CrossCountry - Express or Local Service?

[jhy44]

One of the perceived (my be) weaknesses of the British Rail system compared to our continental neighbours is the lack of distinguishing between local, regional, intercity and express services.

In Germany and Spain they are clearly marked our with the 'Regio / Media-Distancia' label, whereas in the UK we have vague-ish designations that some operators run 'express' and others 'local' but the lines often get blurred.

CrossCountry is the best example of this. If we take Birmingham - Manchester for example, the service between the country's 2nd and 3rd largest cities, one would expect a high-speed/express service to operate, but CrossCountry's service actually acts as more of a regional local, with calls at Stockport and Macclesfield and Wolverhampton and Stafford.

The Turbo run services on the old Central Trains routes have even more of an identity crisis, being even more of a 'local' service.

I'm aware that High-Speed Rail (if and when it's built) will provide those express services, meaning that the existing normal XC services are likely to become definite regional-local services, and

I'm aware that lack of track-capacity on some routes means it isn't feasible to run both local, regionals and expresses on the same line, so they're forced to mutate a little, but...

With all the talk of XC timetable reform, has there ever been any serious discussion (by those in the industry and government, not on forums like this which count for nothing) about eliminating some stops on CrossCountry services to make them more genuine expresses, and then extending the local service to pick up the calls that have been dropped?

My first such recommendation would be to eliminate Stockport and Macclesfield calls from XC and VTWC services and putting on a new 2tph semi-fast Northern service from Piccadilly to Stoke to pick up the slack. It's frustrating when you're on a 4 coach voyager our of Piccadilly and passengers heading to Reading are having to stand due to Macclesfield commuters taking all the seats.

Discuss (nicely please).

 

[Class 170101]

What demand is there to the south of Stockport and Macclesfield though? Those people would still want a direct service to Bristol, Birmingham, Reading etc.

 

[daikilo]

Back in the days of BR, the cross-country network was an attempt to provide non-London connections to as many regional points as reasonable. It came under the banner of intercity but served many points which were no more than "medium-size" towns. With privatisation it became a specific TOC and is still.

The point you are raising is that the way the TOCs have been constructed is not actually exclusively fast long-distance/regional/local. Whilst XC does rather tend to stop everywhere outside connurbations, that also happens to some extent with VTWC/VTEC/GWR for at least some of their trains.

I think the fundamental question is whether these multiple stops lead to a loss of long-distance passengers to other modes. We know that this is a factor for some passengers when changes of train are required. We also know that at pek times, some services become fully-loaded with the addition of commuters which reduces their attractivity to true long-distance passengers.

The issue today is that the TOCs actually run services principally defined by the DfT who neither have the time nor to some extent the capability to do the fine tuning that BR could do, and did every year.

 

[tbtc]

A number of people on the Forum would like some kind of "perfect world" Germanic split between different types of trains - fair enough.

Realistically, since we are where we are, it's not going to be simple to achieve that kind of "blank sheet of paper" world though.

IF you eliminate the "local" stops from XC (albeit some of them are fairly big stations - e.g. nearly four million journeys a year at Stockport - more than Stoke - despite the OP's desire for Stoke to gain a couple of extra fast services to Manchester per hour whilst Stockport loses its longest Manchester services each hour) then what frequency does XC become? Do you downgrade it to an hourly service? In which case, presumably?

And, if Stockport's four million journeys per year are insignificant enough for XC then do you curtail the network at Bristol/ Edinburgh? Certainly no stations in Cornwall/ Fife get numbers anywhere near Stockport's ones. I used to commute by XC daily from Sheffield to Leeds and get annoyed at the scrum of Wakefield passengers, but then Wakefield is a place with around two and a half million journeys per year (at Westgate alone), so it seems silly for an InterCity TOC to avoid.

And how many Manchester - Reading passengers actually are there (to be inconvenienced by short distance passengers)?

Fair enough, bring in some pick up/set down restrictions (which are admittedly hard to enforce on short distance journeys) but I think that the bigger priority should be more capacity on the core - rather than fewer stops - which may need to come at the expense of sending so many 125mph trains all the way to Paignton etc (or crayonista plans for putting additional towns on the "map").

Also, the OP is talking about VTWC not stopping at Stockport or Macclesfield? That'd put a *huge* pressure on the local services - if you can't use the eleven coach 390 then you're going to cram onto a Sprinter - which is potentially bad news for passengers wanting Knutsford/ Buxton (etc) who will see their services over-run by short distance passengers too.

