Portishead approved

[Pinus contorta]

Exactly!

Didn't make it there this year as the game versus Wigan got shifted due to the pitch issues Postponements.

 

[Brissle Girl]

And Bristol Bears (still find that rebrand awful!)

+1

 

[Basil Jet]

It's not ideal but as zwk500 says above just getting it built is the biggest hurdle. Once its open and if it proves successful it will be far easier to open stations at Ashton Gate (muted phase 2)

I thought that the only possible station site at Ashton Gate had been used up by some sort of segregated bus alignment, or am I getting mixed up?

 

[507020]

They'll probably build the station and then close it on match days as the hourly 2-car trains will be insufficient to deal with the crowds

When in reality they need to run a much longer train much more often. Either a 6 or 8 car 150, a HST or an IET. The thing is the infrastructure capability to turn back long frequent trains does not have to extend beyond Ashton Gate itself to Pill or Portishead.

Am I right in saying that happened with the Station by Coventry s ground?

What’s the point of having a stadium station if it’s not going to deal with huge passenger numbers during events…

 

[Mollman]

What rolling stock would they use? poach a few 165s from other parts of the west?

3-car battery powered 350s going off the BB/C news story illustration

 

[david1212]

No, it's been watered down too much. But I suppose improving an existing service should be easier than implementing a new one

It's not ideal but as zwk500 says above just getting it built is the biggest hurdle. Once its open and if it proves successful it will be far easier to open stations at Ashton Gate (muted phase 2) and potentially restoring the double track at Pill to allow half hourly.

You only have to look at the success of the Severn beach line on the opposite side of the river. Very nearly lost it in the 1990s with single bubble car hourly only running to Avonmouth. Now its half hourly service with potential of double tracking it all the way to Clifton Down in near future. It has been a great success story last 5-6 years, the line is thriving.

My understanding of today is that now the full business plan has to be established before a final approval by the SoS in early 2024.. so it might still not see the light of day but i guess if there a GE not far around the corner when its due for approval and Liam Fox's seat looking decidedly dodgy at present.. then it might be perfect timing shall we say

What rolling stock would they use? poach a few 165s from other parts of the west?

Yeah pretty sure they'll share the rolling stock with the Severn Beach line which is a few 165/166s and the occasional 158.

There was something about cutting back the platform at Portishead so potentially could only have 4 car trains..

Going back over years of the proposals and practicality I recall the combination of access to Portbury docks and the topology would always constrain the maximum practical service frequency and the train length.
While I welcome services returning to Portishead and along the route I have always been concerned that the capacity would be inadequate for a significant reduction in the number of cars joining the M5 at Jn 19 to head into Bristol. Crush loaded trains will not be attractive. A 2-car 165 has around 160 seats and a 3-car 250 but 3+2 seating is often not ulitised close to 100%. 158 sets as 2+2 seating are less plus slow loading with the end doors. If the limit was 4-car i.e. 2 x 2-car then using 165's around 320 seats. Long into the future if a 30 minute service and 2 x 3-car 3+2 seated sets then 500 per train so 1000 per hour.
Putting availability of rolling stock aside a proposal I once read was early morning to send togther two sets down then they split to return separately.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Railway Gazette has this para on next steps:

Portishead railway reopening granted planning consent

UK: The Department for Transport has granted planning consent for reinstatement of the railway between Portishead and Pill. This is the first passenger reopening to be approved using a Development Consent Order, which includes planning and environmental consent and compulsory land acquisition...

www.railwaygazette.com

Detailed design is to get underway in winter 2022-23, with full business case approval by DfT expected in summer 2024. Construction would commence shortly afterwards, for services to begin in autumn 2026.

 

[Dr Day]

So still requires 'full business case approval' - ie not a done deal just yet. It will no doubt be critical that as detail design develops the capital costs remain within the agreed funding, and don't rise due to various construction inflationary pressures, as well as the overall benefits for passengers given the likely practicable timetable exceeding the overall costs, including day to day operating costs.

 

[geoffk]

What rolling stock would they use? poach a few 165s from other parts of the west?

Not from Devon I hope as there are too many short-formed trains as it is. The fleet has already been "stretched" to cover Okehampton.

 

[Starmill]

Getting the line open in the first place is the key, because then there is a motivation to see it get used and increase revenue. 1tph could be transformational if it gives people a service they're willing to use.

