Idea to split rail services into Express and Local (post lockdown)

[PTR 444]

One quirk about Britain's rail services is that a lot of them tend to be a hybrid of limited stop express and local services, particularly London commuter services which start off as an express but stop at more stations further down the line. This is different from countries such as France and Belgium, where express/intercity trains are more clearly defined and only serve the major towns/cities, while local trains are left to pick up the stations in between with many of these having no direct service to the country's capital city. The reason for the quirk in the UK is down to the fact that we are a very densely populated country with a far reaching commuter belt out of London, but as usual commute is becoming a thing of the past, is this the perfect time to follow the continental two-tiered approach?

I propose that services in the UK are split into two tiers with there being a clear distinction between the two through branding: Intercity would be for the express services out of London Termini and cross country, only calling at major stations and charging more for tickets, while Local would be for services that connect the minor stations in between, although not as many would run through to the London as they do now. There could be a third "Metro" brand for London suburban services although this would be functionally similar to Local services. If social distancing is to continue for the long term, this approach could work as reservations would be compulsory on Intercity services, while Local services would see limited long distance users due to their stopping nature.

Also I forgot to add that train lengths will be maximised where possible. It would mean fewer services although capacity would remain about the same as it did before lockdown.

 

[The Planner]

Not sure what you are proposing here, a branding exercise or a wholesale re-write of the UK timetable to allow what you are suggesting?

 

[TheBigD]

Like Intercity, Regional Railways and NetworkSouthEast?

 

[Ianno87]

Like Intercity, Regional Railways and NetworkSouthEast?

All of which operated services that could be constituted "Express" and others "Local"

E.g. Paddington-Penzance Intercity trains are distinctly local in Cornwall.

 

[PTR 444]

It would require a wholesale re-write of the UK timetable, but branding would be different from sectorisation as some services that were not intercity in the BR era would become so, such as London - Weymouth and London - Brighton. The main change is that some local services running through to London will be curtailed at stations further down the line to allow for faster express services. For example, the Paddington - Penzance train would become intercity and lose most of the intermediate stops in Cornwall, while the stations in between would be picked up by an Exeter - Penzance "Local" service.

 

[MarkyT]

It would require a wholesale re-write of the UK timetable, but branding would be different from sectorisation as some services that were not intercity in the BR era would become so, such as London - Weymouth and London - Brighton. The main change is that some local services running through to London will be curtailed at stations further down the line to allow for faster express services. For example, the Paddington - Penzance train would become intercity and lose most of the intermediate stops in Cornwall, while the stations in between would be picked up by an Exeter - Penzance "Local" service.

There's little point in a Cornwall express missing out all or most intermediate stations en route to Penzance. These trains are relatively uncrowded after Plymouth anyway, except in the height of the summer (which isn't going to be relevant this year clearly) so running a longer express formation is a better bet public healthwise than cramming everyone who doesn't want say Truro and St Austell on with the locals on a following all shacks sprinter. For reduced staffing availability, it's probably better to add more stops to the long-distance and avoid having to run the separate local service altogether. Headline timings and overall capacity aren't the main priorities at the moment.

 

[JonathanH]

It would require a wholesale re-write of the UK timetable, but branding would be different from sectorisation as some services that were not intercity in the BR era would become so, such as London - Weymouth and London - Brighton. The main change is that some local services running through to London will be curtailed at stations further down the line to allow for faster express services. For example, the Paddington - Penzance train would become intercity and lose most of the intermediate stops in Cornwall, while the stations in between would be picked up by an Exeter - Penzance "Local" service.

It doesn't work.

Our railway network is not built to allow this sort of service to run at the extremities. Taking Waterloo to Weymouth as an example, after Brockenhurst, there are no loops - the only way to get a fast service to overtake a slower one over a distance of over 50 miles is to cross down services into the up platform. It isn't even possible to do that in the opposite direction as the crossover facilities at Bournemouth, Poole and Wareham are all into the up platform.

We removed a lot of the 'local' stations on some routes - Warrington - Wigan doesn't justify a local service as the long distance trains stop at both stations and meet the demand.

There are lots of places where skip stopping allows faster services to more places.

 

[RT4038]

It could be made to work. Whether it is desirable is another matter entirely. This country pretty much had a clear distinction between Express and Local trains until the Beeching era, when many of the smaller stations and local services were closed and the Express trains had to pick up those stations previously served by (withdrawn) local services that had too much traffic to be closed. The danger with re-establishing the distinction too rigidly is that some of the local services left would be seriously uneconomic and therefore in danger of curtailment.

