Increases in rail ridership & rail vs road/car discussion.

[Killingworth]

As others have said this poll is bound to favour rail due to the closed nature of the group.

I use rail whenever practical but for most journeys I normally make from where I live neither train nor bus will beat the car, and in many cases be impossible.

Trains and buses are 10+ minutes walk away. Both offer infrequent services, hourly at best by train. Both are often late and can be cancelled. On trains it is difficult to get a seat. For most journeys the bus or train doesn't go close to where I want to go and in many cases would be many miles away.

My car is on the drive. No walk to the unreliable public transport. Ready to go and able to divert to several destinations from a comfortable seat without having to stand. Biggest drawbacks are parking at destinations, and traffic congestion - of which I'll be part!

Wherever possible my alternative to the car on short trips is to walk. After a long journey thus week on the A1 and M1 the volumes of traffic would make me more inclined to use the train - if my destination hadn't been 10 miles from a station with hourly services, needing a change from another hourly service. (Nice stop for an all day breakfast at the Wensleydale Railway tea room at Bedale, open all year round. Not a practical visit by train. )

Reading through the above, I haven't mentioned price. In my view we aren't paying enough for roads.

However, with only 3% of journeys being made by rail how can rail cope with only a doubling of market share bearing in mind the market for travel is growing and rail is struggling now?

 

[Jozhua]

Taken to the extreme it results in gated communities with only one way in and out on one side of the development. The desire for this kind of development is often down to preconceptions that only poor people of colour walk the streets, and they are all criminals without exception who want to rape and kill, and steal money for drugs. I also read there were some poor urban areas in California in the 1960s where it became impossible to walk in or out of the neighbourhood without committing the offence of jaywalking, after streets surrounding them were classified as Freeways (and were thus completely banned to pedestrians even though many actually had sidewalks). Residents, who were mostly black and without cars, could not even walk to active bus stops on these roads without technically breaking the ridiculous law.

Yes, I think Jay walking laws are a terrible idea! Especially in the US, where pedestrian crossings can be few and far between.

It's high rate of use on people of colour has lead some to coin the term "walking while black" in reference to the sheer amount of penalties certain ethnic groups face for Jay walking offences, etc

I agree about some suburban areas. I live 20-35 minutes from a big city by train (an hour by bus) and whilst the service could do with being more frequent, I don't generally find public transport a hindrance to getting around. Some late arrivals/early departures involve a taxi to the next town, but other than that the train/bus does fine.

Some of the modern improvements mentioned above are in danger of being eroded though. In particular more capacity, where that capacity gets used up and cheaper long distance travel, where the DfT seems to be forcing TOC's to price gouge to meet unrealistic premiums.

Definitely think the design of communities has a big impact on people's ability to acess public transport. Plus, areas that are easier to navigate by foot allow for better acess to schools/healthcare and emergency services.

The DfT is probably one of the biggest dangers to UK rail! It risks undoing all of the good work that has resulted in the passenger numbers we see today.

As others have said this poll is bound to favour rail due to the closed nature of the group.

I use rail whenever practical but for most journeys I normally make from where I live neither train nor bus will beat the car, and in many cases be impossible.

Trains and buses are 10+ minutes walk away. Both offer infrequent services, hourly at best by train. Both are often late and can be cancelled. On trains it is difficult to get a seat. For most journeys the bus or train doesn't go close to where I want to go and in many cases would be many miles away.

My car is on the drive. No walk to the unreliable public transport. Ready to go and able to divert to several destinations from a comfortable seat without having to stand. Biggest drawbacks are parking at destinations, and traffic congestion - of which I'll be part!

Wherever possible my alternative to the car on short trips is to walk. After a long journey thus week on the A1 and M1 the volumes of traffic would make me more inclined to use the train - if my destination hadn't been 10 miles from a station with hourly services, needing a change from another hourly service. (Nice stop for an all day breakfast at the Wensleydale Railway tea room at Bedale, open all year round. Not a practical visit by train. )

Reading through the above, I haven't mentioned price. In my view we aren't paying enough for roads.

However, with only 3% of journeys being made by rail how can rail cope with only a doubling of market share bearing in mind the market for travel is growing and rail is struggling now?

