Okehampton - Exeter open a year- success?

[uglymonkey]

It's been a year since "levelling up" reopened the 16 odd miles from Exeter to Okehampton. Passenger numbers seem up, has it been a success for all concerned?

 

[Kilopylae]

The new connection is well regarded in circles discussing the ongoing bus controversy in Exeter—there's a perception that it's more reliable.

 

[Ashley Hill]

Yes it is a success. It has attracted not just tourists but regular passengers too and not just to Exeter. Crediton also sees passengers to and from Okehampton. Add to that passengers connecting to and from mainline services and you have a very good number of passengers using the line. Newton St Cyres has also received extra trains which brings extra trade to the Beer Engine pub.
A few years ago some on here suggested this line would would be a waste of time being remote from the town centre,steep hill etc and not worth opening. I disagreed at the time and have been proven right. Okehampton has attracted a large catchment area from outlying towns and villages such as Holsworthy for example. There is a rumour of a housing development near Sampford Courtney so if true it may be a chance to give that station a proper opening. Onwards and upwards for this line.

 

[geoffk]

More recently bus connections at Okehampton station have been improved. In addition to buses from Tavistock, those from Bude and Launceston are also going up to the station and connect into and out of trains every two hours. A colleague reported that a morning train from Exeter arrived with 4 passengers but departed with 60+, thanks to the crowd from Bude and Holsworthy. This would be normal practice in mainland Europe (with through fares!) and it's good to see it happening with local authority tendered bus services. A pity that North Tawton is such a long way from the former station.

 

[coppercapped]

Define, please, 'success'.

Is it 'successful' financially? That is, does the additional fare income cover the additional movement costs? Does the additional fare income make any contribution to the infrastructure operational and maintenance costs or even help recover the capital investment?

If none of these things are true then it has been 'successful' in making the tax payer cough up...

 

[Brush 4]

Are there any lines that ever achieve that. A self defeating recipe for opening or improving nothing.....

 

[geoffk]

Is it 'successful' financially? That is, does the additional fare income cover the additional movement costs? Does the additional fare income make any contribution to the infrastructure operational and maintenance costs or even help recover the capital investment?

Can any line reopened in the recent past meet your criteria? The Robin Hood line, the Borders railway, Aberdare, Maesteg... What about non-user benefits and to what extent should they be included in the balance sheet? Reduced road congestion and pollution (not so relevant in a rural area), improved health and well-being for those otherwise confined to their local area etc.

 

[Xavi]

Define, please, 'success'.

Is it 'successful' financially? That is, does the additional fare income cover the additional movement costs? Does the additional fare income make any contribution to the infrastructure operational and maintenance costs or even help recover the capital investment?

If none of these things are true then it has been 'successful' in making the tax payer cough up...

With that approach there’d never be any public sector investment or revenue expenditure.

More through ticketing (as well as Bude) is being negotiated by Devon County Council and Cornwall County Council with operators.

 

[the sniper]

If none of these things are true then it has been 'successful' in making the tax payer cough up...

You must be really impressed with the success of most public services funded by the state, if that's the only way you judge them...

 

[tbtc]

Are there any lines that ever achieve that. A self defeating recipe for opening or improving nothing.....

@coppercapped is right though, you need some kind of metric to measure “success” against

Comments earlier in the thread like “numbers seem up” sound lovely but what’s the context? “Higher than a year ago before the line opened”? You’d expect any new line to show continuous growth over the first three or five years as more people start to use and rely on it - if a brand new line was already seeing passenger numbers dropping then I’d be rather worried!

I dunno… It seems like if someone starts a thread asking “has it been a success for all concerned?” then maybe there should be some way of assessing/ measuring “success”?

How it stacked up against the business case seems like one metric but a number of lines were built regardless of the BCR (e.g. the Alloa branch opened as a concession to the town since freight was being diverted off the Forth Bridge and through Clackmannanshire instead… the Tweedbank line was the result of political horse trading at Holyrood, if Labour wanted to secure a coalition with the LibDems… The Airdrie-Bathgate line suddenly became a priority because alternative capacity was needed in the central belt when the main Glasgow-Edinburgh line was being upgraded/electrified rather than because of an amazing business case). So it wasn’t particularly important to assess future passenger numbers too hard since the line/ station was going to happen regardless.

But at least that’s something. If you don’t want to use “not making a loss” as a measurement or comparisons with the business case (especially now that full construction costs are known, rather than expected costs) then what?

The unquantifiable benefit of people now being able to leave Okehampton (despite the fact that there was always a regular bus service to Exeter, so they were never cut off from civilisation)?

