Out of interest what's the bottom end of that range ?
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Out of interest what's the bottom end of that range ?
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Dr Hoo
Established Member
The range lies from 19% to 55% growth, to 2040, at an overall level. As might be expected there are more detailed figures for various vehicle types, road types and regions of the country.
The '2015 forecasts' document is at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...a/file/411471/road-traffic-forecasts-2015.pdf and is a slightly heavy 73-page read.
As someone who during my railway career was associated with many successful new or re-opened station and line schemes I am as keen as the next person to see the rail network grow, flourish and increase its contribution to the nation. However, experience taught me that ideas for expansion had to 'go with the flow' of economic, demographic, political and planning realities. Understanding where the locations of greatest need, pressure and opportunity really are is a key part of the battle.
The '2015 forecasts' document is at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...a/file/411471/road-traffic-forecasts-2015.pdf and is a slightly heavy 73-page read.
As someone who during my railway career was associated with many successful new or re-opened station and line schemes I am as keen as the next person to see the rail network grow, flourish and increase its contribution to the nation. However, experience taught me that ideas for expansion had to 'go with the flow' of economic, demographic, political and planning realities. Understanding where the locations of greatest need, pressure and opportunity really are is a key part of the battle.
So we're looking at a mid-point of around 37%, which would still represent a fair increase.
For me, a lot of the worse places for traffic are precisely the beauty spots that combine pre-motor age small towns and villages that are also tourist magnets, as well as the urban motorways of Leeds. Plus there's the fact that I don't drive, so without decent public transport, I won't get there.
In terms of reopenings of greatest need, I fully accept that other routes may have a greater priority. The extension of East - West to Cambridge and Bere Alston to Okehampton seem to be high up there in terms of Connectivity and strategic value, yet even with these, we seem to be left waiting. If we were to get some progress on these, your argument might ring truer with me. Until then, it just seems to be procrastination at all costs.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
I cannot speak for others but suggest that prioritisation is the way forward. By their capital intensive nature railways are 'volume hungry' and these volumes are normally to be found in urban areas or between major regional centres rather than in Keswick.
I also recognise that re-opened railways can greatly support re-generation and development, as seen, for example on the Robin Hood Line, Ebbw Vale and in the Borders, which is where this interesting thread started. However, in the context of a National Park it is hard to see how the North Lakes line has much potential in this direction. East-West Rail on the other hand is going forward (slowly, sadly) on the back of tens of thousands of new houses, jobs, business parks, etc.
Indeed, so long as we actually get somewhere.
Here are some statistics from the DfT and Office of National Statistics.
Conversely in 2004, the Northern franchise was awarded on a no growth basis. Growth in the Leeds City Region has been 67% in 10 years. How wrong can you be and Northern passengers have suffered as a result
200 billion litres of diesel are burnt annually in road transport. That is the capacity of Kielder Water.
Peak Oil Group of academics predicted in 2000 that World oil production would peak in 2015 causing price increases. It actually peaked in 2009 due to unprecedented demand for oil in India and China over the last ten years causing a gap between demand and supply.
In 1999, Britain became a net importer of oil again after 30 years of being an exporter. In 1999 the price of petrol was £0.62 per litre but peaked in 2012 at £1.41 when it should have been £0.84 with normal inflation. This is why car use has flatlined since 2004 and possibly the cause of increase in rail growth since then.
BUT, in 1971 a gallon of petrol was £0.33 and return fare from Harrogate-Leeds (18 miles), my daily journey at that time, was £0.34. In 2015 a gallon of petrol is now £5.60 but the return peak time rail fare is £10.00. Without above inflation fare increases and the additional cost of running a privatised railway this fare should only be £6.00. That does not indicate that 21% growth in rail in the last three years is due to cost of car commuting. Maybe road congestion and journey time has an influence?
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The original benefit/cost ratio for east-west rail was only just above Government baseline of 1.5 until 100,000 fictitious houses were factored into the equation and BCR leapt to an incredibly high 11.0. This is assuming that everybody who buys one of these fictitious houses is going to use the railway which they will not.
