Leaked VTEC document reports weak Edinburgh <> London rail market share

[yorksrob]

I believe 'price messaging' means advertising on the basis of price, rather than on the basis of speed or of comfort and quality. All of VTEC's advertising is gimmicky, regardless of which of these they are pushing (and they have pushed all three at times in the past).

There'd better be enough fares to match peoples expectations once they've been raised by the advertising, otherwise it will just put peoples backs up.

 

[Starmill]

I imagine they have also lost people to VTWC? If you are going somewhere between the two routes they are now often a better option than they were historically. While I personally would never voluntarily do Cambridge - Birmingham if I could avoid it, it now often shows up in the journey planner as part of a trip to Glasgow where it wouldn't have before!

If your journey is Cambridge to Glasgow you're likely to find that it's CrossCountry blocking the quota between Cambridge and Peterborough.

This is probablematic. They have short trains with no real options for strengthening. They also can't accommodate much luggage. It's probably not feasible for them to accommodate connection passengers without paying a premium on the busy trains. There are however no direct alternatives to get to Peterborough. If you take a GN train to Ely and a GA train to Peterborough both are non-reservable. ScotRail trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow are also non-reservable, so only the Peterborough to Edinburgh leg should in this case be influencing your Advance availability. However, changing at Ely is something of a faff and many customers may resist it. You could split at Peterborough but this is complex and many customers may resist it.

So the options for this journey are all poor. Unless people railhead themselves to Peterborough of course, but that cuts down on revenue for the train company and increases traffic on the roads. Sometimes these 'weak links' can betray the more capable parts of the network.

Fundamentally this is the Government's fault. Cambridge and Peterborough are both cities with significant population just 40 miles apart and with booming growth in Cambridge. Only hourly trains between them and only a 2 or 3 car DMU is plainly not adequate.

 

[Hadders]

It seems quite clear to me that VTEC would increase prices at weekends if they were able to.

While it's far from perfect thank god we've got some sort of fares regulation in place. Anyone suggesting that it removed should be very careful about what they wish for.

 

[DarloRich]

where was this leaked?

 

[Starmill]

where was this leaked?

Here.

 

[gingerheid]

However, changing at Ely is something of a faff and many customers may resist it. You could split at Peterborough but this is complex and many customers may resist it.

So the options for this journey are all poor. Unless people railhead themselves to Peterborough of course, but that cuts down on revenue for the train company and increases traffic on the roads. Sometimes these 'weak links' can betray the more capable parts of the network.

Fundamentally this is the Government's fault. Cambridge and Peterborough are both cities with [...]

It's Cambridge North - Ayrshire. I'm not averse to a bit of changing (though I can see why people can be), but its a journey that can easily turn into changes at Cambridge or Ely, Peterborough, (maybe also somewhere on the ECML), Edinburgh, cross Glasgow.

There just comes a point when, horrible as Stansted is, it seems like less hassle.

Yes, all the attention is on Cambridge > London and other places are being left behind Peterborough (and indeed Birmingham), Kings Lynn, Ipswich and Norwich should all be half hourly, and Stansted should run half hourly and for longer hours. What we are getting from the new GA is welcome, but a bit underwhelming

 

[mark-h]

From a VTEC point of view Waverley is a mess and must be brutal to manage. Currently their services can depart from platforms 2, 7, 8, 9, 11 & 19

Platform 5&6 (currently under construction) should help as they give a pair of platforms able to take long terminating trains from the south/east.

 

[Suraggu]

My employers (a UK based FOC) are sending me to a meeting in London and being based in the north east they booked me a BA flight to return home to Newcastle, 3 weeks before travel. The combined journey time, airport check in and price means BA is far superior.

 

[whhistle]

VTEC also highlight here that they simply cannot match Ryanair on price, which is something many of us have long suspected about costs in the industry. This goes way beyond the ICEC franchise of course, and is something for the ORR and the Government to consider carefully. Why, exactly, is one of the most efficient (on paper) modes struggling so much on price against by far and away the most polluting in terms of noise and air quality, and the biggest emitter of atmospheric carbon?

