Have Trains had their day?

[Inthislife]

This could sound antagonistic but it’s absolutely not meant to be, Have Trains had their day?

I continuously have difficult journeys on the rail network, I see a complex system that is difficult to manage and it seems running them for profit just hasn’t worked? I could be wrong as I am far from knowledgeable about rail, I’m simply a user.

Isn’t it time that an alternative could be a better alternative for those that work on the system and users of the system?

Now this is very layman, but couldn’t the UK just tarmac (or suitable alternative) most of the rail network (leave some historical lines as museums) and run electric buses on them instead. There could be replacement units ready in case one breaks down so a swap could be minutes not hours. Jobs would be secured as a travel system still exists. Just swapping from one that is old, expensive and abused by big companies? This might help meet CO2 emissions targets? Generating the electricity might be difficult but solar could be installed in lots of stations and yards to support. All the stations could stay the same as buses would fit?

Maybe this is simply the wonderings of a window gazing rail user who doesn’t understand?

 

[74A]

Maybe this is simply the wonderings of a window gazing rail user who doesn’t understand?

Correct

 

[richa2002]

The problem isn't railways. It's how they are being running.

 

[Gholm]

The current privatised way of running trains has certainly had its day (although you could well argue it never had its day in the first place), but trains as a whole may well be entering a new golden age, if the government allows it. Railways, when run competently, are fast, efficient and comfortable and even affordable! Busses are much too slow, and with much worse capacity and often comfort as well. Not to mention much more expensive in the long term and on a large scale.

 

[Kraken]

Now this is very layman, but couldn’t the UK just tarmac (or suitable alternative) most of the rail network (leave some historical lines as museums) and run electric buses on them instead. There could be replacement units ready in case one breaks down so a swap could be minutes not hours. Jobs would be secured as a travel system still exists. Just swapping from one that is old, expensive and abused by big companies? This might help meet CO2 emissions targets?

This is a really good idea actually. It probably just needs a few tweaks to make it viable.

Firstly the interface between the bus tyres and the road is extremely high friction, so you’d be using more electricity than you had to. A better idea would be to make the road out of metal and then also have the buses wheels made out of metal.

Secondly you would be spending an awful lot of money on bus drivers salaries, could you maybe attach a lot of the buses together in a line so that you would only need one driver?

 

[irish_rail]

Secondly you would be spending an awful lot of money on bus drivers salaries, could you maybe attach a lot of the buses together in a line so that you would only need one driver?

You might even call it a train lol.

 

[SteelWeelApeal]

There are certainly lines where this could work. However, not most of them. A line at full capacity can take a 12 coach train more or less every 3 minutes per track. A 12 coach train can take well over a thousand people. Let’s call it a thousand to be conservative. That’s 333 people per minute, 100 every 20 seconds, 5 every second. There are very few other way to transport that number. Now, obviously no line is quite at that capacity because of bottlenecks, junctions etc. But somewhere like East Croydon to London, the lines into Waterloo, through Stratford, etc aren’t that far off during peak times.

For busy lines, the disadvantage of buses are they are smaller, so need more drivers, slower (sometimes, a lot, lot slower), and less efficient (steel on steel is very efficient for moving large masses). For most lines, the train is best.

However, for smaller branch lines, like the Looe line, I have a (personally sinking) feeling that your idea would make a lot of sense. Compared to a usually mostly empty, 2 coach diesel sprinter, a bus would be better environmentally (cheaper to build than an electric train too), more flexiable (better serving places in the way), probably just as quick, and cheaper to operate overall (although mostly because rail staff insist on having guards and paying train drivers a lot more than bus drivers).

So I think many of these other people are being too quick to criticise.

 

[Kraken]

You might even call it a train lol.

That was my point a little bit!

 

[gazzaa2]

They're certainly still full with passengers a lot of the time.

 

[stuu]

This could sound antagonistic but it’s absolutely not meant to be, Have Trains had their day?

I continuously have difficult journeys on the rail network, I see a complex system that is difficult to manage and it seems running them for profit just hasn’t worked? I could be wrong as I am far from knowledgeable about rail, I’m simply a user.

Isn’t it time that an alternative could be a better alternative for those that work on the system and users of the system?