This is a sensible view from the perspective of a resident or local campaigner or politicians, and I don't disagree with it.

However, from the view of a system operator, (or 'guiding mind' as the GBR proposals have frequently termed it) this is the path to decline. The industry at present, and for the foreseeable future, has been unable to negotiate the necccesary operating subsidy to run 2019 (or 2019 plus a handful of extras, as with the 2tph Monday - Saturday between Avonmouth abd Bristol Temple Meads) levels of service reliably. Across England, train drivers and other crews, plus station and support staff have seen real pay cuts over the past three years and are exercising their rights to take industral action as a result of that. Overtime is generally unavailable and therefore some operators, including Avanti West Coast and TransPennine Express, have seen reliability and customer service collapsing. More to the point many lines have had their service frequency cut permanently, such as the much-discussed cut affecting much-used Whiston and Rainhill from half-hourly to hourly. All of the above cause patronage to drop and the market for rail travel suffers long term scarring as a result.

It is considered politically unviable to withdraw services on lines where almost nobody travels, so expensive resources are still being frittered away on running near-empty trains between Ellesmere Port and Helsby, Heysham Port and Morecambe, Dorking and Horsham, Girvan and Stranraer, Bleanau Ffestiniog and Llandudno Junction (and so on). There is no serious prospect of growth in any of these lines, and although most consume only a handful of crew and unit hours, taken together they are still a real drain. That a rail replacement bus is going to have to be procured to replace the Chiltern Railways service from West Ealing typifies how poorly the industry is doing on cost control, because even a rare service that's totally without merit cannot be cut to zero. Obviously it is still a reduction in cost without any genuine disbenefits, and is therefore still welcome.

Is it really wisdom to spend so many tens of millions in capital expenditure to add yet another heavily loss-making, infrequent diesel train to the burden of annual operating expenditure, all in the hope of unknown future increases to the annual subsidy on offer, while taking no action to improve efficiency either here or elsewhere?

A single train per hour is overwhelmingly poor value for money because it doesn't offer substantial enough reductions over the bus service in generalised journey times. There is no prospect of getting even more funding to run a half-hourly service in the foreseeable future. People may choose to use it still in large numbers, and if the service is finally delivered, I hope that they do. But unfortunately that doesn't mean that the country is better off as a result of the decision.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It is considered politically unviable to withdraw services on lines where almost nobody travels, so expensive resources are still being frittered away on running near-empty trains between Ellesmere Port and Helsby, Heysham Port and Morecambe, Dorking and Horsham, Girvan and Stranraer, Bleanau Ffestiniog and Llandudno Junction (and so on). There is no serious prospect of growth in any of these lines, and although most consume only a handful of crew and unit hours, taken together they are still a real drain. That a rail replacement bus is going to have to be procured to replace the Chiltern Railways service from West Ealing typifies how poorly the industry is doing on cost control, because even a rare service that's totally without merit cannot be cut to zero. Obviously it is still a reduction in cost without any genuine disbenefits, and is therefore still welcome.

I think you're probably missing one key thing - just how anti-car Bristol is. I think an hourly DMU here will be well-patronised. I'd not put this in the same "basket case" category as some of those in your list, it'd be more like adding another Ormskirk-Preston but with more traffic as if Preston were anti-car - by no means a profit centre, but certainly not useless. I wouldn't even put it in the same category as Okehampton, which itself is more like the Conwy Valley, which is nowhere near as much of a basket case as say Girvan-Stranraer now the boats have gone.

In a sensible world, Councils would be uncapped, and local democracy could drive whether this sort of thing should be funded locally. Knowing Bristol and some Bristolians, I suspect people would take a little more Council Tax and business rates not to only have a very slow and inadequate bus-based public transport network.

A single train per hour is overwhelmingly poor value for money because it doesn't offer substantial enough reductions over the bus service in generalised journey times. There is no prospect of getting even more funding to run a half-hourly service in the foreseeable future.

Generalised journey times (i.e. basing it on people turning up randomly) is not a useful measure unless you're working out whether you're going to change one "turn up and go" frequency into another one, i.e. change frequency in the range of say 4tph to 8tph, because people don't turn up randomly for hourly services.