I wonder if it simply boils down to time.

An hour from East Midlands Airport to Edinburgh at £105.
A comparable train from Peterborough sits at 4 hours for £183, or go off-peak and it's £127.
To be fair though, an Advance ticket is £82 (return) even at the peak time.

Yes, you could add the 2 hours each way to the flight, but that can be pushed back to an hour if you're a lone traveller, but that still adds to 3 hours against 4.

I wonder if rebuilding the East Coast to be a new High Speed railway (yes, lots of disruption and cost but relatively easy?) and running some direct services between Edinburgh and London could break the hold of the airlines.

 

[DarloRich]

Here.

Thanks. That is interesting - not a regular press outlet then.

I have a had a chance to look that this in more detail. I can see how VTEC might be a little unhappy to see their business plan documents splashed about the internet but this isnt a business plan. The table appended above is nothing more than a SWOT grid which isn't a report in any meaningful sense. It is a headline tool to generate discussion in business meetings and offers no context or data. I fill them in all the time and they are worthless without that underlying data and business knowledge which the people using the tool will have.

What does it tell us that is new, exciting or concerning?

 

[InOban]

From a VTEC point of view Waverley is a mess and must be brutal to manage. Currently their services can depart from platforms 2, 7, 8, 9, 11 & 19 (I think). Those platforms are all over the place.

You can have a VTEC train arriving on 8 and one departing on 2 almost simultaneously which are at opposite ends of the station from each other. This will all add to the stresses of running the operation so it may not be the fact that the station is spacious but the layout and logistics.

If you look at other terminating stations such as Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle etc the services all usually depart from the same two or three platforms which are usually adjacent to each other. Even at Kings Cross all the VTEC platforms are together. Cleaning, portering and assistance costs are probably higher at Edinburgh compared to the others due to this which will make it a weakness.

Once the new terminating platforms are in place this should make it easier operationally for the staff and the customers as in theory only the Aberdeen/Inverness/Stirling services should be using other platforms.

When the extension of platforms 6 and 7 is complete, I would expect all VTEC trains to use them.

 

[Romilly]

It seems quite clear to me that VTEC would increase prices at weekends if they were able to.

Meanwhile, they are increasing weekday evening fares on London-Edinburgh in the sense that the lowest tier of Advances was £47.50 before December 2017 on the services I am thinking of, went up to £49 and has recently gone up to £57 for journeys from September 2018.

 

[swaldman]

I'm not sure that having only 24% of market share can be considered to be a reflection on price *or* speed if the trains are fairly full. Do we know that this isn't just a capacity issue? (I realise that capacity for flexible tickets is not technically limited, but if people find themselves standing for 4 hours they won't come back. And advance tickets are limited by capacity, and are all that's affordable for many)

I agree that the most energy-efficient mode of transport being unable to match airlines for price is bonkers.

Re speed, the current 4.5 hrs for London-Edinburgh is *slightly* slower than flying for a city centre to city centre journey, but it's vastly preferable to spend that time on a train than in a taxi, shuffling through security, waiting in departure lounges, etc. For many passengers there's a quality-of-life adjustment, though that suffers a little when the trains are over-full.

 

[Robertj21a]

I wonder if it simply boils down to time.

An hour from East Midlands Airport to Edinburgh at £105.
A comparable train from Peterborough sits at 4 hours for £183, or go off-peak and it's £127.
To be fair though, an Advance ticket is £82 (return) even at the peak time.

Yes, you could add the 2 hours each way to the flight, but that can be pushed back to an hour if you're a lone traveller, but that still adds to 3 hours against 4.

I wonder if rebuilding the East Coast to be a new High Speed railway (yes, lots of disruption and cost but relatively easy?) and running some direct services between Edinburgh and London could break the hold of the airlines.

Not sure why you're using EMA as the airport ?. Stansted to Edinburgh is a far busier (and significantly cheaper) route if you fly.

