Drop in passenger numbers sees train services cut

[AY1975]

This will be changing next week with more reductions.

Yes, it appears that LNER's daily Hull train will be withdrawn from next week, although Hull Trains will still be running. LNER is keeping its daily Lincoln train, although unlike Hull Lincoln isn't served by any other operator's direct London trains.

 

[_toommm_]

Look on RTT for Monday/Tuesday as updated timetables are on now.

Liverpool-York-Newcastle/Scarborough
Broadly the same with an earlier and later Newcastle service and a later service to/from Scarborough (still two hourly to SCA and two hourly to NCL).

Leeds-Hull
Leeds-Manchester Piccadilly
The self contained Leeds-Hull cease and the Piccadilly to Leeds stopper extends every 2 hours in its place (calling South Milford, Selby, Howden (in peaks), Brough and Hull) with services until 2200/2300.
Manchester Piccadilly to Leeds continues to call at all stations.

York-Redcar
Manchester Airport-Redcar
There’s 2 extra trains per day (giving 4 hourly frequency) from Redcar Central and 2 of these now go to Manchester Airport but run Calder Valley don’t call at Dewsbury or Huddersfield (0707 and 1107 from Redcar) with 2 TPD in the opposite direction from airport to Redcar (1110 and 1510) which don’t call at Manchester Vic, Huddersfield or Dewsbury. No stations between Picc and Airport are served.

Newcastle to Edinburgh
Two journeys each way between Newcastle and Edinburgh per day calling at Morpeth, Alnmouth, Berwick and Dunbar.

Scottish WCML
As per current timetable

Cleethorpes-Manchester
As per current timetable

Aww thank you very much for that. I’ve not been on RTT much as some of the operators were slow to update their timetables at the start of the week.

 

[infobleep]

ermm doesn’t that worsen the concentration of passengers wanting to interchange??

Perhaps they felt they would disperse above ground.

 

[rg177]

On the Northern Website, under timetable 1 (Newcastle to Morpeth/Chathill) it encourages you to visit the TPE website as apparently from next week they'll be operating the service.

https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/key-worker-timetables

From Monday 30 March, this service will be covered by TransPennine Express - please check their website to find out more

For a moment I had visions of an 802 calling at Acklington, but I suspect that won't be the case, and in fact it just means that the remaining Newcastle to Morpeth trains will be in TPE hands.

 

[snookertam]

ScotRail timetables being reduced further from next week. As a general rule commuter routes will be hourly, including Edinburgh to Queen Street express service and Glasgow Central to Ayr. Long distance routes will be two hourly. Stranraer, Carlisle via Dumfries reduced to 2-4 services per day. West Highland and North Highland lines reduced also. Only route operating anything like normal will be Aberdeen-Inverness.

 

[LAX54]

The Wherry Lines are almost a full service, surprised that has not been cut back to 2 hourly ! (off peak)

 

[infobleep]

I see SWR are running a bus every hour today between Guildford and Aldershot. That's better than during the week when it was only a train every 2 hours and better than the advice on their Web Site, which said no trains would run between Guildford and Aldershot and passengers to or for Wanborough would need to use the KITE bus service. To be fair that was for Monday to Friday.

Hopefully by this Monday the train will still be running and they can give out the correct advice.

 

[jamesst]

All TfW Chester-Liverpool services axed from Monday 30th March.

 

[341o2]

With Wightlink withdrawing the ferry to Yarmouth, I wonder whether the Lymington branch will be suspended

 

[Meerkat]

With Wightlink withdrawing the ferry to Yarmouth, I wonder whether the Lymington branch will be suspended

There is more to Lymington than just the ferry!

 

[S&CLER]

Northern has replaced Ormskirk-Preston by a bus service (hourly from tomorrow). Have any other lines been bustituted?

 

[MDB1images]

Northern has replaced Ormskirk-Preston by a bus service (hourly from tomorrow). Have any other lines been bustituted?

Was a rail replacement last week(certainly between 12:00 and 18:00)

 

[AY1975]

Some operators' websites are better than others in terms of how they present their revised service information. For example, Northern, Southeastern and TransPennine Express have the full revised timetables on their websites, while ScotRail and South Western Railway have summaries for each route.

 

[westv]

Local news has just said LNER will reinstate their Hull service next week.

 

[JN114]

Local news has just said LNER will reinstate their Hull service next week.

Now that Hull Trains have withdrawn their services entirely that’s not overly surprising.

 

[westv]

Must have misheard - it's from tomorrow not next week.

 

[initiation]

Some graphs on rail passenger usage here
https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1244665835475677186?s=19

Down 90%(ish).

 

[WatcherZero]

Ridership seems to be halving every couple of days from personal experience.

My morning commute from Wallgate which had around 100 passengers board at the station a couple of weeks ago when it was 4tph is now down to 1tph and has less than 6 passengers boarding. My return journey today had only three passengers. There was more Northern staff onboard the train before departure than there were passengers (Last few days seems to be a manager, couple of guards and a fitter doing a onceover of the train every morning before departure separate to the actual train crew).

Im starting to worry that the low ridership will see the service cancelled outright and either bustituted or simply putting key workers in taxis, with the ridership now it would probably be cheaper than operating a three car sprinter with only 6 passengers in rush hour.

 

[infobleep]

Some operators' websites are better than others in terms of how they present their revised service information. For example, Northern, Southeastern and TransPennine Express have the full revised timetables on their websites, while ScotRail and South Western Railway have summaries for each route.

