How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

[Ken H]

They should lease half a dozen 8 car hitachi 8xx bimodes. Diagram them for edinburgh - Brun vis Newcastle then on to Bristol or reading. Resist the urge to send them to penzance or aberdeen, keep them on the core. Any spare voyagers can do Cardiff-Nottingham services
Wiring the fast lines between Kings Norton and Longbridge would help.

 

[Kite159]

How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

 

[JonathanH]

How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

However, doing that you prevent people from Coventry and Wolverhampton having access to Reading or Manchester.

In the immediate aftermath of Operation Princess, Wolverhampton stops were taken out of some Birmingham to Manchester services (and Stafford out of the services to Scotland) but the Wolverhampton stops were later restored because connectivity is important.

Does CrossCountry even take a disproportionate load of the passengers through the West Midlands?

 

[dk1]

How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

Trouble is then you deprive Coventry of services to Oxford, Reading & the South coast & Wolverhampton of services to Stoke, Stockport & Manchester. Best you could do is put in set down/pick up only restrictions at these stations but that can be equally problematic.

 

[gc4946]

How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

Agreed, stopping patterns should be reviewed.
I've often seen people pile onto XC services between Leeds and Sheffield where's there's plenty of alternatives, even if they take longer.
Maybe restrict XC's calls at certain stations to every 2 hours where their routes provide an hourly or better combined service.
Leeds-Sheffield cheap day returns are sold for journeys avoiding Doncaster, they could also stipulate "not XC" on tickets

 

[JonathanH]

Agreed, stopping patterns should be reviewed.
I've often seen people pile onto XC services between Leeds and Sheffield where's there's plenty of alternatives, even if they take longer.
Maybe restrict XC's calls at certain stations to every 2 hours where their routes provide an hourly or better combined service.
Leeds-Sheffield cheap day returns are sold for journeys avoiding Doncaster, they could also stipulate "not XC" on tickets

It is really difficult to see how CrossCountry should not be the primary means of getting between Leeds and Sheffield, particularly given the services via Barnsley are restricted to 2-car 195s.

One thing the current practice of running double Voyagers does result in is increased capacity between Leeds and Sheffield.

 

[The Planner]

How can Cross country overcrowding be alleviated?

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

Would only end up pathing them out so you are trundling along behind something else. That gets noticed by passengers.

 

[HST43257]

In my view, XC should get a large fleet of 7 car IETs with 6 standard class coaches and 1 first class coach.
There could also then be an option for one extra standard and first coach for each set, depending on how busy services are. They would have capability for Overhead and Third Rail electric power plus Diesel and potentially Battery or Hydrogen depending on where technology goes. These would run on all the voyager routes and perhaps some 170 routes if suited. Run proper frequencies using this fleet and/or amend calling patterns.

 

[Trainbike46]

In my view, XC should get a large fleet of 7 car IETs with 6 standard class coaches and 1 first class coach.
There could also then be an option for one extra standard and first coach for each set, depending on how busy services are. They would have capability for Overhead and Third Rail electric power plus Diesel and potentially Battery or Hydrogen depending on where technology goes. These would run on all the voyager routes and perhaps some 170 routes if suited. Run proper frequencies using this fleet and/or amend calling patterns.

Do you have a plan for what would happen to all the class 220/class 221s? Because it does seem a bit wasteful to just scrap so many relatively young trains

 

[Starmill]

There's nothing that can be done without a large increase in resources, beyond what is already being done, which is making the service expensive to use.

 

[Snow1964]

Do you have a plan for what would happen to all the class 220/class 221s? Because it does seem a bit wasteful to just scrap so many relatively young trains

Plenty of services around the country could use them, especially if they were regeared to 100-110mph

Everything from the secondary cross country services (including those not actually run by XC) eg Cardiff-Plymouth, Cardiff- Nottingham, Liverpool-Stansted etc

There is very little available on the network between an outer suburban DMU and a high speed bi-mode, and using trains like 170s or aging cast off HSTs on these services isn’t ideal.

