Wales & Borders Franchise Consultation

[Gareth Marston]

My thoughts exactly. Isn't the whole point of Advances to fill up spare seats cheaply? If ATW know that they don't have any spare capacity on certain services then they need to stop selling Advances for these trains.

The policy makes no sense at all - you can reserve a seat on a specific service with an off-peak or anytime ticket where there's a chance the passenger will travel on another service so the reservation will be unfilled, yet with an Advance where you know you must be on a specific service you can't automatically reserve a seat. ATW don't widely advertise the fact you can try to book an Advance reservation at a ticket office so most people won't bother to.

AP's started out as a spare capacity measure but you can now get them on all trains even ones notorious for overcrowding. Theirs some sort of pricing grading yield management theory borrowed from the airlines involved. However the crucial difference between trains and planes is that there is finite capacity on a plane whereas trains don't work like that. The 0514 from Aberystwyth to Birmingham International arrives New St at 0829 its the peak commuter train from Shropshire into Birmingham and six cars in length on weekdays. I found i could book about 35 AP tickets at £8.50 each on it from Newtown to Birmingham. Whilst the service is never full to Shrewsbury people paying £1760 per annum for a 12 month season ticket from Telford to New St then have to stand......

If you book far enough ahead you can get them on peak time trains into and out of major cities.- I just tried and I could get 40 AP tickets on the 1730 ATW departure from Manchester Piccadilly to Shrewsbury on Friday 30th June. Theirs people riding in the peak between Euston and Birmingham for £8.00 on AP tickets , spare seats and unfortunates who have paid Anytime (or their company has) whilst the off peak trains before and after are rammed.

 

[northwichcat]

Speke is a hopeless airport to get to from Chester/North Wales, and it will still be more like 35 minutes Chester to Parkway (and another half hour on the bus).
You might as well go to Manchester for (usually) more flights and better connections.

Half an hour would be the worse case scenario for most of the day as the bus takes 16 minutes and runs every 15 minutes.

There are a few destinations served from Liverpool and not from Manchester. There are also some destinations served from both but not every day from either Airport so it might be you need Liverpool to fly out on Monday and back on Saturday but Manchester to fly out on Sunday and back on Friday.

 

[Jez]

So what would people like to see on the Marches Line?

An hourly Manchester-Cardiff regional express backed up by an hourly stopper?

Where would the latter go to/from?

I would say an hourly express from Cardiff to Manchester calling at Newport, Abergavenny, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Crewe, Wilmslow, Stockport.

And an hourly stopper calling at Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool and New Inn, Abergavenny, Hereford, Leominster, Ludlow, Craven Arms, Church Stretton and Shrewsbury. With a 2 hour extension to Chester and North Wales and maybe the other hour it could go to Liverpool.

The situation with no seat reservation on advance tickets is silly I agree. With advance tickets you have to travel on the train you are booked on, so the passenger will need a seat whether one is reserved for them or not. So it doesn't really free up any seats, just someone travelling with an advance isn't guaranteed a seat because they haven't provided one.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The situation with no seat reservation on advance tickets is silly I agree. With advance tickets you have to travel on the train you are booked on, so the passenger will need a seat whether one is reserved for them or not. So it doesn't really free up any seats, just someone travelling with an advance isn't guaranteed a seat because they haven't provided one.

And, as I said above, it shows that they are discounting fares to deliberately attract people to travel on already overcrowded trains. That's just not on. I would love to see penalties in franchise agreements for this kind of thing; no Advance should ever be sold on any train that would have all seats taken were no Advance fares available. They should be sold only on trains where there would be spare seats; that being the case a reservation is not an issue because it doesn't stop a walk-up passenger from taking a seat.

 

[Llanigraham]

I would say an hourly express from Cardiff to Manchester calling at Newport, Abergavenny, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Crewe, Wilmslow, Stockport.

And an hourly stopper calling at Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool and New Inn, Abergavenny, Hereford, Leominster, Ludlow, Craven Arms, Church Stretton and Shrewsbury. With a 2 hour extension to Chester and North Wales and maybe the other hour it could go to Liverpool.

The situation with no seat reservation on advance tickets is silly I agree. With advance tickets you have to travel on the train you are booked on, so the passenger will need a seat whether one is reserved for them or not. So it doesn't really free up any seats, just someone travelling with an advance isn't guaranteed a seat because they haven't provided one.

Have you ignored the number of people from Mid Wales who head to either Ludlow or Leominster to catch trains? One or both should be included.

