Hypothetical services after future modal shift to rail

[The Ham]

I would agree here, however closed railways are usually good routes for transport corridors, but there should always be a focus on improving links, not immediately defaulting to "re-opening the railway!" However some do advocate for a status quo of a slightly improved bus service and this doesn't do much.

True, for example, few are calling out for the Meon Valley Line to reopen (for those who don't know it's a line from Alton southwards through rural Hampshire and only serves a few small settlements).

However there are some lines which could be useful if they were to reopen and there are places where buses aren't suitable.

Secondly, if you are going to run a public transport route down a rail corridor, it should probably be a railway based solution, since busways generally have not been particularly successful.

Indeed, and sometimes (for an example look at the report into providing a line to Borden in Hampshire) heavy rail can be cheaper than trams - especially if there's a need for a depot for a fairly small fleet of trams.

Best way of achieving modal shift is to gain rail commuters, they will use the railway 500 times a year, much better than occasional leisure users. Rail commuters can be gained by providing frequent reliable transport between where people live and work, and ensuring commutes are by public transport where possible should play a stronger role in planning, hopefully with the New Towns coming with substantial rail improvements, unlike those of the 1960s which had their railways closed as construction started, often "to prevent them going back to London/Liverpool" and out of a misguided desire to provide both living and working in the same town.

I tend to agree, however, almost wherever you would want to provide a rail link for leisure purposes you'll likely see commuting (even if that's just to get workers to where the tourists are wanting to be).

 

[Technologist]

Out of the box thinking I would start modal shift with freight not passengers.

One freight train takes 30 HGVs off the road, one passenger train takes 300-600 cars off the road.

Road vehicles are in the middle of electrification and will likely beat rail to the punch there.

As a rule rail freight should never cost a passenger train path and pricing should reflect this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Sunday at 10:34 ==

To assess demand, I'd start with existing station-to-station passenger flows, but also identify the origin-destination pairs with high potential that don't show up in these stats because they are currently unserved or poorly served by existing rail networks.

Where does one get this city pair data?

 

[Magdalia]

Where does one get this city pair data?

For existing rail flows the data is available on the internet, thanks to the railwaydata website.

RailwayData | Passenger Flows - GB Network

Origin & Destination Matrix, outlining passenger flows for the English, Scottish and Welsh national network.

www.railwaydata.co.uk

What this sytem does​

• Using ticket sales data, estimates how many people travelled between each GB mainline station over a financial year

What this sytem cannot do​

• Passengers who choose to travel without a ticket are not included
• Journeys made on light rail networks and underground systems not part of the GB national network are not included

I now use this source a lot, and sometimes quote numbers from it on this forum.

For example, the biggest one way flow estimates for Cambridge in 2023/24 are:

Kings Cross 1420k
Ely 502k
St Pancras 322k
Stansted Airport 201k
Royston 151k
Cambridge North 140k
Waterbeach 92k
Newmarket 87k
Peterborough 79k
Kings Lynn 77k
Norwich 76k

With the right infrastructure, what might the flows be for St Neots, Huntingdon, St Ives or Haverhill?

If you're focusing on modal shift overall I think you get better results by focusing on suburban services - i.e. those that people will use on a daily basis.

In the Cambridge case, the data suggests that this is the right approach. Note that the longest journey in the list above is Norwich.

More generally, the usual source for travel to work data would be the decennial census. Unfortunately the 2021 census was conducted during the Covid pandemic so did not yield representative data for travel to work. For places like Cambridge the 2011 census is another world, in 2011 the Biomedical Campus was still fields.

 

[Dr Hoo]

One freight train takes 30 HGVs off the road, one passenger train takes 300-600 cars off the road.

Road vehicles are in the middle of electrification and will likely beat rail to the punch there.

As a rule rail freight should never cost a passenger train path and pricing should reflect this.

A freight train taking a container from, say, London Gateway to Yorkshire is definitely taking an equivalent HGV trip off the road. We are also told that HGVs cause vastly more road wear, tear and damage because of the 'fourth power' law in relation to their weight. HGVs are still well off from being suitable for battery operation on trunk trips. HGVs are also involved disproportionately more serious casualties in 'accidents', however caused, again because of simple laws of physics. So - a lot of benefits in modal shift for freight.

