What is the point of Old Oak Common?

[willgreen]

Yes I am talking anecdotally. I'm not in a position to need to provide you any evidence.

I suppose this says quite a lot about your arguments.

 

[irish_rail]

I suppose this says quite a lot about your arguments.

Hardly. I actually work on the railway. Unlike some armchair warriors I have actual first hand experience of the travelling public , and their experiences and travel patterns. At the end of the day statistics can be made to suit any argument (that's why we are probably stuck with HS2 in the first place). Sometimes a bit of context and real life experience can help a debate. Your statement is purely lazy and frankly offensive.

 

[willgreen]

Hardly. I actually work on the railway. Unlike some armchair warriors I have actual first hand experience of the travelling public , and their experiences and travel patterns. At the end of the day statistics can be made to suit any argument (that's why we are probably stuck with HS2 in the first place). Sometimes a bit of context and real life experience can help a debate. Your statement is purely lazy and frankly offensive.

All of your arguments are something of a race to the bottom - why isn’t there enough spent on the south west? Why does Yorkshire get a good service? What is the need for HS2? The thought process isn’t exactly comprehensive or network-wide, it’s pitting different areas against each other .
I’m not trying to be offensive but it lowers the tone of the conversation when you refuse to use statistics - in your eyes your unprovable anecdotes are superior to others’ hard facts - I would like to have a genuine conversation rather than shutting down avenues of debate which challenge your own thinking (not least without stooping to personal insults!). But have a nice day

 

[irish_rail]

All of your arguments are something of a race to the bottom - why isn’t there enough spent on the south west? Why does Yorkshire get a good service? What is the need for HS2? The thought process isn’t exactly comprehensive or network-wide, it’s pitting different areas against each other .
I’m not trying to be offensive but it lowers the tone of the conversation when you refuse to use statistics - in your eyes your unprovable anecdotes are superior to others’ hard facts - I would like to have a genuine conversation rather than shutting down avenues of debate which challenge your own thinking (not least without stooping to personal insults!). But have a nice day

It's far from a race to the bottom in my eyes, it's just it gets boring seeing the same regions get all the spending , all the time. I spend a fair amount of time up north, so I'm not in some south west bubble. The amount of expenditure you see up there is mind blowing. Trust me, coming home to the south west it is very noticeable. All I consistently argue for is a fairer share of the pie instead of just forever throwing money at the north , particularly when that (OOC) will actually worsen the lives of travellers to London throughout the south and south Wales. I've nothing against the north getting money spent on it, just not at the expense of other frankly more needy regions. You only need to look at railway stations up north compared with ones down south. The northern ones are in a far better state in terms of amenities, transport links, etc etc. I'm just asking for the south west , south and south Wales to benefit the way the north may do from HS2.

 

[SynthD]

All I consistently argue for is a fairer share of the pie

In a new topic, can you define ‘fair share’?

 

[MarkyT]

In all honesty, yes I probably would drop Totnes and Tiverton, with the stopper picking up passengers from these two places. The passengers would then need to board London trains at Newton Abbot or Taunton. Not ideal, but that is the way you get the under 3 hour journey with the present infrastructure constraints. I of course would not knock out Exeter, as it probably has more London bound travel than Plymouth , despite Exeters smaller size.

Totnes has high long-distance sales because the trendy town and its picturesque South Hams hinterland are home to many media and arts and other business people who travel frequently to London and other big cities, or they regularly come to stay in 2nd homes at weekends. Because the local service between Newton Abbot and Plymouth is fairly limited, long distance trains, both XC and GWR, become the de facto local regional expresses for the area and carry many local passengers as well. Routinely cutting these stops out may lose many of these lucrative passengers and trying to maintain frequency of calls on local slows alone would require a lot more services, particular difficult to justify commercially at quieter off peak times even if paths could be found which would become more difficult with faster (albeit marginally) expresses on the largely double track railway. Tiverton Parkway is a major railhead for much of north Devon; would everyone currently using it be willing or able to drive the extra 17 miles to Taunton (and immediately 17 miles back if being dropped off)? How much extra journey and interchange time would a local train connection to Taunton add? Being able to add such stops on most services today is a direct result of modern traction trends, particularly since the HSTs in the 1980s with their significant boost in power/weight ratio versus their predecessors. With steam and early diesel, the fastest express journeys were often only possible by missing out stops as the acceleration back to cruising speed could be painfully slow. Totnes in particular was difficult to serve in that era because of its location in a dip between steep banks.

