First will not take over West Coast from December

[Wath Yard]

So if someone suggests through trains to Pwllhelli you think Virgin are going to include that in their bid? Should save them £15 million or so on the bid preparation, just get a few Virginites to do it for them.

 

[transmanche]

So if someone suggests through trains to Pwllhelli you think Virgin are going to include that in their bid? Should save them £15 million or so on the bid preparation, just get a few Virginites to do it for them.

If someone is going to spend £15 million on preparing for a bid, I'd be very surprised if some of that money wasn't spent on finding out exactly what (potential) customers want! It's what most businesses do all the time.

You assume that it would only be requests to serve places not included in the ICWC franchise. But it could be something like; renting DVDs from the shop, or a Virgin Atlantic style chauffeur-service, or being able to book a specific meal in advance.

Ask your customers, build on what's popular and factor it in. It means more loyal customers and bigger profits.

 

[Wath Yard]

You're right. The bit that says 'Where should we be running our trains to?' obviously confused me!

Real, grown up market research doesn't usually involve asking all and sundry to e-mail suggestions.

 

[Nym]

Real, grown up market research doesn't usually involve asking all and sundry to e-mail suggestions.

But it doesn't usually gain much better results (as a customer of market research), sometimes something as simple as just asking customers and trying to get the gist of the public opinion is good enough as a PR exercise, let alone actually using it for research.

 

[calc7]

Aren't the customers in respect to the bid the DfT, not the travelling public anyway?

 

[HH]

Aren't the customers in respect to the bid the DfT, not the travelling public anyway?

DfT kowtow to politicians; politicians kowtow to voters; the travelling public vote.

D'ya geddit now?

 

[jon0844]

I'd expect Virgin will steal the best bits of the First bid. They can let people submit whatever they want from this PR stunt, then come back with the 'results' later on and - of course - it will then sound like a mix of the public AND Virgin coming up the ideas.

Anything First tries to do later will simply be seen as a poor attempt to copy.. and it won't matter if First tries to show it was going to do that originally as people won't listen to First but will to Virgin. Virgin will be getting on TV, not First. First is just a greedy company out to make profit for shareholders. Virgin is a charity (or so people probably think!)

 

[transmanche]

Real, grown up market research doesn't usually involve asking all and sundry to e-mail suggestions.

Yes it does. It's called customer engagement. And (as I said) lots of businesses do it. Dell has it's IdeaStorm. Many others use tools like Get Satisfaction, UserVoice, BazaarVoice, or OpinonLab to do it.

Of course if you believe that successful businesses ignore what customers think...

 

[AndyLandy]

Real, grown up market research doesn't usually involve asking all and sundry to e-mail suggestions.

Actually, any good "market research" should involve "researching one's market", or in other words, "asking the customer". Sure, probably 90% of answers will be detritus that you need to just ignore, but the only way to know what your customers want is to ask them.

 

[Wath Yard]

Yes it does. It's called customer engagement. And (as I said) lots of businesses do it. Dell has it's IdeaStorm. Many others use tools like Get Satisfaction, UserVoice, BazaarVoice, or OpinonLab to do it.

Of course if you believe that successful businesses ignore what customers think...

You may as well have put in a link to Cats Protection - none of that means or proves anything, and most of it is about PR anyway which isn't market research.

 

[transmanche]

You may as well have put in a link to Cats Protection - none of that means or proves anything, and most of it is about PR anyway which isn't market research.

Jolly good. You can carry on burying your head in the sand if you want. The rest of the world has moved on...

 

[Wath Yard]

Actually, any good "market research" should involve "researching one's market", or in other words, "asking the customer". Sure, probably 90% of answers will be detritus that you need to just ignore, but the only way to know what your customers want is to ask them.

Which isn't asking all and sundry to e-mail suggestions. Real market research actually has very little to do with what the average customer wants. It is about identifying profitable customers and developing strategies to keep them or attain more, developing strategies to make marginal customers more profitable, and dumping unprofitable customers. These strategies will then be tested on representative groups. Anonymous suggestions from members of the public who may not even be customers or potential customers isn't market research. It's PR.

 

[transmanche]

Anonymous suggestions from members of the public who may not even be customers or potential customers isn't market research. It's PR.

That's rather an old-fashioned attitude.

Any decent product manager will tell you that they get as much (if not more) from customer suggestions that they get from "research". You then use that information as part of your knowledge when "identifying profitable customers and developing strategies to keep them or attain more, developing strategies to make marginal customers more profitable, and dumping unprofitable customers".

