retained by EMT, which coincidentally would be broadly the number of units required to run the Manchester to South Coast services which would have the most under the wire running)
The replacements for the HSTs would be broadly of the same capacity, otherwise all other replacements would be bigger as a 7 coach unit would have circa 350 seats vs 250 (plus 40%) and the 5 coach units would have either 250 or 315 seats vs 200 (plus 25% to 58%).
There would be a lot less need for doubling up of units, which would bring the staff overheads down but there would be a lot of end coaches in store/scrapped.
The number of coaches on lease would be 65 more than currently (421 vs 356) but without the need for the leasing of the class 43's, so lease costs shouldn't be too much more, but with the potential to carry a lot more people.
The track access charges would be higher because of the total number of coaches and due to the higher charges for the 22x's over the Mark 3's, yet there would be significant savings from not needing to run pairs of class 43's with each HST in service.
Therefore although costs would be higher overall it shouldn't be so much that it meant that XC wasn't viable.
The first step would be to buy the new 80x's early in the next franchise and reform all the 220's to be 5 coaches long whilst retaining the HSTs until the 222's can be released.
If EMT were to want to retain some 222s then that would be known (due to be being announced about 5 months before the ITT for the XC franchise) and so extra 80x's could be added into the bid which could allow the lengthening of the 221s to 7 coach units earlier.