 

[Wolfie]

I guess fairly early on you get to "Oh, we're going to have to design a completely new vehicle to comply with standards. And build a new assembly line and tooling. And it's going to be a very small production run so there are few vehicles to dilute these costs over. Oh, and we're going to have to do major surgery to the systems on the existing vehicles. Gosh this is all going to be horribly complicated and terrifically expensive".
The mistake was allowing Virgin to go ahead with a ridiculous plan and utterly trashing what was a high quality rail service. You didn't have to be some kind of genius or industry expert to realise that running new trains with loads of wasted space and less than half the seating capacity of the old ones was going to lead almost instantly to severe problems.

The pre-Voyager Cross Country service was far from a high quality rail service. Clapped out rolling stock and infrequent operation does not equal high quality.

There's nothing that can be done without a large increase in resources, beyond what is already being done, which is making the service expensive to use.

Agreed

 

[The Planner]

Plenty of services around the country could use them, especially if they were regeared to 100-110mph

Everything from the secondary cross country services (including those not actually run by XC) eg Cardiff-Plymouth, Cardiff- Nottingham, Liverpool-Stansted etc

There is very little available on the network between an outer suburban DMU and a high speed bi-mode, and using trains like 170s or aging cast off HSTs on these services isn’t ideal.

So we are now going from getting a brand new fleet to re-gearing all the existing? Getting expensive ....

 

[Kite159]

In my view, XC should get a large fleet of 7 car IETs with 6 standard class coaches and 1 first class coach.
There could also then be an option for one extra standard and first coach for each set, depending on how busy services are. They would have capability for Overhead and Third Rail electric power plus Diesel and potentially Battery or Hydrogen depending on where technology goes. These would run on all the voyager routes and perhaps some 170 routes if suited. Run proper frequencies using this fleet and/or amend calling patterns.

Make them 9 coaches with SDO for those stations where 9 coaches don't fit. Although the percentage on 3rd rail probably won't be worth the extra expense of developing a 3rd rail pickup system.

 

[cactustwirly]

I think the Voyagers need to be binned tbh.
They are very poorly designed with a very inefficient layout. I think this is the fundamental problem with XC.

Replace the lot with a mix of 9 and 5 car 802s. The 802s are a lot more efficient, a 5 car has considerably more seats than a 5 car 221. Plus they are cleaner as they can run on electric, plus they provide a better passenger experience with better luggage provision.

I don't think taking extra Voyagers or Meridians is the solution, yes it increases capacity. But it is a bodge not a fundamental fix of the problem.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

I think the Voyagers need to be binned tbh.
They are very poorly designed with a very inefficient layout. I think this is the fundamental problem with XC.

Replace the lot with a mix of 9 and 5 car 802s. The 802s are a lot more efficient, a 5 car has considerably more seats than a 5 car 221. Plus they are cleaner as they can run on electric, plus they provide a better passenger experience with better luggage provision.

I don't think taking extra Voyagers or Meridians is the solution, yes it increases capacity. But it is a bodge not a fundamental fix of the problem.

Quite frankly - they’re useless for ex VT-CrossCountry, purely because it’s reduced capacity for no reason.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t run full length trains on Manchester Bournemouth/Bristol, North East Southampton, Scotland Plymouth - other than it means they have to avoid Platform 3 at Reading (and a certain one at Newcastle) and platform sharing at Piccadilly, which is possible anyway. You can couple them but why bother cabbing two large driving ends in, taking up space and blocking access between the two halves. While I like Voyagers and believe receiving Avanti’s could help, if they must be replaced I think one fleet of nine or ten carriages would be better.

 

[181]

As bad as it sounds, ripping out some station calls to reduce local travel, I.e Coventry & Wolverhampton

However, doing that you prevent people from Coventry and Wolverhampton having access to Reading or Manchester.