A passenger train may take journeys from cars on the road but a significant proportion of passengers will be taken from buses or coaches and probably also be making a lot of 'new' journeys. This may have benefits for the economy and personal wellbeing but is not relevant to modal shift - the subject of this thread.

 

[The Ham]

Are there no places where existing suburban services could have their frequency increased without building entire new lines? I've often felt there's a case to be made for looking at practices in other countries and seeing if they get more frequency out of their infrastructure than we do. Japan in particular manages to get very high frequencies out of double-track lines with the minimum of terminal platforms.

Depends on where you draw the boundaries. I gave an example of something which could be done to improve rail frequency for the 32nd largest urban area (larger than Oxford, Cambridge and York).

However, for London and other major cities it probably does mean new lines.

 

[Bald Rick]

HGVs are also involved disproportionately more serious casualties in 'accidents', however caused, again because of simple laws of physics.

Genuine question - is that the case?

I ask because HGVs are by defintion driven by professional drivers (HGV drivers are in my experience are rather better than other professional drivers, eg Taxi), and HGV mileage is disproportionately focused on the trunk road network for obvious reasons, and the Trunk road network is rather safer than the road network as a whole on a normalised basis. H.gVs also do rather more miles on average than the average car or motorcycle.

Motorcyclists are disproportionately represented in accident statistics, for example.

 

[Magdalia]

Depends on where you draw the boundaries. I gave an example of something which could be done to improve rail frequency for the 32nd largest urban area (larger than Oxford, Cambridge and York).

And you have drawn your own boundary to suit your case.

The relevant built up area populations from the 2021 census are:

Oxford 171k
Cambridge 153k
York 142k
Farnborough 61k

Farnborough is not bigger than Oxford, Cambridge and York.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Genuine question - is that the case?

I ask because HGVs are by defintion driven by professional drivers (HGV drivers are in my experience are rather better than other professional drivers, eg Taxi), and HGV mileage is disproportionately focused on the trunk road network for obvious reasons, and the Trunk road network is rather safer than the road network as a whole on a normalised basis. H.gVs also do rather more miles on average than the average car or motorcycle.

Motorcyclists are disproportionately represented in accident statistics, for example.

This seemed to be a key point when the question of the acceptability of 'smart' motorways (with no continuous hard shoulder) came into prominence. A 'stranded' car in Lane 1 is obviously at some risk from a following car where the driver doesn't notice it but a car can swerve more quickly and its mass in an impact is less likely to be fatal. The risk from a heavy lorry is much greater both because of lower manoeuvrability and much greater mass. The fatalities that occurred appeared to disproportionately be cause by lorry > car impacts.

I was trying to relate the relative benefits of a trunk container move by road (probably via the very four-lane M1 that I am extremely familiar with) or by rail between London Gateway and Yorkshire. I was no way intending to talk about urban roads with cyclists trying to make left turns, motorcycles on the Snake Pass or whatever, which are nothing really to do with long distance modal shift.

 

[HSTEd]

A freight train taking a container from, say, London Gateway to Yorkshire is definitely taking an equivalent HGV trip off the road. We are also told that HGVs cause vastly more road wear, tear and damage because of the 'fourth power' law in relation to their weight. HGVs are still well off from being suitable for battery operation on trunk trips. HGVs are also involved disproportionately more serious casualties in 'accidents', however caused, again because of simple laws of physics. So - a lot of benefits in modal shift for freight.

A passenger train may take journeys from cars on the road but a significant proportion of passengers will be taken from buses or coaches and probably also be making a lot of 'new' journeys. This may have benefits for the economy and personal wellbeing but is not relevant to modal shift - the subject of this thread.

A freight train container is on average less than one HGV load.

Modern UK trailers have much greater internal volume than a 40ft container. Although the cargo weights of a tralier and a container are similar, most goods in the UK context 'cube out' before they 'weigh out'.