Yes, I honestly think that some extra road tax could be a good thing and should probably pay for better maintenance of roads. The condition of many roads is really poor and road markings almost not visible. Whilst I'm definitely not pro adding more lanes, we should definitely maintain the current road network to a good standard, so as to improve safety for all road users.

Also the amount of times I've already been soaked by vehicles ploughing through roadside lakes this year whilst walking is ridiculous.

Rail capacity definitely needs to keep up with passenger numbers. It's a long term industry and requires a degree of long term planning, whereas most things the DfT does should have been fixed 10 years prior.

When Virgin XC changed to XC, capacity should have been increased then. Castlefield should have been upgraded at the same time as adding the Ordsall Chord.

No good trying to fix things that have been wrong for 10+ years, when the schemes to fix them take about that long to come to fruition.

 

[EssexGonzo]

I haven't voted in the poll as I'm (time wise) equally split between the three - car/train/walking. I suspect there are many people using a combination of options that your poll will not capture.

Train - I work in London so cost alone (rather than ease) rules out driving. Although driving might also take me longer and be more stressful.
Walking - to home station and from Liverpool St to the office (and return) is about 4 miles per day in total. A significant proportion of my travel time.
Car - nearest relative is 200 miles away. Train is not an option due to cost/frequency/ease of travel at destination. We visit relatives regularly. Then youve got shopping, social activities etc.

It's not binary and as others have said, you will find a high degree of group bias as you're running it on a rail enthusiasts forum. Maybe try it on Pistonheads.com too? And The ramblers Association?

 

[PeterC]

SNIP
It's not binary and as others have said, you will find a high degree of group bias as you're running it on a rail enthusiasts forum. Maybe try it on Pistonheads.com too? And The ramblers Association?

Motoring forums do tend to have a high proportion of members who need to drive (working on remote sites, carrying equipment etc) so you would see a different bias and probably a less measured response than we are seeing here.

A couple of thoughts from other comments in the thread:
1. Bus lanes - like the "little girl with a little curl" when not very good they are horrid. A couple of days ago I was on the top deck of a park and ride bus in Oxford looking at an empty bus lane that we couldn't reach because the traffic queue from the roundabout in the single remaining lane was longer than the actual bus lane.

2. Cul de sacs. Opinion flip-flops between wanting safe walking / cycling routes and closing off unoverlooked areas where anti-social behaviour can take place.

3. Cul de sacs and estate design. Too many housing developments are laid out without consideration for access by bus.

 

[markymark2000]

3. Cul de sacs and estate design. Too many housing developments are laid out without consideration for access by bus.

The housing development near Lackside Scunthorpe is a great example of this whereby the development is all fenced in so someone can't just walk out onto the main road for a bus

4. Or, the housing estates build so that there is 1 way in and out for buses meaning that you need a route to terminate there or through routes would need to take a large diversion around the site and back to the original intersection.
5. It can't be hard for them to install bus gates on some of these developments, it's just a lack of willingness to do so because building larger roads and bus gates means less space for houses and the developers scream 'unviable'.
Not sure if this one is true but I am told as well that housing developers are building roads so there are 'cambers' which are unsuitable for low floor buses (generally I believe this is on the more narrow roads though and not on ones which are built to be bus friendly)

That is the new housing development issue, now for the bus operators issues,
A lot of bus operators don't want to serve new developments because it's an untested market and they don't know if there will be demand (Despite the fact if no one tries, no one will know if there is demand)
In Chester there is a development with over 1,000 homes but Stagecoach won't divert the Gold 5 to terminate into the estate despite it having a big enough roundabout half way which could be used to turn buses.

 

[Jozhua]

I haven't voted in the poll as I'm (time wise) equally split between the three - car/train/walking. I suspect there are many people using a combination of options that your poll will not capture.

Train - I work in London so cost alone (rather than ease) rules out driving. Although driving might also take me longer and be more stressful.
Walking - to home station and from Liverpool St to the office (and return) is about 4 miles per day in total. A significant proportion of my travel time.
Car - nearest relative is 200 miles away. Train is not an option due to cost/frequency/ease of travel at destination. We visit relatives regularly. Then youve got shopping, social activities etc.