In theory, it sounds good - maybe at privatisation XC could have focussed more on longer distance passengers - instead it got lumbered with the obligation to stop at tiny places like Chester le Street and Dronfield (due to the absence at the time of "local" services on those sections of line). But, given how things are now, I don't think we have capacity to provide alternative services (where are the paths over Stockport Viaduct for a semi-fast Stoke service, and why aren't we using them for other things?).

More seats are what are needed, maybe that means we should run some eight coach 110mph EMUs from Manchester to Birmingham instead (retaining some token through service to Bristol/ Reading, but Manchester had no direct Bristol service for a period under Virgin and coped).

Also worth pointing out that, under BR, Cross Country stopped at some much smaller places than it currently does - e.g. Crossgates to provide additional peak capacity into Leeds - 'twas ever thus.

 

[Ianno87]

What demand is there to the south of Stockport and Macclesfield though? Those people would still want a direct service to Bristol, Birmingham, Reading etc.

Therein lies the eternal paradox is it:

-Everyone having a through train from everywhere to everywhere else, versus
-Services getting crowded with local passengers and slowing down journeys for the bigger flows like Manchester-Birmingham

The problem is that XC have no particularly dominant flows in demand terms, I think even Manchester-Birmingham is only around 1% of total franchise revenue - although I reckon demand on this flow is heavily suppressed by poor journey times and lack of capacity, but which is hard to do anything about pre-HS2 Phase 2B. Then Macclesfield etc can then be catered for seperately via a 'regional' service, with fast services on HS2.

 

[higthomas]

Also, across most of the country replacing the 2tph cross country services with 2tph local semi fasts just isn't feasible. There isn't that capacity, otherwise such trains would already be there.

 

[jimm]

One of the perceived (my be) weaknesses of the British Rail system compared to our continental neighbours is the lack of distinguishing between local, regional, intercity and express services.

In Germany and Spain they are clearly marked our with the 'Regio / Media-Distancia' label, whereas in the UK we have vague-ish designations that some operators run 'express' and others 'local' but the lines often get blurred.

CrossCountry is the best example of this. If we take Birmingham - Manchester for example, the service between the country's 2nd and 3rd largest cities, one would expect a high-speed/express service to operate, but CrossCountry's service actually acts as more of a regional local, with calls at Stockport and Macclesfield and Wolverhampton and Stafford.

The Turbo run services on the old Central Trains routes have even more of an identity crisis, being even more of a 'local' service.

I'm aware that High-Speed Rail (if and when it's built) will provide those express services, meaning that the existing normal XC services are likely to become definite regional-local services, and

I'm aware that lack of track-capacity on some routes means it isn't feasible to run both local, regionals and expresses on the same line, so they're forced to mutate a little, but...

With all the talk of XC timetable reform, has there ever been any serious discussion (by those in the industry and government, not on forums like this which count for nothing) about eliminating some stops on CrossCountry services to make them more genuine expresses, and then extending the local service to pick up the calls that have been dropped?

My first such recommendation would be to eliminate Stockport and Macclesfield calls from XC and VTWC services and putting on a new 2tph semi-fast Northern service from Piccadilly to Stoke to pick up the slack. It's frustrating when you're on a 4 coach voyager our of Piccadilly and passengers heading to Reading are having to stand due to Macclesfield commuters taking all the seats.

Discuss (nicely please).

A rather fundamental difference between Germany, and France, and Spain, etc, is that large settlements tend to be much further apart than they are on our crowded little island - outside the Ruhr, there are precious few concentrations of population of the kind we have in the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Great Manchester, for example.

As a result, our train services have evolved in a different way to what is seen in our larger European neighbours in particular.

I'm afraid the suggestion of dropping XC and WTWC calls at the likes of Stockport in particular ranks as one of the most off-beam notions I've ever seen on this forum.

XC is already a financial basket case - remove all the footfall on its trains at places like that and you would only make the losses even worse.

Never mind making it far harder for people living in some large towns and cities to use the railway - Wolverhampton alone has a population of 250,000, to take but one example.

Stockport is the long-distance railhead for a substantial area to the south of Manchester - why on earth should the hundreds of thousands of people nearby have to either go into Manchester, or change at Stoke, in order to get a train to London or Birmingham?

 

[mrcheek]

One of the perceived weaknesses of the British Rail system compared to our continental neighbours is the lack of distinguishing between local, regional, intercity and express services.

.