 

[Envoy]

And, as I said above, it shows that they are discounting fares to deliberately attract people to travel on already overcrowded trains. That's just not on. I would love to see penalties in franchise agreements for this kind of thing; no Advance should ever be sold on any train that would have all seats taken were no Advance fares available. They should be sold only on trains where there would be spare seats; that being the case a reservation is not an issue because it doesn't stop a walk-up passenger from taking a seat.

The ideal situation would be for this (& all routes) to have enough capacity with fares being set according to 3 tiers of predicted demand. High walk on fares deter people from using the trains.

 

[berneyarms]

Have you ignored the number of people from Mid Wales who head to either Ludlow or Leominster to catch trains? One or both should be included.

I'd agree - at a minimum the Express should call at one every other hour, but probably should call at both given they are both over 10k population and have an even larger catchment area

 

[Redonian]

Have you ignored the number of people from Mid Wales who head to either Ludlow or Leominster to catch trains? One or both should be included.

Indeed.
Leominster already has a lesser service than Ludlow despite being (I think) a slightly bigger town.
It also ignores the fact that the Manchester trains provide a valuable connection at Crewe to a variety of places for the very stations this proposal seeks to have the service withdrawn from.

 

[Chester1]

Half an hour would be the worse case scenario for most of the day as the bus takes 16 minutes and runs every 15 minutes.

There are a few destinations served from Liverpool and not from Manchester. There are also some destinations served from both but not every day from either Airport so it might be you need Liverpool to fly out on Monday and back on Saturday but Manchester to fly out on Sunday and back on Friday.

Agreed. Its also an hour and a half or more from Chester to Manchester Airport with a change at Piccadilly. A direct train to Liverpool South Parkway will make Liverpool Airport quicker to get to by train than Manchester Airport from Chester and North Wales, probably by half an hour. Liverpool has regular flights to Dublin so it will affect ferry passenger traffic.

 

[Class 170101]

Have you ignored the number of people from Mid Wales who head to either Ludlow or Leominster to catch trains? One or both should be included.

They still have the slower train every hour to Shrewsbury though.

 

[Llanigraham]

They still have the slower train every hour to Shrewsbury though.

Both are towns of quite large populations.
Both are towns with a large English and WELSH hinterland.
Both are towns where people commute in BOTH directions.
Both are towns with good connections into Wales.

I do wonder whether some people ever look at an atlas before they answer here!:roll:

 

[ivanhoe]

Have you ignored the number of people from Mid Wales who head to either Ludlow or Leominster to catch trains? One or both should be included.

Agreed. Ludlow and Leominster need to be served for the reasons you have stated. Instead of thinking express we should be thinking Medium Distance Trains . Manchester to Cardiff will never be express (time wise)so why leave out these towns?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Agreed. Its also an hour and a half or more from Chester to Manchester Airport with a change at Piccadilly. A direct train to Liverpool South Parkway will make Liverpool Airport quicker to get to by train than Manchester Airport from Chester and North Wales, probably by half an hour. Liverpool has regular flights to Dublin so it will affect ferry passenger traffic.

You have to look at the map and all the rail/air timetables.
As a result rail traffic from Chester/North Wales to either airport is quite small, as the roads are far more direct.
You are also not limited to train times which forget that many flights are unreachable by rail, as they leave before 0930 or get back after 1930, which is about the limit of rail connections allowing for airport bumbledom.

Many times I drive to Manchester because either one way or the other, or both, just doesn't work with the trains.
Ryanair and EasyJet have a habit of leaving early and getting back late.
I've even left from Liverpool and returned to Manchester, with all the logistical complications of both lots of public transport (park at Hooton, 80p a day!).
Liverpool airport has a very limited set of destinations, mostly LCC, and I think its importance for rail is vastly overestimated.
It gets 1/5 of the passengers that Manchester does.

The really important thing is to have early and late through airport services to Manchester, which ATW just doesn't do at the moment.

 

[craigybagel]

Agreed. Ludlow and Leominster need to be served for the reasons you have stated. Instead of thinking express we should be thinking Medium Distance Trains . Manchester to Cardiff will never be express (time wise)so why leave out these towns?

They still have the slower train every hour to Shrewsbury though.

Both are towns of quite large populations.
Both are towns with a large English and WELSH hinterland.
Both are towns where people commute in BOTH directions.
Both are towns with good connections into Wales.

I do wonder whether some people ever look at an atlas before they answer here!:roll:

I'd agree - at a minimum the Express should call at one every other hour, but probably should call at both given they are both over 10k population and have an even larger catchment area

It's a difficult one that. As always with the Marches, it comes down to the need to both serve Intermediate stations and provide an express link between North West England and South Wales. I will add though that by far the biggest demand for passengers from Leominster is just to Hereford, so if you were only going to stop at one of the two I'd suggest Ludlow instead since more people from there are travelling longer distances. It is also the busier of the two stations, and has (slightly) longer platforms.