It's not binary and as others have said, you will find a high degree of group bias as you're running it on a rail enthusiasts forum. Maybe try it on Pistonheads.com too? And The ramblers Association?

Yeah, to be honest the poll was just out of interest, not necessarily looking for the most scientific results!

Motoring forums do tend to have a high proportion of members who need to drive (working on remote sites, carrying equipment etc) so you would see a different bias and probably a less measured response than we are seeing here.

A couple of thoughts from other comments in the thread:
1. Bus lanes - like the "little girl with a little curl" when not very good they are horrid. A couple of days ago I was on the top deck of a park and ride bus in Oxford looking at an empty bus lane that we couldn't reach because the traffic queue from the roundabout in the single remaining lane was longer than the actual bus lane.

2. Cul de sacs. Opinion flip-flops between wanting safe walking / cycling routes and closing off unoverlooked areas where anti-social behaviour can take place.

3. Cul de sacs and estate design. Too many housing developments are laid out without consideration for access by bus.

Yeah bus lanes when not done can backfire somewhat unfortunately! I've seen a few of these before. When done right though, they can work fantastically.

In regards to antisocial behaviour, this is definitely a good point. I think mostly deployment of cul de sacs in the same development is just a tad unnecessary and you could argue they'd be harder to police due to there being more secluded hidden areas. It's all well and good having an area being secluded from antisocial behaviour, until it's very design allows it to brew within!

I think councils should more strongly consider acess when approving new developments, even if it's purely on a basis of providing services such as waste collection and emergency services.

I definitely believe these types of developments are bad for health. You can't get anywhere by foot, so people drive more. Those that can't drive like kids and the elderly become prisoners in their own communities, relient on those with cars to get around and lose their independence. I definitely believe this has something to do with current obesity rates, especially in kids.

Obviously suburbs serve a purpose and people have many reasons to want a bit more space and a garden, etc but we should be careful planning them to make sure that local amenities, etc are still accessible for all!

 

[edwin_m]

The train is more likely to be used where the origin or destination or both have convenient stations. Otherwise the cost, time and hassle of getting to and from the station outweigh the benefits of using the train, and car journeys are less likely to hit traffic congestion if they don't involve city centres. So it's not surprising that the train does best for longer journeys and for those where at least one end is a city centre - share of passenger-kilometres at about 10% is much higher than share of passenger journeys. The train does pretty well at moving large numbers of people into city centres.

On these routes the network capacity often limits the number of people who can use the train, hence HS2 and NPR which would directly improve capacity between major cities and also allow the existing routes to carry more people into those cities. But that leaves the large majority of journeys for which rail is simply impractical (and incidentally was not much better prior to Beeching). To my mind the way of increasing modal share by rail is two-fold:

• Improve services to the major cities outside London. Nearly every London commuter is on public transport already, so there isn't much opportunity there. But in other cities there is still a significant share of travel by car into the centre and the opportunity to shift that to rail is about longer trains and platforms rather than massive investment in new track.
• Integrate with other public transport modes to create a proper network that allows more people to access stations more easily.

 

[PartyOperator]

I’ve voted train/public transport as that’s what I do most of by distance, although most of that is on company business so I probably shouldn’t double count the mileage… I’m sure the sustainability people at work are already claiming the credit for all the rail tickets the company pays for, as is their right.

Personal travel is still mostly by car, although I’ve managed to halve that over the past year or so by switching to rail for long journeys and cutting down on unnecessary trips. Mostly little things like combining commuting and shopping, having garden waste collected by the council rather than driving to the dump, sharing lifts to family and sporting events, getting the bus or cycling to work at least one day a week and cycling or walking for most trips less than 5 miles. Overall I’m probably not spending much much more on transport but I am travelling less. It’s a big reduction mostly because I was being very wasteful before but I think lots of others are probably in a similar position.

 

[Killingworth]

Well, I tried a trip to Gloucester yesterday from Chesterfield, and was there between the showers of rain. Outward trip by XC and GWR worked very well and I'd happily do that again as I could barely have matched the timing by car. My final destination was 10 minutes walk from the station.