This is impossible for the Keswick line as development on any scale is not allowed within the National Park but the people who live there and the people who want to visit should not be denied the ability of rail to take them there if there is a need. BCR is a way of prioritising but should include traffic emissions saved, air quality in corridors where people live and better demand forecasting. Greater regard should be taken of amount of petroleum imports saved and connectivity and sustainability, the two big words that are the political flavours at the moment. It should not be possible to massage the final figure by adding houses just because there is land available for possible development along a reinstatement route. This unfairly prioritises projects in the same way that any road scheme is investment and any rail infrastructure is subsidy.
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Don't assume that fares from Harrogate to Leeds are representative of the whole country. The majority of the 'above inflation fare rises' for the majority of passengers happened between 1989-1994 (Network SE official records). And don't assume that fuel is the main cost of motoring. My first car insurance as an 18 year old was £300. Taking inflation into count that would now be about £600. Actually, now it would be £3k (I just checked for a similar car).
Nevertheless, journey time and road congestion has had an impact on commuting, particularly to cities. But this is not the case in rural areas.
Re the EW link - I would be very surprised if the 100k new houses in the business case led to an assumption that they would *all* use the train. Unless EWR had 30 tph of 8 coach trains they wouldn't fit on. Much more likely that a proportion in residents were assumed to use the train, and that proportion would be similar to measured rail use in similar circumstances.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
You're correct that for most people, fuel is not the main cost of motoring. However, in most cases, it is the biggest visible *marginal* cost of each car journey - which is likely to be the more important factor in people's minds when they compare whether to travel by car or train.
Well it's a good job that fuel costs have dropped 30% in the last couple of years then. More money for people to spend on non-essentials.
The main reason people drive rather than use the train is because a car takes them from where they are to where they want to go. A train takes them from somewhere they aren't to somewhere they don't want to be. People choose the train because the drive is too slow, stressful, or expensive, not because the car is inconvenient.
Most people visiting the lake district want to visit the lake district, not a small town. A line to Keswick will allow people to go to Keswick. The people who will change onto a bus at Keswick are equally able to change onto a bus at Penrith or Windermere. Anyone wanting to visit Butermere, or the Honistor pass, or climb Helvelyn, or have tea in Ambleside, or visit Boot station, or go boating on Ulswater or stay at the Black Sail youth hostel, or the Seathwaite camping barn, are not going to be able to do so from Keswick railway station.
I'd love to see a train to Keswick. I'd love to see some lighter rail winding its way in the valleys too. I don't see it being viable.
The trouble is they don't and I wouldn't change onto a bus at Penrith for Keswick either. Visitors accept that train to train transfers even with heavy luggage is acceptable within a station but train/bus transfer is inconvenient.
The worst bit of flying abroad is the bus transfer from long stay car parks particularly at the end of the holiday. That is why I preferred Teesside airport as the long stay car park was only 100 yards from check in. Sadly hardly any holiday charter flights land there now.
I have a bus pass and probably haven't used it more than 20 times in 8 years and only between Ripon and Harrogate. I wouldn't have used it at all had there been a railway line open in Ripon as I would have preferred to pay a railcard fare than free ride on a bus.
For the amount NYCC spends annually on bus passes it would have paid for reinstating rail to Ripon in those 8 years.
Had I wished to have tea in Ambleside I would have stayed in the Windermere area rather than Keswick and used the lake steamers.
I must admit that train from Leeds to Windermere is not very convenient via Carnforth with only four trains per day but TPEx via Manchester is better even though more expensive.
Again short-sighted penny pushers closed the through platforms at Carnforth on the WCML resulting in additional journey time to Lancaster and back for connections to Windermere.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
But until the new franchises were granted, my good lady wife and I could be assured that First TPE would use Class 185 units, with the first-class accommodation that, together with the seat reservations pre-booked with the ticket, meant a rather nice way of travelling to and fro Windermere station. We are indeed fortunate not to live so very far away from the Manchester Airport station, as I still have unlimited use of the consultancy car park space there that was one of my leaving presents when I took retirement in 2010. Of course, in my post-stroke situation, Patricia even at the age of 74 still finds enjoyment in driving the Range Rover....God bless her...