 

[willgreen]

It's far from a race to the bottom in my eyes, it's just it gets boring seeing the same regions get all the spending , all the time. I spend a fair amount of time up north, so I'm not in some south west bubble. The amount of expenditure you see up there is mind blowing. Trust me, coming home to the south west it is very noticeable. All I consistently argue for is a fairer share of the pie instead of just forever throwing money at the north , particularly when that (OOC) will actually worsen the lives of travellers to London throughout the south and south Wales. I've nothing against the north getting money spent on it, just not at the expense of other frankly more needy regions. You only need to look at railway stations up north compared with ones down south. The northern ones are in a far better state in terms of amenities, transport links, etc etc. I'm just asking for the south west , south and south Wales to benefit the way the north may do from HS2.

I understand this but the truth is that the North is simply more populated and economically important. These are statistics that you dismiss, and I can understand that - they weaken your argument - but in terms of investment prioritisation the focus on HS2 to the North is understandable. To get back on topic the aim of OOC is in part to offer the SW decent access to HS2 - it will be useful for some journeys although we can argue over how many - and thus I would hope that the investment in GWML platforms at OOC will provide additional routeing benefits for SW passengers which outweigh the slight increase in journey time. Glass half full and all that!

 

[irish_rail]

I understand this but the truth is that the North is simply more populated and economically important. These are statistics that you dismiss, and I can understand that - they weaken your argument - but in terms of investment prioritisation the focus on HS2 to the North is understandable. To get back on topic the aim of OOC is in part to offer the SW decent access to HS2 - it will be useful for some journeys although we can argue over how many - and thus I would hope that the investment in GWML platforms at OOC will provide additional routeing benefits for SW passengers which outweigh the slight increase in journey time. Glass half full and all that!

By that argument (that the north is more populated and economically important), we should be angling all spending at the south east. The fact is we need to begin to level this country up. The current s*it shower have no interest in doing that. Levelling up is not and should not just be throwing money at a part of the north. Wealth needs to be spread. And not just to Manchester and Leeds.
On your other point, I still just cannot see virtually any journeys from anywhere west of Swindon or Westbury that will be cheaper, quicker and convenient by HS2. What is needed in this country is a genuinely decent, quick, high capacity XC network. But that's another debate.

 

[cle]

This attitude makes my blood boil. Because the minute anyone suggests slowing down a train to Edinburgh or Manchester by even a few minutes and there would be uproar. If we are looking to encourage use of public transport we should be striving for journeys from say Plymouth to London of under 3 hours. Headline 2hr xx minutes Plymouth to London could be a game changer. It would not be tolerated from northern cities to London, and slowing shouldn't be tolerated from Western cities either. What a sad state off affairs that some think the south west should be slowed down, whilst the north benefits from faster Hs2 journeys.

These places on HS2 will have an OOC stop at all. Maybe they won't like it, but I suspect it'll give them more options.

Plymouth by itself is not that large or important a rail market from London. Totnes isn't either, Taunton etc etc - but together they add up to something. I would say another hourly to Paignton which picked up Newton and Tivertion, maybe Taunton - might enable a fast Reading-Exeter-Totnes-Plymouth pattern - if pathable.

If this whole thread is a personal grievance (of a theoretical future 3 mins 'delay') dressed up as a genuine issue, I'm not sure it's a valid open thread and more of a 'disgusted of Plymouth' angry local rag letter.