 

[northwichcat]

The really important thing is to have early and late through airport services to Manchester, which ATW just doesn't do at the moment.

In the morning and evening peak there aren't paths available to the Airport and even if there were and ATW got more trains it would make sense for ATW to strengthen existing services, rather than extending peak time services to the Airport for the sake of a few passengers, who can easily change to another service - there's plenty of services between Piccadilly and the Airport and to/from North Wales you can quite often make a connection without changing platforms.

The largest place served by the direct North Wales/Chester to Manchester Airport services is Warrington which will get a Northern Connect service to the Airport at the next recast. Given Warrington's population and the fact it's within a commutable distance of the Airport I wouldn't be surprised if demand for public transport from Warrington to the Airport is higher than from all of North Wales. After all a holiday maker may only make one return trip a year while a commuter will make around 225 return trips a year for work.

Unless we have a 24 hour network on all routes then there's always going to be people from some places who can't get to the Airport for early/late flights.

 

[Jez]

I'd agree - at a minimum the Express should call at one every other hour, but probably should call at both given they are both over 10k population and have an even larger catchment area

My reason for this is there would be a hourly stopper calling at all stations between Cardiff Central and Shrewsbury. By the time this reached Shrewsbury it would be timed to provide a good connection with the next fast train to Manchester. Perhaps extending the stopper to Crewe and incorporating the stops between Shrewsbury and Crewe providing an hourly service there (perhaps only calling at request stops Yorton, Prees and Wrenbury every 2 hours) and then more options to connect to Manchester with Virgin services etc.

Or perhaps Ludlow could be a stop on the express service to Manchester. But the least stops the better if we want a fast intercity type service between Cardiff and Manchester.

 

[berneyarms]

I don't disagree at all with your final sentence!!

 

[Llanigraham]

And what about southbound? People don't only want to go to north.

I know several like me who drive to Ludlow to go to London, changing either at Hereford or Newport, because they can guarantee to get home, whereas if they travelled via the Cambrian and Shrewsbury they would miss the last connection.

Car parking is also easier at Ludlow than Leominster and Hereford.

 

[Jez]

they still can do this, there would be at least an hourly service from Ludlow to Newport/Cardiff.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Or perhaps Ludlow could be a stop on the express service to Manchester. But the least stops the better if we want a fast intercity type service between Cardiff and Manchester.

BR decided around 1970 that the intercity service between Cardiff and Manchester would be on XC via Birmingham, which is still reflected in the timetable and the franchise split.
Regional Railways was left with a sparse Crewe-Cardiff shuttle, which over the years has been improved and extended to Manchester (Liverpool too for a period), but is still not an express service.
So Marches services are this uncertain hybrid, being a rural stopper one minute, a regional fast service the next, and now with a modicum of long-distance premium services as well.
It's arguably more important for the stations north of Newport to have higher priority for the Marches service than the Cardiff-Newport-Manchester flow which has other choices.
The intended 2tph on the Marches route (one to Manchester, the other to Chester and beyond) is rather a luxury.
The stopping pattern will have to address all these demands while keeping costs in check.
It's going to be fast/slow, or skip-stop.
It's also as much WG's responsibility to serve Whitchurch and Leominster adequately as it is Wrexham and Abergavenny.

 

[Phil from Mon]

I wouldn't be surprised if demand for public transport from Warrington to the Airport is higher than from all of North Wales. After all a holiday maker may only make one return trip a year...

Very dangerous to think it is only tourists going from north Wales. Lots of us take business flights, particularly from Manchester with its much wider range of destinations, but also in these economically-straightened times with the budget carriers from Liverpool.

 

[Envoy]

BR decided around 1970 that the intercity service between Cardiff and Manchester would be on XC via Birmingham, which is still reflected in the timetable and the franchise split.
Regional Railways was left with a sparse Crewe-Cardiff shuttle, which over the years has been improved and extended to Manchester (Liverpool too for a period), but is still not an express service.
So Marches services are this uncertain hybrid, being a rural stopper one minute, a regional fast service the next, and now with a modicum of long-distance premium services as well.
It's arguably more important for the stations north of Newport to have higher priority for the Marches service than the Cardiff-Newport-Manchester flow which has other choices.
The intended 2tph on the Marches route (one to Manchester, the other to Chester and beyond) is rather a luxury.
The stopping pattern will have to address all these demands while keeping costs in check.
It's going to be fast/slow, or skip-stop.
It's also as much WG's responsibility to serve Whitchurch and Leominster adequately as it is Wrexham and Abergavenny.