I understand that this Manchester Airport to Windermere service is one of the services that will now be transferring to Arriva as the new franchisee of the Northern Rail franchise. We have experience of Arriva running units with no first class accommodation in the Class 175 units from Wilmslow to Shrewsbury, Ludlow and Hereford. To add insult to injury, sometimes these are only the 2-car rather than the three-car variety.
Although I usually travel via Bentham to avoid the TPE crush at various places.
Would it? I doubt it. And it wouldn't have been any use to the vast majority of the 7m concessionary bus passengers in N Yorks who don't want to travel between Ripon and Harrogate.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
While I have much sympathy with the view that some Beeching closures should not have happened, I think the question of seasonal traffic is a bit more nuanced that some people suggest.
Seasonal traffic requires extra rolling stock which is either running mostly empty or stored in sidings for the rest of the year, and there is a cost attached to this as well as a benefit. If today's railway could make money by providing more or longer trains at holiday peak times then it would be happening today. However the fact it largely doesn't indicates that the economics of seasonal traffic don't even justify the retention of loco-hauled stock where the capital cost has been written down and the maintenance regime can be reduced to reflect limited usage.
In the Beeching era the costs were very different but if the railway had made a push to retain seasonal traffic then it would probably be finding it very costly to continue to do so today. Seasonal traffic would also have declined considerably because holidaymakers with large amount of baggage tend to prefer to drive, and because the traditional mass exodus to the nearest seaside resort was being replaced by a more diverse pattern with a large slice of the market taking package holidays abroad. So perhaps Beeching was right on this question, though maybe for the wrong reasons.
There is also the question fo infrastructure provision for extra seasonal services, which was presumably included in Beeching's costs as it was there the whole time. If seasonal traffic was uneconomic then it would have been worthwhile to investigate whether the railway should have been "rationalised" to carry the year-round service only - a major failing of the process in my view.
Seasonal traffic requires extra rolling stock which is either running mostly empty or stored in sidings for the rest of the year, and there is a cost attached to this as well as a benefit. If today's railway could make money by providing more or longer trains at holiday peak times then it would be happening today. However the fact it largely doesn't indicates that the economics of seasonal traffic don't even justify the retention of loco-hauled stock where the capital cost has been written down and the maintenance regime can be reduced to reflect limited usage.
In the Beeching era the costs were very different but if the railway had made a push to retain seasonal traffic then it would probably be finding it very costly to continue to do so today. Seasonal traffic would also have declined considerably because holidaymakers with large amount of baggage tend to prefer to drive, and because the traditional mass exodus to the nearest seaside resort was being replaced by a more diverse pattern with a large slice of the market taking package holidays abroad. So perhaps Beeching was right on this question, though maybe for the wrong reasons.
There is also the question fo infrastructure provision for extra seasonal services, which was presumably included in Beeching's costs as it was there the whole time. If seasonal traffic was uneconomic then it would have been worthwhile to investigate whether the railway should have been "rationalised" to carry the year-round service only - a major failing of the process in my view.
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In the 8 years to end-march 2014 NYCC spent £60M on concessionary fares.
Would that have paid for reinstating rail to Ripon?
And bearing in mind that NYCC ranges from Selby to Scarborough ...
Doesn't matter anyway since the scheme is a national requirement.
Not sure I agree with that analysis.
I think a lot of the seasonal traffic referred to on seaside routes, for example, was already run by DMU stock by the time Beeching wielded his axe. It would have been more like regional commuter routes today where the DMU's were very busy some times and days of the year, but lightly loaded others.
We're used to this situation today, so there's no reason why a larger network would have had to have had thousands of carriages in siding 90% of the year.
Now, my follically challenged little friend, I do not make statements like this on this forum without being sure of my facts. There are those here who just relish shooting posters down for inaccuracies.