On the other hand, some might see this as a strength rather than a weakness.

 

[centraltrains]

Stockport is the long-distance railhead for a substantial area to the south of Manchester - why on earth should the hundreds of thousands of people nearby have to either go into Manchester, or change at Stoke, in order to get a train to London or Birmingham?

Why should I have to take the train into the city just because my specific local station has no direct long distance services? Why don't they stop at the interchange stations instead?

 

[Senex]

The problem is that XC have no particularly dominant flows in demand terms, I think even Manchester-Birmingham is only around 1% of total franchise revenue - although I reckon demand on this flow is heavily suppressed by poor journey times and lack of capacity, but which is hard to do anything about pre-HS2 Phase 2B.

It would be really interesting to know if any research has been done on how far demand is suppressed by the poor journey-times on flows not just like Manchester<>Birmingham but also Manchester<>Leeds and most other routes out of Manchester except that to London (and you can well substitute for Manchester Leeds or another of the top handful of cities which have similarly slow connections between one another). Add to the slow times the inadequate capacity leading to thoroughly uncomfortable journeys on services like XC and TPE and one might well think there really must be suppressed demand (and perhaps even suppressed demand from those who would be paying the high full fares). History has given us a railway system that allows very fast connections to and from London but offers only pretty poor connections between major provincial centres unless two of them happen to lie on the same "London and ..." line.

 

[route:oxford]

has there ever been any serious discussion (by those in the industry and government, not on forums like this which count for nothing) about eliminating some stops on CrossCountry services to make them more genuine expresses, and then extending the local service to pick up the calls that have been dropped?

Isn't the reason why Cross Country services are so slow due to the local services getting in the way?

By slashing local services the service timing could be improved considerably without cutting station calls.

A few years back, during engineering works, there was an XC Edinburgh-Birmingham service that was timed to take just a few minutes longer than a West Coast route. It was discussed on here, but I can't find the link.

 

[daikilo]

Isn't the reason why Cross Country services are so slow due to the local services getting in the way?

By slashing local services the service timing could be improved considerably without cutting station calls.

Does anyone know whether there is significant pathing (not recovery) time in XC services, or is this just a myth?

 

[Ianno87]

Does anyone know whether there is significant pathing (not recovery) time in XC services, or is this just a myth?

Most of it is just genuine pathing time to fit round so many parts of the network. XC would almost certainly remove it if they could, reliably.

 

[pt_mad]

I would say the current XC is basically an intercity service (voyager routes only). Particularly between Birmingham and Manchester. They need to call at stations on route which are going to make sense for increasing footfall, revenue and business. And the time penalty for Stafford Wolves and Macclesfield stops won't be huge. The benefits seemingly outweigh the time penalty. And it works for pathing.

The other service which could be placed into this questionable bracket is the LNR Birmingham Liverpool service. Currently inter regional when you'd possibly expect an express intercity service. Although when the 5 car 24m 110mph capable Aventras are on the route, it will basically be the same kind of thing as a Voyager working the service (be it EMU not DMU) . Will seem more of a fitting stock with the Aventras.

 

[Ianno87]

It would be really interesting to know if any research has been done on how far demand is suppressed by the poor journey-times on flows not just like Manchester<>Birmingham but also Manchester<>Leeds and most other routes out of Manchester except that to London (and you can well substitute for Manchester Leeds or another of the top handful of cities which have similarly slow connections between one another). Add to the slow times the inadequate capacity leading to thoroughly uncomfortable journeys on services like XC and TPE and one might well think there really must be suppressed demand (and perhaps even suppressed demand from those who would be paying the high full fares). History has given us a railway system that allows very fast connections to and from London but offers only pretty poor connections between major provincial centres unless two of them happen to lie on the same "London and ..." line.

The effect on rail demand of release of suppressed demand where there is a step change in service is notoriously difficult to model or forecast, as with Operation Princess.

For Manchester-Brum, Manchester-Leeds, demand is obviously there as evidenced by the busy-ness of the parallel motorways.

With a change in rail service provision, how *much* of the demand would transfer is hard to predict, being so sensitive to so many factors (journey time, pricing, crowding, etc.), compared to a relatively attractive road alternative.

 

[Fuzzytop]

I don't think the former Central Trains routes really can decide what they want to be... At the Cambridge end of the Stansted Airport route, XC refused to add calls at the new Cambridge North station on the grounds that they were long-distance services.