Now this is very layman, but couldn’t the UK just tarmac (or suitable alternative) most of the rail network (leave some historical lines as museums) and run electric buses on them instead. There could be replacement units ready in case one breaks down so a swap could be minutes not hours. Jobs would be secured as a travel system still exists. Just swapping from one that is old, expensive and abused by big companies? This might help meet CO2 emissions targets? Generating the electricity might be difficult but solar could be installed in lots of stations and yards to support. All the stations could stay the same as buses would fit?

As a thought experiment, can you imagine somewhere like Fenchurch Street station. It has four platforms, which recieve up to 20 12 car trains in the busiest hour. That's 240 carriages, each holding more passengers than a bus. Each of those needs a driver, and have the ability to get rid of its passengers, and be off out of the way because another bus will arrive every 15 seconds. And you would need more buses than rail carriages because of the higher capacity.

Rail is exceptionally good at moving high volumes of people, nowhere on the planet has come up with a better solution

 

[notverydeep]

There are certainly lines where this could work. However, not most of them. A line at full capacity can take a 12 coach train more or less every 3 minutes per track. A 12 coach train can take well over a thousand people. Let’s call it a thousand to be conservative. That’s 333 people per minute, 100 every 20 seconds, 5 every second. There are very few other way to transport that number. Now, obviously no line is quite at that capacity because of bottlenecks, junctions etc. But somewhere like East Croydon to London, the lines into Waterloo, through Stratford, etc aren’t that far off during peak times.

For busy lines, the disadvantage of buses are they are smaller, so need more drivers, slower (sometimes, a lot, lot slower), and less efficient (steel on steel is very efficient for moving large masses). For most lines, the train is best.

However, for smaller branch lines, like the Looe line, I have a (personally sinking) feeling that your idea would make a lot of sense. Compared to a usually mostly empty, 2 coach diesel sprinter, a bus would be better environmentally (cheaper to build than an electric train too), more flexiable (better serving places in the way), probably just as quick, and cheaper to operate overall (although mostly because rail staff insist on having guards and paying train drivers a lot more than bus drivers).

So I think many of these other people are being too quick to criticise.

Looking back on the Beeching era, it seems strange how few of the closed routes were reused to make new roads, especially the double track lines as these could be wide enough for two lanes. Though many short sections here and there have been removed to build bypasses, hardly any have been converted for significant distances, even where parallel sections of road are now often busy and congested. My assumption is that while the right of way is probably wide enough in most locations, the cost of upgrading or replacing the narrow railway structures rarely makes economic sense.

 

[Alanko]

The current privatised way of running trains has certainly had its day (although you could well argue it never had its day in the first place), but trains as a whole may well be entering a new golden age, if the government allows it.

I doubt any Tory government is going to be that invested in a decent railway service. They fly everywhere, assume we drive everywhere and shape policies to match. The cost per kilometre to do any upgrade to existing track, let alone lay anything new, is staggering. I think long term government indifference is partly to blame as well as a general attitude of kicking the proverbial can down the road. Decades of underinvestment or 'biting the bullet' when it comes to major investment results in an ugly patchwork quilt of a network with spotty electrification and obvious bottlenecks.

I sometimes wonder if we are cursed by being the first? Our wimpy loading gauge was dictated two centuries ago by men with top hats. We can't use European stock 'off the peg' like other countries, so we still prod 37s into service where you might see Eurodual or Vectron locos on the continent. Plans to run high speed intercity services are hampered by infrastructure built by the same fellas with top hats, who probably considered 25 mph to be 'a fair clip'.

At the moment the UK government are poised to drop the chunk of HS2 that will somehow solve complex multi-generational socioeconomic issues in the north of England. We are looking at a government that is more interested in asset stripping or selling off public services to their mates, installing a tollbooth or turnstile on anything left and shuttering the rest. Entirely the wrong political landscape for new railway projects to thrive.

 

[Watershed]

The OP makes a very fair point, even if their notion of converting railways to roads is a fanciful one that was, thankfully, last taken seriously in the 1980s when there was a proposal to convert the line out of London Marylebone into a dedicated busway.

The railway currently doesn't really deliver for anyone. Staff at DfT TOCs are unhappy because of a lack of payrises for 4 years and a lack of government commitment to railways. The government (i.e. the taxpayer) is getting very poor value for money for the billions of pounds being spent each year simply keeping the network running - costs are far higher than most railways abroad, and the railways are highly inefficient in a lot of operational respects (this not being helped by decisions made by previous governments).