So the comparison is significantly less than one to one.

EDIT:
An ISO container has an internal volume of around 75m3.
A UK height artic trailer can reach 100m3 of internal volume.

So each lorry is equivalent to ~1.33 volume limited containers.

The UK government is also moving towards allowing longer trailers that will increase the volume of the lorryload still further. Reportedly by 15% or so, so that would take us to ~1.53 containers per lorryload.

 

[Dr Hoo]

A freight train container is on average less than one HGV load.

Modern UK trailers have much greater internal volume than a 40ft container. Although the cargo weights of a tralier and a container are similar, most goods in the UK context 'cube out' before they 'weigh out'.

So the comparison is pretty far from one to one.

This is completely irrelevant. For better or worse deep sea intercontinental trade is in ISO containers, even if they are sometimes full of fluffy teddy bears rather than lead ingots. In the absence of de-vanning and re-packing into a separate high-cube road trailer (which would be unnecessarily inefficient) the container will move, still sealed, to say Yorkshire. It is better for it to go by train to one of the half-dozen intermodal terminals than via the M1.

I wasn’t attempting to propose that unitised low-density cargo such as flowers in trailers from Holland to GB are amenable to modal switch to rail once they are through the Channel Tunnel or taken off the ferry at Purfleet.

 

[Brubulus]

This is completely irrelevant. For better or worse deep sea intercontinental trade is in ISO containers, even if they are sometimes full of fluffy teddy bears rather than lead ingots. In the absence of de-vanning and re-packing into a separate high-cube road trailer (which would be unnecessarily inefficient) the container will move, still sealed, to say Yorkshire. It is better for it to go by train to one of the half-dozen intermodal terminals than via the M1.

I wasn’t attempting to propose that unitised low-density cargo such as flowers in trailers from Holland to GB are amenable to modal switch to rail once they are through the Channel Tunnel or taken off the ferry at Purfleet.

I don't think last mile is a realistic market for rail. However the journeys to and from factories, ports and distribution centres are definitely fair game for rail. Sadly we now have a swath of poorly linked distribution parks and industrial areas, which rely on roads.

Planning policy should have a focus on rail linked distribution, with modal shift targets as a key part of future approvals. However this will need to be in sync with rail capacity.

 

[JLH4AC]

I would agree here, however closed railways are usually good routes for transport corridors, but there should always be a focus on improving links, not immediately defaulting to "re-opening the railway!" However some do advocate for a status quo of a slightly improved bus service and this doesn't do much.

That is exactly my point, the focus should be on improving transport links where needed, if a suitable closed railway is a transport corridor is along it should be but we should not be defaulting to reopening the railway because it was once there, yet people should be careful not to fall into the trap of maintaining the status quo of bus service just because the line was close in the past.

Secondly, if you are going to run a public transport route down a rail corridor, it should probably be a railway based solution, since busways generally have not been particularly successful.

I do agree that rail based solutions should be the preferred solution for such transport corridors, but busways should not be ruled out even as a stopgap solution as they can be decent transport in certain contexts.

Best way of achieving modal shift is to gain rail commuters, they will use the railway 500 times a year, much better than occasional leisure users. Rail commuters can be gained by providing frequent reliable transport between where people live and work, and ensuring commutes are by public transport where possible should play a stronger role in planning, hopefully with the New Towns coming with substantial rail improvements, unlike those of the 1960s which had their railways closed as construction started, often "to prevent them going back to London/Liverpool" and out of a misguided desire to provide both living and working in the same town.

Yeah, the New Towns should come with substantial rail improvements, it was a great shame how many of the previous New Towns were let down by poor public transport links, and New Town development could be a great opportunity to push forward transport projects that previously failed to go anywhere due to population/development issues.

 

[Technologist]

Genuine question - is that the case?

I ask because HGVs are by defintion driven by professional drivers (HGV drivers are in my experience are rather better than other professional drivers, eg Taxi), and HGV mileage is disproportionately focused on the trunk road network for obvious reasons, and the Trunk road network is rather safer than the road network as a whole on a normalised basis. H.gVs also do rather more miles on average than the average car or motorcycle.