Sure, but it feels very contradictory to entice short distance passengers on that same service with cheap Advances for the shortest legs. One egregious example is Peterborough to Ely, where some five tiers of XC Advances are available for less than £5. The next cheapest option of an Anytime Day Single for PBO-ELY for the other TOCs would set you back £12.60.

 

[pt_mad]

I don't think the former Central Trains routes really can decide what they want to be... At the Cambridge end of the Stansted Airport route, XC refused to add calls at the new Cambridge North station on the grounds that they were long-distance services.

Sure, but it feels very contradictory to entice short distance passengers on that same service with cheap Advances for the shortest legs. One egregious example is Peterborough to Ely, where some five tiers of XC Advances are available for less than £5. The next cheapest option of an Anytime Day Single for PBO-ELY for the other TOCs would set you back £12.60.

Maybe they don't have enough space onboard to stop regularly at Cambridge North?

 

[Senex]

The effect on rail demand of release of suppressed demand where there is a step change in service is notoriously difficult to model or forecast, as with Operation Princess.

For Manchester-Brum, Manchester-Leeds, demand is obviously there as evidenced by the busy-ness of the parallel motorways.

With a change in rail service provision, how *much* of the demand would transfer is hard to predict, being so sensitive to so many factors (journey time, pricing, crowding, etc.), compared to a relatively attractive road alternative.

And presumably a significant proportion of those driving on the M6 and M62 are driving for business purposes and so might well be the sort of people who would be paying the higher fares on the trains. It does shew how relatively unattractive the train-services are when driving on those two very overcrowded motorways seems a more attractive proposition than taking the train. But at least between Birmingham and Manchester and Manchester and Leeds there are roads of motorway standard as an alternative to the poor train-services. Manchester-Sheffield is bad by both road and rail.
As for Operation Princess, it will be fascinating one day to read a detailed analysis of what happened and find out how far there was a massive under-estimate of demand, whether estimates could have been any better done given the knowledge available at the time, and what might have happened if the full scheme had been launched as originally planned, complete with all the infrastructure works and the point-to-point times originally aimed for.

 

[Bertie the bus]

I notice the OP is from Birmingham but doesn’t suggest XC and WC services skip Wolverhampton or Coventry stops when these services can also be overcrowded with locals. I’ve been on XC services which have been full and standing between Birmingham and Wolverhampton and barely 1/3 rd full after that and the problem with longer distance passengers having to stand whilst locals get a seat is more acute as getting on the train at New St is always a scrum, whereas at least they start their journey at Piccadilly so if you arrive a few minutes early you are likely to get seated.

InterCity services for long distance passengers and local services for local passengers is fine in principle but on an already congested railway it doesn’t make any sense skipping stops because people want to travel there.

 

[hooverboy]

A rather fundamental difference between Germany, and France, and Spain, etc, is that large settlements tend to be much further apart than they are on our crowded little island - outside the Ruhr, there are precious few concentrations of population of the kind we have in the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Great Manchester, for example.

As a result, our train services have evolved in a different way to what is seen in our larger European neighbours in particular.

I'm afraid the suggestion of dropping XC and WTWC calls at the likes of Stockport in particular ranks as one of the most off-beam notions I've ever seen on this forum.

XC is already a financial basket case - remove all the footfall on its trains at places like that and you would only make the losses even worse.

Never mind making it far harder for people living in some large towns and cities to use the railway - Wolverhampton alone has a population of 250,000, to take but one example.

Stockport is the long-distance railhead for a substantial area to the south of Manchester - why on earth should the hundreds of thousands of people nearby have to either go into Manchester, or change at Stoke, in order to get a train to London or Birmingham?

I disagree.
over on the continent it is fairly normal on regional express trains to have stopping points around 15-20 miles apart.
in the case of around london this is absolutely in the zone for ECML/MML/WCML/Chiltern/Southern etc.

the one thing this country lacks,which europe has, is a nationwide semi-fast regional express plan.....and as I have intimated on other posts,should be another seperate franchise alongside a national intercity express network.

cross country is not fully cross country is it?,it is severely lacking in several areas of the UK,so cannot be considered truly national.

 

[radamfi]

The effect on rail demand of release of suppressed demand where there is a step change in service is notoriously difficult to model or forecast, as with Operation Princess.

For Manchester-Brum, Manchester-Leeds, demand is obviously there as evidenced by the busy-ness of the parallel motorways.

With a change in rail service provision, how *much* of the demand would transfer is hard to predict, being so sensitive to so many factors (journey time, pricing, crowding, etc.), compared to a relatively attractive road alternative.