Most importantly of all, passengers are badly let down by an unreliable system where little effort is made to co-ordinate connections or collaborate across operators and modes of transport, whose fares are typically expensive, and to which 'customer service' is an alien concept.

Nobody is getting what they deserve from the current system, and something fundamentally has to change to fix it. As I see it, the underlying problem is that public transport outwith London isn't seen as important enough to warrant the kind of political attention and spending that it gets in countries which get it right. Until there's a big shift in attitudes amongst politicians - which will be informed by what they think the public want - any changes will just be tinkering at the edges.

We need real political commitment to setting the railways (and public transport as a whole) long-term, funded plans and sticking to them.

 

[philosopher]

The OP makes a very fair point, even if their notion of converting railways to roads is a fanciful one that was, thankfully, last taken seriously in the 1980s when there was a proposal to convert the line out of London Marylebone into a dedicated busway.

I have sometimes thought about the practicality of converting railways to busways and concluded it would just not be as good as railways at transporting large number of people. Theoretically, a single carriageway busway could accommodate 900 buses an hour, however stations and junctions would reduce that considerably, perhaps to something like 200 buses an hour. 200 buses carrying 50 passengers equates to 10,000 passengers an hour. A railway with 18 trains per hour each carrying 1,000 passengers, can carry 18,000 passengers, almost double that of the busway.

Buses also will never be as fast as trains. A non stop bus with an average speed of 60 mph would take approx 7 hours to travel to London to Edinburgh, whereas a train today can do it in four and half hours.

Longer term, driverless cars I think will pose somewhat of a threat to trains, particularly for shorter journeys, however realistically I can’t see them becoming common until the 2040’s as there are a number of issues with them to iron out. Even when they do start becoming common, the issue of congestion will still there and they will still take a lot longer than trains.

 

[Sonik]

Now this is very layman, but couldn’t the UK just tarmac (or suitable alternative) most of the rail network (leave some historical lines as museums) and run electric buses on them instead. There could be replacement units ready in case one breaks down so a swap could be minutes not hours. Jobs would be secured as a travel system still exists. Just swapping from one that is old, expensive and abused by big companies? This might help meet CO2 emissions targets? Generating the electricity might be difficult but solar could be installed in lots of stations and yards to support. All the stations could stay the same as buses would fit?

This is last century thinking, based on decades of deliberate sabotage of public transport to the benefit of road transport.

You only have to look at the exasperation of Americans, who are often stunned by the efficiency, comfort and utility of European and Asian rail systems when they travel, and question why they can't have something similar instead of being stuck in their cars in constant gridlock. Instead like us they are cursed with an increasingly car dependent culture that is constantly promoted by special interests and serves no one apart from those who stand to profit from it.

Hence we end up with the bizarre situation where our own prime minister attempts to harvest political indignation from the 'war against car drivers' without acknowledging that much car dependency only exists as a consequence of lack of credible alternatives due to decades of failed transport policy.

 

[Magdalia]

Now this is very layman, but couldn’t the UK just tarmac (or suitable alternative) most of the rail network (leave some historical lines as museums) and run electric buses on them instead.

I suggest that you take a look at the history and current usage of the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, which is mostly on old railway lines.

It operates well below capacity, the most useful section (between the main railway station and the Biomedical Campus) has been closed for more than a year for safety reasons, and use of electric vehicles has only just started this year.

something like 200 buses an hour. 200 buses carrying 50 passengers equates to 10,000 passengers an hour.

This is the sort of calculation that was used to justify the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Actual usage doesn't even hit 10 percent of that.

And think how many drivers would be needed for that level of service!

you would be spending an awful lot of money on bus drivers salaries

That's assuming that it is possible to recruit and retain the drivers. In places like Cambridge, with full employment and expensive housing, that's very difficult.

Looking back on the Beeching era, it seems strange how few of the closed routes were reused to make new roads, especially the double track lines as these could be wide enough for two lanes.

In the Fens some long sections of railway have been used for roads, for example the A16 between Spalding and Boston, the A17 between Kings Lynn and Sutton Bridge, and the A141 between March and Chatteris.

