Might have to back it up with the occasional RPI swoop where anyone with a Bolton ticket would be followed up with the maximum vigour and publicity.
Why? For maximum bad publicity?
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Might have to back it up with the occasional RPI swoop where anyone with a Bolton ticket would be followed up with the maximum vigour and publicity.
The simplest solution would be the solution that is used for many other services across the country. At Manchester Airport, Piccadilly and Oxford Road the platform PIS would not show Bolton as a stop on the service and the PIS on the train would not mention Bolton when heading from Manchester. At Bolton, the service heading to Manchester would not be advertised - when the service is at the platform the PIS can display to not board this service as tickets from Bolton are not valid, backed up with an announcement. That would stop the majority of customers from boarding. Why not path it into platform 4 on the way to Manchester, even less likely to get anyone boarding!
Might have to back it up with the occasional RPI swoop where anyone with a Bolton ticket would be followed up with the maximum vigour and publicity.
Just miss the Bolton stop out every now and then and charge them all tickets to Preston (and pay to get back, too). That'll be enough to make the point. Run a separate service from Bolton behind it.
But then on the other hand the selfish one in me thinks that because Im heading to Scotland- I should get a seat because I will be on the train three or four times longer than someone who is going to Bolton.
We are missing the point, which is not enough seats between Oxford Road and Preston and Lancaster, which is back to trains and platforms too short, not enough stock (with 319s sitting in sidings after coming off Thameslink) and limited track capacity. How to get Bolton commuters onto other trains? Offer seats.
That's not much help if the long-distance passenger can't physically get onto the train in the first place...On a purely theoretical basis I would say a passenger travelling for 20 minutes should get to sit for 20 minutes, while a passenger travelling for 3 hours and 20 minutes could stand for 20 minutes then sit for 3 hours. Of course I'm disregarding the other factors in play like overcrowding.
They are not complying with the conditions of carriage if boarding a train marked pick up only with the intention to alight .They are complying with the National Rail Conditions of Carriage, Railway Byelaws etc as they have paid a fare and have equal rights and if anything have endured overcrowded trains, prolonged engineering works and industrial action. TPE will be entitled to lucrative ORCATS revenue also and with all the TOCs just now- every penny counts.
But then on the other hand the selfish one in me thinks that because Im heading to Scotland- I should get a seat because I will be on the train three or four times longer than someone who is going to Bolton.
I will watch this one with interest.
This thread is about stopping off peak trains at Bolton, so commuters are not relevant. From the link in the OP:We are missing the point, which is not enough seats between Oxford Road and Preston and Lancaster, which is back to trains and platforms too short, not enough stock (with 319s sitting in sidings after coming off Thameslink) and limited track capacity. How to get Bolton commuters onto other trains? Offer seats.
Yes the trains are crowded in the peaks, but off peak there are usually lots of empty seats. Northern runs 7tph all day between Bolton and Manchester, of which 5tph are now usually 4-car and the other 2tph 3-car. That makes 26 carriages per hour, of which 12 (3*4-car) run via Piccadilly/Oxford Road and the other 14 via Victoria/Salford Central.“Later this summer, we are planning to commence stopping our Anglo-Scottish services at Bolton during off-peak hours..."
Seriously? Go to all the trouble and expense of running an extra unit and crew all the way from Bolton to Scotland, carrying mainly fresh air? Just to punish maybe a few Bolton OAPs on their way back from a weekly shop in Manchester, who might have learnt from experience that the nice TPE train makes an unadvertised stop at Bolton?Just miss the Bolton stop out every now and then and charge them all tickets to Preston (and pay to get back, too). That'll be enough to make the point. Run a separate service from Bolton behind it.
Yes, it would be helpful if @Howardh could amend the misleading thread title. The source Bolton News article headline is also misleading:Apologies, that isn't clear from the thread title (TPE Scotland/Bolton/Manchester. How to stop commuters boarding?), or indeed much of the debate. How to stop commuters boarding seems more about peak times, unless something odd has happened at my end to the title. Yes, off peak seems OK, though not lavish, when I'm on the services from Lancaster.
However, the quote from TPE in the text of the story makes clear that the trains will still be running through non stop during commuting hours.Scottish trains set to stop in Bolton again - but commuters will not be allowed on.
I used to be able to get trains direct to Glasgow, Nottingham, Oxford, the South Coast and even London (Kensington Olympia)
Seriously? Go to all the trouble and expense of running an extra unit and crew all the way from Bolton to Scotland, carrying mainly fresh air? Just to punish maybe a few Bolton OAPs on their way back from a weekly shop in Manchester, who might have learnt from experience that the nice TPE train makes an unadvertised stop at Bolton?
Get real!
misleading thread title
It was very very profitable for FGW: they had a long train full of people they could charge the anytime day single for the journey (>£100, +administrative fees if they don't pay), and then charge them again for a ticket home.The GWR certainly did it to Reading commuters for exactly that reason. Fiennes writes about it in his book. It could I suppose be run to Preston only for a connection.
A couple of times a day. Surely a far more frequent connectional timetable is vastly superior?
Nothing demonstrates incompetence to the public than "Commuter fined for having valid ticket between Bolton and Manchester" plastered all over the local news. When a headline like that appears it turns a lot of prospective, leisure travellers off
This is impossible to police. If TOCs don't want commuters using long-distance services than that's not the passengers problem but an industry problem - a lack of seats.
It is also clear from some the of the posters here, they don’t really get it. These people are passengers. They are human. They are already resentful of how they have been treated. And now it is still second class citizens. They have been landed with trains that they know are too old and knackered to keep servicing Luton and the S London hood and are supposed to be grateful for it....what does that say about the attitude to Lancastrians?
Where are the new units? Where is the huge amount of new stock?
Know your place, Boltonians.
And that’s before the embarrassment that is the Manchester to Blackburn/Clitheroe line. Have any of you actualy ridden it at peak times. It was an overcrowded disgrace twenty years ago. It’s still the same old units, more overloaded and even more worn out infrastructure and stock....
It is just a really negative view of something positive.
Long distance trains are being stopped so that Boltonians can travel to/from the North/Scotland.
Commuters want to get on trains that aren’t for them.....they are Long distance trains!
The alternative is for them not to stop at all.
By all means don't advertise the calls. That will be as disincentive to all but a few.
And if a few people do get on....so what exactly? The occasional diversion away from Bolton in disruption should offer enough disincentivisation rather than a financial penalty....