Survey: Cardiff rail users happiest while Manchester commuters miserable

[pemma]

Flying back into Manchester airport the other week, and catching a TPE to Newcastle, I was amazed to see that a train for Windermere had 6 coaches, and left almost empty, whilst the 3-coach TPE was rammed from the outset, with the pitifully inadequate luggage space for an airport service immediately full, and the remaining luggage lying all over the place, and people standing/sitting on and around it. Ludicrous.

There are no Windermere services that are 6 coaches. It would have either been a Windermere service attached to an Edinburgh service or a Windermere service attached to a Blackpool service.

 

[Mainliner]

There are no Windermere services that are 6 coaches. It would have either been a Windermere service attached to an Edinburgh service or a Windermere service attached to a Blackpool service.

Yes, the latter.

 

[John55]

Salop is an old name for Shropshire not a specific town.
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No-one's quoted any examples for Cardiff expect the average figure given in the report.

Like it said it's the figure the passenger pays that's important for the scope of this survey, if 99.9% of commuters in Manchester can't afford to buy an annual season ticket in advance but it's only 50% in London then that could explain, which seems to be what some people are having trouble understanding.



This is the problem - we don't know what people's expectations are, we aren't comparing like with like. Plus there are places on the list with hardly any commuter stations (Nottingham and Leicester have hardly any "local" services, Sheffield's handful of urban stations get a low service - hourly at Darnall/ Woodhouse and bi-hourly at Dore), so there's not the same number of local commuters to interview.



Unless the survey was done pre-September 2011 then the 180s had been replaced by cascaded 150s.
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Buying weekly tickets for Warrington to Manchester would come to £1641.60 over 48 weeks, that's almost £100 over the figure quoted.



So have you read the bit about journey lengths of 10-19 miles being used?

I did wonder why at first but it's actually quite obvious when you think about.

For Birkenhead to Liverpool you have a choice of train, bus and ferry so if the train is very expensive then you're not forced to use it. On the other hand for Warrington to Liverpool buses would be much slower so really the train is the only viable option.

It seems they've compared the cities fairly but with London being much larger and having commuters doing longer average distances the 'fair' comparison doesn't do London justice.

Do you read the posts before you reply? In this post you quote me as saying “I don't think there is any merit in this survey at all. I have tried to check a single item in the table which is the cost of a railway season ticket to Liverpool which is quoted as £1547 average for stations between 10 and 19 miles from Liverpool. I cannot find any season tickets which cost this much for any station within 19 miles of Liverpool.” And then you ask, “So have you read the bit about journey lengths of 10-19 miles being used?”

The most expensive annual season ticket I can find which meets the 10 – 19 mile criteria from Liverpool are £1440 for Bryn and £1448 from Chester (which can be done with a cheaper Railpass ticket). An annual season from Wigan (20 miles) costs £1604. A couple of looks at the Manchester prices suggests the same kind of problems.

I don’t know what the price of multiple weekly seasons from Warrington to Manchester has to do with fares to Liverpool but please feel free to explain.

Do you realise that most season ticket prices are calculated as a multiplier of the anytime day return price? So a weekly is X x ADR and monthly Y x ADR and annual is Z x ADR. For my local station to London Z is approx. 170 which seems fairly common for normal commuting (up to 20 miles) it is much less for long distance commuting to London (a colleague used to buy a weekly season from Southampton to London for less than 2 x ADR).

Birkenhead to Liverpool is much less than 10 miles unless the Mersey has grown wider since last weekend. You cannot commute from Birkenhead to Liverpool by ferry at normal working times.

How can you say they have compared the cities fairly when the basic data is so fundamentally flawed? This is a classic case of a pressure group trying to do some “research” on the cheap with data extracted from other reports and superficial additional work and presented to a gullible media. CfBT ought to be ashamed of themselves. Anything presented as a “happiness index” is pretty clearly nonsense.

 

[pemma]

Do you read the posts before you reply? In this post you quote me as saying “I don't think there is any merit in this survey at all. I have tried to check a single item in the table which is the cost of a railway season ticket to Liverpool which is quoted as £1547 average for stations between 10 and 19 miles from Liverpool. I cannot find any season tickets which cost this much for any station within 19 miles of Liverpool.” And then you ask, “So have you read the bit about journey lengths of 10-19 miles being used?”

Your point about using the Merseytravel tickets seem to contradict what you used earlier.

