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Campaign for Better Transport - The Case for Expanding the Rail Network

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muddythefish

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there is plenty of political support. These sort of stories are easy column inches in any local paper. What there isn't is enough money.

There's always money available if the political will is there - eg, the DUP £1bn bribe to keep May in power and, in the past week, the revelations over the government's Brexit offer to Nissan and Theresa May's offer to throw money at the Labour heartlands in exchange for Labour's support for her Brexit deal. Very little progress will be made regards to rail reopenings in England until power is wrested away from Westminster into the regions. The London civil service basically isn't interested.
 
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muddythefish

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But real political support also needs voters. Who genuinely wants to pay more tax?

Many people I would suggest, if it meant more police numbers, safer streets, properly funded armed forces, a cleaner environment, a healthcare service not in perpetual crisis......and much better public transport
 

yorksrob

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But real political support also needs voters. Who genuinely wants to pay more tax?

Voters seem to be paying tax for HS2.

I wouldn't mind betting that the majority would prefer to pay more tax to get their local station back !
 

Bald Rick

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I'm a bit surprised by this, @Bald Rick - thought this one had a lot going for it.

The best part of half a billion quid, which, I suspect, does not allow for the changes that would be required at Cambridge, for what would be at best a half hourly shuttle service to one town. It appears to be, basically, a project to lift house prices in Haverhill.

To be honest, it’s lucky to get nil.



My sauces tell me that could be higher still apparently, Willenhall and Darlaston are pretty likely.

I agree, but it will have to pass the alternatives test. Nevertheless I hope it gets through, it would be good for Willenhall and Darlo to ‘ketchup’ :lol:


I tend to lean to Yorksrob's position here. The lack of political will for some of these schemes is a problem. One of the schemes on the longlist has been looked at for years and found to be very viable, has full plans drawn up by the TOC (as obligated in their bid), support from local politicians, would be a brilliant regeneration project, ties in with major road improvements and housing developments, and would be relatively easy to reinstate as it's reopening a mothballed line. It's about as much of an open-and-shut reopening case as you can get. However the ultimate decision lies with government and they're sitting on their hands, as they have for at least the last 15 years

I’d be interested to know which scheme this is. If it does have a clear cut case - supported by a good business case with fact based evidence and sound analysis (and particularly if it was part of a winning bid for a franchise) then it will be on the DfTs list for consideration. As everything on the DfT list is also in Network Rail Route studies, it will be in the public domain and won’t be a secret.
 
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Shaw S Hunter

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Voters seem to be paying tax for HS2.

I wouldn't mind betting that the majority would prefer to pay more tax to get their local station back !

Not strictly true. HS2 funding is largely dependent on government issued bonds. It has been explained countless times that reducing/cancelling HS2 will not release a single penny to other budgets. And your assumption about the majority is not borne out by voting preferences at elections.
 

yorksrob

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Not strictly true. HS2 funding is largely dependent on government issued bonds. It has been explained countless times that reducing/cancelling HS2 will not release a single penny to other budgets. And your assumption about the majority is not borne out by voting preferences at elections.

I don't think you can draw any conclusions from the polls that people would prefer HS2, or various other infrastructure projects over their local station - even with a functioning electoral system, let alone first past the post !
 

Shaw S Hunter

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I don't think you can draw any conclusions from the polls that people would prefer HS2, or various other infrastructure projects over their local station - even with a functioning electoral system, let alone first past the post !

It would appear you have missed my point; the only party that could be said to be genuinely pro public transport is the Greens. Their manifesto is very clear about their intentions regarding taxation. They have 1 MP.
 

DarloRich

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Contradiction there somehow. If there was political support the cash would follow. Austerity is a political decision; the cash is there when bribes to eg DUP or Leave-voting mining towns are concerned.

OF COURSE (!) the decisions are political. That's the whole point. The rules set by those political decisions are clear. I haven't the inclination or time, unlike many here, to pontificate on what the perfect but unreachable world looks like. I prefer simply to get on with what we have and try to make that work.

Oddly enough when offered the choice to vote for the magic granddad Corncob most chose not to.

Voters seem to be paying tax for HS2.

I wouldn't mind betting that the majority would prefer to pay more tax to get their local station back !

Above better schools, more police, better roads and a better NHS. Really?
 

yorksrob

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It would appear you have missed my point; the only party that could be said to be genuinely pro public transport is the Greens. Their manifesto is very clear about their intentions regarding taxation. They have 1 MP.

