Why don't East Midlands Trains stop at St Albans?

[JonathanH]

Would it be a possible compromise to stop the EMR Connect Corby services at St. Albans? Are there any reasons why these trains couldn’t depart 2 or 3 minutes earlier from St. Pancras to include a St Albans stop and then regain their current timings from there northwards.

No, because it would become impossible to manage loadings on them. If they leave St Pancras earlier there is a Thameslink service in the way. Southbound they have the Nottingham right up behind

 

[Pumbaa]

Interesting you imply Nottingham is not sensitive to journey time. Many Nottingham-London passengers currently drive to Grantham for the quicker journey, and even the train with a change at Grantham isn't much longer than the time via Leicester. Does this mean that time-sensitive travellers are off the route already and a variation of plus or minus few minutes won't make much difference?

Pretty much as you say. You had to make very sizeable time savings to make significant inroads to the Nottingham market (and vv slow down for losses) and that just wasn’t possible.

As someone said upthread it should be accepted rail can’t be the best option for all journey permutations - that’s true for now for fast trains to Notts. But over time I’m sure that’ll change. It’ll be interesting to see if any of the deliberate policies to try and rebalance the industrial/cultural outputs of the Derby-Notts area have any impact on the make up of the markets, including the Metro Mayor portfolio.

No, because it would become impossible to manage loadings on them. If they leave St Pancras earlier there is a Thameslink service in the way. Southbound they have the Nottingham right up behind

And more importantly on the Up they’ll knock onto the following Nottingham arrival. And you can’t run earlier as you can’t get out at Wellingborough any earlier due to the Sheffield.

 

[edwin_m]

Pretty much as you say. You had to make very sizeable time savings to make significant inroads to the Nottingham market (and vv slow down for losses) and that just wasn’t possible.

In which case it's doubly unfortunate that they don't stop at Luton Airport Parkway. Much easier stop than Bedford, good level of usage of the airport by East Midlands passengers with no rail competition, and even a good connection to St Albans!

 

[Bald Rick]

I don't think that adding 10 minutes to a London - Sheffield journey will put people off from the train. Although journey time is one of the reason why people take trains, adding 10 minutes to a 2-hour or more journey is just a minor change, but if we can take away two changes for people boarding at St Albans / Luton Airport Parkway / Luton, many can be attracted onto the train.

I don't think that adding 10 minutes to a London - Sheffield journey will put people off from the train. Although journey time is one of the reason why people take trains, adding 10 minutes to a 2-hour or more journey is just a minor change, but if we can take away two changes for people boarding at St Albans / Luton Airport Parkway / Luton, many can be attracted onto the train.

A 10 minute journey time increase is a big deal on London Sheffield (and, for that matter, London Derby and London Leicester). Thats why the industry spent hundreds of millions of punds reducing them a few years back.

The market between London and Leicester / Derby / Sheffield is an order of magnitude larger than the market between St Albans + Lutons + Bedford and these three places. And many people in the latter market already make the journey by rail, in the St Albans case often via London. The gain in passengers and revenue from providing the latter with journeys with one fewer connection would be offset at least 10 times by the loss in passengers and revenue from the longer distance routes. And the longer distance oassengers would all have longer journey times to their disbenefit. And it would cost more to do (longer journey times costs more).

In short - fewer passengers, lower income, longer journey times, higher costs. Overall bad for passengers and bad for the taxpayer.

 

[WideRanger]

Could the perceived issues here (and some others that get mentioned frequently around the southern end of the MML) be solved by running an all stations train Northbound from Bedford to Leicester or thereabouts (with an easy connection from Thameslink) every few hours? Or would pathing constraints not allow it?

 

[Bald Rick]

Could the perceived issues here (and some others that get mentioned frequently around the southern end of the MML) be solved by running an all stations train Northbound from Bedford to Leicester or thereabouts (with an easy connection from Thameslink) every few hours? Or would pathing constraints not allow it?

Current pathing does not allow it:

Platform capacity for a terminating train at Bedford
Fitting an all stations in amongst the freight, Corbys and longer distance services
Capacity at Wigston Junctions
Platform capacity at Leicester.