That warm feeling towards rail was continued on the Cardiff - Nottingham service towards New Street, with tea and a biscuit served by an unhurried young man on a very lightly used train. Things started going wrong with a 20 minute unbooked stoppage at Bromsgrove and then a drag into Birmingham platform 9. The train was then besieged, those wishing to leave having difficulty getting out. That train left loaded to the point where people were being pushed in to get the doors closed. The warm feeling about rail was cooling.

My connecting Plymouth - Edinburgh service had been held up behind and duly arrived into a packed platform. By then the following XC service to Newcastle was also due - but cancelled. All supposedly due to adverse weather conditions. My reserved seat was at the farthest end of the last coach, but further up the train it seemed to be over full. The guard apologised for the late running and hoped they'd recover time by Edinburgh but it had got worse by Chesterfield. The lady sitting next to me had missed her connection in Sheffield and would be at least an hour late to her final destination. The lady on the refreshment trolley didn't leave her docking station, commenting as I left that she wouldn't be able to get through all the drunks up there!

I qualify for delay repay. Having looked at the website I reckon it could take almost half an hour to claim. I may find time tomorrow, but more likely I'll join the majority who are put off by the procedure and don't bother.

Would I use the train again? Possibly. Would I travel by car in November? Probably not. I'm certainly deterred from going again by train so another journey may not be made at all. Maybe that helps with climate change.

 

[Jozhua]

I’ve voted train/public transport as that’s what I do most of by distance, although most of that is on company business so I probably shouldn’t double count the mileage… I’m sure the sustainability people at work are already claiming the credit for all the rail tickets the company pays for, as is their right.

Personal travel is still mostly by car, although I’ve managed to halve that over the past year or so by switching to rail for long journeys and cutting down on unnecessary trips. Mostly little things like combining commuting and shopping, having garden waste collected by the council rather than driving to the dump, sharing lifts to family and sporting events, getting the bus or cycling to work at least one day a week and cycling or walking for most trips less than 5 miles. Overall I’m probably not spending much much more on transport but I am travelling less. It’s a big reduction mostly because I was being very wasteful before but I think lots of others are probably in a similar position.

That's good! There are loads of ways of reducing car journeys and they can make you healthier as well.

Definitely think over-reliance on cars is a big cause of obesity and poor health as people aren't getting any exercise.

Well, I tried a trip to Gloucester yesterday from Chesterfield, and was there between the showers of rain. Outward trip by XC and GWR worked very well and I'd happily do that again as I could barely have matched the timing by car. My final destination was 10 minutes walk from the station.

That warm feeling towards rail was continued on the Cardiff - Nottingham service towards New Street, with tea and a biscuit served by an unhurried young man on a very lightly used train. Things started going wrong with a 20 minute unbooked stoppage at Bromsgrove and then a drag into Birmingham platform 9. The train was then besieged, those wishing to leave having difficulty getting out. That train left loaded to the point where people were being pushed in to get the doors closed. The warm feeling about rail was cooling.

My connecting Plymouth - Edinburgh service had been held up behind and duly arrived into a packed platform. By then the following XC service to Newcastle was also due - but cancelled. All supposedly due to adverse weather conditions. My reserved seat was at the farthest end of the last coach, but further up the train it seemed to be over full. The guard apologised for the late running and hoped they'd recover time by Edinburgh but it had got worse by Chesterfield. The lady sitting next to me had missed her connection in Sheffield and would be at least an hour late to her final destination. The lady on the refreshment trolley didn't leave her docking station, commenting as I left that she wouldn't be able to get through all the drunks up there!

I qualify for delay repay. Having looked at the website I reckon it could take almost half an hour to claim. I may find time tomorrow, but more likely I'll join the majority who are put off by the procedure and don't bother.

Would I use the train again? Possibly. Would I travel by car in November? Probably not. I'm certainly deterred from going again by train so another journey may not be made at all. Maybe that helps with climate change.

Trains are good until they go wrong, then it's incredibly stressful! Many otherwise car based families try out rail on Bank Holidays and weekends I've noticed, which is when TOC's offer the worst service...