The most expensive annual season ticket I can find which meets the 10 – 19 mile criteria from Liverpool are £1440 for Bryn and £1448 from Chester (which can be done with a cheaper Railpass ticket). An annual season from Wigan (20 miles) costs £1604. A couple of looks at the Manchester prices suggests the same kind of problems.

I don’t know what the price of multiple weekly seasons from Warrington to Manchester has to do with fares to Liverpool but please feel free to explain.

I mis-typed it should have said Liverpool.

Birkenhead to Liverpool is much less than 10 miles unless the Mersey has grown wider since last weekend. You cannot commute from Birkenhead to Liverpool by ferry at normal working times.

I was using that as an example of why they probably didn't consider routes of under 10 miles - because other transport options are competitive with the train.

OK it's not technically Birkenhead but Seacombe ferry terminal is actually closer to central Birkenhead than to central Wallasey.

 

[John55]

Your point about using the Merseytravel tickets seem to contradict what you used earlier.

Sorry I am not sure what you mean here. Could you explain the comment a bit more please?

 

[pemma]

Sorry I am not sure what you mean here. Could you explain the comment a bit more please?

You said dismissed the figure quoted for Liverpool season tickets saying

Most Liverpool commuters will used a Trio ticket which costs £1152 for an annual all zones ticket (or a cheaper more limited ticket).

That's why I brought up the 10-19 miles bit even though you had already said it because the majority of stations covered by the Trio tickets are not 10-19 miles from Liverpool, so bringing up the price of that ticket didn't seem relevant.

Out of the Merseyrail services:
West Kirby to Liverpool: All stations less than 10 miles away.
New Brighton to Liverpool: All stations less than 10 miles away.
Chester to Liverpool: 4 stations 10 or more miles away, 10 stations less.
Ellesmere Port to Liverpool: 4 stations 10 or more miles away, 10 stations less.
Hunts Cross to Southport via Liverpool: 7 stations 10 or more miles away, 14 stations less.
Ormskirk to Liverpool: 3 stations 10 or more miles away, 7 stations less.

I've obviously not included the 4 central Liverpool stations in the above numbers.

 

[John55]

You said dismissed the figure quoted for Liverpool season tickets saying



That's why I brought up the 10-19 miles bit even though you had already said it because the majority of stations covered by the Trio tickets are not 10-19 miles from Liverpool, so bringing up the price of that ticket didn't seem relevant.

Out of the Merseyrail services:
West Kirby to Liverpool: All stations less than 10 miles away.
New Brighton to Liverpool: All stations less than 10 miles away.
Chester to Liverpool: 4 stations 10 or more miles away, 10 stations less.
Ellesmere Port to Liverpool: 4 stations 10 or more miles away, 10 stations less.
Hunts Cross to Southport via Liverpool: 7 stations 10 or more miles away, 14 stations less.
Ormskirk to Liverpool: 3 stations 10 or more miles away, 7 stations less.

I've obviously not included the 4 central Liverpool stations in the above numbers.

In the first post I made I said there were no season tickets for journeys to Liverpool of 19 miles or less which cost as much as £1547.33. So if the maximum price of a season ticket is less than £1547.33 for the range of journeys specified it is pretty clear that the average must be less.

In Merseyside the maximum price annual ticket that can be bought is the All Zones Trio, which is why I thought it useful to quote the value as most commuters into Liverpool originate in Merseyside. There are cheaper tickets as well and that only makes the data in this “survey” even less accurate.

There are only 10 stations in the 10 – 19 mile range where it is possible to buy National Rail season tickets and only 4 were it is necessary to pay more than the £1152 cost of the All Zone Trio. So unless Bryn (£1440), Rufford (£1440), Sankey (£1352) and Warrington Central (£1368) have unexpectedly large commuter flows we can be confident the average value of the season tickets the “survey” should be using is lower than the £1152 of the All Zones Trio ticket.

 

[Gareth Marston]

My colleague "worked" this service with his trolley and gave up at Salop. He managed to work it back down OK as far as I know. V. unusual for that to be a 2-car. Must have been a lot of people heading for Manchester Airport via Wilmslow methinks.

Didn't see much evidence of suitcases - I was in very front vestibule.

 

[Michael.Y]

Didn't see much evidence of suitcases - I was in very front vestibule.

He was trapped in the middle.