Improved air pollution levels at Dartmoor?

“Fewer cars on the road” sounds an interesting definition but I’m pretty certain that after years of operation the half hourly trains from the Borders and Midlothian into Edinburgh have only removed fifty cars a day from the notoriously busy Sherrifhall roundabout, which isn’t a *terrible* thing but probably not worth hundreds of millions of pounds, we could have just offered each motorist a million pounds and saved the taxpayer a few quid! The passenger growth seems to be coming more from former bus passengers/ leisure passengers who’d not have come to the Borders otherwise/ people who’ve changed jobs or houses and are new to commuting - all of which are valid but if the argument is that a railway will take hundreds of cars off the road then we have to be certain that it will deliver big numbers

Or do we declare this thread a safe space only for those who have decided that any new line is a success (regardless of measurements) and refuse to accept that any line could be seen to be a failure, because in your eyes a new bit of railway is an “end” in itself, rather than a means to an end (e.g. something that will hopefully deliver certain goals, but will have failed if it doesn’t)?

I’ll often see something in the Speculative sub-Forum and accept that there’s no point arguing with the wild optimism of the OP’s suggestions, but this thread is in the main Forum so I didn’t think it was inappropriate to add a touch of realism to it, apologies if that offends anyone

(Awaits incoming comments about Serpell/ Beeching/ Hitler any time soon…)

 

[coppercapped]

@coppercapped is right though, you need some kind of metric to measure “success” against

Comments earlier in the thread like “numbers seem up” sound lovely but what’s the context? “Higher than a year ago before the line opened”? You’d expect any new line to show continuous growth over the first three or five years as more people start to use and rely on it - if a brand new line was already seeing passenger numbers dropping then I’d be rather worried!

I dunno… It seems like if someone starts a thread asking “has it been a success for all concerned?” then maybe there should be some way of assessing/ measuring “success”?

How it stacked up against the business case seems like one metric but a number of lines were built regardless of the BCR (e.g. the Alloa branch opened as a concession to the town since freight was being diverted off the Forth Bridge and through Clackmannanshire instead… the Tweedbank line was the result of political horse trading at Holyrood, if Labour wanted to secure a coalition with the LibDems… The Airdrie-Bathgate line suddenly became a priority because alternative capacity was needed in the central belt when the main Glasgow-Edinburgh line was being upgraded/electrified rather than because of an amazing business case). So it wasn’t particularly important to assess future passenger numbers too hard since the line/ station was going to happen regardless.

But at least that’s something. If you don’t want to use “not making a loss” as a measurement or comparisons with the business case (especially now that full construction costs are known, rather than expected costs) then what?

The unquantifiable benefit of people now being able to leave Okehampton (despite the fact that there was always a regular bus service to Exeter, so they were never cut off from civilisation)?

Improved air pollution levels at Dartmoor?

“Fewer cars on the road” sounds an interesting definition but I’m pretty certain that after years of operation the half hourly trains from the Borders and Midlothian into Edinburgh have only removed fifty cars a day from the notoriously busy Sherrifhall roundabout, which isn’t a *terrible* thing but probably not worth hundreds of millions of pounds, we could have just offered each motorist a million pounds and saved the taxpayer a few quid! The passenger growth seems to be coming more from former bus passengers/ leisure passengers who’d not have come to the Borders otherwise/ people who’ve changed jobs or houses and are new to commuting - all of which are valid but if the argument is that a railway will take hundreds of cars off the road then we have to be certain that it will deliver big numbers

Or do we declare this thread a safe space only for those who have decided that any new line is a success (regardless of measurements) and refuse to accept that any line could be seen to be a failure, because in your eyes a new bit of railway is an “end” in itself, rather than a means to an end (e.g. something that will hopefully deliver certain goals, but will have failed if it doesn’t)?

I’ll often see something in the Speculative sub-Forum and accept that there’s no point arguing with the wild optimism of the OP’s suggestions, but this thread is in the main Forum so I didn’t think it was inappropriate to add a touch of realism to it, apologies if that offends anyone

(Awaits incoming comments about Serpell/ Beeching/ Hitler any time soon…)

Thank you - my point exactly.

 

[the sniper]

@coppercapped is right though, you need some kind of metric to measure “success” against

Was it intended to be the one profitable line on the rail network? It seems he chose an odd single measurement of success to me.

 

[tbtc]

Was it intended to be the one profitable line on the rail network? It seems he chose an odd single measurement of success to me.