Unless wider timetable changes were made, it would also break the connection at Wolverhampton from Avanti's Scotland/Blackpool-Birmingham-Euston trains to XC's Reading/Bournemouth ones (the latter overtake the former at Wolverhampton, so you can't change at Birmingham instead). It's bad enough that post-Covid journeys from Yorkshire and the north-east to the Thames valley involve hanging around at Birmingham for an hour, without making passengers from the northern WCML do the same.

Trouble is then you deprive Coventry of services to Oxford, Reading & the South coast & Wolverhampton of services to Stoke, Stockport & Manchester. Best you could do is put in set down/pick up only restrictions at these stations but that can be equally problematic.

Yes -- leaving aside the question of enforcement, restrictions like that would (just like not stopping) add an extra change to journeys like Wolverhampton-Oxford or Manchester-Coventry.

 

[43096]

The pre-Voyager Cross Country service was far from a high quality rail service. Clapped out rolling stock and infrequent operation does not equal high quality.

But it was a better service than what we have now in XC's post-pandemic world. The service was not "infrequent", it was basically hourly on all the main routes, but with a better spread of which route services went to the other side of Birmingham.

 

[The Ham]

Make them 9 coaches with SDO for those stations where 9 coaches don't fit. Although the percentage on 3rd rail probably won't be worth the extra expense of developing a 3rd rail pickup system.

Historically it used to be that the lease on a coach of a DMU was £110,000 and least costs being about 1/3 of the cost of running the services.

With seating for 70 people a standard coach would need to generate about £16/day to cover those costs (assuming in service for 300 days a year).

Now to allow for inflation it may be double that now. However given that a seat even on a train only ever half full can be used by multiple different passengers it shouldn't be that hard to build for 7 coach services but with an option for 9 coach services if the demand required it within (say) 5 years.

With HS2 being (at best) paused for the Eastern Leg a lot of the risk for XC having too much rolling stock has reduced for the next 15 years, however would be clearer within the above assumed 5 years window for train lengthening. As such it should be possible to plan for something like this.

Given the number of places which XC serves it would clearly fit within the leveling up agenda and would be a fairly cheap win for the government, especially if it also allowed for the delivery of more jobs if the trains were built (OK, assembled) in the UK and the increased jobs associated with maintaining them (good honest engineering jobs... complete using whatever other political rhetoric you wish).

 

[JonathanH]

Given the number of places which XC serves it would clearly fit within the leveling up agenda and would be a fairly cheap win for the government, especially if it also allowed for the delivery of more jobs if the trains were built (OK, assembled) in the UK and the increased jobs associated with maintaining them (good honest engineering jobs... complete using whatever other political rhetoric you wish).

I'm not sure it does fit the levelling up agenda because the places it serves are too disparate. If you had a given pot of money to spend, concentrating that spend on true 'commuter' services into the next city would trump spending it on CrossCountry.

For whatever reason, Manchester to Leeds has got more pressure to be improved than CrossCountry over recent times despite the fact that CrossCountry has arguably been an issue for longer.

 

[Ken H]

I'm not sure it does fit the levelling up agenda because the places it serves are too disparate. If you had a given pot of money to spend, concentrating that spend on true 'commuter' services into the next city would trump spending it on CrossCountry.

For whatever reason, Manchester to Leeds has got more pressure to be improved than CrossCountry over recent times despite the fact that CrossCountry has arguably been an issue for longer.

But XC does do commuter flows. Into Bristol from Taunton and Chrltenham, chesterfield to Sheffield, between Leeds and Sheffield, into Newcastle from Darlington, Durham and Chester-le-street. And others.

 

[JonathanH]

But XC does do commuter flows. Into Bristol from Taunton and Chrltenham, chesterfield to Sheffield, between Leeds and Sheffield, into Newcastle from Darlington, Durham and Chester-le-street. And others.