Motorcyclists are disproportionately represented in accident statistics, for example.

Since HGVs are very much larger the consequence of them impacting other road users is more likely to causes deaths and serious injuries. The best driver in the world can't stop a pedestrian stepping in front of it and whilst it might nominally be the pedestrians fault it is the HGV bringing the hazard as the pedestrian is only really a hazard to a (motor)cyclist. Road death statics don't capture "blame".

All motor vehicles did 330bn vehicles miles in 2024, cars did 256bn, HGV did 16.6bn. HGVs are involved with 12% of fatal accidents, cars 77%. Thus you get 4.9 deaths per billion vehicle km for cars and 11.1 deaths per billion vehicle km for HGVs.

Thus if we are to make the safety argument for a train removing several hundred cars from the road or 30 HGVs the amount of hazard removed per train path is much higher for passenger train. The real world is obviously a little more complicated as modal shift isn't really a thing when the roads are so badly congested. Thus for every freight train we displace with a passenger train we would expect that most of that volume of freight would go by road, thus generating another 30 HGV journeys. The rest of the paths freed by putting those passengers on a train would likely be filled by other car journeys (economic growth).

But this issue would be that we are now putting more HGVs on the road so would there not be more deaths and injuries? Probably not, whilst an HGV is more than twice as hazardous as a car it also takes up about twice the road capacity thus we aren't increasing the hazard by putting more HGVs on the road.

In terms of road wear (which was brought up earlier) the cost per passenger km or freight km to maintain roads is very much lower than it is for rail. Roads are much less complicated than rails.

In short if we are looking at modal shifts there is a good argument that freight should never get in the way of passengers. We get much more bang for our buck from putting people on the track than putting freight there.

 

[Dr Hoo]

It seems that a comparison is being made between safety statistics for the entire road system rather than just trunk roads and motorways. It also seems that point about massively greater road damage by HGVs (and consequently need for regular reconstruction with extensive lane restrictions and so on) is still being ignored.

Is it seriously being suggested that all intermodal trains on West Coast Main Line and routes like Southampton to the West Midlands should be withdrawn and replaced by HGVs on the M1, M6, A34 and so on in order that more passenger trains can be run on those routes?

 

[Flinn Reed]

The answer to increasing capacity will always involve High Speed Rail. This is what many countries in continental Europe (where rail fares are generally a lot cheaper than the UK) have been introducing, not just for quicker journeys but also to address capacity.

I think we need to view the railways like the road network. You wouldn't have one road catering for all speeds and distances of journeys. We need a rail equivalent of the motorway network - to be used by freight services and intercity passenger services for a significant part of their journeys.

This then frees up the exising lines to be used mostly for regional/commuter/local services, and making these more frequent.

The motorway network actually gives a good guideline of where High Speed lines should be built, as it has established where the demand is for longer distance journeys. I would suggest something like the following:

HS1 - as present

HS2 - London to Birmingham and the North West, with branches to Manchester and Liverpool, and through trains to Glasgow. Also perhaps a revised route between London and Birmigham, to stop at Luton Airport (roughly following the M1/M6)

HS3 - Supporting the ECML, from London to Edinburgh, via Stansted Airport, Cambridge, Peterborough, York and Newcastle, with branches to Sheffield and Leeds. Also some trains could use the HS line from London to Cambridge, then continue to Ely/Norwich/etc.

HS4 - Northern Powerhouse Rail. Combining the branches of HS1 to Liverpool/Manchester (with a triangular junction near Warrington), then continuing to Leeds and York.

HS5 - London to Bristol via Heathrow Airport, splitting with branches to South Wales and Exeter.

HS6 - Cross Country route from Bristol to Birmingham and onwards to Sheffield/Leeds. Possible extensions at both ends using sections of HS3 and HS5.

HS7 - London to the South Coast. A shared High Speed line from Central London to somewhere near Epsom, then splitting to two branches. One to Gatwick and Brighton, the other to Guildford, Portmouth and Southampton.