Still finally Guildford to Farnham gets a mention in the summery.

There will be a reduced service between Farnham and Guildford with one train every two hours, calling at Ash and Wanborough. The last train service from Farnham is at 23:04, with the last service from Guildford at 23:33.

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey/coronavirus-temporary-timetable

It was one of my pet topics that Guildford to Farnham never got mentioned, despite more trains usually running between Guildford to Farnham than Guildford to Ascot. Obviously there is usually regular Aldershot to Ascot trains.

 

[infobleep]

This week no Great Western Railway services are going to Gatwick Airport. They either removed any that were or modified them to terminate at Redhill. This was about 4. They are also finishing earlier.

Reliability figures will improve online as they have put the times in, in advance rather ran cancelling the trains each day.

South Western Railway have reduced some of their evening trains, finishing earlier than last week.

 

[telstarbox]

Ridership seems to be halving every couple of days from personal experience.

My morning commute from Wallgate which had around 100 passengers board at the station a couple of weeks ago when it was 4tph is now down to 1tph and has less than 6 passengers boarding. My return journey today had only three passengers. There was more Northern staff onboard the train before departure than there were passengers (Last few days seems to be a manager, couple of guards and a fitter doing a onceover of the train every morning before departure separate to the actual train crew).

Im starting to worry that the low ridership will see the service cancelled outright and either bustituted or simply putting key workers in taxis, with the ridership now it would probably be cheaper than operating a three car sprinter with only 6 passengers in rush hour.

If they did that then would drivers start to lose route knowledge?

 

[Killingworth]

If they did that then would drivers start to lose route knowledge?

That's starting to happen already. A month is not too serious, but with routes suspended indefinitely (eg Hull Trains, EMR between Sheffield and Liverpool ) it will make reintroductions harder to achieve.

That said, it will be many months before passengers will come back anyway.

 

[Kite159]

Ridership seems to be halving every couple of days from personal experience.

My morning commute from Wallgate which had around 100 passengers board at the station a couple of weeks ago when it was 4tph is now down to 1tph and has less than 6 passengers boarding. My return journey today had only three passengers. There was more Northern staff onboard the train before departure than there were passengers (Last few days seems to be a manager, couple of guards and a fitter doing a onceover of the train every morning before departure separate to the actual train crew).

Im starting to worry that the low ridership will see the service cancelled outright and either bustituted or simply putting key workers in taxis, with the ridership now it would probably be cheaper than operating a three car sprinter with only 6 passengers in rush hour.

I would imagine the likes of Northern (and other TOCs) would have some sort of ranking system which would see train services on lines with low ridership replaced by buses (or taxis) if more staff become unavailable.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would imagine the likes of Northern (and other TOCs) would have some sort of ranking system which would see train services on lines with low ridership replaced by buses (or taxis) if more staff become unavailable.

The thing is at the moment that despite Northern's bluster it isn't only for key workers, it's for any non-retail business choosing to remain open where home working is not possible.

If we lock down further to "only key workers may work, all other business must close", it'd actually make more sense to bin off rail entirely, requisition the bus fleets from the major operators and operate dedicated works buses to each hospital, supermarket etc.

 

[Bantamzen]

The thing is at the moment that despite Northern's bluster it isn't only for key workers, it's for any non-retail business choosing to remain open where home working is not possible.

If we lock down further to "only key workers may work, all other business must close", it'd actually make more sense to bin off rail entirely, requisition the bus fleets from the major operators and operate dedicated works buses to each hospital, supermarket etc.

I disagree strongly, binning train services in a lot of cases would result in even longer commutes for many of those remaining key workers. I don't think that would go down at all well for people already working long, stressful hours!

 

[Kite159]

The thing is at the moment that despite Northern's bluster it isn't only for key workers, it's for any non-retail business choosing to remain open where home working is not possible.

If we lock down further to "only key workers may work, all other business must close", it'd actually make more sense to bin off rail entirely, requisition the bus fleets from the major operators and operate dedicated works buses to each hospital, supermarket etc.

I was thinking for the next few weeks if more staff become unavailable due to CV isolating, with the timetable needs to be chopped down further to provide a more reliable service.

 

[ainsworth74]

I think there may be two separate things here. We may get to a point where Northern (and other operators) end up further hacking away at their timetables to be able to run something reliably but if that happens I suspect we'd still see more trains running around than the timetable suggests purely in the form of route refreshing and keeping trains running. A lot of trains don't like being left to stand idle for long periods of time so keeping them in use on ECS runs may end up being important (and helps keep the depots clear enough so trains can be maintained!) and keeping train crew route and traction cards vaguely full will be important when we get to the other side.

So whilst the public timetable has to be reliable in order to be useful, if it does get reduced further I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see excess train crew out and about on ECS moves...

 

[Jamesrob637]

I just saw a Piccadilly to Chester on my daily walk and that was only 2-car however it didn't look as having more than a handful on board.

 

[Kite159]

I just saw a Piccadilly to Chester on my daily walk and that was only 2-car however it didn't look as having more than a handful on board.

Isn't that the normal loadings for that route?

I agree with @ainsworth74 I suspect there will be some drivers working ECS services to keep their knowledge up, keep the train from being stood around for too long and make space in the depot if required.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Northern has replaced Ormskirk-Preston by a bus service (hourly from tomorrow). Have any other lines been bustituted?

Huddersfield to Castleford is buses until further notice. The biggest users are school and college students, so with those closed it was always going to be an easy one to axe.