"Nobody in the SW uses Heathrow."

Also it's very inbound in nature. From the London outbound perspective, Plymouth is an unimportant halt on the way to Cornwall.

 

[The Ham]

In all honesty, yes I probably would drop Totnes and Tiverton, with the stopper picking up passengers from these two places. The passengers would then need to board London trains at Newton Abbot or Taunton. Not ideal, but that is the way you get the under 3 hour journey with the present infrastructure constraints. I of course would not knock out Exeter, as it probably has more London bound travel than Plymouth , despite Exeters smaller size.

Fair enough, however can you be sure that the time savings would result in more people travelling, or does that result in the overall numbers reducing.

For example you'd need an extra 3% traveling from Plymouth to cover for a 10% reduction in the number of passengers at Totnes. However that's a very rough guide, as it doesn't account for the extra income for Plymouth to London tickets over Totnes to London tickets, nor does it account for the local travel to/from Plymouth or Totnes.

Depends a bit where the High Speed line rejoins the existing line. North of Newton Abbot and it probably wouldn't save more than 5 minutes max. North of Totnes maybe a bit more. But the most useful option, a High Speed line most of the way to Plymouth, could knock half an hour off the journey times, so then you'd easily be looking a sub-3-hours Plymouth to London.

A full HS line would unlikely be justifiable for the South West with a population of circa 6 million (which includes Bristol/Gloucestershire as well as Plymouth and Cornwall, so quite a geographic spread and so not all that useful for a single line - unlike HS2), whilst that's about double that is the Manchester urban area Manchester isn't that far from Liverpool and goes past the West Midlands, all of which adds a lot of population to the catchment is train services.

 

[Benjwri]

Fair enough, however can you be sure that the time savings would result in more people travelling, or does that result in the overall numbers reducing.

For example you'd need an extra 3% traveling from Plymouth to cover for a 10% reduction in the number of passengers at Totnes. However that's a very rough guide, as it doesn't account for the extra income for Plymouth to London tickets over Totnes to London tickets, nor does it account for the local travel to/from Plymouth or Totnes.



A full HS line would unlikely be justifiable for the South West with a population of circa 6 million (which includes Bristol/Gloucestershire as well as Plymouth and Cornwall, so quite a geographic spread and so not all that useful for a single line - unlike HS2), whilst that's about double that is the Manchester urban area Manchester isn't that far from Liverpool and goes past the West Midlands, all of which adds a lot of population to the catchment is train services.

I don’t think anyone is asking for a full HS line, but the infrastructure is falling apart, and there there has been very little spending in the region. Thinking more about for example electrification, even Bristol hasn’t received it. The local trains are some of the oldest in the country and there’s nothing more than a vague notion new ones may order at some point. A lot of the stations have seen no work in years, many are still in FGW colours, and some even have branding older than that.

 

[willgreen]

By that argument (that the north is more populated and economically important), we should be angling all spending at the south east. The fact is we need to begin to level this country up. The current s*it shower have no interest in doing that. Levelling up is not and should not just be throwing money at a part of the north. Wealth needs to be spread. And not just to Manchester and Leeds.
On your other point, I still just cannot see virtually any journeys from anywhere west of Swindon or Westbury that will be cheaper, quicker and convenient by HS2. What is needed in this country is a genuinely decent, quick, high capacity XC network. But that's another debate.

Of course we need to level up, but if you want to level up quickly and redistribute wealth from London then the fact remains that a better way of doing that is by concentrating on the North - for starters. I am sure you can see that there has to be a degree of priority - Plymouth for example obviously deserves a better service than say Looe due to population and economics. (And don’t forget that there has been decent investment in SW rail - 2tph on Cornish main line, Cornwall Metro, Okehampton, MetroWest coming in (and hopefully Portishead if they get round to it!), and loads of stations round Exeter. If they could finish off electrification to Bristol that would also be great). It’s not a race to the bottom, it’s more how can we level up the whole country - and HS2 as originally proposed was a fantastic way of improving connectivity between the country’s second, third and fourth largest economic areas (Brum/Manchester/Leeds). OOC as planned should have tied into that and provided another option for better connectivity (it should have been a quicker way to reach Leeds/Newcastle for example). Let’s hope that future governments can finish off HS2 and provide genuinely beneficial interchange opportunities for the SW so it doesn’t just become about getting to London ASAP. For what it’s worth I also agree with your XC comment, it’s ridiculous that we’re running four carriage trains between massive cities - but as you say that’s probably a question for another thread.

