End-to-end traffic is already adequately catered for by existing services. The length of line that would need to be re-opened is substantial (34 miles) and the previous track bed, especially in the urban areas served, has been substantially built over, obstructed or used. It is a largely rural area, and the populations of Stamford Bridge, Pocklington and Market Weighton combined are less than 20k. There is unlikely to be much commuting into Hull from towns on the proposed reinstated line (Beverley and Cottingham already have a good train service).
A much better re-opening in terms of value for money would be Aberbeeg to Abertillery, a mere 2 miles with an uobstructed trackbed as far as the Tesco store.
End to end traffic is not adequately catered for; two cities the size of Hull and York have an hourly service between them which typically takes at least 1hr10m. There is huge demand for travel between locations along this route and the current rail service is simply not attractive to most of it, both due to frequency (which is constrained by capacity into York from the south) and journey time (70 minutes from Hull verses 56 via Pocklington, or 90 minutes from Beverley versus 46 via Pocklington).
The ERYC Local Plan Strategy document (adopted in 2016) recognises that the A1079 is already seriously congested at peak times and that “… the road network cannot be expected to accommodate unconstrained traffic growth” (paras 7.43-7.44).
Dualling the A1079 has been shown to be more expensive than reinstating the railway.
The intermediate stations would have catchment (as these are rural areas the quoted population of a town a very tightly drawn). More representative populations are:
Pocklington Provincial (Pocklington and Stamford Bridge plus their hinterlands) 17,001
Wolds Weighton (Market Weighton, it's hinterland and some of Pocklington's) 16,746
Holme on Spalding Moor (also Market Weighton hinterland) 3,100
So that's 37,000 odd. Remember all 3 settlements are earmarked for substantial house building in the Local Plan too.
Previous engineering studies have identified multiple workable diversions around the lost urban parts of the route.
Just using the last post on the subject, not all questions related to this post.
Would running from Scarborough allow (more) through services to run, and in doing so improve platform capacity?
Given that direct services are more attractive than changing, then a direct service would increase rail use would it not?
Likewise by removing passengers from the existing route would free up capacity for others to use the existing trains without the need to lengthen existing services, and whilst lengthening existing services would be cheaper, that would only be true of there's no significant engineering works required. Now whilst that would benefit capacity on a wider area it depends on where the extra capacity is needed. How well loaded are the existing services?
It could provide opportunity for through services too yes, from the Scarborough direction there would be the opportunity to reverse in platform 3 or 5 at York to go North. Hull lacks links north of York and this could be a good way of achieving such a service. Further platforms are suggested in other plans for construction at York so this could well be a workable option.
There would probably be some effect of freeing up capacity on the existing service to York however I'm not sure it's likely to be any more meaningful than avoiding the peak services being full and standing.
The existing service isn't really getting it's hands on the end to end market, it's much more about modal shift. Once a half hourly service was running via Pocklington, I'd suggest that the existing service could pick up the all stops work between Hull and Selby (releiving the Hull-Doncaster stopper and the Hull-Leeds services).
Pocklington School would probably oppose the re-opening, on the basis of NIMBY - it occupies the track bed and the former station trainshed.
New workable alignment options have been identified by engineering studies. The areas involved are pretty much free from challenging terrain and still provide for reasonably well located stations.
No it wasn't. Quite the opposite. It was one of the worked up financial cases in the Beeching report to show why it should be closed.
The local BR management team had identified it as a route they anticipated remaining in use, and the first automatic half barrier crossing was installed on the line. In fact when closure was first announced significant amounts of modernisation was planned and equipment ordered, including resignalling to a single box.
What is this 'clear untapped end to end demand for the line'? If there was demand, the number of carriages on the existing trains running end to end (via Selby) could easily be increased. However, these trains are not noted as being particularly overcrowded, are they?
The issue is journey time, you could to a small degree address this by running the Hull services via the East Coast Mainline rather than Sherburn but you run into capacity problems on approach to York and you still don't address the frequency problem.