We do, regularly. We're actually somewhat unusual in being a one-car household despite living in a rural area, which means we need to use the (surprisingly good) bus service as well as trains. My personal travel habits are identifiable on the origin-destination data for my local station.
But sometimes the train doesn't do what we need it to do, and the option of driving is incredibly useful. If we still lived in the Highlands, it would be absolutely essential.
I'd very much like to see trains kept in rural areas. But we can't go around expecting the network (and travel habits) to be frozen in aspic. And unfortunately decades of underinvesting have left us in a situation where battery-electric buses are a serious threat to rural railways - and even some main lines.
That didn't need to be the case, but we are where we are. Sticking our heads in the sand won't make the economic system change, or make electric buses go away. We need to be thinking about how to preserve the best features of railways and mitigate the worst features of buses.
The next best option is probably to have bus services defined in the same way as rail services, operated in an integrated way, and locked down so the operator can't mess around with them in hopes of making the EBITDA graph go up.
I'm glad to hear that you do use the train service. You rightly say that sometimes the train doesn't do what you need it to do. For a lot of people, sometimes the car doesn't do what they need it to do. Both are needed.
Battery trains are coming along just like buses. These will be the future of long rural lines, have no fear.
As for the network being set in aspic, I would rather see it grown, so that it can become even more useful as a network.
Respectfully, you do seem to be implying that everyone who wants the railways to save money believes that the railways must run at a profit. I doubt many people who read this forum think that! But there is a limit. It is one thing to subsidise a line with an hourly service to towns of a few thousand people. It is another thing to spend tens of millions of year on a line with a handful of services a day, serving the most remote communities in the country, and following an extremely slow route.
I don't think I've suggested that.
The bigger point is that if you start lopping off bits of the network here and there, you will end up losing vastly more than you gain (if anything).
All this self flagellation will gain nothing for railway passengers. Can you imagine the RAC foundation offering up roads that could be done without ? No. They understand the value of their network. So should we.
Any talk of 're' opening and 'reversing' damage is still backwards-looking though. There are entire towns that have never been on the rail network. If we only look at lines previously closed, how can we adjust to the new travel patterns?
All rail proposals should start first with 'what should a rail service to Town X look like?', then ask 'what infrastructure would be needed to provide that?' and only then should it consider if old trackbed might be useful.
Below 1tph, its arguably better to have a completely irregular frequency but have trains targeted to serve key journey generators.
The Bentham and S&C lines seem to be edging towards a service every two hours or thereabouts. This seems to be vastly superior to a sporadic service. The improvement to the Bentham line is notable.
However big the health budget, it will never be able to do everything, and will have to make choices. Just like the railways have to. In France, some rural branch lines have closed in recent years, but you could hardly accuse France with its massive TGV network or being anti railway.
The railway has already made the tough choices, between around 1962 and 1985.
The X99 service is even more sparsely operated than the train. 3 services on a weekday, 2 on a Saturday with last southbound departure from Thurso before midday! The journey times benefits between Inverness and Thurso are not as noticeable as from Wick. Of course public money could improve this frequency and hours of operation.
I think this coach-stitution policy would have more support if first of all express routes not served by rail were clearly embedded into the network with branding, mapping, high quality branded halts, long-term commitments etc so they are widely known not just to a lucky few and people gain confidence that the removal of a few edge cases won’t be a hardship. So for Stranraer a coach service from Carlisle station to Stranraer and Cairnryan via the A75 and selected towns would be a good first step followed by one up the A77 to Ayr.
I suspect that if the bus service was that much more popular than the train as some suggest, they would have already increased the frequency.
Reading back through the thread, so much of the discussion focuses on the Far North line and the fact that the X99 is faster than the train, and provides a similar service. Much discussion on viability, cycle carriage, and a lit on decarbonisation.
Worth considering that Ember are recruiting in Thurso right now to launch their own electric coach service, and they also carry cycles. Yet to be seen if the route can survive the options of rail and 2 bus services.
And must be remembered when looking at current usage figures that market on intercity and long-distance coaches in Scotland is that concessionary card holders (disabled, over-60 and under-22) will get free travel on all bus and coach services within Scotland, irrespective of distance, but not free rail travel. Without this distinction, it may not be true that both Far North Line and X99 (and soon Ember) could operate on the same route. Both are receiving a considerable amount of subsidy currently.
Ember's success, and now Citylink's use of electric coaches in Scotland now also means decarbonisation can no longer be used as an argument to keep low usage rural rail lines open
To offer free travel on one long distance mode and not the other is clearly a distortion of the market. I bet Dr Beeching's spirit wishes he'd thought of it.
