Cross-City line 1982 - lack of Redditch services off peak

[Sprinter107]

Even after the Redditch service was reprieved, Selly Oak and Bournville stations were still under threat, and were themselves reprieved sometime after.

I think the problem with the Redditch service was that it is across the boundary in Worcestershire, so the PTE wouldn't support it. I suppose had Redditch have been in the West Midlands, its service wouldve increased from the start of the Cross City service.

 

[The exile]

Presumably Beeching and BR were looking at whether such a service would 'pay its way' and concluded that it wouldn't, much like the current service to Redditch doesn't 'pay its way'

Beeching wrote in his report about the financial problem of city suburban/commuter services. His remit was to make the railways as a whole 'pay its way' and he recognised that these type of services never would but were likely needed to perform a passenger transport function. He suggested that these needed funding separately, rather than expecting 'the railway' to cross-subsidise from Inter City and Freight traffic. Govt. took quite some time to put this into practice (basically setting up the PTEs in the 1968 Act), and even then it took the PTEs some time to grapple with the financial implications. In the delay, some lines got closed completely and others (such as Redditch) ended up on life support minimal services. Perhaps the Govt at the time were hoping they would get away with the closures - after all this was the time of thinking that cars would take over passenger transport, with buses for the losers.

No allowance was made for the “will be” or the “could be” - however foreseeable. Only the “is” counted.

 

[gg1]

Difficult to get my head round that thought (though I'm not denying that was the thought at the time); from somewhere like Redditch, Birmingham seems a very obvious work and leisure destination.

In the 1960s it was unusual for people to work, shop or socialise outside the town in which they lived. For the majority of people living in Redditch at the time a trip to Brum would be a once or twice a year affair, often around christmas.