Perhaps the answer here is to suggest to DfT that if Devon has banks it must also have bankers, who need high-quality transport links like the bankers in London.
Electrification is more to do with the sheer number of people that are carried on the trains in London and the South East, rather than who is carried on them.
Assuming that electrification was only there for bankers then with 145,000 staff in London (assuming working 220 days a year) that's 64 million passenger journeys a year.
Assuming that they all come in on SWR services into Waterloo then they would take up about 2/3's of the number of people who did so (mostly allowing for the WofE services, which wouldn't be carrying any bankers!). However ALL the other stations in London which are electrified would then would not need to be. That also assumes that none of those bankers live within London.
64 million is tiny compared to the nearly 1 billion (heavy) rail journeys that are made in London and the South East. Even if every one of those bank Industry staff in London made a further return journeys a day (not including Intercity travel) to get above 10% of all (heavy) rail journeys in London and the South East. Even then there would be about 9 other people who were not bankers for every banker on every train.
Even if you meant the wider professional and financial services sector London has circa 700,000, which is less than three times the number in Manchester (240,000) yet with a urban population of something like five times as many as Manchester. Therefore, chances are that Manchester has a higher level of bankers per million people than London. However, definitely has a higher level of people working in finance per million people in London.
(Yes I got that your post wasn't serious, but there are some on here who would think that such retoric was sound and that other regions need to have more investment but are missing out due to the bankers on London getting it all for their trains. Whilst the reason that other regions aren't getting the same, perceived, investment is more to do with less people per million using rail. Of course, that could be due to not having the investment in the past and isn't a reason not to invest in rail in other regions. Which is why I think that there should be more investment in rail than there had been. However even so it is unlikely to look like the same sorts of level, just because there's still a fair amount of train lengthening that can be done fairly easily elsewhere -
even if trains only make it to 8 coaches long - whilst London has a significant number of services which are at the maximum 10-12 coaches long during the peaks).
P.S. personally I would love to see the Devon Banks electrified, but feel that chances are it will be done off the back of the local services justifying it (Devon Metro and all that) with the longer distance services being an added bonus. However, I would also like to see a significant percentage of the rail network being electrified and I'm fairly disappointed that more electrification appears to be off the table for the time being.
If for no other reason than so other reasons than so other reasons could have more of London's cast offs, as there's not enough of a market for all their second hand EMU's yet and with the reduction of DUM's that can be cascaded from London (what with the electrification of the GWML) as otherwise that's going to become more of a problem going forward.
P.P.S. for those that missed it; that last paragraph may have been slightly tongue in cheek.
P.P.P.S. maybe not so slightly and less of the maybe
I updated the pinned stick with this direct link too - very useful - thanks again
