Leicester rail users 'most underserved' in Britain, survey suggests

[thenorthern]

Just seen this on BBC News

Leicester rail users 'most underserved' in Britain, survey suggests


Rail users in Leicester are the most underserved in Britain, according to research which suggests the city has the fewest number of railway stations per head of population.

The city has one railway station serving almost 350,000 people.
Campaign for Better Transport Leicestershire said public transport "could be better".

It has been campaigning for the Ivanhoe line, from Leicester to Burton-upon-Trent, to reopen to passenger trains.

The group's chairman, Terry Kirby, said: "We've struggled for 20 to 30 years. Leicester station is busy and there are only four platforms.

"Cardiff is a similar sized city but it has more than a dozen stations."
The capital of Wales has 20 stations, which works out as one per 17,858 people.

The research, carried out by the Press Association, listed 10 places with the fewest number of railway stations.

Areas served by a mixture of mainline and light rail services, such as Sunderland and Wolverhampton, were not included in the ranking.

The City of London was found to top a list of the highest concentration of stations per population, with one for just 1,460 residents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-37212969

I don't get this article though it just says what we all know that in the East Midlands the three cities have one main station with a couple of small suburban halts served mostly hourly on semi-rural lines.

Not sure as well how opening the line from Leicester to Burton-on-Trent would help though as it would just be a new line and not new stations.

 

[telstarbox]

And said station has services in five directions including an airport and London. Meaningless.

 

[Comstock]

Indeed. I don't think you can just divide the population by the number of stations and get a meaningful figure.

Just up the A6, Derby has 4 stations (if you count Duffield), but only one of those has services useful to the majority of people in the city.

 

[GatwickDepress]

By using their logic, Doleham is the most overserved station in the south east!

 

[thenorthern]

I don't get why Oldham is included though as it has Metrolink and quite a large number of stops within Oldham.

The logic for the press association is flawed though as it doesn't take into account the number of trains for example Bradford may have two stations but neither of them go anywhere except the couple of trains to London, Preston on the other hand has services to most parts of the country but by the PA's logic its worst served than Bradford.

 

[najaB]

By using their logic, Doleham is the most overserved station in the south east!

Taking that logic to the extreme: Tyndrum, 1 station per 83 inhabitants!

 

[thenorthern]

Taking that logic to the extreme: Tyndrum, 1 station per 83 inhabitants!

Or Teesside Airport station that serves no one.

 

[3141]

People compete to be considered the worst off. For railways it was the North generally. Or East Anglia. Now Leicester's trying to grab the lead. You can always find some statistics that prove you've nothing better to do.

 

[Pigalle]

Don't the people who live in Syston and (South) Wigston consider themselves living in Leicester? When I lived in Wigston I never considered it anything but a part of Leicester.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Time for another argument about the ridiculous and arbitrary nature of borders and boundaries I guess, Leicester is quite compact in terms of how much of the urban area surrounding the city that it actually governs and it could easily swallow up Wigston and Syston and call those places Leicester if it wanted to and it would get two more stations overnight. Neither of those stations are particularly well served of course, but the premise of the initial argument is silly to say the least. Leicester station itself is very well served, it has very fast and frequent trains to London, a decent (if overcrowded) Birmingham service and better connections than most places northbound at Derby and Sheffield and better cross London connections than most given it's direct trains into Thameslink land. I'm not sure anyone can claim they are hard done by, even if they don't have passenger trains to Burton.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

And said station has services in five directions including an airport and London. Meaningless.

Two airports. Three if you count East Midlands!

 

[thenorthern]

Don't the people who live in Syston and (South) Wigston consider themselves living in Leicester? When I lived in Wigston I never considered it anything but a part of Leicester.

Syston is in Charnwood while South Wigston is in Oadby and Wigston.

Its misleading stats as it should really be urban areas to measure passenger stations to population. Surely though somewhere like Newcastle-under-Lyme or Washington should be top as they have large populations and no station.

 

[Harbornite]

Whingey sods, they've got two railways that go to Loughborough and will soon have two going to Nottingham!

 

[Busaholic]

Bristol must be the city with the worst rail service for the population size.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Syston is in Charnwood while South Wigston is in Oadby and Wigston.

Its misleading stats as it should really be urban areas to measure passenger stations to population. Surely though somewhere like Newcastle-under-Lyme or Washington should be top as they have large populations and no station.

Dudley is the winner on that front, both in terms of having a large population with no station and how misleading it can be as there are at least half a dozen stations within a mile or two of most of the population of the town.

 

[edwin_m]

Indeed. I don't think you can just divide the population by the number of stations and get a meaningful figure.

Just up the A6, Derby has 4 stations (if you count Duffield), but only one of those has services useful to the majority of people in the city.

Duffield is well outside the Derby city boundary and also outside the Derby built-up area, so by either measure shouldn't be one of Derby's stations.

Going by urban areas that makes Derby the worst off, as although both conurbations have three stations, all of Leicester's are served at least hourly, the service at Peartree is parliamentary and Spondon not much better.

 

[Class 170101]

In terms of destinations available I think Leicester could be better served.

 

[thenorthern]

Duffield is well outside the Derby city boundary and also outside the Derby built-up area, so by either measure shouldn't be one of Derby's stations.

Going by urban areas that makes Derby the worst off, as although both conurbations have three stations, all of Leicester's are served at least hourly, the service at Peartree is parliamentary and Spondon not much better.

All the East Midlands cities are bad the trains are semi-rural branch lines which stop at small understaffed suburban halts on their way into the cities mostly hourly. Such as Carlton which is served by the Newark Castle trains but not a dedicated Nottingham service.