HS8 - Glasgow to Edinburgh.

Also, not High Speed as such, but on the topic of the Motorway network, I think an orbital line around London, roughly following the M25, would be very useful. Passengers making longer journeys wouldn't always need to go through London, and for shorter journeys around Outer London and the home counties, it could encourage many away from driving. And making travel to airports easier in some cases. But the biggest benefit here would be for freight services, which don't always need to enter London, and so freeing up capacity on busy commuter routes like the Mildmay Line.

 

[HSTEd]

It seems that a comparison is being made between safety statistics for the entire road system rather than just trunk roads and motorways. It also seems that point about massively greater road damage by HGVs (and consequently need for regular reconstruction with extensive lane restrictions and so on) is still being ignored.

The entire trunk road system only costs £6bn per annum, complete with capital expenditure.

That is where the bulk of HGV mileage is.
However, once you add up fuel duty and VAT on fuel paid by HGVs, plus the HGV levy and other minor charges, HGVs will make a vastly larger contribution to their infrastructure costs than railfreight does.
A detailed analysis is probably too much for this thread, but I would not be surprised if it came out as HGVs covering their actual costs.

Is it seriously being suggested that all intermodal trains on West Coast Main Line and routes like Southampton to the West Midlands should be withdrawn and replaced by HGVs on the M1, M6, A34 and so on in order that more passenger trains can be run on those routes?

I would personally suggest that, yes. I recognise that I hold a rather unusual and extreme position!

An all passenger railway would be able to stack more trains than we can do today, as passenger train performance converges on the physical limitations of steel rail technology.

The railway needs to reinforce success, and right now its passenger operations are far more successful than its freight ones in an economic sense.

 

[Magdalia]

Is it seriously being suggested that all intermodal trains on West Coast Main Line and routes like Southampton to the West Midlands should be withdrawn and replaced by HGVs on the M1, M6, A34 and so on in order that more passenger trains can be run on those routes?

I would personally suggest that, yes. I recognise that I hold a rather unusual and extreme position!

An all passenger railway would be able to stack more trains than we can do today, as passenger train performance converges on the physical limitations of steel rail technology.

The railway needs to reinforce success, and right now its passenger operations are far more successful than its freight ones in an economic sense.

I would say yes too, but for a different reason. Improved passenger services benefit UK residents and the UK companies that they work for, with a positive effect on GDP growth.

But the UK runs a huge trade deficit in goods. Lots of the containers on the railway are full of manufactured goods imported from other countries, and coming ashore at places like Southampton and Felixstowe. A significant portion of the benefits of good freight transport links go to manufacturers abroad, especially in China, through lower distribution costs, and with less benefit to the UK economy.

 

[Technologist]

The entire trunk road system only costs £6bn per annum, complete with capital expenditure.

That is where the bulk of HGV mileage is.
However, once you add up fuel duty and VAT on fuel paid by HGVs, plus the HGV levy and other minor charges, HGVs will make a vastly larger contribution to their infrastructure costs than railfreight does.
A detailed analysis is probably too much for this thread, but I would not be surprised if it came out as HGVs covering their actual costs.

I would personally suggest that, yes. I recognise that I hold a rather unusual and extreme position!

An all passenger railway would be able to stack more trains than we can do today, as passenger train performance converges on the physical limitations of steel rail technology.

The railway needs to reinforce success, and right now its passenger operations are far more successful than its freight ones in an economic sense.

That was precisely what I was advocating for as well, I would not advocate for throwing freight off the rails arbitrarily but that some process be used to objectively quantify the relative benefits. I suspect that specific paths fall into a few specific scenarios:

1: Freight that does not interfere with passenger traffic and as such can be left alone.
2: Freight use that does take capacity from passenger service but could ultimately be shifted to a time when it doesn't. I would imagine that this would be resisted by the industry as whilst they might be perfectly capable of shifting more trains to the night it will cost them more money for no benefit. If they aren't going to move then they can go through case 3.
3: Freight use which takes capacity from passenger services which can't be shifted and which cannot make a cost benefit case ahead of passenger service and which would get sent by road
4: Freight use which takes capacity from passenger services and which does buy its way onto rails, I'm going to guess this will be astonishingly rare.