What is more important is if the service is timed to be useful for the majority of journeys. What that means depends on the line. In some cases it'll be whether it connects with the hourly InterCity service or not (e.g. most of the Cornish and Thames Valley branches are primarily connectional). In others it'll be whether people can get to the nearest employment-providing town at a relevant time, and that time will vary depending on what the predominant type of employment is - if it's offices it's probably about 0845 for a small town to be able to walk to the office by 0900, if it's retail it'll probably be a bit earlier to allow for setting up before opening at 9.

I've said before (and still am of the view) that an infrequent service like the Conwy Valley can be made more useful by reducing the frequency and actually thinking about which user groups would use which service for what purpose. Four well-timed round trips would be potentially much more useful than the present six arbitrarily every three hour ones.

Of course there's also the argument that an hourly bus service and converting the Conwy Valley to a cycleway would have more value, and it probably would, or truncating it to Betws so you could run two-hourly and a bus beyond. But Portishead isn't the Conwy Valley and shouldn't really be compared with it in quite the same way.

 

[Starmill]

I think an hourly DMU here will be well-patronised.

There's every chance trains will be busy. But even if the hourly two car DMU is so full that people can't physically board, from first train to last, seven days a week, it will still require a large annual subsidy to provide a GWR driver and guard, plus the unit's lease, maintenance and fuel costs. That's without taking into account any of the capital cost. That's why it has such a poor business case. It's less poor than the ones I've listed, certainly, but unfortunately that's saying very little.

Now, if the service were a tram line running 5tph with just a tram driver and a ticket inspector it would have a very persuasive case. But of course there's, lamentably, no existing tramway in Bristol to extend to Portishead, and as such this one line would be dumped with the cost of building through the city centre, building a depot, procuring the trams, and the enormous start-up costs of hiring and training the staff. This is obviously not feasible.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Now, if the service were a tram line running 5tph with just a tram driver and a ticket inspector it would have a very persuasive case. But of course there's, lamentably, no existing tramway in Bristol to extend to Portishead, and as such this one line would be dumped with the cost of building through the city centre, building a depot, procuring the trams, and the enormous start-up costs of hiring and training the staff. This is obviously not feasible.

That's not a bad future aspiration. I would be unsurprised if Bristol gained a tramway at some point in the not too distant future, and it could of course be founded around the two by then existing hourly DMU lines - this one and Severn Beach.

Yes, it'll take subsidy. I can see the argument for moving such subsidy to being paid by local people through Council Tax, a bit more like the way regional services are funded in mainland Europe, and the way PTEs have classically paid for service uplifts - thus local democracy can decide whether it's wanted or not and pay for it accordingly, and local democracy has generally worked better in the UK than national. But I can't agree that subsidy of public transport is a bad thing, which is what you're basically doing.

In short, if you're anti-this sort of line, you're not just saying Girvan-Stranraer should close (it probably should, in exchange for electrification and an hourly service to Girvan), you're asking for Serpell.

 

[Starmill]

not a useful measure unless you're working out whether you're going to change one "turn up and go" frequency into another one, i.e. change frequency in the range of say 4tph to 8tph, because people don't turn up randomly for hourly services.

Sorry but I'm afraid this is wrong. There's still a large cost in having to adjust your life around the train timetable, such that people who don't want to or need simply won't do so. Nearly everyone has car access in Portishead.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Sorry but I'm afraid this is wrong. There's still a large cost in having to adjust your life around the train timetable, such that people who don't want to or need simply won't do so. Nearly everyone has car access in Portishead.

Just because they have cars doesn't mean it's good for them to drive them into Bristol (a very anti-car city).

No, you won't sell them a bus park and ride any more than you'd sell one to the populace of two-Range-Rovers-and-a-Jag Cheshire for going into Manchester. (You can sell them a Metrolink one, though!)

 

[Starmill]

Yes, it'll take subsidy. I can see the argument for moving such subsidy to being paid by local people through Council Tax,

If you wanted to move the costs of regional English rail into local authorities you'd need to give the authorities permission to levy many times as much from council tax as they currently do. And I say that as someone who is generally in favour of local taxation funding local policies, and who would even be willing to pay double or triple my annual council tax bill if it meant Swiss-style local transport. The reality is that English politics will never allow it.

Just because they have cars doesn't mean it's good for them to drive them into Bristol (a very anti-car city).

This is currently the dominant mode of transport between Portishead and Bristol though. Large parts of Bristol City Centre are car parking, and prices aren't higher than typical for other non-London English cities. Lots of Bristolians might like to be members of anti-car Facebook pages, but they haven't voted for an authority that can be bothered to even implement the proposed Workplace Parking Levy have they?