Again, you’re not answering the question, just getting annoyed that anyone has the temerity to do anything other than say “yeah, of course it’s a success, even if nobody has to declare what we are judging it against (and, also, the Emperor is wearing a lovely new set of clothes)”

You’ve obviously made your mind up that it must be a success, but the rest of the world generally needs something to measure “success” against - it’s not like Primary School where everyone gets a sticker regardless of how they performed

If it’s so wrong to assess how much fares income the line is bringing in (minus any reduction in Barnstaple line revenue, of course, since an existing passenger from somewhere like Bideford switching to driving to Okehampton for Exeter trains rather than a station on the Barnstaple line isn’t entirely “new” income), then I presume that you have some other sensible metrics to measure with?

Or is it just going to be some unquantifiable “holistic” excuse, where the “social benefits” that can’t be counted and things like “improved health” somehow always mean that any reopening is always a success?

It just seems strange to have a thread asking if something has been a success, where we’re forbidden from assessing it against anything (e.g. the railway/ council could have used that money towards electrifying the Devon Banks for the 802s to better cope with… or purchased some new battery powered trains for local services that were a lot greener than the DMUs doing a couple of miles to the gallon on lots of Devon services… or subsidised fares for many years or funded improved local bus infrastructure… There’s always alternative things that each of public money could be spent on - just as someone has to decide how to split the education budget between staff wages/ modern classrooms/ better IT/ increased staffing levels/ new school books/ focusing more on certain subjects or types of child - nobody expects schools to make a profit but we still assess whether the money being spent is delivering the targets set)

 

[the sniper]

Again, you’re not answering the question, just getting annoyed that anyone has the temerity to do anything other than say “yeah, of course it’s a success, even if nobody has to declare what we are judging it against (and, also, the Emperor is wearing a lovely new set of clothes)”

You’ve obviously made your mind up that it must be a success...

I'm not sure how you've worked that one out... What was the question and what was my answer?

You seem to be conducting a conversation on behalf of everyone in this thread.

 

[Techniquest]

You seem to be conducting a conversation on behalf of everyone in this thread.

I'm tempted to agree there. tbtc certainly has a very interesting view, I can't say I agree with them apart from the method of determining a measurement of success. Other than that, the eyebrows were rising at just how negative and miserable they were being!

 

[The exile]

Can any line reopened in the recent past meet your criteria? The Robin Hood line, the Borders railway, Aberdare, Maesteg... What about non-user benefits and to what extent should they be included in the balance sheet? Reduced road congestion and pollution (not so relevant in a rural area), improved health and well-being for those otherwise confined to their local area etc.

Or, indeed, how many roads off the trunk network?

 

[yorksrob]

Define, please, 'success'.

Is it 'successful' financially? That is, does the additional fare income cover the additional movement costs? Does the additional fare income make any contribution to the infrastructure operational and maintenance costs or even help recover the capital investment?

Whatever it is its not that.

The fact that passenger numbers have exceeded those expected in the business case for opening, is a clear definition of success.

 

[dk1]

Whatever it is its not that.

The fact that passenger numbers have exceeded those expected in the business case for opening, is a clear definition of success.

That’s all that really matters. Financial viability has never even come into the reopening of regional lines.

 

[RPI]

From my daily observations, the line appears to become more popular week on week, the big shift came in September when the Devon County Council Scholar passes were re-issued, those that were previously issued for bus travel between Okehampton and Exeter seem to have now been issued for rail travel.

There are also several season ticket holders on the line too. But there has also been a huge uptick in passengers from Crediton, the former hourly service may not have been that attractive compared to the bus but two trains per hour seems to have made a difference (its not half hourly sadly) and since the bus links to Okehampton station were provided from the end of October there does seem to be higher proportion of people using those to catch the train.

These are just my observations working on the gates at Exeter Central and doing the odd trip to Okehampton, not based on any official figures.

 

[Future]

In my own personal experience I’ve found it useful for walking/cycling around the north of Dartmoor, in fact only last weekend I took the train the bus out to Lydford to walk the Granite Way and found the times to match up well. I would class that as a sucess

 

[zwk500]

Whatever it is its not that.

The fact that passenger numbers have exceeded those expected in the business case for opening, is a clear definition of success.

Tbh, comparison to the business case is only a judgement on the quality of the feasibility studies, not the line.

That’s all that really matters. Financial viability has never even come into the reopening of regional lines.

Or any line, to be fair.

For me, the 'true' measure of success is whether the overall impact to the economy of the intended service catchment was positively influenced by an amount close to or exceeding the subsidy, but that's impossible to measure.

