Controversial railway opinions (without a firm foundation in logic..)

[Bletchleyite]

Yet I can't see any Advances available for the days I looked at, so anyone forced to travel at that time will be paying that price.

The vast majority of people don't travel at traditional peak times on long distance routes. Or when they do they're not paying.

 

[Krokodil]

The vast majority of people don't travel at traditional peak times on long distance routes. Or when they do they're not paying.

You want a different comparison? Booking 1 month ahead, afternoon Eurostar can be had for £81. Same departure times on Avanti are coming up at £118 from the 15:33 departure onwards - for a journey 100 miles shorter!

Evening departures on Eurostar (again 1 month ahead) show £69. Equivalent departures with Avanti are £47.50, so marginally more per mile.

Ultimately Eurostar fares will remain high until (and if) EES settles in and speeds up border control. Until St Pancras can reliably handle multiple departures there will be more people bidding for seats than there are seats available.

Avanti meanwhile seems doomed to never have capacity improvements between London and Manchester, as the Government have deemed (in their wisdom) that the 70% capacity increase HS2 would have brought the most profitable flow on the WCML (possibly even the UK) is an extravagance.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You want a different comparison? Booking 1 month ahead, afternoon Eurostar can be had for £81. Same departure times on Avanti are coming up at £118 from the 15:33 departure onwards - for a journey 100 miles shorter!

Evening departures on Eurostar (again 1 month ahead) show £69. Equivalent departures with Avanti are £47.50, so marginally more per mile.

Ah, a sanctimonious early booker. My car doesn't require me to book a month in advance, so in the majority of cases that's of no relevance to me. And Avanti isn't really fully yield managed anyway (unlike say LNER).

I'd probably do multiple Eurostar day trips a year if the prices didn't get so ridiculous near to departure. Because they do, I've done two in the last 20 years.

However, if booked well in advance, air is almost always cheaper than Eurostar, if you want that comparison.

 

[12LDA28C]

Ah, a sanctimonious early booker. My car doesn't require me to book a month in advance, so in the majority of cases that's of no relevance to me. And Avanti isn't really fully yield managed anyway (unlike say LNER).

I'd probably do multiple Eurostar day trips a year if the prices didn't get so ridiculous near to departure. Because they do, I've done two in the last 20 years.

However, if booked well in advance, air is almost always cheaper than Eurostar, if you want that comparison.

How many people plan a journey on Eurostar at very short notice? Not many I'd suggest.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

How many people plan a journey on Eurostar at very short notice? Not many I'd suggest.

Well obviously not with the prices you currently pay to travel at short notice!

 

[12LDA28C]

Well obviously not with the prices you currently pay to travel at short notice!

The point is that in general people don't wake up on a Monday morning and think 'ooh, I fancy a trip to Paris on Thursday'. They book ahead because they are planning a holiday, weekend away or whatever.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The point is that in general people don't wake up on a Monday morning and think 'ooh, I fancy a trip to Paris on Thursday'. They book ahead because they are planning a holiday, weekend away or whatever.

I would disagree. Plenty of people, if the price is right, may decide on an impulse to go away for a couple of days at short notice. And with a sub-2.5-hour journey time, Eurostar London to Paris is well within the travel-time range at which spending 1-2 days away is worthwhile. I myself done that kind of thing lots of times - but never done Eurostar because of the high fares. In fact on some occasions I've made journeys that timewise are just as long as Eurostar, but with the intention of returning the same day.

It's probably never going to be a majority of people on Eurostar who would travel at short notice, but with reasonable fares, it could be a very significant minority - enough to considerably boost passenger numbers. And if the trains stopped at Ashford, making the journey doable from Kent, the numbers would probably be even greater.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The point is that in general people don't wake up on a Monday morning and think 'ooh, I fancy a trip to Paris on Thursday'. They book ahead because they are planning a holiday, weekend away or whatever.

As I said, I'd have done multiple day trips over the last 20 years if the price was reasonable (around £120 return would be what I would consider reasonable). Day trips tend to be less planned because no accommodation is required.

