Railway economics - cost of running a service

[Failed Unit]

We have had a number of threads about cost saving on the forum, but just interest if anyone knows how much the cost of running the Cleethorpes - Barton-On-Humber service has increased.

Previously it was ran using a 153 unit.
This was then changed to 2x 153 units. (Which I assume would double the leasing costs, fuel costs and maintenance costs of operating the service)
It is now a 156 (Which is probably in the same region as 2x 153)
From May it will be a 2 car 170 (which I assume is more expensive to lease than the 156 - possible more in fuel)

However EMR will only have 2x DMU fleets so I guess that will cut the maintenance. Would this forced change in rolling stock have made a large difference to the viability of the line, or is the track / crewing more significant?

Likewise on Grimsby - Lincoln on weekends in particular they used a 2 car unit, and left passengers behind. Now it is a 3 car unit so they fuel / leasing costs of this route has increased. But will the extra revenue of actually getting everyone on board that ones to travel compensate this? On this route, if they change to hourly they need 1 extra unit to cover the increase in frequency, but I assume that will increase the loss on the line, so the government is unlikely to let this happen.

The Barton line has interested me for a while as regulations have forced it to go to 2 car from the 153, I don't see it having the growth that the Grimsby - Lincoln route is seeing following the removal of the 153. Do regional routes ever cover their costs?

 

[Krokodil]

A single 153 can't physically fit enough passengers to cover the costs of crewing and running it.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Lines aren’t costed individually - they tend to be treated as a network so individual line ”viability” isn’t really considered.

 

[Krokodil]

Lines aren’t costed individually - they tend to be treated as a network so individual line ”viability” isn’t really considered.

One of the flaws of the Beeching report was that lines were considered as individual entities. The assumption was that when the branch line was cut the passengers would drive to the nearest surviving railhead and board a train there. In reality they left the railway entirely and secondary routes started to lose viability too.

 

[BigB]

A single 153 can't physically fit enough passengers to cover the costs of crewing and running it.

Interesting, as by this logic, a 50% loaded two car diesel unit is not economic either....

As a general rough rule of thumb, does anyone know what the break even point for loadings on 3 or 4 car DMU/EMU may be?

 

[Clarence Yard]

It all depends on what the yield is per passenger.

For example, going back 20 years, a 3 car 170 doing Ipswich to Lowestoft would be getting a lower average yield per passenger than the same unit doing Kings Cross to Hull.

Which is why when you are proposing an increment or decrement, you have to be sure of what you are gaining/losing by doing that change because that is the sum that matters nowadays.

Without going down the Beeching rabbit hole, “Gourvish” (the 1948 to 1973 volume) is your friend to see what really happened in the late 1950’s and early to mid 1960’s. Basically, the (largely price) cost increases of the time were outstripping the savings that were being made or the ability to raise fares to compensate, so BR was getting in a real mess. Some of the secondary lines, even before Beeching, were just as much basket cases as the branch lines and only the subsidies that came BR’s way in the late 1960’s stopped the network from being very much smaller than it is now.

Fundamentally, most rail services in this Country do not pay their way. The decision to run them is a political one and investment in those services is subject to approval, as is any reduction in service. As lines are not individually costed, if overall TOC costs go up (i.e. for staff, energy or materials) the DfT either has to pay for them or approve reductions.

 

[tbtc]

Any attempt to look at costs will always generate a defensive reaction, some kind of “ah, but if you look at the bigger picture”/ “holistic approach”/ blame Beeching responses

But I think from a discussion about reopening old branch lines, the figure of half a million pounds a year per unit stuck in my mind - I think that was based on the staffing costs given the number of shifts required over a week for drivers/ conductors (given thirty-something hour weeks/ holidays/ sickness/ employer pension costs and National Insurance etc, obviously additional staff may impact upon the number of “back room” staff needed but that’s not a guarantee amount, you might be able to employ half a dozen more frontline staff without that forcing your HR/ IT/ Training staff to increase)

However, I think that the half million pounds a year was just the staff, nothing to do with the cost of the trains!

