Shapps wants ‘earlier extinction of diesel trains’: suggestions welcome on how to achieve this

[Energy]

Or battery trains rather than diesel. There is the proposal I've made before that a subfleet should be procured for the Barrow/Windermere services of 3x24m bi-modes/battery trains which could be used to run a portion worked hourly clockface Manchester Airport to Barrow and Windermere service. There'd be tons of time to charge up under the wires. A strong "Northern Connect - Lakes and Furness" sub-brand could be developed including named units, and they could have a lot of luggage space for the tourists, and perhaps 4 rather than the usual 2 bike spaces for similar reasons, as well as lots of window-aligned table seats for the scenery.

The question to answer is probably "what's cheaper - such a subfleet ordered new now, or wiring it now"? (To be fair add to the subfleet possibly tweaks to Lancaster station to allow for splitting and joining, e.g. bringing platform 6 back into use).

Northern don't want another sub fleet, they would either electrify and use 331/323s, use 195/158s or get a bimode 331 which is similar for maintainence, CAF do offer it along with battery options.

 

[HSTEd]

What do British Cycling do, do they say that's going to make very little difference, or do they say all these little steps will make a difference?

British cycling also have the benefit of functionally unlimited money for what they are doing.

Based on a fairly cheap lease car £150/month plus a £1,000 up front payment), a low VED cost (£40), fairly low insurance (£200) and breakdown cover and servicing being included in the above, before fuel costs you're looking at a cost of 35p per mile. With fuel costs that's around the 45p per mile mark.

A new Dacia Sandero is £99/month with ~£1200 up front.
So you are probably off by quite a bit, as the lease costs will dominate.

And ten pence per mile on fuel for a small hatchback is definitely on the excessive side.

Overall I think 25-30p per mile all in is probably your best bet.

And the alternative is simply buying the car because it will probably last you ten years or more before the MOT kills it. And interest rates on savings are rather small at the moment.

Even fairly expensive, pay as you go train costs over short distances are likely to be lower than this. For issuance a 5 mile return trip would be £4.50.

You get far more capability for your money.
And £4.50 is probably on the high side.

 

[The Ham]

A new Dacia Sandero is £99/month with ~£1200 up front.
So you are probably off by quite a bit, as the lease costs will dominate.

And ten pence per mile on fuel for a small hatchback is definitely on the excessive side.

Overall I think 25-30p per mile all in is probably your best bet.

And the alternative is simply buying the car because it will probably last you ten years or more before the MOT kills it. And interest rates on savings are rather small at the moment.

That's still getting on for £2,000 a year before you've driven a single mile (£1,588 least, £40 VED and £300 insurance) you can travel quite a lot for that much money by public using season tickets.

Even if you buy a car and run it for several years your still going to struggle to get it for much less then £2,000 a year, as you'll be adding servicing and MOT costs which can easily add £120 a year.

 

[HSTEd]

That's still getting on for £2,000 a year before you've driven a single mile (£1,588 least, £40 VED and £300 insurance) you can travel quite a lot for that much money by public using season tickets.

Even a relatively short journey like Grantham to Nottingham runs ~£1750 per annum on a rail season.
If you want public transport to be truly competitive than rail fares have to fall by half if not more.

Even if you buy a car and run it for several years your still going to struggle to get it for much less then £2,000 a year, as you'll be adding servicing and MOT costs which can easily add £120 a year.

Average age of a scrapped car is about 13-14 years.

That suggests that the £6695 for the Sandero can be amortised down to about ~£515/yr, given that interest rates on savings are near zero there isn't really a capital charge to consider.
£40 VED, £300 insurance and the £120 for servicing and MOT takes us to something order of £1000 per year.

 

[Bald Rick]

You’ll be hard pressed to find non-corporate car buyer who amortises the capital of their car. Interest rates on personal loans are typically 3%+.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You’ll be hard pressed to find non-corporate car buyer who amortises the capital of their car. Interest rates on personal loans are typically 3%+.

Quite. The view in most households will be "the car costs £X per month for loan, tax and insurance", servicing is just an inconvenient lump sum once a year, tyres/brakes an inconvenient lump sum slightly less often than that, and the cost of a journey is fuel.

People can shout all they like about that being a poor model - and it is - but people simply aren't going to change how they think about it.

 

[Meerkat]

The cost of driving is fuel. Everything else was accounted for in the “I want/need a car” decision.