All parties have commitments to spend on public transport and transport in general. Some are fairly weak, but commitments they are. The current Government paid millions just to prolong the rail strike. They could adjust their priorities to encompass some reopenings.
 

DarloRich

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They could adjust their priorities to encompass some reopenings.

i agree entirely. The Government could change their policy. However they wont. My view is: lets try to deliver what we can with what we have rather than deliver nothing and complain that we don't have everything.
 

yorksrob

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i agree entirely. The Government could change their policy. However they wont. My view is: lets try to deliver what we can with what we have rather than deliver nothing and complain that we don't have everything.

By all means, deliver what we can now (isn't that what the railway does anyway) but we shouldn't stop calling for our missing towns to be reconnected back to the network.
 

DarloRich

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By all means, deliver what we can now (isn't that what the railway does anyway) but we shouldn't stop calling for our missing towns to be reconnected back to the network.

Fine. But lets do so with some business & financial intelligence - that is what these kind of reports always lack.
 

yorksrob

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adrock1976

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What's it called? It's called Cumbernauld
Approaching this from a different angle, have any like minded organisations done any studies to see if any railways that were proposed to be built, but were not or only a partial section built to see what improvements could be made?

By this and as an example, I mean the section of the former Oxford & Rugby Railway (the present day section that is used by the local Oxford - Banbury and the Intercity XC) that only got built as far as Fenny Compton, with the northward section via Southam never built at all. I feel that this would be useful for freight at the very least, as the traffic via Oxford to the North West could join the West Coast Mainline around the Rugby area (ideally grade separated connecting northwards on the ex Trent Valley section rather than the ex London & Birmingham - sorry I do not have a historic map of the original projected connection at the Rugby end) so as to avoid weaving across the layouts at Leamington Spa, Coventry, and Nuneaton.
 

yorksrob

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Fine. But lets do so with some business & financial intelligence - that is what these kind of reports always lack.

I think something similar to the New stations fund, set aside for reconnecting regional towns would be beneficial. The best cases could compete against each other for funding.
 

DarloRich

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I think something similar to the New stations fund, set aside for reconnecting regional towns would be beneficial. The best cases could compete against each other for funding.

it would have to be extra funding i think. I wouldn't want the overall budget reduced to fund less than attractive schemes.
 

Bald Rick

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Bwlch y Groes

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I'd be interested to know which scheme this is. If it does have a clear cut case - supported by a good business case with fact based evidence and sound analysis (and particularly if it was part of a winning bid for a franchise) then it will be on the DfTs list for consideration. As everything on the DfT list is also in Network Rail Route studies, it will be in the public domain and won’t be a secret.

DfT? Who said the DfT were involved? ;)

In terms of previous studies, it had a BCR of over 3 a few years ago under a previous local authority study. But that was a scheme of a different nature - heavy rail as part of a less frequent service. Light rail means it'll be cheaper in some respects, and a more frequent service potentially means a greater benefit. Whereas the scheme as it was a few years ago was public domain, the details of the current scheme aren't (as far as I'm aware). It was one of a number of schemes the bidders had to provide some level of plans for
 

A0wen

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Not at all.

Take the small town of Normanton in Yorkshire. The station is near the centre, and the majority of homes are within walking distance.

The station gets a good number of passengers, and the majority walk. Some from further out drive or get lifts.

If the station were four miles from the centre, it would doubtless get some passenger traffic, but nowhere near as much.

Not comparable, Normanton is a piddly little place of 20,000 people - Stevenage is almost 90,000, Hemel is 94,000, MK and Northampton are bigger still.

You're comparing apples with bananas. For a small town, it's highly likely all the housing will be within a 3 mile radius of a station - for somewhere bigger i.e. over 50,000 that's far less likely.
 

The Planner

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Approaching this from a different angle, have any like minded organisations done any studies to see if any railways that were proposed to be built, but were not or only a partial section built to see what improvements could be made?