Indeed, a point which some people don't like, because they think CrossCountry should all be about the long distance journeys.

However, I don't think that any of those commuting flows translate to electoral issues.

 

[The Ham]

I'm not sure it does fit the levelling up agenda because the places it serves are too disparate. If you had a given pot of money to spend, concentrating that spend on true 'commuter' services into the next city would trump spending it on CrossCountry.

For whatever reason, Manchester to Leeds has got more pressure to be improved than CrossCountry over recent times despite the fact that CrossCountry has arguably been an issue for longer.

Whilst I agree that you could improve one or maybe two commuter flow(s) more efficiently than XC, that would be fairly limited in scope (maybe a 6 MP's could talk about it benefiting their voters).

However, for hot a lot more, you could do something "big" to fix XC and dozens of MP's could talk about how it's benefiting their voters.

If it was stated now, then it's likely that it could be delivered by, or at least very soon after (soon enough that testing might just have started or at the very least the first coach had been completed enough fora photo opp.), the 2025 general election. Something which, depending if there was a need for infrastructure, may not be so easy for those commuter services.

 

[trebor79]

The pre-Voyager Cross Country service was far from a high quality rail service. Clapped out rolling stock and infrequent operation does not equal high quality.

As a regular user of that service and into early Voyager days I wholly disagree. It was frequent by enough for a long distance service - fundamentally a doubling of frequency from hourly makes no odds return you're doing at hours journey. The stock was not "clapped out". I can recall only 1 journey with any kind of issue with the rolling stock -b the lights and heating were out in my carriage but I chose to sit in it anyway as it afforded a better view it if the window at night and kept the beer cool.
Every journey on the old stock was in a seat and relaxing. Every journey on the new stock was cramped, overcrowded, smelt like a public toilet and often standing in vestibules for hours.
No point having fancy new rolling stock if you can't get a seat, 99% of punters would prefer a seat on an old train than standing in the toilet smelling vestibule.

 

[hexagon789]

Ultimately either the entire XC system and timetable should be reviewed and rewritten properly or the whole of CrossCountry should be binned and the paths and services split up between the other operators to enable them to offer enhanced services, new stock procured by them and through journeys over the XC corridor simply made by changing trains - which is often quicker and cheaper anyway...

 

[gc4946]

Ultimately either the entire XC system and timetable should be reviewed and rewritten properly or the whole of CrossCountry should be binned and the paths and services split up between the other operators to enable them to offer enhanced services, new stock procured by them and through journeys over the XC corridor simply made by changing trains - which is often quicker and cheaper anyway...

I'd hand the Turbostar-operated routes over to other train operators.
Transport for Wales could run the Cardiff-Birmingham service.
East Midlands Railway could operate the rest of those services.

Meanwhile XC should focus on the truly long-distance services.

 

[irish_rail]

Ultimately either the entire XC system and timetable should be reviewed and rewritten properly or the whole of CrossCountry should be binned and the paths and services split up between the other operators to enable them to offer enhanced services, new stock procured by them and through journeys over the XC corridor simply made by changing trains - which is often quicker and cheaper anyway...

Agree its time maybe XC was disbanded as it is no longer fit for purpose. I say that with a heavy heart as ot used to be a really useful operator. But the provision is now so poor, and is increasingly ignoring the outer parts of its operation and so maybe splitting it up may help focus investment and improvements on different areas. Id start by giving Penzance to Birmingham to GWR.

No point having fancy new rolling stock if you can't get a seat, 99% of punters would prefer a seat on an old train than standing in the toilet smelling vestibule.

You've hit the nail on the head there.

 

[The Ham]

No point having fancy new rolling stock if you can't get a seat, 99% of punters would prefer a seat on an old train than standing in the toilet smelling vestibule.

Thing is; soon it'll be old trains with no seats!