The south Wales to Manchester services do not really have the choice of going Intercity via Birmingham as no direct services are offered via this route - apart from one. That is the 7am Voyager service from Cardiff to Manchester that goes via Bristol Temple Meads & takes a whopping 4 hours to link these cities - making it the slowest service of the day. (A pity that XC do not offer direct services to York & Newcastle from south Wales - which they seem to regard as a backwater).

Going from Cardiff to Manchester via Bristol Parkway (change) takes 3 hours 34 minutes whilst even the slowest service on The Marches takes 3 hours 25 minutes with the faster services taking 3 hours 10 minutes. So, The Marches route is the shortest and quickest way to get from south Wales to NW England - which of course includes Crewe. (Crewe being the change point for the WCML going up to Scotland). Bristol Parkway has direct services to Edinburgh but these all go via Newcastle so take much longer than the west coast route. Throw in the fact that fares via The Marches are less than half of those via Birmingham and it is easy to see why long distance travellers favour using this route.

I don’t think the public care about what is known as ‘Intercity’. As far as they are concerned, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Hereford, Manchester are all cities with considerable populations that need to be linked. Perhaps with slower trains calling at all the stations, it would free up space for the Coradias (175’s) to carry the long distance express passengers?

 

[PHILIPE]

The south Wales to Manchester services do not really have the choice of going Intercity via Birmingham as no direct services are offered via this route - apart from one. That is the 7am Voyager service from Cardiff to Manchester that goes via Bristol Temple Meads & takes a whopping 4 hours to link these cities - making it the slowest service of the day. (A pity that XC do not offer direct services to York & Newcastle from south Wales - which they seem to regard as a backwater).

Going from Cardiff to Manchester via Bristol Parkway (change) takes 3 hours 34 minutes whilst even the slowest service on The Marches takes 3 hours 25 minutes with the faster services taking 3 hours 10 minutes. So, The Marches route is the shortest and quickest way to get from south Wales to NW England - which of course includes Crewe. (Crewe being the change point for the WCML going up to Scotland). Bristol Parkway has direct services to Edinburgh but these all go via Newcastle so take much longer than the west coast route. Throw in the fact that fares via The Marches are less than half of those via Birmingham and it is easy to see why long distance travellers favour using this route.

I don’t think the public care about what is known as ‘Intercity’. As far as they are concerned, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Hereford, Manchester are all cities with considerable populations that need to be linked. Perhaps with slower trains calling at all the stations, it would free up space for the Coradias (175’s) to carry the long distance express passengers?

XC did run direct services from South Wales to the North East and even 1 to Aberdeen during the days of Operation Princess in 2003 but it was the SRA who took them away not XC (Virgin XC at the time). Some ran via Chepstow and some via Bristol Temple Meads.

 

[northwichcat]

Very dangerous to think it is only tourists going from north Wales. Lots of us take business flights, particularly from Manchester with its much wider range of destinations, but also in these economically-straightened times with the budget carriers from Liverpool.

Still unless businesses are sending their employees on flights most days it's a fraction of the number of journeys made by people who work at the Airport.

 

[Envoy]

XC did run direct services from South Wales to the North East and even 1 to Aberdeen during the days of Operation Princess in 2003 but it was the SRA who took them away not XC (Virgin XC at the time). Some ran via Chepstow and some via Bristol Temple Meads.

Yes, and Virgin even ran a Leeds to Swansea Voyager service which returned as Swansea to Edinburgh via Newcastle.

At the time, three companies were operating between Cardiff and Birmingham; Central Trains, Wales & Borders and Virgin. Unfortunately, some of the Virgin services went via Temple Meads - making for very long journeys, some went via Bristol Parkway and some used the direct line via Gloucester.

 

[Gareth Marston]

The south Wales to Manchester services do not really have the choice of going Intercity via Birmingham as no direct services are offered via this route - apart from one. That is the 7am Voyager service from Cardiff to Manchester that goes via Bristol Temple Meads & takes a whopping 4 hours to link these cities - making it the slowest service of the day. (A pity that XC do not offer direct services to York & Newcastle from south Wales - which they seem to regard as a backwater).

Going from Cardiff to Manchester via Bristol Parkway (change) takes 3 hours 34 minutes whilst even the slowest service on The Marches takes 3 hours 25 minutes with the faster services taking 3 hours 10 minutes. So, The Marches route is the shortest and quickest way to get from south Wales to NW England - which of course includes Crewe. (Crewe being the change point for the WCML going up to Scotland). Bristol Parkway has direct services to Edinburgh but these all go via Newcastle so take much longer than the west coast route. Throw in the fact that fares via The Marches are less than half of those via Birmingham and it is easy to see why long distance travellers favour using this route.