 

[Bald Rick]

Q: Name the city outside the South East that has the most frequent direct 'Intercity' quality services to London per standard off peak hour.

 

[tbtc]

People compete to be considered the worst off. For railways it was the North generally. Or East Anglia. Now Leicester's trying to grab the lead. You can always find some statistics that prove you've nothing better to do.

Agreed.

There seems to be a perverse pleasure in terms of "proving" how much worse off your local area is compared to other ones.

The grass is always greener - you'll always be able to find somewhere that appears to have cheaper fares or that has a lower/higher population (depending on how you define boundaries) or find a way of skewing the figures to focus on the number of seats/ carriages/ trains per hour to suit your personal prejudices.

It makes for a good story in the local press - LOOK HOW HARD DONE BY WE ARE - yet Leicester has most services per hour operated by post-privatisation stock (170s, 222s), Leicester has seen significant frequency increases since privatisation (London frequency doubled?), Leicester will be seeing the MML electrified in the next few years - I'm sure that next week it'll be an argument about how disadvantaged Plymouth or Hull or Liverpool is - and we'll go round in circles yet again!

 

[Mugby]

Q: Name the city outside the South East that has the most frequent direct 'Intercity' quality services to London per standard off peak hour.

Might that be Leicester by any chance!

The only legitimate complaint Leicester might have is poor early northbound services, nothing until after 7am Mon-Sat. and nothing until after 10am on Sundays.

 

[WatcherZero]

Surely its Reading?
They may not be branded intercity but they are intercity services.

 

[thenorthern]

Surely its Reading?
They may not be branded intercity but they are intercity services.

Reading is in the South East of England region and sorry to be pedantic but Reading isn't a city its a town.

Q: Name the city outside the South East that has the most frequent direct 'Intercity' quality services to London per standard off peak hour.

Most I have is Birmingham and St. Albans which both have 8 trains per hour.

 

[yorksrob]

The East Midlands does seem comparatively bereft of local train services. It's all well and good having the most frequent IC service into London, but people still need to get to Leicester from elsewhere in the region. Dare I say it, a situation exacerbated by the loss of the Ivanhoe line and the section of the GC between Nottingham and Rugby.

 

[edwin_m]

The East Midlands does seem comparatively bereft of local train services. It's all well and good having the most frequent IC service into London, but people still need to get to Leicester from elsewhere in the region. Dare I say it, a situation exacerbated by the loss of the Ivanhoe line and the section of the GC between Nottingham and Rugby.

Like most cities of a similar size (broadly up to 0.5 million in built-up area), Leicester, Derby and Nottingham lost what suburban services they had to tram and later bus competition in the first half of the 20th century. The distances were simply too short to make fast but infrequent heavy rail competitive against a tram or bus that was slower but probably stopped at the end of most streets and ran every few minutes. Increases in employment, population and congestion would have made rail more relevant over the last 30 years or so, but once a line has been closed and the land sold off in an urban area restoration is virtually impossible.

 

[thenorthern]

One thing I have noticed is the combined population for the three East Midlands cities is well over a million but there is no frequent shuttle services between the cities and the towns between them similar to the shuttle services from Birmingham to Coventry/Wolverhampton/Walsall, Leeds to Bradford, Newcastle to Gateshead/Sunderland as well as many other areas.

With the East Midlands there is only fast inter-city or semi-fast rural services between the cities and its not a case of you can just turn up at the station you need to know the times that the trains run. For example between Derby and Leicester there is only the twice hourly London to Sheffield service also many of the smaller stations in the other cities don't seem to have links to the other cities such as Derby is the only station in Derby with links to Leicester.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I don't get this article though it just says what we all know

"We all", as in RailUKforums readers, might all know it. But the BBC has a wider audience...

Not sure as well how opening the line from Leicester to Burton-on-Trent would help though as it would just be a new line and not new stations.

Really? You can say categorically there would be no new stations? Have you seen final plans for the project?

 

[azz7008]

Leicester's local links are pretty poor for a city of it's size. There is always a major flow of traffic to and from Coventry, Birmingham and to a lesser extent Leamington Spa. If you look at the journey times between Coventry and Leicester it's much faster just to do it in a car, not to mention the state of the Coventry - Nuneaton line and that the Nuneaton - Leicester trains are often overcrowded.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Just seen this on BBC News



I don't get this article though it just says what we all know that in the East Midlands the three cities have one main station with a couple of small suburban halts served mostly hourly on semi-rural lines.

Not sure as well how opening the line from Leicester to Burton-on-Trent would help though as it would just be a new line and not new stations.

We've been discussing the Ivanhoe line and its potential very recently!

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=133925

 

[70014IronDuke]

One thing I have noticed is the combined population for the three East Midlands cities is well over a million but there is no frequent shuttle services between the cities and the towns between them similar to the shuttle services from Birmingham to Coventry/Wolverhampton/Walsall, Leeds to Bradford, Newcastle to Gateshead/Sunderland as well as many other areas.

The long-planned last-minute money-saving move to sever the Nottingham-Leicester-Coventry service at Nuneaton during the rebuild was outrageous. A very short-sighted decision, ruining a service on a very important local corridor that far from cutting, should have been developed.

I assume the costs of re-instatement now would make it a no-goer.

 

[thenorthern]

The long-planned last-minute money-saving move to sever the Nottingham-Leicester-Coventry service at Nuneaton during the rebuild was outrageous. A very short-sighted decision, ruining a service on a very important local corridor that far from cutting, should have been developed.

I assume the costs of re-instatement now would make it a no-goer.

Would be impossible now as the track layout at Nuneaton changed.