Well CrossCountry's MD would appear to disagree with you as well:
Once regarded as a 'forgotten' franchise, and wrestling with capacity challenges, CrossCountry is well placed to play an expanded role in reshaping the UK rail sector, Managing Director Tom Joyner tells Tony Miles.
www.railwaygazette.com
(The article can be read for free if you register)
I'm not sure quite what he means but (taking into account that he's only talking about long distance services), it sounds like a case of "average" in terms of median/mode rather than the more typical "mean" - i.e. if there are a hundred people who use XC each year and twenty use it daily to commute (as I used to) whilst fifty of them only use it twice a year (and the others use it weekly/ monthly), then you could argue that the "average" person only uses XC once or twice a year - even though the "twenty" people in my example are each responsible for
hundreds of journeys (and therefore do significantly more XC trips each year than the "fifty" people).
Regardless, he's not saying that the "average passenger" is doing journeys of three/four/five hours, just that a lot the people who use XC each year (which make up a minority of journeys on XC each year) are only doing so a handful of times - that doesn't say anything about the journey length, just that a large number of annual customers are made up by very occasional users - I'm sure that the same is true of a lot of industries/ services - there's the old adage about "twenty percent" of people being responsible for "eighty percent" of sales.
I certainly know of a number of people who use XC regularly for everyday commutes around Sheffield/ Leeds - I know that when I go on XC services there's a huge turnover of people at the large interchange stations - whilst there are obviously some who use them for longer journeys (as I do occasionally when going back up to Scotland) I think that there should be more focus on the regular journeys than the "once a year" ones. Running a TOC on the basis of "once a year" passengers seems a strange priority (but, hey, this is the DfT...)
I agree about the three hour issue, but that is true for all but a few intercity services. And if we are to put a block on better buffet/shop facilities (clearly Virgin thought it was worthwhile) then where do we draw the line? Anything under 90 mins and no shop? So London to Birmingham would be downgraded in that case. London to Bristol would be a push, given the volume of commuter traffic from Reading. I’d say the intercity services on XC need a shop. They are too long to not have facilities to cater for a market segment they are attempting to attract.
I'd say that we should tailor facilities based on the kind of passengers/ demand that a route has, rather than the black/white approach that services have to fit a certain pigeonhole.
There seems to be a view on here that if a route was branded as "InterCity" in BR days then it must have an "InterCity" level of service nowadays, and we must have consistency between "InterCity" services... rather than saying that, if New Street to Euston is ninety minutes then there's not going to be a lot of people sitting down to a full meal on board.
In my eyes, some routes do/don't justify First Class... some routes do/don't justify a restaurant coach/ a buffet/ a trolley/ no provision... some routes do/don't justify direct services... but I don't see any hard/fast rule that "just because the duration is over a certain number of minutes there must be First Class and/or a Buffet.
Regarding bringing in surplus HSTs , if used as a 2+7 and driven well, add in the ridiculous amount of dwell time on XC services on the SW - NE route, the HST would barely lose time. And allowing safer travel with the loss of a couple of minutes potentially is probably preferable to an on time 4 car voyager rammed to the gunwhales
It's not like buses/coaches, where you can add a minute extra to the schedule here and there.
XC are tightly times to get through certain bottlenecks nationwide. I've mentioned before that a two minute delay going north out of Sheffield will mean being half an hour late at Leeds (due to the way that services are flighted, with the "stopper" being let out of Aldwarke Junction after the XC service has already passed). And getting into Leeds late will mean struggling to find a path on the line from Leeds to York, which will continue to have repercussions all the way to Glasgow.
Look in your neck of the woods at the difference in time a Voyager takes from Newton Abbot to Exeter compared to the GWR stopper - miss your slot and expect to be stuck behind a tediously slow Sprinter.
So, if you want to put slower stock (by which I mean stock unable to match Voyager diagrams - the top speed isn't the old factor) then you're going to have to try to rip up the existing timetable - it's not just a case of "a couple of minute" here and there and "barely" losing time - you either get through the bottleneck on time or you don't.
Whilst I'm sure that a large number of passengers might happily trade off a few minutes of extra duration for the sake of a much longer train, in an ideal world, it's not that simple.
This is kind of what I’m attempting to understand. Are the franchises not as profitable because of the premiums promised to the government or is the underlying operation unprofitable? I.e. let’s say a TOC is obliged to pay the government £50m per annum, but is operating at a loss of £20m per annum. Excluding the premiums, the franchise makes an operating profit of £30m. Therefore if the DfT took control of the franchise, it should expect £30m profits per annum.
I guess the danger is that, in that case, the DfT would be losing £20m profits a year that it currently accounts for - so if it took the provision in house (assuming it did everything as efficiently as the private sector company etc etc) then where is it going to make up that £20m from in its accounts? £20m less in subsidy for other TOCs? I can't see Westminster just writing a cheque for that "missing" money.
It's a genuine problem for XC though - the longer distance fares are fairly high and the services fairly busy through the core but the logistics of running such a complicated franchise must lead to a lot of awkward costs - loads of small bases/depots - lots of staff travelling "on the cushions" to take up their next shift - lots of contingencies etc (must be a lot of route knowledge to maintain each month, given all of the potential diversionary routes) - so much harder and costlier than the kind of TOC that can get away with running everything from just a handful of bases/depots.