 

[Ianno87]

It's Cambridge North - Ayrshire. I'm not averse to a bit of changing (though I can see why people can be), but its a journey that can easily turn into changes at Cambridge or Ely, Peterborough, (maybe also somewhere on the ECML), Edinburgh, cross Glasgow.

There just comes a point when, horrible as Stansted is, it seems like less hassle.

Yes, all the attention is on Cambridge > London and other places are being left behind Peterborough (and indeed Birmingham), Kings Lynn, Ipswich and Norwich should all be half hourly, and Stansted should run half hourly and for longer hours. What we are getting from the new GA is welcome, but a bit underwhelming

The XC quota blocking from Cambridge is a genuine issue, IMHO. Rules out good fares being offered on VTEC northwards from Peterborough for want of a connection from Cambridge. Can be got around with some creative use of via points, but must deter some passengers less 'in the know' artificially when they see a sky-high price offered.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Fair enough, but there's usually only 4-5 flights a day. Their prices are so much cheaper that I can well see them taking an even greater share of the market.

Don’t forget that EasyJet also go to Edinburgh from Gatwick.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I agree that the most energy-efficient mode of transport being unable to match airlines for price is bonkers.

It reflects the high costs of rail's basic infrastructure, and the way privatisation baked in a "high cost" model to ensure that the infrastructure body (then Railtrack, now Network Rail) and ROSCOs were adequately funded by access/leasing charges.
It's the same reason Eurostar has similar problems matching airline fares - the Eurotunnel tolls are set high to protect their income.

Airlines continue to innovate in reducing the costs of their operation (short turn-rounds, cheap airports, no frills etc), and boosting revenue.
Rail is stuck with its fixed costs, and NR/ORR seem to have given up on bringing them down.
In France, SNCF has developed a low-cost model on high-speed routes (Ouigo) which attempts to compete head-on with the LCC airlines.
The airline model is effectively reservation-only and advance-only.

Then again, this report looks only at Edinburgh-London.
VTEC is a lot bigger than that, and much of its market is not particularly sensitive to airline competition, but more to car/coach/remote working.
Devising a fare structure to meet all the competitive pressures (while extracting maximum revenue where the market will bear it) is no easy task.
Single leg pricing (promised but seemingly undeliverable) might help.

 

[Starmill]

The XC quota blocking from Cambridge is a genuine issue, IMHO. Rules out good fares being offered on VTEC northwards from Peterborough for want of a connection from Cambridge. Can be got around with some creative use of via points, but must deter some passengers less 'in the know' artificially when they see a sky-high price offered.

Absolutely. But then, the prices are intentionally set this way. With a booked 2 car on between Cambridge and Peterborough that's also got to accommodate people going to March, and Ely to Peterborough and Stansted Airport through passengers etc there is a limit to what XC can do. The price is artificially high to deter people from using those trains. If the prices were lower there might be better rail market share but people who can scarcely board which is really no better.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Thanks. That is interesting - not a regular press outlet then.

I have a had a chance to look that this in more detail. I can see how VTEC might be a little unhappy to see their business plan documents splashed about the internet but this isnt a business plan. The table appended above is nothing more than a SWOT grid which isn't a report in any meaningful sense. It is a headline tool to generate discussion in business meetings and offers no context or data. I fill them in all the time and they are worthless without that underlying data and business knowledge which the people using the tool will have.

What does it tell us that is new, exciting or concerning?

VTEC asked me to take it down which I did initially and then they also asked me to take the commentary down that I'd written. It was a full business plan document that also did analysis into their strengths and weaknesses. It wasn't just focussed on Edinburgh to London but was on all markets. As it was from 2016 the things that were mentioned in the plan have already been implemented.

There was lot's of interesting stuff in there, but I'm not going to comment on any of it personally. The reason I removed it was because one of the senior managers offered a meeting.