 

[Bald Rick]

The cost of driving is fuel. Everything else was accounted for in the “I want/need a car” decision.

Fuel plus any parking / toll charges etc. The latter of which will become more prevalent in cities.

(Noting that I am perhaps rather unusual in taking into account the cost of tyres into my driving costs. I get through a pair of fronts every 10,000 miles at £400+ a pair, with the rears at twice the frequency - 6p a mile. Doesn’t sound much, but it’s £15 extra on a typical round trip to the Midlands for me).

 

[Meerkat]

£400 a pair!! What are your driving!

 

[Bald Rick]

£400 a pair!! What are your driving!

let’s just say the tyres are wide, and not much thicker than a coat of paint.

 

[Meerkat]

Greta hates you!

 

[Bald Rick]

Greta hates you!

It’s coming up to its 13th birthday, is ULEZ compliant, and averaged 3,000 miles a year this decade. As cars go, this is one of the better ones sustainability-wise.

 

[AndrewE]

Quite. The view in most households will be "the car costs £X per month for loan, tax and insurance", servicing is just an inconvenient lump sum once a year, tyres/brakes an inconvenient lump sum slightly less often than that, and the cost of a journey is fuel.
People can shout all they like about that being a poor model - and it is - but people simply aren't going to change how they think about it.

...which is a very good argument for putting the costs of insurance and "tax" onto fuel. NOT as VAT, which is claimed back by people running their cars on their "businesses" but as Excise Duty. It would go a little way towards making the apparent costs of driving a bit more comparable with the immediately obvious cost of buying a train (or other public transport) ticket.
A national insurance scheme (bought in from a consortium of insurance companies if necessary) would also stop people driving uninsured, the costs of which are currently picked up by the rest of us.

 

[Bletchleyite]

...which is a very good argument for putting the costs of insurance and "tax" onto fuel. NOT as VAT, which is claimed back by people running their cars on their "businesses" but as Excise Duty. It would go a little way towards making the apparent costs of driving a bit more comparable with the immediately obvious cost of buying a train (or other public transport) ticket.
A national insurance scheme (bought in from a consortium of insurance companies if necessary) would also stop people driving uninsured, the costs of which are currently picked up by the rest of us.

The problem with which is electric cars. It could however be placed onto a new road pricing system instead, and I'd be in broad support of that for many reasons (not least it making borrowing a car if you're not the policyholder on another policy to use the third party extension easier).

 

[DerekC]

This thread seems to have turned into car economics.

I happened to read today that Indian Railways were about 48% electrified in 2015 and were electrifying (to 25kV) about 2000km/year. They aim to double that rate by next year, with the aim of electrifying virtually all the rest of the broad gauge network by the mid-2020s. Now there's an example for Mr Shapps to follow, if he wants to eliminate diesels. It's called having a consistent strategy and acting upon it.

 

[AndrewE]

The problem with which is electric cars. It could however be placed onto a new road pricing system instead, and I'd be in broad support of that for many reasons (not least it making borrowing a car if you're not the policyholder on another policy to use the third party extension easier).

True, but given the track record of implementing big computer systems in the UK I can't really believe that road pricing could be made to work properly anyway.
However, adding not-usually-recognised costs to electric fuel top-up charges would be an even bigger challenge for the smart meter in a house!

 

[Bald Rick]

True, but given the track record of implementing big computer systems in the UK I can't really believe that road pricing could be made to work properly anyway.
However, adding not-usually-recognised costs to electric fuel top-up charges would be an even bigger challenge for the smart meter in a house!

Indeed, and the Transport Select Committee has ‘started a conversation’ on nationwide road pricing a couple of weeks ago. This is a prelude to possible legislation, although don’t expect anything soon.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/...-parliament-2017/national-road-pricing-17-19/

 

[HSTEd]

This thread seems to have turned into car economics.

I happened to read today that Indian Railways were about 48% electrified in 2015 and were electrifying (to 25kV) about 2000km/year. They aim to double that rate by next year, with the aim of electrifying virtually all the rest of the broad gauge network by the mid-2020s. Now there's an example for Mr Shapps to follow, if he wants to eliminate diesels. It's called having a consistent strategy and acting upon it.

Yes, but Indian Railways have the advantage of a huge loading gauge, low labour costs, a comparatively lax railway safety culture and a pre-Thatcherite Government infrastructure.

