Baker Street station is just down the road as in a short 2 minute walk, that gives you much better options than Paddington, especially since Baker Street gives you the Jubilee Line which would be good for workers in Canary Wharf/Westminster.
You must walk very quickly, because I think five minutes would be a more sensible allowance. Baker Street gives more options, but "much better" than Paddington? Hmm. And from 2018 there will be Crossrail straight from Paddington into the West End and the City and Canary Wharf.
Cherry_Picker said:
They both have a token long distance service (you might argue Oxford's is slightly better) yet Cambridge station has always had significantly more passengers. Why is this?
Slightly? I'd call a train every 30 minutes to Birmingham and assorted points across the North (and the odd Edinburgh train) and every 30 minutes much of the day to the South Coast a whole lot better than one an hour to Birmingham. No argument about it, nor is it a 'token' service.
Why more passengers at Cambridge? The two rail options very likely play a part but the economic and employment landscape around the two cities is different, which may well drive London commuting from Cambridge, plus it is much easier to get to the City and Canary Wharf than from Oxford - for the time being. Oxfordshire has the major science centres at Culham (2,000 jobs) and Harwell (4,500 jobs), on top of the two universities in Oxford, and the BMW Mini plant at Cowley employs nearly 4,000 people. The Milton Park business estate near Didcot and Abingdon represents 6,500 jobs. There are also two other big employment centres, in the shapes of Reading and Swindon, within 30 miles. I'm struggling to find the Cambridge equivalents to pretty much any of these.
NickBucks said:
Chiltern continues to stress the role of Oxford in their press releases specially for travellers from South Bucks. High Wycombe> Oxford is widely mentioned for example as the M40 coaches tend to by pass Wycombe
I'm sure it's very touching that Chiltern are so concerned about people from Bucks who want to go to Oxford, just a pity they don't seem all that concerned about the impact of their Mainline timetable on stations in that area, especially if people want to go north. The fact remains that unless people from Bucks are working in central Oxford, the journey time by road is likely to remain more attractive than going the long way round to Oxford via Bicester and then needing to get out from the station to business parks, etc.
Why more coaches at Oxford?
Journey time for one, if you get a good run you'll do Oxford to Victoria in just under 100 minutes. Cambridge's best is two hours, but 2hrs 15mins is more typical. The two-hour mark seems to be a bit of psychological barrier here.
Then there is the issue of access to the services at Oxford in the morning peak. The rail and bus stations are both central, so hard to get to at busy times, but, as the Planner says, the coaches make stops in the east of Oxford and, as I said back up the thread, at the Thornhill park-and-ride on the A40 at the eastern edge of the city, just off the ring road, so you don't need to battle city centre congestion to get on a coach.
This is why Chiltern have homed in on offering a rail equivalent, as they can see there is already a pool of commuters from Oxford who are willing to do a short drive in their cars to get to their ride into London and their hope is that a good number of these people will switch from Thornhill to Water Eaton and use rails instead of the M40.
he is the head of strategic planning, not the director of the Western region!
