Every company is having to make sacrifices sadly thanks to the DfT’s insistence.
That the Bradford - Skipton/Ilkley services are being halved for 5 hours or so during the day is due to the lack of demand on this route. Fortunately for the busier of these routes there are plentiful connections up to Skipton with a change at Shipley.
The only problem here is that with the reduced timetable, the service arriving from Wharfedale is at xx:44, with the next regular Skipton at xx:09. A 25 minute connection, actually worse than the Leeds one by one minute. Given the overall journey times that is crap.
Ilkley is unfortunate in some ways but the ridership on BDQ - ILK services during those hours is seriously low with some services recording single digits of passengers travelling on the section between Guiseley and Shipley with a half hourly service in place (the ‘crucial’ missing link). Most passengers in Wharfedale prefer to travel to Leeds even when there is a half hourly service on both routes.
The line hasn't had a the same level of service during the summer since 2019, so its practically impossible now to say what the demand is without, well you know seeing what the demand is. A half-hourly service (providing its reasonably reliable) is just about good enough to encourage people to make impromptu leisure journeys (an important part of Ilkley's economy especially in summer) as well as provide reasonable assurance to passengers making more regular journeys. Most people do usually travel to Leeds, but not exclusively. In the 15 years I've lived here I've seen plenty of very busy off peak trains as well as empty ones. But ridership on the line was generally on the up the line until the pandemic, but now it is being suppressed. Last year we were told it was to allow for training of crews, this year we are told it is because of a lack of drivers or DfT cost cutting demands. The reality is that this, a bit like Huddersfield - Castleford, it is an easy yet lazy target to appease the DfT bean counters.
Now the former is really something that the TOCs should have a better handle of, the latter. Well cost cutting doesn't necessarily mean having to cut services, efficiency savings and/or revenue improvements could / should easily fill the gap. And earning revenue is what TOCs should be encouraging right now, not stifling. But as mentioned further above, it seems now parts of the railway industry seem to be locked into almost discouraging passengers and giving up at the first sign of anything getting difficult.