Other notable examples are the A66 in the Pennines/Lake District and the M90 in Glenfarg.

 

[Inthislife]

Thanks all, I feel like I have just had a short session on passenger numbers!!!

Looks like everyone sort of agrees management of the network and trains is the real problem.

Back to my window drawing board!

 

[philosopher]

And think how many drivers would be needed for that level of service!

That's assuming that it is possible to recruit and retain the drivers. In places like Cambridge, with full employment and expensive housing, that's very difficult.

Bus Rapid Transit is popular in South America partly for the reason that in that part of the world salaries are low and unemployment is high making it easy to recruit drivers. Obviously as you mention this is not the case in the UK.

 

[RobShipway]

I know it maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but would you really want to travel from London to Edingburgh on a guided bus? With a guided busway instead of the rails from Kings Cross, where the speed on the ECML is about 125mph, you would be lucky to be able to be doing 70 - 75mph with a bus on a guided busway.

As others have said, the issue is not the Infrastructure but the way it is being managed. You also have the issue that cars are for many more comfortable to be driving A to B, than taking the train as they can then use their car to be going places like the Pennines or Lake District.

You have also lost over the last 30 years or more infrastructure where you had Motorail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail_(British_Rail) The nearest public use system you have nowadays is Eurotunnel. Other than that it is the transporting of new vehicles either from the factories here in the UK, to the ports or via Eurotunnel to the continent or vice versa. But those are not for public use.

But I do believe that you still have a good percentage that either don't have a car or choose not to own a car as they can commute easily to work or anywhere they want to be travelling by public transport.

 

[AdamWW]

And think how many drivers would be needed for that level of service!

Converting to busways is also somewhat all or nothing.

It doesn't work very well if the line you want to convert enters its terminus via a stretch of main line. Unless you've converted that to a busway, you now have to run your buses on regular roads just where you really want them to be separated from congestion.

 

[The Planner]

I would back up what has been said about roads being built on railways. South Wales and the valleys have had multiple bypasses built on old alignments. Yeadon way in Blackpool, North Devon Link road. A34 around Newbury and south of there. The list is probably huge.

 

[MarkyT]

Bus Rapid Transit is popular in South America partly for the reason that in that part of the world salaries are low and unemployment is high making it easy to recruit drivers. Obviously as you mention this is not the case in the UK.

Also many S. American systems have been built in new wide corridors sometimes in entirely new cities, often in the medians of busy multilane freeways in the suburbs, which actually make the stations pretty unpleasant places to access and wait at. Many BRT systems were also planned with future rail conversion in mind and the Rio Janeiro network is now being converted to a 200km+ light rail network, partly because of the higher capacities available per vehicle/driver. As wages and living standards grow in developing economies, the 'benefits' of cheap labour availability for crewing and maintenance of large diesel bus fleets start to evaporate and rail is easier to electrify conventionally.

I would back up what has been said about roads being built on railways. South Wales and the valleys have had multiple bypasses built onand old alignments. Yeadon way in Blackpool, North Devon Link road. A34 around Newbury and south of there. The list is probably huge.

It's rational to do this in constrained geography like the valleys and through dense urban areas where the alternative might be large-scale demolition to find an alternative alignment. The difference from early Rail Conversion League ideas is that most structures and the roadbed and drainage etc were completely rebuilt for the new role with the greater width and clearances required to become general traffic roads. the concept of 'just tarmacking over' was nonsense.

 

[Sorcerer]

This is a really good idea actually. It probably just needs a few tweaks to make it viable.

Firstly the interface between the bus tyres and the road is extremely high friction, so you’d be using more electricity than you had to. A better idea would be to make the road out of metal and then also have the buses wheels made out of metal.

Secondly you would be spending an awful lot of money on bus drivers salaries, could you maybe attach a lot of the buses together in a line so that you would only need one driver?

I guess it is true. Trains are to engineering what crabs are to biology.

 

[Halwynd]

As much as I'm fed up with today's railway and no longer use it, railways have absolutely NOT had their day. If anything the opposite is true - what form of transport is best for carrying bulk freight for example, the railway is ideal.

Better times will come... and I hope a more competent and forward thinking government opens up new opportunities and a much better service for passengers.