 

[Archie810]

Definitely, the vibrating drives me crazy

also sick of 2 car DMUs on routes like nottingham to cardiff or liverpool to norwich

 

[devon_belle]

Booking 1 month ahead, afternoon Eurostar can be had for £81.

Afternoon Eurostar is only particularly useful if you are travelling to Paris, unless you plan to get a sleeper train thereafter. I suspect most people do not want to travel over multiple days.

Given the size of Europe (can't blame E* for that, I suppose), morning trains seem like the only option if I want to get to e.g. Spain, Italy or beyond.

I have been planning a work trip and the Eurostar portion of an outbound journey to Marseilles (i.e. morning London to Paris) costs more than the return flights plus a hotel for the night.

 

[Krokodil]

I'd probably do multiple Eurostar day trips a year if the prices didn't get so ridiculous near to departure.

How many people say words to that effect about a journey to Euston? The point I'm making is not that Eurostar are cheap, it's that domestic long-distance operators are charging similar fares - without the HS1/Eurotunnel premium on the access charges to absorb.

Given the size of Europe (can't blame E* for that, I suppose), morning trains seem like the only option if I want to get to e.g. Spain, Italy or beyond.

I have been planning a work trip and the Eurostar portion of an outbound journey to Marseilles (i.e. morning London to Paris) costs more than the return flights plus a hotel for the night

I've just got back from a European trip with my brother. His Interrail pass almost paid for itself just on the journey from Bristol to London and back. No combination of Advances available that would have brought the round trip below the price of an Anytime Return. The Eurostar journey must be in the region of two-and-a-half times the distance of the GWR journey, yet the return Eurostar prices which would have been available to non-passholders at the time we looked were cheaper than that much shorter domestic leg.

 

[LUYMun]

The Milton Keynes/Brian Milne bench (whatever the official name is for the NSE-style benches that have been on stations since the 80s) is an iconic and timeless design, which its removal from the majority of stations has been a downgrade in passenger comfort.

 

[HSTEd]

The point is that in general people don't wake up on a Monday morning and think 'ooh, I fancy a trip to Paris on Thursday'. They book ahead because they are planning a holiday, weekend away or whatever.

Well this is somewhat circular reasoning, because pricing requires them to do this.

If the fares were inexpensive people would do things like that.

My father actually did a day trip to Paris in the 1970s, although he was with the railway at the time so it heavily subsidised the cost.


I worry that the railway is attempting to optimise on the "high fare, small traffic" model, but that this is merely a local maximum.
The railway has to chase volume or it will struggle to justify its ongoing taxpayer support.

The gutting of the high fare business travel market is a major blow to the current operating model, and I don't think we can avoid a total rethink on what the railway is for and why the taxpayer should fund it.

 

[Meerkat]

Well this is somewhat circular reasoning, because pricing requires them to do this.

If the fares were inexpensive people would do things like that.

My father actually did a day trip to Paris in the 1970s, although he was with the railway at the time so it heavily subsidised the cost.


I worry that the railway is attempting to optimise on the "high fare, small traffic" model, but that this is merely a local maximum.
The railway has to chase volume or it will struggle to justify its ongoing taxpayer support.

The gutting of the high fare business travel market is a major blow to the current operating model, and I don't think we can avoid a total rethink on what the railway is for and why the taxpayer should fund it.

What size is the possible spontaneous trip to Paris market though?
Is it really going to outweigh the revenue lost by giving those going anyway a cheaper fare?

 

[SuspectUsual]

If the fares were inexpensive people would do things like that

Absolutely

I remember pre-children that my wife and I once had a couple of days annual leave left to take before the end of March, and on a Thursday we booked Friday off work, and booked an absurdly cheap flight to New York for the following morning, coming back overnight Sunday into Monday

Something like £120 return each (although this was about 1995!)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

What size is the possible spontaneous trip to Paris market though?
Is it really going to outweigh the revenue lost by giving those going anyway a cheaper fare?