The question is how the leasing/ fuel/ track access charges etc increased when you swap from a single/ old 153 to a younger/ longer 170 and what proportion of the staffing costs that is

For example, in this age of National Minimum Wage/ staffing shortages etc, bus companies can no longer get away with paying tiny wages to minimum drivers, so if the cost of running a double decker is only a bit more than a Solo then the extra capacity comes at a fairly low marginal cost, so you’d only have to make a small reduction to frequency to save money running much bigger vehicles…

I don’t know how the economics of that works on the rail way though… a three coach 170 should have the same staffing costs as a single 153 so what difference does it make to leasing/ track access charges/ maintenance (and depot space, if that’s an issue)

I think some people will be reluctant to shine too much light on the costs of the Barton line though as a headline about quite how much subsidy is required per passenger might be a bit embarrassing!

 

[northwichcat]

Lines aren’t costed individually - they tend to be treated as a network so individual line ”viability” isn’t really considered.

Exactly. The viability of LNER and XC services relies on local passengers changing to their services. Places like Wakefield and Stockport are key stops on long distance services because they provide conveninent places to change between the local and long distance services.

bus companies can no longer get away with paying tiny wages to minimum drivers, so if the cost of running a double decker is only a bit more than a Solo then the extra capacity comes at a fairly low marginal cost, so you’d only have to make a small reduction to frequency to save money running much bigger vehicles…

Provided the decker can run on the same route as the small bus. If the operator has to divert the service so the decker avoids a low bridge, electric overheads on a level crossing, a tree canopy etc. then you might end up with a limited service on a replacement route using a small bus. I understand TfGM recently contracted a new route as the existing service was revised to avoid a low canal bridge.

 

[All Line Rover]

Exactly. The viability of LNER and XC services relies on local passengers changing to their services. Places like Wakefield and Stockport are key stops on long distance services because they provide conveninent places to change between the local and long distance services.

Stockport and Wakefield are convenient places for wealthy long-distance passengers to park their car and commence their journey without the stress and inconvenience of venturing to a city centre station. For example, Avanti's most lucrative passengers from east Cheshire start/end their journeys at Stockport - they don't hang about Stockport station waiting for a Northern stopper to Alderley Edge.

I'd be interested to know the exact % of long distance passengers who only travel by train because they were able to connect in to and/or out of a local stopping service, but I would expect it to be less than 20%, perhaps much less.

 

[bib]

If you had the time, you could probably take a good stab at working out the answer based on the scotrail data, assuming there are some similar routes in scotland.

https://www.scotrail.co.uk/sites/default/files/assets/download_ct/20210823/unvyb8g0C5sQnWhXVKIcsKZDpiZk8wjsQRfGj9d8GSU/scotrail_route_by_route_key_metric_assessment.pdf

 

[northwichcat]

For example, Avanti's most lucrative passengers from east Cheshire start/end their journeys at Stockport - they don't hang about Stockport station waiting for a Northern stopper to Alderley Edge.

Very few passengers from Cheshire East would drive to Stockport for London. Maybe an odd person from Poynton. I'd expect if you ask the people parking at Stockport where they're from you'd get answers like Cheadle Hulme, Hazel Grove and Didsbury. For Cheshire East passengers who want to avoid a local connection, they'd use a taxi to Wilmslow or Macclesfield stations, or drive to Crewe. Driving to Crewe from Knutsford would only take a few minutes longer than driving to Stockport and it cuts almost half an hour off the time you need to spend on an Avanti service.

But at the end of the day different people do different things for different reasons. Many still drive to Hartford station when heading to London, despite it no longer having any direct London trains. And people have to follow work expense policies that might not permit expensing a taxi or a day's parking at Stockport or Crewe.

There are a significant number of people who alight Northern trains on platforms 3 & 4 at Stockport and then head to platform 2 for an Avanti service. If everyone who did that over the course of a day drove to Stockport instead you'd need a few thousand parking spaces at Stockport.