 

[BrianW]

Thank you Inthislife, and welcome. New members bring new insights. It's common for those of long-standing to 'poo-poo' such 'grey sky thinking'. Sonik and others are right in questioning 'last century thinking'. The Marylebone busway idea died; Cambridge busway is dormant; Whitemoor marshalling yard is no more -it is the location of a high-security prison. However the possibilities of automated, electronic sorting of individual wagons from anywhere to anywhere became a possibility. Milton Keynes has its Starship autonomous delivery vehicles:

. Driverless vehicles are here, or hereabouts.

Can 'trains' of driverless 'cars' (and vans/ lorries?) marshalled together by Satnav etc be envisaged? Could a canclled/ refocused East West Rail > Expressway be a testbed for England's Economic Heartland?

 

[Irascible]

Secondly you would be spending an awful lot of money on bus drivers salaries, could you maybe attach a lot of the buses together in a line so that you would only need one driver?

Can 'trains' of driverless 'cars' (and vans/ lorries?) marshalled together by Satnav etc be envisaged?

While a driverless future is somewhat less sci-fi than it used to be ( I would challenge anyone starry eyed about it to live in an area with mostly single track lanes & really think hard about the challenges though ) - replacing rail routes with flighted driverless pods is a great way to spend more energy going slower.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

The current privatised way of running trains has certainly had its day (although you could well argue it never had its day in the first place), but trains as a whole may well be entering a new golden age, if the government allows it. Railways, when run competently, are fast, efficient and comfortable and even affordable! Busses are much too slow, and with much worse capacity and often comfort as well. Not to mention much more expensive in the long term and on a large scale.

Correct. I sort of understand current government reluctance in that the unions and the DfT and government interference all make railways difficult to run. A level headed approach of hands off and let the railways run themselves without too much interference and approach the unions with - we want modal shift to the railways - so surely that will give bigger and better jobs and more job security and get everyone on the same side.

We could then see a new golden age of railways. Lower carbon too!

 

[Farigiraf]

Thank you Inthislife, and welcome. New members bring new insights. It's common for those of long-standing to 'poo-poo' such 'grey sky thinking'. Sonik and others are right in questioning 'last century thinking'. The Marylebone busway idea died; Cambridge busway is dormant; Whitemoor marshalling yard is no more -it is the location of a high-security prison. However the possibilities of automated, electronic sorting of individual wagons from anywhere to anywhere became a possibility. Milton Keynes has its Starship autonomous delivery vehicles:

. Driverless vehicles are here, or hereabouts.

Can 'trains' of driverless 'cars' (and vans/ lorries?) marshalled together by Satnav etc be envisaged? Could a canclled/ refocused East West Rail > Expressway be a testbed for England's Economic Heartland?

I've seen those in Cambridge doing deliveries for the Co-op! Really cute to see them going in the rain a few months ago but one got stuck trying to get onto the pavement and almost got hit by a car- very early developments, but definitely useful
To the topic of the thread- I think maglev/ultra fast rapid transit is the future, because, fast.

 

[AdamWW]

I've seen those in Cambridge doing deliveries for the Co-op! Really cute to see them going in the rain a few months ago but one got stuck trying to get onto the pavement and almost got hit by a car- very early developments, but definitely useful
To the topic of the thread- I think maglev/ultra fast rapid transit is the future, because, fast.

Not Cambridge, but I've heard of similar delivery robots having to ask people to press the button at pedestrian crossings.

 

[MarkyT]

Not Cambridge, but I've heard of similar delivery robots having to ask people to press the button at pedestrian crossings.

Why are such motorised vehicles allowed on public pedestrian pavements when electric scooters and boards with a sentient being aboard (well a teenager anyway) are not? Would these things be allowed to roll onto public transport where there's level boarding? Could they purchase travel authority via a wireless link, beep in with a built in oyster card chip or something. They clearly have a (early) dalek-like inability to climb stairs as well so no good for delivering to high-rise blocks when there's a lift failure, assuming they're allowed in the lift. Perhaps later models will be able to levitate - the cargo 'pod' could be detachable from the rolling chassis and an emergency UAV could come and lift it up to floor 9 in that event... then release the package for it to fall back to ground level and shatter into a million pieces then leave a sorry note at the target address. I still think there will be a growing army of anonymous vans going round lifting these things off the street to retrieve their contents, never to be seen again.