I am unsure what the your point is with the Weymouth line? I presume that there would not be local services travelling over 50 miles - just split them up into shorter trips, similar to practice in much of Europe. Shortly after an express leaves Brockenhurst, a local would depart and arrive in Bournemouth before the next express (say 30 minutes later) arrives there. Yes, some track layouts may need to change to take into account this revised operation. Depends how frequent the relevant services are running.

 

[Bletchleyite]

All of which operated services that could be constituted "Express" and others "Local"

E.g. Paddington-Penzance Intercity trains are distinctly local in Cornwall.

Even Germany has an answer to that - a given train can run IC to somewhere then RE/RB thereafter. The once a day Hamburg-Berchtesgaden used to do that, it ran in one of the hourly RE paths from Freilassing. This has more significance in Germany than just calling patterns, though - the RE portion will have given DB the subsidy, whereas the IC portion will have run commercially.

Actually we sort of have one - the Cally from FW is effectively RE to Edinburgh and then EN (or whatever we'd call it) after that!

DB, however, runs much lower frequencies than the UK, with a base of hourly or two-hourly, very rarely better than that. IC/ICEs are mostly hourly I believe, REs hourly (but some two-hourly) and RBs a bit random (the difference between RE and RB isn't actually the stopping pattern, it's about whether it's in the Takt or not, so there are all-stations REs and RBs that miss stations).

While I'm wholly in favour of Takt as a concept (i.e. "same minutes past each hour, every hour, from start to finish of service, plus planned connections and consistent calling points"), I'm not sure this approach would work in the UK with those low frequencies you'd need to get the line capacity to do that. I am in favour of reducing some frequencies, but I think one thing Germans coming to the UK like about our system is the frequency. We might actually do better with something more like the south WCML but with a bit more consistency - i.e. a LN1 runs all stations to Tring, a LN2 runs fast to Tring then all stations to Bletchley or whatever. Which is kind of what the Southern used to do!

 

[Bald Rick]

Surely we should plan services that best suit passenger needs rather than the whim of creating ‘order in the Galaxy’.

 

[4-SUB 4732]

ICE
IC
REX
RE
R
S

It's a marvellous system

 

[Bletchleyite]

Surely we should plan services that best suit passenger needs rather than the whim of creating ‘order in the Galaxy’.

That order is good, though, because it means you can easily remember when trains are and know what connects with what where. It's served Merseyrail well over the years, where basically you have to remember one number and can extrapolate the entire service from it by adding 15 (daytime)/30 (anytime)/45 (daytime) on.

If you have even one train that fails that model (other than peak extras laid on top of the pattern), the whole thing becomes moot.

The Swiss know this well

 

[4-SUB 4732]

That order is good, though, because it means you can easily remember when trains are and know what connects with what where. It's served Merseyrail well over the years, where basically you have to remember one number and can extrapolate the entire service from it by adding 15 (daytime)/30 (anytime)/45 (daytime) on.

If you have even one train that fails that model (other than peak extras laid on top of the pattern), the whole thing becomes moot.

The Swiss know this well

Agreed Re: creating order. In the case of many Intercity services there is a set pattern (e.g. roughly two-hourly repeating, hourly etc.) and therefore you know that you turn up at a place at a certain time, 7 days a week and it then goes. Great.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed Re: creating order. In the case of many Intercity services there is a set pattern (e.g. roughly two-hourly repeating, hourly etc.) and therefore you know that you turn up at a place at a certain time, 7 days a week and it then goes. Great.

If you want to have a go at that in the UK, by the way, in normal times Avanti West Coast services are pretty much fully "im Takt" with only a few exceptions, mostly early morning and late evening plus what does and doesn't go through to Holyhead - I'll even use that term because there are some quite clever connections (e.g. North Wales into Scotland via Brum) even if they weren't planned to work like that!

LM pretty much were too other than the peaks, but LNR has made a bit of a mess of slightly more of it.

 

[tbtc]

There's two very different things being discussed/confused here, as I see it

There's the idea of simple clock face timetables, which I'm all for - using capacity as efficiently as possible - easier for passengers to remember - great.

But there's also the simplistic approach to services (often with some fancy continental terminology) whereby a train has to fit into certain binary terms - so a service that starts as a long distance high speed (LDHS) one remains as a long distance high speed one - whereas the British way is that a LDHS service leaving London might run for an hour before the first stop but further on in its journey it becomes a semi-fast and ultimately a "local" service (e.g. running in the path of 75mph services). Rightly or wrongly that's how things are in the UK.

WhIlst I appreciate that some posters see things in very black/white terms (e.g. the 110mph air conditioned 350s are dismissed as "suburban" trains just because of the obsession that people have with door position), moving to the kind of thing that the OP suggests would mean huge upheaval.