In 2014 there were 570,000 bus pass concessions on the No.36 Ripon-Harrogate bus and probably a similar number between Harrogate and Leeds. I can't think of any other corridor in North Yorkshire with numbers this high. What I do know is that air quality from all traffic along this road is as polluted as the A1(M) north of Dishforth.
Bus passes, as you probably know, are gradually being phased out by 2020 for those under 65. Unfortunately these savings will not be diverted in rail infrastructure.
I was on the committee (Chairman) that commissioned the civil engineering feasibility for Harrogate-Ripon in 2005. Everything was taken into consideration from curves to culverts, dynamic loops to dynamic stabilisation, track circuits to station toilets, with and without electrification. In 2005, even with optimism bias of 33% it came well within £60m. It could still probably be done in 2016 for less than £60m.
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Whilst a devious b******, I don't think Beeching was devious enough to solve seasonal traffic problems by closing holiday resort branch lines for that reason alone. That would have sorted itself out with time by natural wastage, but branch lines to holiday resorts should have been retained if only to assist overcrowded resort car parking problems.
Apologies as I was on a mobile phone yesterday and didn't spot this bit when commenting.
Had some of those lines survived today, I believe that they would have probably ended up as year round MU operations, rather than large seasonal loco hauled - much like the coastal resort lines that survive today.
Exactly. Another of the findings of Beeching was that a huge proportion of the wagon and carriage fleets were greatly underemployed. He started the process, which has continued to this day, of choosing not necessarily to fulfil the peak demand (diurnal or seasonal). More recently, considerable marketing efforts and in particular yield management have been used to try to fill off-peak capacity. Thus the surviving coastal and rural branches are often surrounded by large areas of vacated carriage sidings and terminate in a couple of residual platforms. In some cases, it has been necessary to increase the number of such platforms – for example, at Whitby. Now it is a well established principle that local optimisation can lead to global chaos. At the present time, ROSCOs – under Department for Transport guidance – tend to procure slightly less than the capacity which can uncomfortably be filled in the peak. The result is to reduce the subsidy requirement - but also to choke off peak demand, which is efficient in accounting terms but impacts the ability of railways to make a real contribution to the reduction of congestion and of the need for new roads. Of course, the road coach industry, and also small railway companies which are flexible enough to provide older rolling stock, locomotives and sometimes crews, make a small contribution. Meanwhile, I would suspect that many road users stuck in traffic jams to the coast wish that someone had had the wit to retain at least some of the destroyed rail capacity.
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But in the case of the surviving lines, the railway was in general "rationalised" to carry the year-round service only. The interesting - if rather academic - question then arises: if the full additional capital and maintenance costs of road infrastructure that has been provided (e.g. A64 to Scarborough) and journey disbenefits where road improvements have not been made were taken into account, did that rationalisation process go too far? The fact that there are still surviving summer Saturday services, sometimes with almost eccentric rolling stock, suggests that perhaps it did.
The overall conclusion I reach is that lines closed that should not have done - among which Keswick to Penrith (or better, Carlisle?); and that rationalisations occurred that went too far. In almost every case sadly the very high costs currently associated with reinstatement make it very difficult to justify reopening. In addition, the Balkanisation of the system (think ROSCOs and franchisees) makes it almost impractical to make short-term reallocations of stock and of people. Thus an inherently inflexible system, the railway, becomes even more difficult to adapt. That matters because railways are usually greener and safer than alternatives.
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Where would we be right at this moment if somebody had not rescued "old" Mark 2 coaches and "old" locomotives from the cutters torch?
1. Carlisle-Barrow, "old" everything but much more comfortable than the normal daily stuff. This has attracted me for a couple of trips on the West Cumbrian Coast purely for the ride having not been on this line since selling my grandparents house in Workington in 1989.
TOCs should make more of this on scenic routes with Mark2/3 coaches and a variety of locos.
Carlisle-Penrith-Keswick twice a day as an extension of a loco-hauled service on the S&C between regular stock would be ideal and good use of stock rather than laying over in Carlisle.
Stopping at every gatepost resulting in a Leeds-Carlisle journey time of 160 minutes has become a deterrent to many potential passengers from the West Riding to West and North Scotland.
