If FWC are going to run services to Shrewsbury & Telford in the near future, would it not make sense to have a :
London - Wolverhampton - Shrewsbury - Gobowen - Wrexham - Chester?
I was wondering whether they'd try the London - Nuneaton - Walsall - Wolverhampton route to get to Shrewsbury that Virgin were considering in WSMR days (which would get Walsall on the long distance "map" too - a town with almost twice the size of Shrewsbury).
The problem with running a Voyager on the current EBW service is that its a lot smaller than a Pendolino (in the way that running a single Voyager on a London - Manchester - Bolton service is too short), yet a doubled up Voyager would be too much west of Wolves.
I am not one of Crow's greatest fans but if a company promises more services and more trains and offers to pay more to obtain the franchise then it is highly likely that costs will have to be cut somewhere and that is most likely to be of staff or their wages
Before the announcement Crow was claiming that there would be hundreds of job cuts. Now that First have announced they are keeping staff numbers the same (despite all those on temporary contracts, which would have been an issue for Virgin too) he's having to change tack.
Can't be bothered to read through the whole thread.
First's share price closed down 6% - suggesting that the city aren't convinced that West Coast is going to work for them. Although I've nothing against First, it will be interssting to see how long it is before things go to pot.
There's a lot more to First than just the WCML franchise - their problems in the bus market are well documented. Plus anyone informed will have known of their WCML "win" for a few days now. Maybe the dip is due to the markets being unhappy with them keeping so many staff and not making the drastic changes suggested by Bob Crow?
All he cares about is his own personal gain, and getting himself on the TV
Crow or Branson? There are a few similarities...
what was stopping Virgin implementing some of these ideas prior to the bid ? Yes, he couldnt get the baby Pendos and run to Shrewsbury etc now, but what else in their bid could have been implemented prior to refranchising that would have given them extra brownie points ?? Why say "look what we are going to do" when there was some potential to say "look what we are doing now, let us keep it" ?
A very good point. Since the new stock and service increases (almost ten years ago now) on the WCML, there's not been a huge amount of innovation. Have Virgin decided not to make many improvements in recent years to "keep their powder dry" for the retendering?
I've got neither the time nor the interest to go through all the financial details of the bids but could the 5.8% increase in passengers not be partially accounted for by the additional stops at Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes is a rapidly growing town, and passengers wouldn't even need to necessarily use FWC's services to achieve 'passenger growth'. First have stated more services will call there, but I don't know how many extra services they are tlaking about.
An ORCATs raid perhaps?
The additional trains will mean a roughly 10% increase in the size of the fleet (depending whether you count "trains" or "coaches"), so the extra services planned (both in terms of new destinations e.g. Bolton and frequency increases e.g. Bangor) will hopefully increase passenger numbers.
If by marginal costing, you mean cramming the network to capacity to lower the unit cost per "potential" journey , I'm comfortable with that.
At the second level , having empty trains @ 10 ? Million a time running up & down all day means that someone somewhere is barking mad and missed the whole point of level 1 (network capacity).
Why run a train to Glasgow if it's 10% full , you're providing a luxury service using luxury assets for zero gain ,I don't get this at all , you might as well issue airline tickets to the passenegrs for Glasgow and send the trains back to the ROSCO.
35% sounds like a fairly poor seat utilisation, but its probably about right.
For example, in the morning peak, whilst the trains to London will be pretty full, the ones leaving the capital will be carrying a lot of empty seats. And most trains are going to be a lot busier at the London end than at the other end (Holyhead etc). So in the example of a train 10% loaded at Glasgow, by the time that's coming through Preston/ Wigan etc its going to have picked up a lot more passengers.
