Surely this would have been an afterthought after it was discovered that you can’t thread a Berwick - Edinburgh stopper inbetween the existing services.
You can.
Transport Scotland consulted Network Rail to provisionally secure them ahead of the 2015 franchise award in anticipation of the ScotRail Dunbar semi-fasts being extended right through to Berwick (was in the franchise tender). To my knowledge this hasn't changed other than the plan to run the service itself rather than path constraints.
That's what it feels like to me - there's a seperate thread about ScotRail where people are suggesting that ScotRail's poor passenger numbers/finances (fare income making up just over a third of costs) would be improved if only LNER stopped running a handful of services a day north of Edinburgh - the idea that these passengers are somehow being "poached" (even though BR/ GNER etc have been running these services for decades
Could you post the link to said thread? It'd be interesting to read the arguments for that. It's funny to me as it's a way of basically saying that the only way to entice people to choose ScotRail is to eliminate the competition by forcing people to board the only TOC that turns up.
It is counter intuitive, and it's worth noting that to assume that passenger flows would remain the same if LNER caesed north of Edinburgh is a gross mistake as you remove the main incentive that has seen demand for their services leap that of the traditional ScotRail flows.
Most likely the demand would disperse onto other services throughout the day and you're back to square one when the subsidy kicks in.
The SNP have suggested doing this before, and it's played well with the nationalists
Are you sure?
Are you talking about the party as a whole in adopted policy stances (of which there's never been one to caese DfT controlled cross border operators north of Edinburgh) or just one or two individuals within the party suggesting things that the majority of the party are against for a snappy newspaper headline?
Because the two are certainly very very different. The SNP have been in government for 15 years. If they wanted to scrap these services they'd have already done it by now.
Funny that we are having the discussion though - for many years I was reading that the fact that so many people preferred the GNER/ NXEC/ EC/ VTEC/ LNER (etc) trains for internal-Scottish journeys was because HSTs are so wonderful and that passengers would deliberately plan their journeys around these comfortable old trains rather than enduring those horrible modern ScotRail trains...
...now, we have ScotRail operating HSTs on Aberdeen/Inverness - Edinburgh services whilst LNER have these IETs that I keep reading are so terrible that enthusiasts are avoiding them where possible...
...and yet, now we are in a situation where people are complaining that the IETs are more popular and people are basing journeys around these infrequent services rather than the more regular ScotRail HSTs. Funny, eh? From the way that HSTs are lionised on here, you'd think that LNER trains would be empty.
It reinforces the idea that commuters do not necessarily care about what rolling stock they travel in (within reason), but how they associate their travel preferences with the visual differences around them or the feeling it gives them that they are getting a premium option.
I would bet that it's comparable to those who choose British Airways over EasyJet for short haul international flights between the same airports, aboard the same plane type, with the same journey times. People like the illusion that they are getting a more premium option because of the brand as much as the actual service onboard at least for standard paying passengers.
First class however is more obvious in this case since LNER's fares to my understanding match ScotRail's, so include the free drink and food every 10 minutes no doubt sways it for domestic Scottish commuters and rightly so.
Fair to say that infamous survey has been grossly misinterpreted to a certain extent.
Though that being said, the woeful HST introduction and the lack of time for this to cement itself hasn't exactly given the most compelling of means to truly compare this in the current environment for any meaningful length of time. Especially with Covid.
I've no idea about profitability - my guess is that ScotRail replacing LNER on these services would mean more subsidy required for ScotRail - the additional services would probably be less loss making than existing ScotRail routes but that doesn't mean that they are actually profitable. And that's assuming that forcing everyone to change at Edinburgh wouldn't see a lot of the business/leisure passengers switch to cars/planes instead (or even the Sleeper)
The plane argument comes up all the time but I don't really understand it.
Does the incentive for people to fly or get the train from Inverness and Aberdeen really depend on whether there is a direct train or not, regardless if it sits for 15-30 minutes at what otherwise would have been the interchange station anyway? If so, it can't be that meaningful in the grand scheme seeing as domestic flights in the UK are more expensive than international flights and in a lot of cases more expensive than the rail option for standard class passengers.
if an agreement could be made - but that requires co-operation rather than flag waving
Not sure how flag waving comes into it in all seriousness. I'm sure if the DfT approach Transport Scotland to work on a cooperation agreement for these services to make them more efficient to operate there wouldn't be much standing in their way providing the Edinburgh/Newcastle staff who work these services are still guaranteed their jobs at the end of it, and that there is a revenue arrangement that can justify ScotRail wanting to take over joint running of them rather than just doing a favour to the DfT and diverting their own resources away from ScotRail services.
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