Manchester to Birmingham, at least, should be "fixed" by HS2 Phase 2a/2b.

 

[30907]

While Germany has the distinction between Regional services (heavily subsidised) and IC/ICE (commercial with higher walk-up fares), the IC network (and previously the Interregios) typically stops quite frequently.

A town the size of Macclesfield or Stafford would certainly have every IC train calling. It might also be served by an RE on the same line, but that would certainly stop more frequently, at the likes of Congleton and Stone.

The "German" model is in any case beginning to break down, with IC services at the extremities being available at local fares. For many parts of the UK the better European comparison would be the Netherlands, Belgium or perhaps Switzerland, where tickets are the same price on (almost) any train.

 

[jimm]

I disagree.
over on the continent it is fairly normal on regional express trains to have stopping points around 15-20 miles apart.
in the case of around london this is absolutely in the zone for ECML/MML/WCML/Chiltern/Southern etc.

the one thing this country lacks,which europe has, is a nationwide semi-fast regional express plan.....and as I have intimated on other posts,should be another seperate franchise alongside a national intercity express network.

cross country is not fully cross country is it?,it is severely lacking in several areas of the UK,so cannot be considered truly national.

My comments were made with reference to the original post - which clearly calls for XC services to make fewer stops so that that XC network looks more like the OP's idea of what intercity/express services should look like, as opposed to regional express type services, which I take it is what the OP thinks the current XC service pattern looks like and wants to change.

But, I repeat, the fact that this is a small country with a lot of largish settlements, often clustered close together, is why our intercity/long-distance network has developed differently to Germany, etc.

HS2 will, in some years' time, provide an opportunity to think again about what sort of services operate on the existing network in some parts of the country, but until that moment arrives I see precious little to be gained by messing around with what is currently operating.

 

[cuccir]

For Manchester-Brum, Manchester-Leeds, demand is obviously there as evidenced by the busy-ness of the parallel motorways.

Although somewhat ironically these roads are so busy because they're locations where long distance travel is forced to share the route with local travel. EG Manchester-Birmingham is particularly busy north of the A50, as it's also carrying East Midlands--North West traffic.

A local/express split would be great but, you know, capacity!

 

[route:oxford]

Cross country is not fully cross country is it?,it is severely lacking in several areas of the UK,so cannot be considered truly national.

Given that there is no bridge or tunnel to Northern Ireland and the track is to a different gauge, there is a good reason why Cross Country don't offer a fully UK wide service.

 

[swt_passenger]

Copied from the other XC discussion...

There must be similar examples elsewhere, but it appears to me down here in the south that XC are just another part of the overall service offering. If you look at a relatively short regional journey such as Southampton to Basingstoke, then XC actually provide the majority of the fastest services. So do you change usage of XC by giving SWR more Basingstoke calls in their fastest services (slowing them down), or get some XC trains to skip Basingstoke, removing existing connections?

As suggested “we are where we are” because that’s how services happen to have developed over many years, difficult to change now.

 

[daikilo]

Given that there is no bridge or tunnel to Northern Ireland and the track is to a different gauge, there is a good reason why Cross Country don't offer a fully UK wide service.

In that vein, XC doesn't go to Wales either and only serves a small part of Scotland. The truth is that XC is a misnomer, only justified because it doesn't go to London.

 

[headshot119]

In that vein, XC doesn't go to Wales either and only serves a small part of Scotland. The truth is that XC is a misnomer, only justified because it doesn't go to London.

Has there been a serious land slip in South Wales?

 

[Ianno87]

Maybe they don't have enough space onboard to stop regularly at Cambridge North?

My theory is:
-Stopping at Cambridge North creates very little new demand, it would largely just abstract passengers who already join at Cambridge anyway
-What little demand is created is largely in lowish value fares to/from Ely, which themselves have to be split with GA and GTR. So they'd be stopping for peanuts revenue in return
-In the meantime, I reckon XC must get a decent slice of Stansted/Cambridge-Midlands/North fares for which London is also a valid route. Thus the journey time extension to call at Cambridge North has the effect of swinging Orcats revenue away from XC as the theoretical atractiveness of the route in terms of journey times (compared to via London). So they may in fact lose money by stopping.

 

[richw]

In that vein, XC doesn't go to Wales either and only serves a small part of Scotland. The truth is that XC is a misnomer, only justified because it doesn't go to London.

Cardiff is in Wales last time i checked.