 

[DerekC]

Yes, but Indian Railways have the advantage of a huge loading gauge, low labour costs, a comparatively lax railway safety culture and a pre-Thatcherite Government infrastructure.

So does that imply that you think further electrification is unaffordable for us?

 

[The Ham]

Even a relatively short journey like Grantham to Nottingham runs ~£1750 per annum on a rail season.
If you want public transport to be truly competitive than rail fares have to fall by half if not more.

Yet such a journey would be result in over 11,000 miles traveled a year for a 5 day a week job with 35 days of holiday entitlement (including 8 days of bank holidays) which is exactly my point.

Thats still before anything you would have spent on variable costs (such as fuel, tyres, etc.).

That's all on a fairly cheap car on a lease.

Average age of a scrapped car is about 13-14 years.

That suggests that the £6695 for the Sandero can be amortised down to about ~£515/yr, given that interest rates on savings are near zero there isn't really a capital charge to consider.
£40 VED, £300 insurance and the £120 for servicing and MOT takes us to something order of £1000 per year.

The problem with that is:

- Few people actually pay cash for their cars, so you then need to include an element of loan costs into the purchase costs
- Few people actually drive such a cheap car
- There are likely to be some large maintenance costs within a 14 year life of a car
- There's no certainty that a car would make it to that age, for instance are those figures the available age a car is scrapped or are they the average end of life age (scrapped, written off, etc.) for all cars?

All of which would add to the cost of a car ownership.

There are certainly a lot of people who are paying well over the odds for their transport because they only consider the cost of the fuel for their journeys rather than their total spending.

 

[The Ham]

So does that imply that you think further electrification is unaffordable for us?

Even with those added costs for our electrification projects, there's going to be a time when it would be cheaper to electrify our rail network than try and cut emissions by other means.

As I've highlighted before the average rail user results in 1/5th the emissions of the average car user. This is based on average loadings which are circa 2 people in a car and circa 1/3 of the seats full on a train.

It's also worth noting that using existing train services do not result in extra emissions until extra services are provided, add those emissions will happen almost whether there's passengers on them or not. Whilst every car journey results in extra emissions, as they don't produce emissions if they are not being used.

Therefore, untill extra capacity is proposed and then passenger loadings are likely to be high and therefore lower than the average rail user anyway, it is better to use rail than drive.

 

[The Ham]

Quite. The view in most households will be "the car costs £X per month for loan, tax and insurance", servicing is just an inconvenient lump sum once a year, tyres/brakes an inconvenient lump sum slightly less often than that, and the cost of a journey is fuel.

People can shout all they like about that being a poor model - and it is - but people simply aren't going to change how they think about it.

I'm not suggesting that everyone will so having any cars, rather where people have now than one car is it really worth doing so?

Especially those cars which are used for little more than <1 mile runs to/from school and some shopping. Worse still, those which are driven to a train station and left in a car park before being driven home again (sometimes a few miles or less).

I'm aware that there's those who do need to drive, and there's always going to be a place for that. However not everyone who has a car needs to and many could cope fairly easily without a second car in their household.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not suggesting that everyone will so having any cars, rather where people have now than one car is it really worth doing so?

Especially those cars which are used for little more than <1 mile runs to/from school and some shopping. Worse still, those which are driven to a train station and left in a car park before being driven home again (sometimes a few miles or less).

I'm aware that there's those who do need to drive, and there's always going to be a place for that. However not everyone who has a car needs to and many could cope fairly easily without a second car in their household.

And it's quite possibly second cars that good public transport supplemented by the likes of Uber and car clubs can reduce. No-car households are very unlikely for the foreseeable future other than in very urban areas. Though owning a car in the household for occasional and short distance use is expensive on a per-month basis, the vast majority of people consider that money worth paying for the convenience.

 

[PartyOperator]

It's also worth noting that using existing train services do not result in extra emissions until extra services are provided, add those emissions will happen almost whether there's passengers on them or not. Whilst every car journey results in extra emissions, as they don't produce emissions if they are not being used.

Therefore, untill extra capacity is proposed and then passenger loadings are likely to be high and therefore lower than the average rail user anyway, it is better to use rail than drive.

I suspect that when extra capacity finally is added, it will often be in the form of more efficient trains so you could even argue that the marginal emissions due to an extra passenger could be negative. If XC were to replace their chronically overcrowded four-car Voyagers with 9-car bi-mode class 800s or similar (as seems likely eventually) they could double capacity and quite possibly reduce emissions per train on some routes.