By this and as an example, I mean the section of the former Oxford & Rugby Railway (the present day section that is used by the local Oxford - Banbury and the Intercity XC) that only got built as far as Fenny Compton, with the northward section via Southam never built at all. I feel that this would be useful for freight at the very least, as the traffic via Oxford to the North West could join the West Coast Mainline around the Rugby area (ideally grade separated connecting northwards on the ex Trent Valley section rather than the ex London & Birmingham - sorry I do not have a historic map of the original projected connection at the Rugby end) so as to avoid weaving across the layouts at Leamington Spa, Coventry, and Nuneaton.
Unless it allows a load of new passenger traffic then it is worth diddly as freight doesn't contribute enough to a case.
 

si404

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That’s interesting. But misses a rather crucial point that Birmingham has a rather substantial commuter rail network that’s functions much like a metro. Which rather negates much of the study.
That report claims a 33% shortfall in productivity due to Birmingham's lack of more than one tram/metro corridor, but Manchester, with its extensive tram network, would be considered by them to have a 20% shortfall. And Sheffield and Newcastle area with their tram/metro systems perform badly, with Bradford being the only city analysed that's further from the French trend line.

And Portsmouth and Bristol are the two English cities which, by their measure, are over-performers. Even the suburban rail in those cities is pretty bad coverage- and quality-wise: it's all buses and cars there.

It's terrible analysis, even with the assumptions they are making about bigger is better (most French cities are shown to have similar GDP/capita, but the outliers tip the graph to make it look like bigger is better), to look at just one other city - Lyon, and not also look at Manchester (as a similarly sized UK city to Birmingham and Lyon, that does slightly better than Brum and a lot worse than Lyon).

And they don't look down the line - there's a big cluster of similar-sized cities with Edinburgh, Bristol, Portsmouth and Glasgow way above the trend line, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Rennes and Grenoble a little way above the trend line, Rouen on the line, Cardiff, Leicester, Nottingham, Montpellier, Saint-Etienne and Liverpool a little way below, and Toulon, Bradford, Sheffield and Newcastle some way below. That's where your thesis has to be produced, not by dealing with a comparison between just two outliers...
 

Mordac

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Many people I would suggest, if it meant more police numbers, safer streets, properly funded armed forces, a cleaner environment, a healthcare service not in perpetual crisis......and much better public transport
Most people would like "the rich" to pay more tax to fund those things, the rich being generally defined as anyone who makes more money than they do.
 

camflyer

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In the context of the Birmingham proposals in particular, this article is quite an interesting read in terms of how to quantify the benefits of new/reopened lines

https://productivityinsightsnetwork...ize-and-the-disappearing-productivity-puzzle/

That's interesting but it does ignore that the fact some of the wealthiest (per head) cities in the UK are relatively small places - Cambridge, Oxford, Reading/M4 corridor, Brighton etc some which may have poor internal public transport but all they benefit from good connectivity to London.
 

yorksrob

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Not comparable, Normanton is a piddly little place of 20,000 people - Stevenage is almost 90,000, Hemel is 94,000, MK and Northampton are bigger still.

You're comparing apples with bananas. For a small town, it's highly likely all the housing will be within a 3 mile radius of a station - for somewhere bigger i.e. over 50,000 that's far less likely.

That rather reinforces my point that if you have very big town, you're going to need to have station somewhere near to the middle of it if it is going to be accessible on foot for a large proportion of it's population, not four miles away.
 

Bwlch y Groes

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That rather reinforces my point that if you have very big town, you're going to need to have station somewhere near to the middle of it if it is going to be accessible on foot for a large proportion of it's population, not four miles away.

Either that or multiple stations per town. Hemel has 2

I suppose there's an interesting question here - what's an ideal stations-to-people ratio? I know there's no perfect marker - some small towns and villages have well-used stations, and it depends on geography, location etc - but what should we be looking at as a guide?
 
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If you divide the total population of Great Britain (64 million, not including N Ireland) by the total number of stations (2566) you get an average of 25,000 people per station.

Interestingly if you divide the population of Greater London (8.67 million) by the total number of stations in Greater London (330) you get 26,300 people per station. I'm honestly quite surprised by how close these two numbers are.
 

Mogster

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I work for the NHS in central/south Manchester. Recently people have begun rejecting otherwise attractive posts at our site citing central Manchester’s transport problems as the primary reason.

People just aren’t prepared to lose 3 hours of their day commuting by car. The railway is perceived as inconvenient, expensive, overcrowded, unreliable etc. I’m sure the same is happening at other businesses.
 

VT 390

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Interestingly if you divide the population of Greater London (8.67 million) by the total number of stations in Greater London (330) you get 26,300 people per station. I'm honestly quite surprised by how close these two numbers are.

Is that including London Underground stations?
 
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