This would all have to be done against and expansive future state case where we look at whether every existing piece of railway infrastructure can be turned into a high frequency/speed railway and we look at inducing demand via transit orientated development.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Monday at 17:30 ==

I would say yes too, but for a different reason. Improved passenger services benefit UK residents and the UK companies that they work for, with a positive effect on GDP growth.

But the UK runs a huge trade deficit in goods. Lots of the containers on the railway are full of manufactured goods imported from other countries, and coming ashore at places like Southampton and Felixstowe. A significant portion of the benefits of good freight transport links go to manufacturers abroad, especially in China, through lower distribution costs, and with less benefit to the UK economy.

The end user does get the benefit in the form of lower prices, however they would get more benefit from being able to go more places by train. Ergo buy a cheaper/larger house a long way from your job due to fast rail connection or get slightly cheaper tat from Temu?

 

[Bald Rick]

as a counter- argument, there is a very strong socio-economic and financial business case to remove off peak passenger services on the Felixstowe branch to provide more freight paths.

 

[Brubulus]

as a counter- argument, there is a very strong socio-economic and financial business case to remove off peak passenger services on the Felixstowe branch to provide more freight paths.

Or fully double tracking the route? Even then there are bottlenecks at the NLL and Soham-Ely /Ely North that are going to limit capacity.

 

[Technologist]

as a counter- argument, there is a very strong socio-economic and financial business case to remove off peak passenger services on the Felixstowe branch to provide more freight paths.

Well any train with less than ~60-80 people on it is likely less economic benefit than a freight train, with the caveat that some under loaded trains may be facilitating some peak loaded ones and I suspect due to speed differentials on constrained tracks a single freight path might take more than 1 stopping service off the diagram.

 

[Bald Rick]

Or fully double tracking the route?

Nope. Removing the off peak passenger services has a far, far better case.

 

[eldomtom2]

as a counter- argument, there is a very strong socio-economic and financial business case to remove off peak passenger services on the Felixstowe branch to provide more freight paths.

It's already just 1 passenger train per hour - if you're going to remove most of those you might as well close it to passenger services entirely. The political cost of cutting off-peak services would be very heavy.

 

[The Ham]

And you have drawn your own boundary to suit your case.

The relevant built up area populations from the 2021 census are:

Oxford 171k
Cambridge 153k
York 142k
Farnborough 61k

Farnborough is not bigger than Oxford, Cambridge and York.

I said urban area, Farnborough is only part of the Aldershot Urban area
Aldershot
Camberley (on the route of the service)
Ash
Frimley (on the route of the service)
Sandhurst
And others

If you look at the ONS map for percentage of population within 30 minute walk of a station:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/indicators/railway-station-walk#map

Oxford 26% (so circa 45,000)
York 34% (circa 48,000)
Surrey Heath 53% (Frimley, Camberley, Bagshot, but also quite a lot of rural population too)
Cambridge 61% (circa 93,000)
Rushmoor 85% (Farnborough and Aldershot) (circa 90,000)

Given that (other than Farnborough Main and Aldershot) all the stations only see 2tph (at best)

Not that far you've also got Fleet, Basingstoke, Bagshot and Ascot which would all be on the route of the service.

On didn't say it was the only place, if you could find lines which are under used then they could also make a good case for intensifying.

However, within 30 minutes walk the two highest places are Cambridge and Rushmoor (both around 90,000), so arguably good places to look at increasing rail frequency.

 

[Magdalia]

I said urban area, Farnborough is only part of the Aldershot Urban area
Aldershot
Camberley (on the route of the service)
Ash
Frimley (on the route of the service)
Sandhurst
And others

Urban area population statistics are compiled on a common definition by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS give the 2021 census population of Aldershot Urban Area as 40k.