Hard to say. But cheaper fares wouldn't only encourage spontaneous weekend trips to Paris: It would also result in more planned-in-advance trips to Paris/more people taking the train instead of flying/more people using the train to Paris when their ultimate destination is somewhere else in France etc. And of course the other way round: More people coming from Paris/Brussels/etc. to visit London.

At the moment we have a high speed line from Kent/France into the heart of London that seems to be woefully underused in terms of numbers of trains/passengers using it (although admittedly not helped by that there aren't many platforms at St Pancras anyway which limits how many trains can use the line). It does seem wrong and that the line is currently not nearly as useful to society as it could've been because of a business model of high fares to cover not-very-many passengers.

 

[RT4038]

Well this is somewhat circular reasoning, because pricing requires them to do this.

If the fares were inexpensive people would do things like that.

My father actually did a day trip to Paris in the 1970s, although he was with the railway at the time so it heavily subsidised the cost.


I worry that the railway is attempting to optimise on the "high fare, small traffic" model, but that this is merely a local maximum.
The railway has to chase volume or it will struggle to justify its ongoing taxpayer support.

The gutting of the high fare business travel market is a major blow to the current operating model, and I don't think we can avoid a total rethink on what the railway is for and why, if and by how much the taxpayer should fund it.

To be extra controversial!

 

[Meerkat]

Hard to say. But cheaper fares wouldn't only encourage spontaneous weekend trips to Paris: It would also result in more planned-in-advance trips to Paris/more people taking the train instead of flying/more people using the train to Paris when their ultimate destination is somewhere else in France etc. And of course the other way round: More people coming from Paris/Brussels/etc. to visit London.

At the moment we have a high speed line from Kent/France into the heart of London that seems to be woefully underused in terms of numbers of trains/passengers using it (although admittedly not helped by that there aren't many platforms at St Pancras anyway which limits how many trains can use the line). It does seem wrong and that the line is currently not nearly as useful to society as it could've been because of a business model of high fares to cover not-very-many passengers.

Presumably Eurostar have a lot of yield data to decide their pricing strategy - are you suggesting they should accept lower profits?

 

[HSTEd]

Presumably Eurostar have a lot of yield data to decide their pricing strategy - are you suggesting they should accept lower profits?

Well Eurostar's data is only part of the story

The Government does indirectly subsidise EUrostar, as it ate a substantial loss on the sale of the concession to the current HS1 operator.
The HS1 operator also does not optimise for societal benefit, it optimises for its own financial gain.

In essence, HS1 is currently operated in a way that is optimal for the private shareholders but is unlikely to be so for society as a whole.
Then again, the optimum-for-society way to operate HS1 is probably not to fill it with Eurostars, it would likely be to stack it full of domestic trainsets.

But this wider problem is found throughout the UK rail industry.
The farebox is now only a small portion of the cost of operating the railway, consequently we would expect the "optimisation of fairbox" and "optimisation of societal benefits per pound spent" options to become increasingly divergent.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

In essence, HS1 is currently operated in a way that is optimal for the private shareholders but is unlikely to be so for society as a whole.
Then again, the optimum-for-society way to operate HS1 is probably not to fill it with Eurostars, it would likely be to stack it full of domestic trainsets.

I would imagine you should be able to do both. I don't know what the capacity of HS1 is, but assuming it's been built to decent modern signalling, you'd hope it could comfortably cope with at least a train every 5 minutes. That's 12 tph, and I doubt the population of Medway/East Kent is sufficient to fill that many trains to London. Plausibly, given reasonable fares and a SouthEastern timetable recast, I could just about imagine it supporting 4tph to Medway/etc., and maybe 4tph to Ashford/etc. and 2tph to Maidstone West, but probably no more than that. That leaves 2tph for international services. The main snag though is going to be capacity at St Pancras.