So I'd go for 2 measures: performance, and percentage loadings. A train service must be reliable to be of any use, and a reasonable utilisation of the capacity indicates a good balance between demand and supply, somewhere in the 75% Peak/50% off-peak region would be my personal benchmarks.

 

[Xavi]

From my daily observations, the line appears to become more popular week on week, the big shift came in September when the Devon County Council Scholar passes were re-issued, those that were previously issued for bus travel between Okehampton and Exeter seem to have now been issued for rail travel.

There are also several season ticket holders on the line too. But there has also been a huge uptick in passengers from Crediton, the former hourly service may not have been that attractive compared to the bus but two trains per hour seems to have made a difference (its not half hourly sadly) and since the bus links to Okehampton station were provided from the end of October there does seem to be higher proportion of people using those to catch the train.

These are just my observations working on the gates at Exeter Central and doing the odd trip to Okehampton, not based on any official figures.

This mirrors my experience too.

For those asking for measurement of success, there’s only so much quantitive analysis that can be done. Wider benefits are not always quantifiable and are therefore excluded in a base BCR.

BCR is somewhat subjective, often very questionable and sometimes controversial. I recall a Jacobs report into a proposed rail reopening ten or so years ago where, quite remarkably, a very significant disbenefit for extended journey times for trips previously undertaken by car that would take marginally longer door-to-door when using the train! Unsurprisingly, no benefit for being able to work / read on a train was included.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Reduced road congestion and pollution (not so relevant in a rural area)

You'd be surprised. Okehampton can be quite spectacularly snarled up in summer.

 

[zwk500]

You'd be surprised. Okehampton can be quite spectacularly snarled up in summer.

Indeed, rural areas can often be the worst, especially those with high seasonal variations, as the infrastructure just can't cope and it gridlocks out. Urban areas usually have either bigger roads or more route options to handle the flow.

 

[Master29]

Define, please, 'success'.

Is it 'successful' financially? That is, does the additional fare income cover the additional movement costs? Does the additional fare income make any contribution to the infrastructure operational and maintenance costs or even help recover the capital investment?

If none of these things are true then it has been 'successful' in making the tax payer cough up...

Why must everything be about "profit" with some?

 

[tbtc]

has it been a success for all concerned?

What was the question and what was my answer?

Since you keep seeming to miss it, I’ve quoted the OP’s question above

But instead of trying to justify *why* it’s apparently a success, people seem to be taking umbrage that anyone dare question this and come up with some things that conveniently make it impossible to judge the success/failure (e.g. “Wider benefits are not always quantifiable”)

So I think that the only thing to do is to meekly nod along and say that every reopening is a huge success, even if passenger numbers don’t look great, because there’s some conveniently unquantifiable “other” that trumps any inconvenient data

Must be nice to have such a simple approach to things, I guess

 

[Railwaysceptic]

Why must everything be about "profit" with some?

Because if something has to be paid for, it makes sense to question if a better financial result could be achieved. Most people in this country would prefer additional tax-payers' money be spent on strengthening the police service rather than increasing subsidies to the railway.

 

[uglymonkey]

Has it for example increased loadings on the GWML and SW Line ? How would you know this? I think I know one place that judge it a success is the Okehampton Taxis - who I have seen, many times, rushing up the hill to connect with a train ( maybe the buses too?). These trips - station to town and back must have been very few and far between 1972 - 2021 !!!

I hear the buffet is also open again.

 

[bramling]

Has it for example increased loadings on the GWML and SW Line ? How would you know this? I think I know one place that judge it a success is the Okehampton Taxis - who I have seen, many times, rushing up the hill to connect with a train ( maybe the buses too?). These trips - station to town and back must have been very few and far between 1972 - 2021 !!!

I hear the buffet is also open again.

It was certainly open when I made a return trip to Okehampton last month. Indeed the platform was packed upon arrival, however about 95% of the people weren’t travelling, and the 150 left with only a small handful on. This was weekday midday.

 

[yorksrob]

Tbh, comparison to the business case is only a judgement on the quality of the feasibility studies, not the line.

Or any line, to be fair.

For me, the 'true' measure of success is whether the overall impact to the economy of the intended service catchment was positively influenced by an amount close to or exceeding the subsidy, but that's impossible to measure.

So I'd go for 2 measures: performance, and percentage loadings. A train service must be reliable to be of any use, and a reasonable utilisation of the capacity indicates a good balance between demand and supply, somewhere in the 75% Peak/50% off-peak region would be my personal benchmarks.

But surely since a reopening lives or dies by the strength of the business case, it stands to reason that its success should be measured against the business case.