 

[calc7]

That's rather an old-fashioned attitude.

Any decent product manager will tell you that they get as much (if not more) from customer suggestions that they get from "research". You then use that information as part of your knowledge when "identifying profitable customers and developing strategies to keep them or attain more, developing strategies to make marginal customers more profitable, and dumping unprofitable customers".

Do Blackpool - London passengers count as bread and butter Virgin customers? Surely the most valuable customers for Virgin are those travelling between Manchester, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and London.

I'm happy to be proved wrong but I honestly don't see frivolous extensions to second-grade towns and cities as the most cost-effective use of stock and paths.

I'd love to know the patronage of the EC morning/evening "extension" services verssus other services with a change at Newark/Leeds. Do all the Bradford passengers really wait till 1833 to leave London?

 

[transmanche]

Do Blackpool - London passengers count as bread and butter Virgin customers? Surely the most valuable customers for Virgin are those travelling between Manchester, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and London.

I'm happy to be proved wrong but I honestly don't see frivolous extensions to second-grade towns and cities as the most cost-effective use of stock and paths.

I'll just repeat what I said in post #1022:

You assume that it would only be requests to serve places not included in the ICWC franchise. But it could be something like; renting DVDs from the shop, or a Virgin Atlantic style chauffeur-service, or being able to book a specific meal in advance.

 

[Deerfold]

I'd love to know the patronage of the EC morning/evening "extension" services verssus other services with a change at Newark/Leeds. Do all the Bradford passengers really wait till 1833 to leave London?

The morning service from Bradford is usually quiet and then is fairly busy after Shipley to say it leaves at 0635 - 20% full?. However a lot of the traffic is to Leeds, then the train is more or less fully seated from Wakefield.

In the evening few people join at Leeds (largely as there's a service 7 minutes earlier to Shipley) and the train is perhaps 5-10% full leaving Leeds.

 

[All Line Rover]

Do Blackpool - London passengers count as bread and butter Virgin customers? Surely the most valuable customers for Virgin are those travelling between Manchester, Birmingham, Milton Keynes and London.

I'm happy to be proved wrong but I honestly don't see frivolous extensions to second-grade towns and cities as the most cost-effective use of stock and paths.

Regarding Birmingham, Chiltern provide a fairly good service at present and London Midland should be providing a very good service come 2014. If London Midland were able to procure additional stock and run 4 'fast' trains an hour between WVH/BHM-EUS (some of which at 8 or 12 cars long), at a journey time almost as short as Virgin's, I'd question whether the EBW route is the most efficient use of Virgin's rolling stock.

True, the trains are very well used, often packed to the rafters - in my limited experience more so than any other Virgin route. But the EBW route doesn't feel like a 'premium' experience - the journey times are slow (compared to other routes), the First Class service is limited because Virgin try to cram it in between Coventry and Milton Keynes, and the trains are full of commuters at both ends of the route.

 

[bnm]

I'm confused. Where's EBW?

 

[SprinterMan]

I'm confused. Where's EBW?

EBW is an abbreviation for Euston - Birmingham/Wolverhampton.

Adam

 

[AndyLandy]

Regarding Birmingham, Chiltern provide a fairly good service at present and London Midland should be providing a very good service come 2014. If London Midland were able to procure additional stock and run 4 'fast' trains an hour between WVH/BHM-EUS (some of which at 8 or 12 cars long), at a journey time almost as short as Virgin's, I'd question whether the EBW route is the most efficient use of Virgin's rolling stock.

Surely you'd still need the same amount of paths in/out of Euston though, you might free up some Pendolinos for additional services, but that's not a great deal of use if there are no paths around London (unless you were planning on running an enhanced Birmingham-Glasgow service?)

 

[All Line Rover]

Surely you'd still need the same amount of paths in/out of Euston though, you might free up some Pendolinos for additional services, but that's not a great deal of use if there are no paths around London (unless you were planning on running an enhanced Birmingham-Glasgow service?)

Some of the Pendolinos could be moved to the Birmingham to Scotland route, the displaced Voyagers being used to double up existing Euston Voyager services (therefore using no extra paths out of Euston), perhaps splitting at Crewe or Chester to provide additional services to Shrewsbury, Wrexham and so on. As Network Rail are remodeling the entire West Coast timetable in 2014, I'm sure we'll see significant changes anyway.