 

[Bletchleyite]

This is currently the dominant mode of transport between Portishead and Bristol though. Large parts of Bristol City Centre are car parking, and prices aren't higher than typical for other non-London English cities.

But then if we took the view that we wouldn't try to change that, then we aren't being very progressive, are we? Vast swathes of most cities used to be car parking, largely on old disused bomb sites from WW II. It's on the wane, though, as buildings are put up on those sites.

Lots of Bristolians might like to be members of anti-car Facebook pages, but they haven't voted for an authority that can be bothered to even implement the proposed Workplace Parking Levy have they?

I'd not vote for it either given the pitiful state of public transport and cycling provision in Bristol. It has to be carrot first, and this line, much as it's a fairly small carrot, is a carrot.

 

[Starmill]

But then if we took the view that we wouldn't try to change that, then we aren't being very progressive, are we?

It would be progressive in my view to use the small amount of public subsidy on offer to take actions which most effectively exclude cars from city centres. But under the current industry structure, that would mean essentially no local rail service whatsoever, and roads closed and given over to pre-2018 London-style subsidised buses. I'm not sure that will help much longer term so we're left with the current compromise. A tramway is the obvious best solution, but nobody is brave enough to argue for one. Even though this project's budget would be almost enough to start a minimum viable product building a single tram line.

I'd not vote for it either given the pitiful state of public transport and cycling provision in Bristol. It has to be carrot first, and this line, much as it's a fairly small carrot, is a carrot.

Precisely. You won't change your lifestyle voluntarily, and in the political sphere you strongly oppose measures which might force you to change your behaviour. Like nearly everyone does.

That's why generalised journey times are useful, and that's why it's mandatory to measure them for business cases.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It would be progressive in my view to use the small amount of public subsidy on offer to take actions which most effectively exclude cars from city centres. But under the current industry structure, that would mean essentially no local rail service whatsoever, and roads closed and given over to pre-2018 London-style subsidised buses. I'm not sure that will help much longer term so we're left with the current compromise. A tramway is the obvious best solution, but nobody is brave enough to argue for one.

I reckon in 50 years, barring anything truly disastrous like WW III, Bristol will have a tramway.

I'd not like to predict exactly when in that period, though, other than that it's very unlikely to be the next 20.

Precisely. You won't change your lifestyle voluntarily, and in the political sphere you strongly oppose measures which might force you to change your behaviour. Like nearly everyone does.

I'll consider changing my lifestyle voluntarily if the appropriate facilities are provided to do so. For instance, I'd use the bus in MK more if the service was acceptable (it's not, it's terrible). It's not viable, but if there was a nearby tram I'd use that even more. I cycle in MK more than I would in a city that didn't have a comprehensive network of off-road cycle paths.

For instance, I'll almost always drive into central Milton Keynes, or secondarily if I've got time cycle. By contrast, driving into Liverpool from say Maghull (a not dissimilar distance) is not something I would even consider, unless there was serious rail disruption. Why this is is a combination of carrot and stick - Merseyrail is frequent and affordable, and parking is costly. If it was just that parking was costly but public transport was a bus taking an hour, I'd suck it up and moan a bit but still drive. I wouldn't consider cycling into Liverpool from Maghull because it's grim.

Carrots do drive behaviour to a fairly large extent. What I object to is using a stick to drive me to use an inadequate replacement. Their purpose is to nudge people who are stuck in their ways onto a reasonable alternative.

 

[Starmill]

I'll consider changing my lifestyle voluntarily if the appropriate facilities are provided to do so. For instance, I'd use the bus in MK more if the service was acceptable (it's not, it's terrible). It's not viable, but if there was a nearby tram I'd use that even more. I cycle in MK more than I would in a city that didn't have a comprehensive network of off-road cycle paths.

In other words you follow perfectly the model used for transport appraisal, and yet you still rail against the appraisal that says the value for money on this route is abominable? What possible justification is there for mainline driver and guard wages, and mainline safety standards and attendant costs, for a route that's almost entirely just carrying people from Portishead and Pill to Bristol centre?