 

[renegademaster]

My money no object(but politics and planning permission still present) would be to solve the St Pancras capacity problem by turning Ebsfleet into "England railport" with a larger ammount of immigration desks/egates and then running a shuttle into London with something high capacity class 700 esque at a reasonable frequency. Could even do it at Calais to avoid the need to station border agents everywhere

 

[Recessio]

The Milton Keynes/Brian Milne bench (whatever the official name is for the NSE-style benches that have been on stations since the 80s) is an iconic and timeless design, which its removal from the majority of stations has been a downgrade in passenger comfort.

I agree with you here. Often wondered what they do with the old ones when they dispose of them during station refurbs, I quite fancy one for the garden...

 

[Bald Rick]

At the moment we have a high speed line from Kent/France into the heart of London that seems to be woefully underused in terms of numbers of trains/passengers using it (although admittedly not helped by that there aren't many platforms at St Pancras anyway which limits how many trains can use the line).

Woefully underused? It’s one of the busiest high speed lines in the world!

I don‘t buy this ‘spontaneous‘ desire for international, or even long distance, travel. Sure a few people do this - but I don’t know any away from thes pages. I would argue that these pages contain a (much) higher than average proportion of people who do.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don‘t buy this ‘spontaneous‘ desire for international, or even long distance, travel. Sure a few people do this - but I font know any. I would argue that thes pages contsin a (much) higher than average proportion of people who do.

With long distance travel it's less it being completely spontaneous and more people not knowing exactly what time they want to travel, particularly on the return journey. This is commonly the case for me. I can almost always say what train I'll use on the outward, I very often can't on the return - be that leisure (deciding to visit another attraction for instance) or business (an overrunning meeting).

However with E* you need to plan *months* in advance to get an attractive fare. I don't plan day trips anywhere months in advance, it'd be a couple of weeks at most.

Woefully underused? It’s one of the busiest high speed lines in the world!

With 2tph, only one in some hours, and a very early evening finish?

 

[popeter45]

With 2tph, only one in some hours, and a very early evening finish?

dont forget the shuttle services as well in the tunnel as well as the SE services on the rest

 

[Bald Rick]

With 2tph, only one in some hours, and a very early evening finish?

2tph Eurostars, plus 7tph Southeastern in the busiest hours.

 

[Jan Mayen]

It may well have been posted before (I'm not reading all 1250+ posts), but I think that an off peak return from A To C via B should be more than an OP return from B to C.
I'm also happy with fares being simplified and going up more than inflation (providing strikes end, and sufficient staff are recruted to run the railway, rather than relying on overtime.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The Milton Keynes/Brian Milne bench (whatever the official name is for the NSE-style benches that have been on stations since the 80s) is an iconic and timeless design, which its removal from the majority of stations has been a downgrade in passenger comfort.

Had to Google to find out which design you were referring to here, and having done so it is the type I suspected- which were once widespread at smaller stations around West Yorkshire. I'd always assumed they were a WYPTE design, so every day is a school day!

I agree with you here. Often wondered what they do with the old ones when they dispose of them during station refurbs, I quite fancy one for the garden...

As do I. I suspect they get scrapped, which is a shame as I'd happily pay a sensible sum for one. Don't have a garden myself currently but it'd be an ideal present for my brother!

 

[HSTEd]

Woefully underused? It’s one of the busiest high speed lines in the world!

Well that says more about other high speed lines than it does about how full HS1 is!

 

[Topological]

Woefully underused? It’s one of the busiest high speed lines in the world!

I don‘t buy this ‘spontaneous‘ desire for international, or even long distance, travel. Sure a few people do this - but I font know any. I would argue that thes pages contsin a (much) higher than average proportion of people who do.

Surely such spontaneous people just use Ryanair, Jet2, or Easyjet (Other budget airlines are available) and then have a far greater choice of destinations than rail could provide.

This is a railway opinion since I do not think it is for rail to provide that market.

This is a controversial opinion since actually the best answer for such people is to use a lot less carbon and stay local (not to mention the economic benefits of the money not leaving the local economy)