In the ONS statistics, all of the following are separate urban areas:

Aldershot
Ash and Ash Vale
Bagshot
Camberley
Farnborough
Frimley

If you want to lump all of those places together, then you need to explain the metric for doing that, so that it can be replicated for the places you are comparing with. What you are doing is not comparing like with like because your "Aldershot Urban Area" is not on the ONS definition so statistically the comparison is suspect. For example, Oxford could be aggregated in a similar way to include Abingdon, Botley and Kidlington.

Anyway, it does not follow that because an area has a high population that it needs more and better train services. Journeys involve two points, not one, a start and an end. It seems to me that the Rushmoor/Surrey Heath area is well served by rail links both to London and for local journeys to places like Basingstoke, Reading, Ascot, Woking and Guildford. When rail already provides most journeys that people may wish to undertake, the best indication of the need for improved services is overcrowding.

What matters more is population growth. Using local authority areas, and comparing 2021 with 2011, Rushmoor grew by 6% and Surrey Heath by 5%, lower than the increases for England as a whole (7%). In contrast Cambridge grew by 18%, and South Cambridgeshire by 9%. Cambridge has also had a huge increase in employment.

If you look at the ONS map for percentage of population within 30 minute walk of a station:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/indicators/railway-station-walk#map
Oxford 26% (so circa 45,000)
York 34% (circa 48,000)
Surrey Heath 53% (Frimley, Camberley, Bagshot, but also quite a lot of rural population too)
Cambridge 61% (circa 93,000)
Rushmoor 85% (Farnborough and Aldershot) (circa 90,000)

What this says to me is that number of stations and administrative geography are key determinants. For example, compare Ipswich at 70% with Norwich at 34%. Most Surrey districts have very high percentages, reflecting the number of stations.

The prospects for modal shift are going to be best where new stations and lines can bring more people within walking distance, and that's hard when 85% are within walking distance already.

The Oxford area clearly needs more stations, mainly because the big population growth is in the neighbouring districts: Vale of White Horse (15%), Cherwell (14%) and South Oxfordshire (11%), not in Oxford (7%). In Vale of White Horse only 8% of the population are within walking distance of a station.

Cambridge is an interesting example. The current administrative geography has Cambridge almost coincident with the urban area, and the surrounding villages are in South Cambridgeshire, where only 17% are within walking distance of a station. The numbers in 2031 will be very different because of local government reorganisation and the opening of Cambridge South.

I'm not up to speed on local government reorganisation in Surrey but that will affect the numbers there.

 

[HSTEd]

Nope. Removing the off peak passenger services has a far, far better case.

Well I guess you could probably get a gondola/cable car across from Harwich station for less money than doubling the railway!

Would need some pretty impressive towers to get over the top of the dockyard but nothing that hasn't been built before.

EDIT: Or more realistically, just put in a corner station and go around it!

 

[BayPaul]

Nope. Removing the off peak passenger services has a far, far better case.

How would dropping to 1 train per 2 hours work? That would seem a reasonable compromise.

 

[The Ham]

Urban area population statistics are compiled on a common definition by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS give the 2021 census population of Aldershot Urban Area as 40k.

However for the 2011 census there's ONS data for larger urban areas:

List of urban areas in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

That's where the population for the Aldershot Urban area comes from.

 

[Magdalia]

However for the 2011 census there's ONS data for larger urban areas:

List of urban areas in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

That's where the population for the Aldershot Urban area comes from.

2021 is more up to date than 2011 both for data and methodology.

Here is the equivalent wikipedia page for 2021:

List of ONS built-up areas in England by population - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This list of built-up areas for England was compiled by the Office for National Statistics after the 2021 UK Census.[1] Built-up area boundaries are defined and named by the ONS.

I wouldn't normally quote wikipedia, but here it has a good presentation of the composition of the built up areas in the major (>200k) and large (>75k) categories, and the numbers match the spreadsheet that I downloaded from the ONS website.

Note the following:

32 Oxford 170805
37 Cambridge 152740
41 York 141685
.
.
.
136 Farnborough 60655

The definitional changes make it difficult to compare 2021 with 2011.

 

[Bald Rick]

How would dropping to 1 train per 2 hours work? That would seem a reasonable compromise.

at a guess, half as good.