 

[The Ham]

I don’t think anyone is asking for a full HS line, but the infrastructure is falling apart, and there there has been very little spending in the region. Thinking more about for example electrification, even Bristol hasn’t received it. The local trains are some of the oldest in the country and there’s nothing more than a vague notion new ones may order at some point. A lot of the stations have seen no work in years, many are still in FGW colours, and some even have branding older than that.

Whilst I don't disagree that there certainly should be more spending in the Southwest, it's not quite a bleak as you highlight. For example the long distance services are fairly new trains (and a lot of stations are served by them, especially within Cornwall).

As long as the paintwork is in good order, What's it matter that it's not the latest colours?

My car is 12 years old, it's reliable and does what I need of it, so as long as the trains have the required capacity, the age of them are of limited concern. Bottom line, someone needs to have the oldest trains and 25 years ago my local trains were some of the oldest with the Southwest local trains being noticeably newer. Chances are within 10 years that could be repeated again, especially if there's a shift towards battery trains.

It's also worth noting that there's no longer any Pacers running in the South West, now whilst that's generally been possible by cascading other trains (unlike Northern, which got new trains).

The biggest infrastructure improvement to benefit the South West in recent years was the grade separation of the junction at Reading - and whilst this is clearly not actually within the South West, it certainly benefitted it, with more services possible along both the B&H and the GWML towards Bristol.

However, there has been other improvements, for example the line to Okehampton - which has not only created a new regular service to Okehampton but also improved the frequency of trains at Crediton.

Clearly more is needed, however, the age of trains and the age of paint are fairly minor (although if there wasn't other things happening then I'd agree that these could be critical symptoms, but other things are happening, maybe not as fast as we'd like).

Electrification should have happened in may more places (Oxford for example), and with some limited extra sections it could have been that it could have helped XC provide more capacity in the SW by having EMU's running elsewhere. 12 years ago, if the electric spine and GWML had fully happened, there was a lot of optimism that by now we could have been looking at electrification deeper into the South West.

 

[Mgameing123]

I understand this but the truth is that the North is simply more populated and economically important. These are statistics that you dismiss, and I can understand that - they weaken your argument - but in terms of investment prioritisation the focus on HS2 to the North is understandable. To get back on topic the aim of OOC is in part to offer the SW decent access to HS2 - it will be useful for some journeys although we can argue over how many - and thus I would hope that the investment in GWML platforms at OOC will provide additional routeing benefits for SW passengers which outweigh the slight increase in journey time. Glass half full and all that!

All we need now is a OOC to Gatwick/Brighton service and the South is well connected.

 

[Basil Jet]

All we need now is a OOC to Gatwick/Brighton service and the South is well connected.

There is a languishing proposal for a rather inconvenient station for the Overground service on the WLL, but the Southern service which currently runs from East Croydon would pass near OOC and Willesden Junction without calling at either.

 

[The Planner]

All we need now is a OOC to Gatwick/Brighton service and the South is well connected.

How would you do that? There is no connection to the WLL

 

[DynamicSpirit]

How would you do that? There is no connection to the WLL

With a new tunnel from OOC to Clapham Junction? No need to bring the WLL line into it, which in any case already seems to be at capacity with overloaded local services.