Additional limited stop loco-hauled or even DMU services travelling mush faster than 60mph on a route originally engineered for 100mph in many places is a must both for sightseers and end to end journey times from Leeds to Scotland via the S&C.
There is no more traffic on the G&SWR than the S&C yet linespeed on this route is higher to allow maximum speed of the Class 156s and empty MGR freight trains. Why not the same on the S&C? Nobody can give an answer.
2. Caledonian Sleepers, "old" Class 86, 87 and 73.
It will be interesting to see the logistics of the Oban experiment. Splitting/joining at Crianlarich with a loco stationed there overnight? Maybe that additional Mark2 BSO in Virgin livery seen in Edinburgh this week will be added at Edinburgh for Oban and two sleeping cars making a three coach portion to Oban and three coach portion to Fort William. I do hope this is successful and builds to a separate train from the West Highlands right through to London or join with just the Inverness portion if not. Aberdeen could then run separately to Edinburgh and down the ECML to Kings Cross.
3. Forth Road Bridge specials, "old" Mark2 coaches.
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What has made me split blood over the recently published NYCC Strategic Transport Prospectus is the proposal to complete dualling of the York-Scarborough A64 costing £525m in the to-be-done-now column when there is a parallel rail line and similarly dualling the A59 from Harrogate to York costing £460m when likewise there is a parallel rail line, yet no road improvement on one of the busiest and most dangerous roads (24 fatalities since 2000) in North Yorkshire between Harrogate and Ripon and Harrogate-Ripon-Northallerton reinstatement costing £180m is only an aspiration for delivery in 2045.
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There has been extensive discussion concerning Harrogate to Ripon and Northallerton reopening at http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=122586. Some commentators have pooh-poohed a reinstatement which might cost £180 million and is unfortunately a depressingly distant prospect. The two road improvements in North Yorkshire highlighted by Deltic08 have a £1 billion pricetag attached. Ripon reinstatement and electrification and further double tracking of Leeds to Harrogate and York could both be done for one third the price of the road improvements. The high market share of rail between Skipton and Ilkley and Leeds and Bradford suggests the enormous potential for improvements to the Harrogate routes. Already, under the new Northern franchise, we should be looking forward to 4 trains per hour between Leeds and Harrogate in the fairly near future. I suspect that will release significant pent-up demand. All these factors add up to a qualitatively good case for significant rail improvements long before 2045.
There's facts and facts.
Fact 1) opening the line between Harrogate and Ripon does precisely nothing for the other 6.5m concessionary bus trips per year in North Yorkshire.
Fact 2) your study might have said £60m in 2005, but note that the costs of every railway opened / reopened in this country that required full reconstruction (ie not upgrading of a freight only line) since 2005 has cost at least £12m a mile. Some have cost much, much more.
Fact 3) railway construction costs since 2005 have gone up. Some markedly so.
Fact 4) optimism bias is 60% to make a compliant DfT business case
Fact 5) I'm not little
Not sure about Llandudno, but Lelant Saltings, the P&R for St Ives (the real one), in it's first 1978 summer, moved 81k people from using bus/car to using the train, and attracted 54k people who wouldn't have gone otherwise.
However by 2007 usage had dropped to 251 per year. It has since recovered to 115k (roughly 1978 levels), showing there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I think that generally the St Ives line is very well used, at least in summer. St Ives may well be a special case with parking though.
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Did you really mean just 251/year (<1 per day)?
I assume 2007 was 25k (!)
I think St Ives is definitely a special case! And Park & Ride is a different concept from the generality.
St Ives is a success, but not sure how widely the same approach could be used.
That's what Wikipedia says, and it's backed up by the spreadsheet at
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/excel_doc/0006/5982/station_usage_0708.xls
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Does the general geography of the environs and the layout of the town have anything to do with this at St Ives. Last time when we were there on a day visit as part of a summer holiday based in Falmouth, we drove the hire car to the car park at the top area and then took the regular shuttle bus from its terminus directly outside the car park directly into the town.
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