New Street - Stansted Overcrowding

[Eagle]

Is there any need for XC to serve Manea? Couldn't responsibility for those stops be given to GA for their Ipswich - Peterborough services?

Could and should. Also ditch XC's sporadic Whittlesea calls.

 

[TheBigD]

Could and should. Also ditch XC's sporadic Whittlesea calls.

Why?

The Whittlesea stops (2 on the up & 3 on the down) are well used. Remove them and you'd lose a sizeable amount of London Commuters in the morning when their first trains goes from 0600 to 0730.

The few XC's stop when there's no Ipswich's/Norwich's in the early morning and also provide an extra evening peak train from Peterborough, again well used.

 

[Eagle]

Why?

I mean, replace them with calls on the Peterborough to Ipswich service, when/if that gets a better service level.

 

[TheBigD]

I mean, replace them with calls on the Peterborough to Ipswich service, when/if that gets a better service level.

Fair enough. Most of the (now XC) calls were removed from the Stansteds when NX started running the P'boro-Ipswich service through to London. It's only a few stops now when there's no other service.

 

[Aictos]

True.

Ideally you'd throw resources at Birmingham - Leicester and Peterborough - Cambridge - Stansted, because both look like they have the potential for decent growth.

However, to improve the full route would take a lot of resources, and its fairly quiet territory between Leicester and Birmingham.

I know I get a bit of criticism for suggesting services are chopped, but I could see the case for electrifying Birmingham - Leicester and Peterborough - Ely, which could become:

• Liverpool - Birmingham - Leicester - half hourly service run by 350s - this used to be a through service under BR/ Central trains days - it'd give Merseyside a direct link to the East Midlands - the capacity of the 350s would be a big improvement on the 170s.
• Leicester - Peterborough - hourly DMU run, maybe interworked with EMT's Ivanhoe service, maybe some services from Leicester - Melton Mowbray - Corby - Kettering to free up the 222s wasted on offpeak Corby services, maybe even some Leicester - Melton Mowbray - Corby - Kettering - Bedford - London services to give Melton Mowbray a better connection?
• London - Cambridge - Peterborough - extend some/all of the West Anglia 379 services through to Peterborough (maybe via Stansted?) giving Ely/March an improved service to the capital.

At the moment the service is so long and slow that its going to struggle to attract what few longer distance passengers there are, so we end up with a service that nobody wants because its trying to cater to the busy "inter city" markets whilst being short enough to suit some of the rural stations - rip it up and start again?

As attractive as your proposals are, if you really want to extend some/all of the West Anglia Class 379 services though to Peterborough then it can only be done with investment to the West Anglia route as otherwise it would not be viable as it would be quicker to use the East Coast route.

I mean a fast service which would be Liverpool Street - Cambridge then Ely, March and Peterborough could rival a semi fast Kings Cross - Finsbury Park then Stevenage followed by all stations to Peterborough in timings.

That being said, I rather wire up Ipswich to Peterborough via Ely which would then see a hourly EMU replace the existing 2 hourly DMU service which would call all stations along the route.

 

[jopsuk]

If you were extending Liverpool Street-Cambridge services to Peterborough, the market you'd be looking at wouldn't be London-Peterborough, much as the Peterborough-Ely-Ipswich-Liverpool Street service was never about connecting Peterborough to London.

 

[tbtc]

As attractive as your proposals are, if you really want to extend some/all of the West Anglia Class 379 services though to Peterborough then it can only be done with investment to the West Anglia route as otherwise it would not be viable as it would be quicker to use the East Coast route.

I mean a fast service which would be Liverpool Street - Cambridge then Ely, March and Peterborough could rival a semi fast Kings Cross - Finsbury Park then Stevenage followed by all stations to Peterborough in timings.

That being said, I rather wire up Ipswich to Peterborough via Ely which would then see a hourly EMU replace the existing 2 hourly DMU service which would call all stations along the route.

Really the whole area could do with wiring up, though I do tend to say that about a few areas!

A Liverpool Street - Cambridge - Peterborough service would never compete with East Coast for London - Peterborough times, but it'd give a few new links as well as giving better capacity from Cambridge to the ECML.

 

[David Goddard]

Wow! Reading through this thread it seems that we are really getting somewhere. If we were able to put all of our ideas together, we would create:

*Remodelling of Ely North Junction and West Curve
*Electrification of Ely - Peterborough, Norwich and Ipswich
*Hourly electric services London - Cambridge - Peterborough and Norwich
*Hourly electric service Ipswich - Peterborough
*Additional hourly service Norwich - Peterborough - Birmingham
*Additional hourly service London - Cambridge - Kings Lynn

Thereby creating:
*5tph Cambridge - Ely
*4tph Ely - Peterborough
*2tph Ely - Norwich
*1tph Ely - Ipswich
*2tph Ely - Kings Lynn
Plus hourly Norwich - Peterborough via the West Curve

New platform 4 needed at Ely anyone???