First of all, you'd presumably not run any London services beyond the last large place on the route, which is bad news for Cornwall, north Wales, the Highland Chieftan etc. Expecting people on those lines to change trains at Plymouth/ Chester etc, removing the longest trains from their local lines... it's not going to go down very well.

Secondly, you'd have to do something about the "local stations on main lines" - e.g. Retford (ECML platforms), Diss, Alnmouth - how do you fit in a "local" train on the two track line from Newcastle to Edinburgh if you've decided that none of the intermediate towns are significant enough for your LDHS criteria? Do you run an Ipswich - Diss - Norwich service just so you can run the existing Liverpool Street - Norwich service non-stop north of Ipswich?

What about lines where you decide that the ultimate termini is large enough to warrant an LDHS London service but there are a lot of local stations, e.g. Paddington to Hereford/Cheltenham beyond Oxford/Swindon? Do you retain the existing frequency and run the service non-stop beyond Oxford/ Swindon as well as running a "stopper" for the intermediate stations? Or would Hereford/Cheltenham see a reduced London frequency if there are fewer passengers due to the removal of local stops?

It's not just London services - e.g. if Liverpool/Manchester Airport to Newcastle is a top tier service then Northallerton/ Thirsk/ Chester le Street are pretty small places, so would they be dumped (with a local train picking up those stops)? If the Cleethorpes/Grimsby conurbation is still significant enough to warrant an LDHS service to Manchester (?) then you'd have to drop most of the stops east of Doncaster (and presumably run a 150 to pick those calls up?).

Thirdly, you'd lose the flexibility for longer distance services to pick up a few local stops at times when there are only a few trains running - e.g. the ScotRail service from Edinburgh to Dundee/ Aberdeen is pretty limited stop as far as Kirkcaldy/ Leuchars but there are some services at certain times of the week that run slower to accommodate the fact that there are fewer Fife Circle services running at those hours - so in this binary world you'd lose the flexibility to do that kind of thing.

Fourthly, what do you do about junctions where the place might not be particularly large but they provide a lot of connections - e.g. a list of big British cities isn't going to include York/ Doncaster/ Peterborough/ Crewe/ Swindon but these towns/cities punch about their weight in railway terms - but you'd have arguments about places that lose their LDHS services whilst a town with a five figure population retains service expresses.

Fifthly, you'd lose the token extension of London services to places like Skipton/ Harrogate (which can provide significant capacity into the nearest big city, even if only a tiny minority of passengers use the services all the way through to London)

I'm not totally against it but there'd be *huge* repercussions of doing something like this (a lot of towns/villages losing their long distance services, losing the longer trains - you'd be expecting a lot of places to either accept a significant reduction in capacity - e.g. seeing your London bound IET replaced by a 150 that will trundle along to the nearest city where you can change for a "big" train.

I can see why people look enviously at other countries, I can see why some enthusiasts like very "binary" definitions (e.g. the idea that all InterCity services must provide the same level of catering, regardless of the local demand patterns), but the consequences of doing something like this would be huge - I think some people should be careful what they wish for! Fine for me living in a reasonable sized city but a lot of medium sized places would lose out massively.

(and if the answer is "well, we should copy Germany but at the same time retain the flexibility of services which start out as one kind of train but change definition part way through" then that isn't what the OP was arguing in favour of)

 

[Sad Sprinter]

ICE
IC
REX
RE
R
S

It's a marvellous system

What are these?

 

[6Gman]

One quirk about Britain's rail services is that a lot of them tend to be a hybrid of limited stop express and local services, particularly London commuter services which start off as an express but stop at more stations further down the line. This is different from countries such as France and Belgium, where express/intercity trains are more clearly defined and only serve the major towns/cities, while local trains are left to pick up the stations in between with many of these having no direct service to the country's capital city. The reason for the quirk in the UK is down to the fact that we are a very densely populated country with a far reaching commuter belt out of London, but as usual commute is becoming a thing of the past, is this the perfect time to follow the continental two-tiered approach?

I propose that services in the UK are split into two tiers with there being a clear distinction between the two through branding: Intercity would be for the express services out of London Termini and cross country, only calling at major stations and charging more for tickets, while Local would be for services that connect the minor stations in between, although not as many would run through to the London as they do now. There could be a third "Metro" brand for London suburban services although this would be functionally similar to Local services. If social distancing is to continue for the long term, this approach could work as reservations would be compulsory on Intercity services, while Local services would see limited long distance users due to their stopping nature.

Also I forgot to add that train lengths will be maximised where possible. It would mean fewer services although capacity would remain about the same as it did before lockdown.

Isn't this another "solution in search of a problem?"

What purpose would it serve other than bringing in compulsory reservation? (Which you appear to believe would be a good thing, though I'm not sure why.)

 

[30907]

What are these?