 

[Bletchleyite]

In other words you follow perfectly the model used for transport appraisal, and yet you still rail against the appraisal that says the value for money on this route is abominable? What possible justification is there for mainline driver and guard wages, and mainline safety standards and attendant costs, for a route that's almost entirely just carrying people from Portishead and Pill to Bristol centre?

I'm not at all opposed to building stuff like this as "interurban tramways" or some other form of light rail if it's cheaper. Though would it be, as it couldn't run into Temple Meads then?

 

[Starmill]

In short, if you're anti-this sort of line, you're not just saying Girvan-Stranraer should close (it probably should, in exchange for electrification and an hourly service to Girvan), you're asking for Serpell.

For the avoidence of all doubt this is also wrong. You've misread what I'm saying - I am against spending capital budgets on things which will add meaningfully to the net subsidy requirement. I am only in favour of withdrawal of services where the benefits are at their very lowest, the lowest of which relative to costs is Girvan - Stranraer.

Most secondary routes that are subsidy-heavy, e.g. Retford - Lincoln, only require very small amounts of capital spend. You wouldn't however be able to make a business case to build Retford - Lincoln from scratch today.

 

[geoffk]

I'm reading this thread as someone brought up in Bristol but not having lived there for 50 years. The location of Temple Meads in relation to the central business/shopping district was always quoted as the main reason for Bristol's poor local train service. Has recent city centre development improved the situation? Several potentially useful local lines have long been abandoned or converted into a cycle route (the North Somerset line as far as Whitchurch and the Midland line to Yate/Warmley via Mangotsfield.) These, together with Portishead and Severn Beach, could have formed the basis of a light rail network linked together with on-street running in the central area and I remember writing to the Evening Post back in the 60s advocating just such an idea. But it was all about cars then and Bristol seemed to have missed the boat by the time light rail was being revived in the 1990s. A half-hourly service should be the minimum requirement for a local rail service in a large city but several services in Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool don't meet this minimum standard.

And what happened to the workplace parking levy? This is only for capital expenditure, isn't it, and only Nottingham has so far has made use of it.

 

[Starmill]

I'm not at all opposed to building stuff like this as "interurban tramways" or some other form of light rail if it's cheaper. Though would it be, as it couldn't run into Temple Meads then?

It would have to run along the road (with the road narrowed) along the front of Temple Meads, and through the city centre. A tramway couldn't really be built if it didn't stop outside the existing main station, and you'd want to capture the two-stop hops of people arriving on long distance trains and going to places in the shopping area of the centre.

And what happened to the workplace parking levy? This is only for capital expenditure, isn't it, and only Nottingham has so far has made use of it.

It's deeply unpopular because most English car drivers won't pay even a single pound extra for parking. They're organised campaigners, and will vote out councillors who are in favour of new charges for parking or polluting the air. Council leaders don't have the guts to get the levy going at a low level for a few years to build up the reserves to spend on capital projects. Without new sources of revenue such as this, local government in England has no hope of funding its own capital projects like tramways. Central government has basically no interest at all in more English public transport capital spend, because all it does is increase their liabilities in subsidy for every year thereafter.

 

[Mikey C]

An hourly service isn't much of a carrot though, especially when to get to the centre it's still a fair distance.

 

[Starmill]

An hourly service isn't much of a carrot though, especially when to get to the centre it's still a fair distance.

Indeed not. That's what is meant by the generalised journey times not coming down.

 

[Bletchleyite]

An hourly service isn't much of a carrot though, especially when to get to the centre it's still a fair distance.

It can be. I reckon it'll be quite well used given the nature of Bristol. People are still using the hourly services into Liverpool, much as it's scandalous that they've been reduced that far.

The question of how much subsidy it will need and if that's good value is a slightly different one.

 

[zwk500]

A tramway is not being proposed, so belongs in the Speculative discussion

This is a sensible view from the perspective of a resident or local campaigner or politicians, and I don't disagree with it.

Is it really wisdom to spend so many tens of millions in capital expenditure to add yet another heavily loss-making, infrequent diesel train to the burden of annual operating expenditure, all in the hope of unknown future increases to the annual subsidy on offer, while taking no action to improve efficiency either here or elsewhere?