I have been sent some interesting things in the past mostly anonymously by their extremely disillusioned staff. What I publish is usually either information they really should be publishing themselves (for example if there's known issues about catering and a guard sends me a list of the affected sets for the day I'll tweet that out as it's info paying passengers should know) or if it's historically interesting. I tend not to publish things otherwise unless they're announced (for example I knew about the electronic seat reservations before they started appearing but I didn't talk about them until they were officially announced).

 

[tbtc]

What does it tell us that is new, exciting or concerning?

Well, it gives us another chance to moan about the "Beardy Price Gouger", and complain about Ryanair's modern planes being bad for the environment, when compared to the HSTs that provide a large amount of Edinburgh - London services under the wires...

Realistically though, whilst 24% doesn't sound like a large amount of the market, it's easy to see any number as looking "low" (to a Forum of railway enthusiasts who have a clear preference for trains). I'm not sure what share of the market rail *should* be aiming for?

To get up near 50% would obviously require double the current number of passengers. And whilst there are some empty seats on services leaving Edinburgh, they don't necessarily stay empty through Newcastle/ York etc. So, whilst a 260m long IET clearly will provide more seats than an HST/225, how many more paths would you require from London to Edinburgh on conventional lines to get near 50% of the market? I'm tempted to say that, until HS2 comes along, rail won't be competitive enough on time and probably couldn't handle a *huge* increase in passenger numbers anyway.

However there are some interesting points on the thread. @Starmill makes a good point about the poor service from Peterborough to Cambridge (a two/three coach DMU every hour is pretty poor for two places of those sizes, especially considering the growth in Cambridge in recent years). If XC ever gets a nationwide capacity improvement then I guess there are a number of corridors where this (increase in seats, allowing cheaper fares) might be enough to divert some existing demands (e.g. would people sit on a W&B service from Cardiff to North West England if XC was providing a five coach train from Cardiff to Birmingham, allowing fast connections towards Crewe/ Manchester etc?). But at the moment, XC have to enforce some silly tickets and not sell advances because their current trains simply cannot cope with existing "essential" demand, so they should not be targeting leisure markets. But I'm getting off topic...

 

[DarloRich]

VTEC asked me to take it down which I did initially and then they also asked me to take the commentary down that I'd written. It was a full business plan document that also did analysis into their strengths and weaknesses. It wasn't just focussed on Edinburgh to London but was on all markets. As it was from 2016 the things that were mentioned in the plan have already been implemented.

Now that WOULD be an interesting document to read.

 

[SaveECRewards]

Now that WOULD be an interesting document to read.

Someone sent me the East Coast 2013-14 version of the document over the weekend. See the other thread... https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/east-coast-business-plan-2013-14.163794/

 

[Starmill]

I'm not sure what share of the market rail *should* be aiming for?

I did provide the necessary context with a comparable example in Madrid to Barcelona. There is significant further reading available on that if you're not familiar with the Spanish High Speed services which I could link to.

Worthy of note that Madrid to Barcelona had more flights at its peak than London to Edinburgh does now, and that rail is still under 70% market share despite now offering the best journey time. Clearly for a 400 miles journey in a developed country such as the UK we should aim for higher than one quarter of the market to be using rail. I think it would be unrealistic to suggest that any more than about two thirds would be going by rail, but that's more than twice the share it has now.

Of course without HSR to Scotland such journey times as 2 1/2 hours are unlikely to be realistic, as is a 66% market share. So there are two points here - one is how likely is post-HS2 development to reduce further the journey times for Edinburgh to London, and the other is how can we work with the existing route to generate more modest increases? It does not look like VTEC were doing a splendid job of this back in 2016. It would be fascinating to hear how they've changed since 2016 or at least how they think they've changed. The linked media release earlier suggested an uptick. Perhaps VTEC are now in control of 26% of the Edinburgh to London Market? A change that seems small but a few percentage points could be significant here.

Of course, as for the emissions argument then diesel trains certainly don't come into it - they're very poor indeed. The end of HST traction will of course improve things in this regard. Who was it that said a 125mph Voyager on diesel from Edinburgh to Plymouth is not only more polluting but less energy efficient than flying? I could believe that easily.

