Settle itself is a fairly large settlement that attracts a reasonable amount of traffic. Kirkby Stephen is also a reasonably sized settlement, and although the distance of the station from the town means that it's more lightly used than the other two,
Population of Settle is about 2500 people. There are estates on many towns up and down the country which have larger populations than that yet they don't justify a station either.
Why is every statement 'plenty' or a 'fair amount' or 'all the people'? Why are you so reluctant to use numbers and statistics? And when other posters do provide statistics, these are apparently outweighed by your own biased personal opinions.
I think it's always worth using actual facts and statistics to counter Rob's flowery language ("useful" / "reasonably large" / "valuable" etc) - my street probably has a population bigger than some of the settlements that he considers "reasonable"
I've no doubt that residents value the service
I'm sure they do.
Do they actually use it in large numbers? No - but they'd probably sign a petition to complain bout what a "valuable lifeline" to is
Just like people who only use their local pub once a year but moan about its threatened closure
My point is that the route already has a service commensurate with its passenger market, so it should not proportionately suffer a greater degree of cutbacks than other routes.
Since other routes are not having their operating day cut in the mid afternoon, the S&C is being disproportionately cut, therefore my point still stands.
Given that we've been in the middle of a nationwide lockdown (for obvious health reasons), during a driver shortage, of course a lightly used predominantly leisure-based route should be one of the first services to be thinned out/ cut
Key workers still need to get to jobs - which is why we focus on urban services.
People don't
need to go for walks in the Yorkshire Dales, which is a large part of the reason for the S&C, which means that line has a lot less use during lockdown
Your own justification for the line involves tourists, so you can't complain that the services are reduced when there are no tourists
The answer to the OP, the S&C was probably one of the "last gasps" of Victorian rail building mania
Agreed - just a punt by nineteenth century speculators (the kind of capitalists that enthusiasts like, rather than modern day ones) - but apparently we now have to preserve all of their mistakes and speculative routes
Settle generates a fair amount of traffic, be it local, railheading from the surrounding area or tourist. This is more important than the size of the settlement.
Really?
I thought that (in your eyes) "railheading" was a myth invented by Beeching (or at least many an enthusiast has claimed that railheading was an imaginary concept and that
nobody would drive to a nearby station if there wasn't one in their village)
So now you're telling me that railheading
does exist when it's a justification for keeping a rural station open (but
doesn't exist when people suggest closing a rural station because the people who use that station would never ever drive to the closest remaining station)?
to be actively encouraging its closure and be seemingly so excited about it I think is very insensitive to the people who rely on and use the line
People on here suggest cutting/diverting services all the time - e.g. is it insensitive to suggest changing any existing services?
For example, the suggestion on another thread at the moment that Corby should see some of it's London services removed (to use the paths for more Leicester - London services) - are we not allowed to discuss that because it's insensitive to the people of Corby?