This is a reasonable response and it's why I fully support the much-bemoaned feasibility studies and endless consultant's fees we often hear moaned about. 'What is the reasonable usage ceiling for the line?' is a critical question for investing multi millions of pounds that could instead by used to make the existing network more efficient. I'm neither a resident, campaigner or politician (Instead I'm a former timetable planner/analyst for NR) so if the line will never justify more than 1tph other then yes the holistic view does need to be taken.
However, if the usage ceiling would eventually justify 2x 100m tph off-peak, to me on a line like this that's worth doing. Especially as I agree with a lot of what was said above about how a good train connection might get people out of cars that a P&R bus site won't.

Precisely. You won't change your lifestyle voluntarily, and in the political sphere you strongly oppose measures which might force you to change your behaviour. Like nearly everyone does.

Plenty of people change their lifestyle voluntarily if the circumstances change, such as a new public transport service opening up. People readily switch to cheaper or faster offerings completely voluntarily. What people won't do is vote against their own interests (such as making themselves pay more for parking).

On your separate point about little-used but existing lines (sorry can't quote it), I'd say that the context is just as important as the data. The line to Heysham, for instance: Lancaster-Morecambe is well used, the Morecambe - Heysham line will remain open for the Nuclear freight, so the only costs of the line being open for passengers are the handful of services and a modest platform. It probably gives about the same net benefit that you'd get from withdrawing the service, running a Takt Morecambe and running a bus between Lancaster station and Heysham for the ferry.
The line to Stranraer, on the other hand, requires maintenance of a lot of line in difficult and remote country, to serve a small town and not the ferry port, with slow and inefficient operating procedures like NSTR that force poor utilisation of guards and drivers. To me, this line is worthy of potential abandonment - I'd suggest extending the OLE to Girvan and then tearing up the line south, running a bus service from Ayr through Girvan calling at Cairnryan before terminating in Stranraer. Stranraer port can then be sold off for redevelopment.

I agree totally on the point re Chiltern's Parliamentary train replacement. The industry needs to be far more flexible about adding and removing services in response to demand, and lose the 'thin end of the wedge' mentality that blocks a lot of quite useful fat trimming.

 

[Bletchleyite]

On your separate point about little-used but existing lines (sorry can't quote it), I'd say that the context is just as important as the data. The line to Heysham, for instance: Lancaster-Morecambe is well used, the Morecambe - Heysham line will remain open for the Nuclear freight, so the only costs of the line being open for passengers are the handful of services and a modest platform. It probably gives about the same net benefit that you'd get from withdrawing the service, running a Takt Morecambe and running a bus between Lancaster station and Heysham for the ferry.

I think there's a not unreasonable chance that Morecambe-Heysham actually costs very close to £0. The platform at Morecambe is already there, the platform at Heysham requires little maintenance (does it even have lights or do they come from the road alongside?), the line is used for nuclear traffic and it's run by the existing unit instead of doing a Lancaster run. Thus you're down to the costs of occasional maintenance on the Heysham platform and any lost custom from the hour gap in the half hourly (ish) Morecambe frequency which may well be a smaller number than the custom gained to go to the ferry (it doesn't run empty).

Of course if the nuclear power station ever closes, then the line probably will too. Then a bus to Lancaster would be much, much cheaper (as it's lunchtime a company like Kirby Lonsdale Coaches could do it at marginal cost between two school runs).

I agree totally on the point re Chiltern's Parliamentary train replacement. The industry needs to be far more flexible about adding and removing services in response to demand, and lose the 'thin end of the wedge' mentality that blocks a lot of quite useful fat trimming.

I agree that Parlies are a waste of time and money; they should just be properly closed. Though again there's maybe the odd one that might cost nothing, e.g. Stockport-Stalybridge is, or was, putting stops in an ECS that went that way anyway, and there will be fares income from enthusiasts riding it.

 

[zwk500]

I think there's a not unreasonable chance that Morecambe-Heysham actually costs very close to £0. The platform at Morecambe is already there, the platform at Heysham requires little maintenance (does it even have lights or do they come from the road alongside?), the line is used for nuclear traffic and it's run by the existing unit instead of doing a Lancaster run. Thus you're down to the costs of occasional maintenance on the Heysham platform and any lost custom from the hour gap in the half hourly (ish) Morecambe frequency which may well be a smaller number than the custom gained to go to the ferry (it doesn't run empty).

Indeed, and it's a careful balancing act, hence context being important. I personally feel that avoiding odd gaps in the train would gain more revenue on the Morecambe - Lancaster than the bus would cost to run, and that the ferry passengers currently on the train would largely transfer to a bus heading straight for Lancaster and it's station.