 

[td97]

Would non-stop London - Edinburgh via the WCML be a viable option to speed up journey times, once HS2a opens in 2026, meaning potentially spare capacity and free Pendolinos?
How would this route timing compare with a service on the ECML?

 

[gsnedders]

Would non-stop London - Edinburgh via the WCML be a viable option to speed up journey times, once HS2a opens in 2026, meaning potentially spare capacity and free Pendolinos?
How would this route timing compare with a service on the ECML?

Slower. It's a longer route with lower line speeds.

 

[cle]

The fact is with everyone bleating on about city to city journey times, hassle of security etc - is that the stats say otherwise. We know all that is true, but to no avail. Hence those arguments (from within this echo chamber of rail fans) are null and void - as they are not impacting people's behaviour overall.

Cost is always going to be the biggest factor - and the train is extortionate and so cannot win. Also, it is about an hour longer than ideal. Hence sparse stopping patterns to hit a regular 4h will not be a good enough PR exercise to bring about change. It would need to be cost-based, with the experience, service, working time and better journey times what KEEP people on the train. So all price-based, I'd say - to initiate change.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Would non-stop London - Edinburgh via the WCML be a viable option to speed up journey times, once HS2a opens in 2026, meaning potentially spare capacity and free Pendolinos?
How would this route timing compare with a service on the ECML?

That is the notional plan when HS2b arrives, with HS2 extended to Golborne.
Until then, the HS2 plan is to stick with just the Glasgow services and indirect ones to Edinburgh, as now.
Journey times to Glasgow are supposed to be 3h56 with HS2a (2027) and 3h43 with HS2b (2033); Edinburgh fractionally longer, if run direct.
That's without any upgrade to the northern WCML, which is still being looked at (but no commitments), or any HSL in Scotland.
In fact the final debate on routeing of HSL trains to Scotland has still to be held.

I think the only reason Edinburgh is not on the 2027 HS2a agenda is that it is considered "too difficult" to reconfigure the ECML as well as the WCML at the same time.
The extra capacity of HS2b between Crewe and Golborne (30 miles) is hardly critical to the debate.
I think VTEC were planning to achieve a standard journey time of 4h on King's Cross-Edinburgh services with IEPs, and with 2tph.

 

[Starmill]

I think VTEC were planning to achieve a standard journey time of 4h on King's Cross-Edinburgh services with IEPs, and with 2tph.

I think that was just one train per hour? With intermediate calls at Newcastle and York only.

As it happens there is just one train that already does this - the 1147 from Aberdeen to London KX on Sundays. Of course with HST stock it does not make it down to 4 hours, but it is 4h 18. I think the key reason it doesn't stop is more down to capacity than anything else.

 

[Robertj21a]

The fact is with everyone bleating on about city to city journey times, hassle of security etc - is that the stats say otherwise. We know all that is true, but to no avail. Hence those arguments (from within this echo chamber of rail fans) are null and void - as they are not impacting people's behaviour overall.

Cost is always going to be the biggest factor - and the train is extortionate and so cannot win. Also, it is about an hour longer than ideal. Hence sparse stopping patterns to hit a regular 4h will not be a good enough PR exercise to bring about change. It would need to be cost-based, with the experience, service, working time and better journey times what KEEP people on the train. So all price-based, I'd say - to initiate change.

Absolutely agree, for many people the other issues become secondary.

 

[gsnedders]

Absolutely agree, for many people the other issues become secondary.

My impression is a large part of the London–Edinburgh/Glasgow traffic is people travelling for business, and for a fair number of people time will be the most important point (to have a full day in London).

Door-to-door times (albeit from Glasgow) for the trip I most often make are around 3.5 hours by air (into City, add about another half an hour for any other airport) versus 6 by rail (and both doors are relatively central, short metro journeys away from the termini); 7 hours of travel in a day is doable, 12 much less so.