 

[HH]

Stories in several newspapers today suggest that DfT spent £2.7m on legal advice about the Virgin claim, £4.3m on advice since, including Laidlaw, plus £1m DoR costs mobilising for WCML.

 

[The Planner]

Regarding Birmingham, Chiltern provide a fairly good service at present and London Midland should be providing a very good service come 2014. If London Midland were able to procure additional stock and run 4 'fast' trains an hour between WVH/BHM-EUS (some of which at 8 or 12 cars long), at a journey time almost as short as Virgin's, I'd question whether the EBW route is the most efficient use of Virgin's rolling stock.

Define fast for LM, are you proposing they bin the local and skip stop everything ? bear in mind you have 3 EBW, 1 ATW, 1 XC (with aspirations for 2) and 4 existing LMs between New St and International, plus a standard freight path. Plus the fact that you need to get these 4 via Weedon to stand a chance on journey time. Unless Virgin bailed out of the EBWs entirely, you don't have room.

True, the trains are very well used, often packed to the rafters - in my limited experience more so than any other Virgin route. But the EBW route doesn't feel like a 'premium' experience - the journey times are slow (compared to other routes), the First Class service is limited because Virgin try to cram it in between Coventry and Milton Keynes, and the trains are full of commuters at both ends of the route.

I don't see how you can make it quicker ? unless you take out stops. 80-85 mins isn't shoddy at all.

 

[tbtc]

If London Midland were able to procure additional stock and run 4 'fast' trains an hour between WVH/BHM-EUS (some of which at 8 or 12 cars long), at a journey time almost as short as Virgin's, I'd question whether the EBW route is the most efficient use of Virgin's rolling stock

...that's a huge *IF* though - LM running four twelve-coach trains an hour from London to Birmingham that are almost as fast as Virgin?

Even if they had the resources to do it, what about concentrating on the "local" market between the cities (Northampton etc)?

 

[All Line Rover]

Define fast for LM, are you proposing they bin the local and skip stop everything ? bear in mind you have 3 EBW, 1 ATW, 1 XC (with aspirations for 2) and 4 existing LMs between New St and International, plus a standard freight path. Plus the fact that you need to get these 4 via Weedon to stand a chance on journey time. Unless Virgin bailed out of the EBWs entirely, you don't have room.

Would 'fast' not be WVH > SAD > BHM > BHI > COV > RUG > MKC > EUS? That would be possible in under 2 hours. Perhaps they could run 3 'fast' via Weedon and 2 local via Northampton every hour? Of course this would only be possible if Virgin completely pulled out of the EBW route.

I don't see how you can make it quicker ? unless you take out stops. 80-85 mins isn't shoddy at all.

The journey times aren't shoddy but when WBQ>EUS takes the same length of time as WVH>EUS, and the latter is full of short distance commuters, the latter doesn't seem one of VT's strong-points or flagship routes, especially as there are plenty of excellent value alternatives (which don't exist on any other route except, come 2014, Rugby, the Trent Valley and, to an extent, Crewe/Stoke/Stafford).

 

[The Planner]

That isn't really comparing eggs with eggs though, WVH to EUS has 5 stops on average and a crawl from Wolves to New St, Warrington is a non-stop run.

 

[kieron]

The journey times aren't shoddy but when WBQ>EUS takes the same length of time as WVH>EUS, and the latter is full of short distance commuters, the latter doesn't seem one of VT's strong-points or flagship routes

Remember HS2, though. Virgin will certainly want to be the dominant operator on that line. London-Birmingham will be a key route on the line. It's a lot easier for them to argue that people want Virgin to operate the fast London-Birmingham trains if they are already doing it.

This assumes that Virgin win the next WCML franchise, but there's nothing for them to gain by planning to fail.

 

[AndyLandy]

Remember HS2, though. Virgin will certainly want to be the dominant operator on that line.

There's an interesting point there, I'd not really given much thought to who would be running the trains on HS2. It stands to reason that it'd be franchised out (assuming the current WCML debacle doesn't throw franchising out the window entirely)

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Remember HS2, though. Virgin will certainly want to be the dominant operator on that line.

HS2 is somewhat many years in the future, should it ever come to fruition. Who is to say who will be the interested parties nearer to that time when franchise proposal arrangements will be put before any interested bodies.

 

[kieron]

Who is to say who will be the interested parties nearer to that time when franchise proposal arrangements will be put before any interested bodies.

No-one knows as such, but you can't run a business without making some guesses about what's going to happen in the market.