Are you all too young to remember the
Prism franchises, or has history been kinder to them than I remember at the time?
They won franchises without any promise/requirement to improve things and ran them into the ground - I remember the state of Valley Lines before National Express bought/rescued them in 2000 - you'd think that modern day Northern were Operator Of The Year in comparison!
I don't know about Connex but in my area:
Northern to Barton is infrequent and more costly than the more comfy and frequent bus.
Northern to Sheffield only run 3 times a day on Saturday. The rolling stock in my opinion is less important than the frequency.
East Midlands Trains to Newark has chronic overcrowding and need an extra car. Also times are not clockface
The Barton branch, the Brigg line and the Grimsby - Newark services have always been infrequent (and irregular, in the case of the Newark service).
That's no reflection on EMT, they were like this under British Rail/ Arriva Trains Northern/ Central Trains etc - you might as well criticise ATW for only running four a day on the Heart of Wales line!
Whilst I appreciate the frustrations re the Newark line, it's a fairly empty part of the country where mass transport isn't going to do brilliantly.
GNER did operate services as traditional Intercity services whereas Virgin were changing things to make them 'more modern'. One such example, GNER offering you a cup of tea from a teapot while Virgin offering you a cup of tea in a disposable plastic container.
I was never a big fan of GNER, but a lot of the reasons that people liked them were the "attention to detail" things like the "tea from a teapot" that you mention.
I remember seeing the complaints when National Express downgraded the quality of the crisps on the East Coast franchise - I think that GNER had given people a very high standard when it came to minor things like this, so when a "common or garden" franchise like NXEC replaced them, it came as a shock to the cosseted GNER passengers.
(however GNER didn't introduce any new stock - unlike MM/ Virgin/ FGW - which is the kind of thing that I'm more bothered about - maybe if you can concentrate on the small stuff then people won't notice the bigger picture?)
Wasn't Arriva Trains Northern pretty poor?
They were good, compared to what they inherited (which I think is the best barometer).
The RRNE franchise had lost a lot of staff (poached by GNER who could pay them a lot more), bustitutions were a regular event (seeing the meltdown on this Forum when Northern cancel a couple of services... it'd have been pandemonium around the time of the millennium considering how bad the cancellations were at that time!)...
...Arriva steadied the ship, brought in sufficient staff, brought in the 37s for capacity on the Harrogate line, I think they did okay. Not sure why Arriva didn't get involved in the initial batch of franchises though (in fairness, First only won one initial franchise - Great Eastern)
You've all forgotten about MTL (ran Merseyrail and "Northern Spirit" before Arriva was induced to take them over).
Generally out of their depth as a rail operator.
It was originally the bus operator of Merseyside PTE.
Yeah, they were dire - for all of the complaints about the current "no growth" franchise, at least Northern have made improvements - MTL were content to preside over an ever decreasing circle of a franchise.
North Western Trains (part of Great Western Holdings) was a shambles too.
They had big plans until they discovered a £1m "black hole" in the accounts.
First North Western wasn't much better, and basically gave up towards the end of the franchise, waiting for a better deal from the SRA.
Today's derided Northern Rail is much better.
FNW were a dreadful franchise - much more interested in finding stock to run from Rochdale (etc) to London than dealing with the "bread and butter" of their franchise - lovely if you wanted a cheap day trip to London (with a twenty minute fag break at Tamworth due to poor pathing) but I don't think they were particularly interested in serving "Greater Lancashire".
EMT worst inter city operator.
Short formed trains, mainly 4 or 5 car Meridians on off peak services out of St Pancras, resulting in serious off peak overcrowding, esp on semi fast trains to Nottingham. Skeleton service only on Sunday with one train an hour to Nottingham and Sheffield calling virtually everywhere en route and, to add insult to injury, many of these once an hours trains only formed of 5 car Meridians
Dunno if you are old enough to remember British Rail/ Midland Mainline - but EMT are way ahead in terms of service provision now.
The 222s were bought by MM (can't blame Stagecoach for those), but EMT extended the short 222s (at the expense of reducing the nine coach ones that MM had taken on) and EMT *did* get their hands on the four Hull Trains units so that they could double the frequency to Sheffield (it was only every hour with BR/ MM - so to blame EMT for "only" running a five coach train on the second hourly path seems a bit unfair)
MM did improve things, doubling the frequency from two/hour to four/hour, but the additional services were with two coach 170s (which became three coach 170s which became four coach 222s), so still shorter than the five coach 222s that you are complaining about.
National Express East Coast: Was a failure right from the start, National Express bid far too much for their franchise causing major losses and National Express's reputation being ruined
Sea Containers signed up to the premium payments profile. It was they who, with their 'keep it at all costs' bid for the franchise renewal in 2005, grossly overbid for the franchise, having misread the market, then failed to address the poor profitability soon enough. They weren't in any way, shape or form, hoodwinked by the DfT. They tendered for the franchise with their eyes wide open.
It was GNER's Christopher Garnett who presided over the unsustainable bid that won the franchise. He takes far more of the blame than anyone at the DfT.
I don't understand why National Express are always criticised for overbidding and not predicting the biggest peacetime recession in the previous umpteen decades, yet enthusiasts excuse Sea Containers for overbidding (esp when Sea Containers didn't suffer the banking crisis and it's effect on demand).
In fairness to NX, people in 2004 (i.e. when the bids went in) weren't predicting the recession - given how big a factor economic growth (or lack of!) is on demand (and outside the control of the TOC), I think that some kind of cap/collar needs to be in place, so that things can be smoothed out
They should also IMO increase fares - the LM Only fares are so cheap I'm not surprised there is overcrowding
I find it hard to sympathise with the "LM should run eight/twelve coach trains to Crewe" argument when a significant amount of the trade north of Northampton seems to be people on bargain/advanced tickets -i.e. those not paying a great deal.
I can understand why LM are more interesting in using any additional stock south of Northampton instead.
To be honest I believe all seat reservations should be chargeable, as that would concentrate peoples' minds on only making them when they actually intend to use them. At present "reserved" tends to mean "this seat may be reserved but has a very good chance of the occupier not turning up".
I would set the price at £2.
Yeah, I agree - at the moment the large number of people buying in advance/ online means significantly more people seem to be travelling with reservations - meaning you can board an afternoon train and play "hunt the unreserved seat", only to find out that once your train is departing (i.e. all passengers boarded/ sat down) that most of the "reserved" seats are unoccupied.
There's also the phenomena of paying full price to stand on a service because many of the seats are reserved by people with much cheaper tickets!
Dunno about £2, but there definitely needs to be a tipping of the balance away from the current situation so that so many people don't reserve seats on services that they don't use. That's probably for another thread though.