Along those lines, I've long thought that you could solve a lot of problems by diverting the Chiltern mainline to OOC and then tunnelling through to Clapham Junction and Bromley South, with a connection to the fast lines to East Croydon - so the Chiltern trains would then take over some of the Southern/SouthEastern services to the coast. Something like another Thameslink with a frequent service Birmingham/Oxford-High Wycombe-Ruislip-OOC-Clapham-Brighton/Kent. You'd not only provide that connectivity from the South/SouthEast to OOC but you'd free up capacity to run much more frequent metro services Marylebone-West Ruislip and Victoria-Bromley South - both lines that are currently constrained because the metro services have to share tracks with the faster trains from outside London.

That does rely though on building Crossrail 2 so people can easily get into Central London from Clapham Junction.

 

[corfield]

Which stops in the West Country do you propose dropping? Don't you think if that was doable it would already have happened?


This attitude makes my blood boil. Because the minute anyone suggests slowing down a train to Edinburgh or Manchester by even a few minutes and there would be uproar.

But what are those minutes for? Just “lost” or with a benefit.

If we are looking to encourage use of public transport we should be striving for journeys from say Plymouth to London of under 3 hours. Headline 2hr xx minutes Plymouth to London could be a game changer.

Why? What will that “headline” achieve?

You complain elsewhere that on a 3 hr journey 5-15 mins is really felt. I call BS on that, it’s less than 8% and there is no way you could identify that. I routinely travel my A to B by two line options, one at 56mins, one at 1hr 6. The latter actually feels faster because it runs much faster (but goes further). I can in no way discern that I’ve “lost” 10mins.

It would not be tolerated from northern cities to London, and slowing shouldn't be tolerated from Western cities either. What a sad state off affairs that some think the south west should be slowed down, whilst the north benefits from faster Hs2 journeys.

Slowed by giving connectivity options.

Not many people actually travel from the south west to Heathrow. It is one of those airports most people use very occasionally if at all. I've used it once in 10 years. Bristol, Exeter Cardiff and Newquay are far more relevant to people living in the West.

Gibberish. You seem to mistake your own personal experience for the wider population. LHR is widely used by the southwest as family and freinds from there can attest to - but at the moment they drive it. With OOC the train becomes an option (as it would for me if Chiltern send some down to it - currently I add to the M25). Time being less of an issue vs ease and cost (esp considering airport parking).

And the last point, as I keep saying, people in Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth are not going to travel to the north using HS2. They will continue to use XC trains. That is unless XC trains are purposely made more expensive and downgraded in order to FORCE people to travel 100s of miles east in order to travel back north and west.

Or if HS2 are so attractive and cheap… people will follow that.

 

[lachlan]

Gibberish. You seem to mistake your own personal experience for the wider population. LHR is widely used by the southwest as family and freinds from there can attest to - but at the moment they drive it. With OOC the train becomes an option (as it would for me if Chiltern send some down to it - currently I add to the M25). Time being less of an issue vs ease and cost (esp considering airport parking).

While I am in full support of stopping everything at OOC, your comment is contradictory. How much time will changing at OOC save vs Paddington for Heathrow - 15 minutes maybe? I'd be surprised if this persuades many to take the train to the airport who currently drive.

 

[BrianW]

How would you do that? There is no connection to the WLL

I recognise the loss of the Junction WLL<> GWML at North Pole; is it not still possible to make connection via Acton <> Willesden Junction? EDIT- silly me - Acton's t'other side of OOC, so not much help! I guess North Pole could be rearranged and the junction could be reinstated IF there were over-riding 'need', though a need to cross the busy main lines would be another inhibiting factor.

 

[corfield]

While I am in full support of stopping everything at OOC, your comment is contradictory. How much time will changing at OOC save vs Paddington for Heathrow - 15 minutes maybe? I'd be surprised if this persuades many to take the train to the airport who currently drive.

Fair point, but quite a bit of time surely, more like half an hour? Plus the sense of it being direct vs going in and out unnessecarily?

Cost wise at the moment it’d be the fare all the way to Padd and then Padd to LHR (quite pricey?). This’d be notably cheaper also.