Ultimately either the entire XC system and timetable should be reviewed and rewritten properly or the whole of CrossCountry should be binned and the paths and services split up between the other operators to enable them to offer enhanced services, new stock procured by them and through journeys over the XC corridor simply made by changing trains - which is often quicker and cheaper anyway...

Reviewed, certainly. However there's still a fair account that is useful about XC.

However with the opening of HS2 the loss of services South of Reading from XC if those paths could then be paired with a Paddington service would actually make them more useful for long distance travelers by providing a single change at Old Oak Common.

For those going to Birmingham it wouldn't make much difference (a little faster), however going anywhere else would be faster and potentially more frequent (especially if you then also considered other services with a change at Reading).

Although to be truly useful you may look to see what services through Winchester you could remove/divert through Salisbury to have 2tph. For instance having 1.5tph Weymouth to Waterloo and 1tph Weymouth to Paddington and 1tph Poole to Paddington (the latter two having the same calling pattern as the XC services South of Reading) wouldn't be that much of a deal breaker for direct Weymouth services to Waterloo. Whilst you could add that extra 0.5tph as (say) Salisbury to Waterloo it could also be a useful gap to help with reliability without cutting services which are otherwise quite useful.

If there was capacity; that could allow XC to run more services to Guildford rather than just stopping at Reading. As that would put Portsmouth only one change away from XC stations, now whilst this wouldn't be as good as direct services, given the frequency from Portsmouth to Guildford an hourly service doing that would be more frequent than anything which happened before.

A similar case could be made for the extension of the XC services to run to Gatwick, rather than run the GWR services, and whilst that would be quite a slow run and require ASDO at the majority of stations (and some odd station stop points to not block level crossings) it could also be quite useful.

However any such review shouldn't have anything on our off the table, other than how can the paths which XC services use be best used going forwards without significantly harming current journey opportunities (i.e. a change of train can be allowed, however it shouldn't be to only an hourly service and ideally more than 2tph where possible)

 

[gc4946]

Thing is; soon it'll be old trains with no seats!



Reviewed, certainly. However there's still a fair account that is useful about XC.

However with the opening of HS2 the loss of services South of Reading from XC if those paths could then be paired with a Paddington service would actually make them more useful for long distance travelers by providing a single change at Old Oak Common.

For those going to Birmingham it wouldn't make much difference (a little faster), however going anywhere else would be faster and potentially more frequent (especially if you then also considered other services with a change at Reading).

Although to be truly useful you may look to see what services through Winchester you could remove/divert through Salisbury to have 2tph. For instance having 1.5tph Weymouth to Waterloo and 1tph Weymouth to Paddington and 1tph Poole to Paddington (the latter two having the same calling pattern as the XC services South of Reading) wouldn't be that much of a deal breaker for direct Weymouth services to Waterloo. Whilst you could add that extra 0.5tph as (say) Salisbury to Waterloo it could also be a useful gap to help with reliability without cutting services which are otherwise quite useful.

If there was capacity; that could allow XC to run more services to Guildford rather than just stopping at Reading. As that would put Portsmouth only one change away from XC stations, now whilst this wouldn't be as good as direct services, given the frequency from Portsmouth to Guildford an hourly service doing that would be more frequent than anything which happened before.

A similar case could be made for the extension of the XC services to run to Gatwick, rather than run the GWR services, and whilst that would be quite a slow run and require ASDO at the majority of stations (and some odd station stop points to not block level crossings) it could also be quite useful.

However any such review shouldn't have anything on our off the table, other than how can the paths which XC services use be best used going forwards without significantly harming current journey opportunities (i.e. a change of train can be allowed, however it shouldn't be to only an hourly service and ideally more than 2tph where possible)

I'd extend the XC services currently terminating at Reading to Guildford now. It means platforms won't be tied up at Reading by terminating trains.

 

[dk1]

I'd extend the XC services currently terminating at Reading to Guildford now. It means platforms won't be tied up at Reading by terminating trains.

How would they get to Guildford & back in 36 minutes?