(Some of the) categories of German train. ICE/IC are classified as Long Distance, the others as Regional, which is the only important distinction, as Regional trains are subsidised. The same split applies in some other countries, but not in UK.

 

[Bletchleyite]

(Some of the) categories of German train. ICE/IC are classified as Long Distance, the others as Regional, which is the only important distinction, as Regional trains are subsidised. The same split applies in some other countries, but not in UK.

On the German model all British trains are RB/RE/IRE because they are all "ordered" by their respective "state" Government. I suppose the open access operations are the closest thing to IC/ICE being fully commercial.

 

[30907]

On the German model all British trains are RB/RE/IRE because they are all "ordered" by their respective "state" Government. I suppose the open access operations are the closest thing to IC/ICE being fully commercial.

Quite so. Though within the franchised TOCs there is a split between those that are intended to make money for HMG, and those that require subsidy - but it doesn't match the Regional/Long Distance boundary.
And there are plenty of mainland European countries where the Regional/LD split is of little real significance.

 

[biko]

As a visitor to the UK, I was surprised and confused by the rail system at first as I am completely used to train categories. It just makes it so much more clear if you know you need to take the IC to a certain destination, especially if the same company runs fast and slow trains to the same place. I see that all kinds of problems are mentioned why it wouldn't work in the UK, such as the irregular stopping patterns and that only open access could be named IC as in Germany. Both are not really a problem: if you have an IC that stops at some intermediate stops, you just add 'also calls at ...' or 'calls at all intermediate stations from ...'. See for example how it works here in the Netherlands (although our ICs are of course not that long-distance, but it gives an idea how you could do it). The IC Amsterdam - Vlissingen is the only train between Roosendaal and Vlissingen, so it calls at all intermediate stations there. The platform screens just show 'IC Vlissingen, calls from Roosendaal at all stations'.

Also, we have some ICs that stop more often than others on the same route. This is solved in a similar way by adding a remark. Previously, those trains just were a different category do you knew it would be slightly slower than the IC but still suitable for longer-distance travel.

Funding is also not a great boundary between different categories. In the Netherlands, the category is just based on whether a train skips enough stops and is faster than the stopping services, not on the funding as there is currently no open access.

I think categories are not just for enthousiasts, it just helps with finding the right train and it stops people from using unnecessary slow trains as it is easy to recognise faster services without looking at all calls.

 

[Dr Hoo]

As a visitor to the UK, I was surprised and confused by the rail system at first as I am completely used to train categories. It just makes it so much more clear if you know you need to take the IC to a certain destination, especially if the same company runs fast and slow trains to the same place. I see that all kinds of problems are mentioned why it wouldn't work in the UK, such as the irregular stopping patterns and that only open access could be named IC as in Germany. Both are not really a problem: if you have an IC that stops at some intermediate stops, you just add 'also calls at ...' or 'calls at all intermediate stations from ...'. See for example how it works here in the Netherlands (although our ICs are of course not that long-distance, but it gives an idea how you could do it). The IC Amsterdam - Vlissingen is the only train between Roosendaal and Vlissingen, so it calls at all intermediate stations there. The platform screens just show 'IC Vlissingen, calls from Roosendaal at all stations'.

Also, we have some ICs that stop more often than others on the same route. This is solved in a similar way by adding a remark. Previously, those trains just were a different category do you knew it would be slightly slower than the IC but still suitable for longer-distance travel.

Funding is also not a great boundary between different categories. In the Netherlands, the category is just based on whether a train skips enough stops and is faster than the stopping services, not on the funding as there is currently no open access.

I think categories are not just for enthousiasts, it just helps with finding the right train and it stops people from using unnecessary slow trains as it is easy to recognise faster services without looking at all calls.

Thank you for this interesting perspective from a non-UK resident.

More generally, I am slightly confused by the idea of 'needing' to take an IC (or any other specific category) for a particular journey. Many routes see a mixture of train categories and operators with little or no overtaking en route, so there is a wide range of journey opportunities. Most journeys by occasional travellers will be arranged using 'journey planners' of some description and these generally suppress (or at least identify) trains that are overtaken.

 

[Aictos]

Surely we should plan services that best suit passenger needs rather than the whim of creating ‘order in the Galaxy’.

Indeed and as a example TL after listening to feedback from various stakeholders during the Covid19 outbreak has changed the stopping pattern of the 07:42 Bedford to St Pancras Int to stop additionally at Flitwick, Harrington and Leagrave so the train now stops all stations to St Pancras Int which is useful for key workers having to travel to/from work at that time.

Another example is the May 2018 Southern TT which has delivered much in the way of benefits for Southern passengers.

Therefore I would file the suggestion of the OP under unrealistic and forgotten about.