I don’t think the public care about what is known as ‘Intercity’. As far as they are concerned, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Hereford, Manchester are all cities with considerable populations that need to be linked. Perhaps with slower trains calling at all the stations, it would free up space for the Coradias (175’s) to carry the long distance express passengers?

The off peak return from Cardiff to Manchester is still valid via Parway and Lydney with no Anytime fare either. 8 hrs on xc with no restrictions! Probably a never sold fare via BHM anyway!

 

[Rhydgaled]

As Neil Williams suggested many pages back, here's a network-map of the W&B franchise with bus-style service numbers (attached). It shows my current thinking as to what would be a good minimum service pattern if only the infrustructure allowed it. Places where I don't think it would actually work are:

• service R4 (Swansea - Pembroke Dock), which with the only loop being at Tenby doesn't form a neat half-hourly pattern in one direction when combined with R2 (Swansea - Fishguard/Milford).
• Service RE5 (Cardiff-Liverpool) clashes with RE1b (Birmingham-Wrexham-Chester) in the northbound direction; this can only be fixed by moving the times of either RE1 northbound/westbound or moving the times of both RE5 northbound and RE3 (Swansea-Manchester) northbound

The second can be worked around by sending northbound RE5 via Crewe every two hours (replacing the faster OSLM (Birmingham-Shrewsbury-Crewe) service), which means IS2 (Chester-Shrewsbury) has to run hourly to provide a 30min-interval service through Wrexham northbound with the soundbound extra taking the OSLM path via Crewe.

Not sure how I can illustrate that on a map, so not sure whether to send the map to TfW or not. If you have any comments for changes to the map; fire away. Also, for RE4 (Manchester-Holyhead), which of Earlestown or Newton-Le-Willows do pepole think would be the more-useful stop?

Unfortunately I haven't managed to make the SEW Metro map; I cannot figure out whether it is possible to get away with Cathays-Radyr being converted to tram (sending all heavy-rail services via Fairwater) or whether the frequency involved requires both routes into CDF available for heavy-rail services.

 

[Welshman]

Also, for RE4 (Manchester-Holyhead), which of Earlestown or Newton-Le-Willows do people think would be the more-useful stop?

Travelling westound, the Newton-le-Willows stop used to be useful as it provided a same-platform interchange from Manchester Victoria [dep. x37ish] with only 10 minutes or so to wait for the following x52 from Piccadilly. This was useful if you were in Victoria about x30 with no time to get to Piccadilly for the x52 North Wales service. Unfortunately, the connections were not as good when travelling eastbound.

However, when travelling westbound on the peak North Wales services [1552, 1650, 1750] from Piccadilly. I often wish both the Newton-le-Willows and Earlestown stops could be omitted and substituted by Northern services, as these ATW trains carry a lot of "local" passengers. who alight at Newtown and Earlestown, meaning longer-distance passengers have to stand from Manchester, especially when the 1750 ex Piccadilly is only a 2-car 175 instead of the 2x2 rostered.

 

[gareth950]

Oh don't send them a light rail map of the Metro, they don't need encouragement! Maybe a fully heavy rail Metro map showing increased services on the Valleys with an extra track over Newport Rd bridge and more services running between Radyr - Central via the City line to allow more trains to run into Central. Then extra services Radyr - Central via Cathays and Queen St to take advantage of more services running via the City line, which is very underused atm, and the extra capacity from having another track over Newport Rd.

 

[northwichcat]

Travelling westound, the Newton-le-Willows stop used to be useful as it provided a same-platform interchange from Manchester Victoria [dep. x37ish] with only 10 minutes or so to wait for the following x52 from Piccadilly. This was useful if you were in Victoria about x30 with no time to get to Piccadilly for the x52 North Wales service. Unfortunately, the connections were not as good when travelling eastbound.

However, when travelling westbound on the peak North Wales services [1552, 1650, 1750] from Piccadilly. I often wish both the Newton-le-Willows and Earlestown stops could be omitted and substituted by Northern services, as these ATW trains carry a lot of "local" passengers. who alight at Newtown and Earlestown, meaning longer-distance passengers have to stand from Manchester, especially when the 1750 ex Piccadilly is only a 2-car 175 instead of the 2x2 rostered.

If you want a path for an additional Northern service from Piccadilly to Earlestown in the peaks you'd either need to have the ATW service terminate at Oxford Rd or it running all stops via Altrincham to Piccadilly. The existing arrangement is the least worse option. At least it doesn't stop at Eccles, Patricroft and Deansgate as well!