Of course if Chiltern run to OOC this gives SW pax better connectivity to the Chilterns. Something I and family would love. At the moment we drive because via London is long, expensive and tedious.

 

[cle]

I think it's fair to hope that one day, sense will be seen and both NLL (more likely) and WLL (less so, and a hike - but strategically more important) - will be revisited for OOC, once the interchange explodes.

Similarly to Stratford, it may be a patchwork affair vs a big bang.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I think it's fair to hope that one day, sense will be seen and both NLL (more likely) and WLL (less so, and a hike - but strategically more important) - will be revisited for OOC, once the interchange explodes.

Similarly to Stratford, it may be a patchwork affair vs a big bang.

It would be nice to think that, and there's certainly something to be said for letting the new interchange evolve as time goes by and passenger numbers grow. But the problem to my mind is that NR/TfL aren't even proposing to make any passive provision to reroute the Overground at a later date. Also they are planning to build two new Overground stations some distance from OOC which pretty much seals in the current NLL/WLL routes - especially given the super-high (and therefore super-expensive) standards to which new stations these days tend to be built.

 

[irish_rail]

While I am in full support of stopping everything at OOC, your comment is contradictory. How much time will changing at OOC save vs Paddington for Heathrow - 15 minutes maybe? I'd be surprised if this persuades many to take the train to the airport who currently drive.

You got there before I could. Utter gibberish. The idea that having to change at Paddington puts people off Heathrow by train, yet the minute they can change at OOC they'll ditch the car is preposterous!

 

[The Ham]

While I am in full support of stopping everything at OOC, your comment is contradictory. How much time will changing at OOC save vs Paddington for Heathrow - 15 minutes maybe? I'd be surprised if this persuades many to take the train to the airport who currently drive.

Looking at realtime trains it's about 5 minutes of travel time each way, given the frequency of service would be similar the only other significant saving could be walk distance between services.

As such about 15 minutes sounds about right.

However as Plymouth to OOC would be more likely to achieve a sub 3 hour journey time then to Paddington some may suggest that it would see significant passenger numbers....

 

[stuu]

Fair point, but quite a bit of time surely, more like half an hour? Plus the sense of it being direct vs going in and out unnessecarily?

Cost wise at the moment it’d be the fare all the way to Padd and then Padd to LHR (quite pricey?). This’d be notably cheaper also.

I don't see any reason it would be cheaper, it's only a couple of miles different. You can get very good prices for Heathrow-Paddington-SW journeys now, last time I did that it was about £3 extra including HEX compared to a ticket from Paddington.

Contrary to certain opinions, trains from Paddington often have a fair few passengers obviously off long haul flights, doubling back is definitely done. OOC won't make much difference from the GWML but it will be very useful for changing onto the Elizabeth Line. Although some people refuse to believe that either

 

[Benjwri]

the only other significant saving could be walk distance between services

Although dependent on the connection time provided by journey planners at OOC, could allow tighter connections, and therefore theoretically faster journeys when a change at Paddington was involved.

However as Plymouth to OOC would be more likely to achieve a sub 3 hour journey time then to Paddington some may suggest that it would see significant passenger numbers....

I wonder if GWR will start quoting times from OOC as London to XXX times?

 

[cle]

If Plymouth-London was advertised as 2h53 or something (to OOC), how many more travellers would that entice?

It’s always going to be far quicker than driving, and the airport closed due to no market, so frankly there aren’t untapped folks or quicker ways. Anyone who wants to take the train already would.

 

[Mgameing123]

How would you do that? There is no connection to the WLL

Build platforms for the Southern train at Hythe Road I think it's called? Old Oak Common Lane is planned to have platforms for the West London Orbital and North London Link.

 

[The Planner]

Build platforms for the Southern train at Hythe Road I think it's called? Old Oak Common Lane is planned to have platforms for the West London Orbital and North London Link.

Right, so it not really OOC to Brighton then.