 

[ac6000cw]

There are certainly a lot of people who are paying well over the odds for their transport because they only consider the cost of the fuel for their journeys rather than their total spending.

As Bletchleyite says, people are quite happy to spend a lot of money on personal transport for the convenience factor/not wanting to share their personal space with other people/not wanting to stand at a bus stop in the cold and rain etc.

Because the cars have a shorter lifespan than rail vehicles, they'll likely go zero-emissions faster than rail will. Also rail emissions are a small part of overall transport carbon emissions - and overall transport usage (take a look at the official government transport statistics), so encouraging the transition to zero-emission road vehicles will reduce carbon emissions faster and deeper than spending lots of money on rail improvements.

 

[MarkyT]

Because the cars have a shorter lifespan than rail vehicles, they'll likely go zero-emissions faster than rail will. Also rail emissions are a small part of overall transport carbon emissions - and overall transport usage (take a look at the official government transport statistics), so encouraging the transition to zero-emission road vehicles will reduce carbon emissions faster and deeper than spending lots of money on rail improvements.

While you're correct on the scale of the issue, rail vehicles with their longer life are more likely to be modified, for instance adding batteries for off wire working, or bi-mode diesel genset packs to allow as much use as possible to be made of existing electrified mileage so there's no excuse for diverting all investment from rail towards road. Rail can play a cost effective part and should receive some appropriate proportion of any notional transportation decarbonisation budget. Even conventional DMUs might have their transmissions converted to electric which could allow bi-mode or battery-backed hybrid operation so urban emissions in particular can be minimised (that may be more about local particulatates and NOx rather than carbon). On the roads I suspect private car migration will take a very long time indeed to reach majority zero emissions, but commercial vehicles are possibly the most promising area in which to encourage early transition, especially the smaller ones that deliver in urban centres, and particularly because there are already measures available to incentivise this. Buses and taxis, also most prevalent in the same densest urban areas, are also a good target. Railways must play their part too in these areas, but modern solutions mean that doesn't necessarily require huge mileage of continuous electrification and then a big bang changeover to an entirely new totally electric fleet. Discontinuous techniques work and can provide earlier and more complete relief from the urban pollution problem.

 

[ac6000cw]

UK transport statistics summary for 2018 is here - https://assets.publishing.service.g...ta/file/787488/tsgb-2018-report-summaries.pdf

Look at the 'UK domestic and international transport greenhouse gas emissions' section on page 8 - the rail emissions are less than 2% of that from all road transport (cars, HGVs, buses & vans) added together. On that basis, I hope that no rational, logical decision maker would spend any significant extra money on reducing rail carbon emissions, as they are almost insignificant in relation to the UK carbon emissions problem (and the transport sector was only around 27% of the total UK carbon emissions anyway in 2016).

The reason the rail sector carbon contribution is very low anyway is because much of the heavily trafficked parts of the network are already electrified (or it's in progress), and the rail percentage of the total passenger transport market is also quite low - 3% of trips and 11% of distance (see page 4 of the report).

 

[MarkyT]

I hope that no rational, logical decision maker would spend any significant extra money on reducing rail carbon emissions, as they are almost insignificant in relation to the UK carbon emissions problem (and the transport sector was only around 27% of the total UK carbon emissions anyway in 2016).

Thanks for the link, and I fully agree on the larger scale, but the remaining diesel operations in urban areas (e.g. Marylebone approaches) are much more a public health particulates and NOx problem, rather than a significant part of the overall carbon issue. That factor might justify some additional targeted intervention above what the vehicle mileage thus converted represents purely in carbon terms. Noise can also be an issue in such urban areas and all these effects can be highly localised in the vicinity of the particular corridors, and particularly around stations, where clearly there are many people on foot milling around breathing the local poor air, many of whom happen to be rail customers.

 

[The Ham]

On that basis, I hope that no rational, logical decision maker would spend any significant extra money on reducing rail carbon emissions, as they are almost insignificant in relation to the UK carbon emissions problem (and the transport sector was only around 27% of the total UK carbon emissions anyway in 2016).

It depends on what needs to happen to reduce CO2 in other modes. It could be easier to electrify more of the rail network that get more people to take up an electric car (although there is likely to come a point when petrol stations will start to close down due the lack of customers, which is likely to speed up the uptake of electric cars in that area).

Anyway, due to reductions in the amount of CO2 in energy production the provisional (National Statistics) UK greenhouse emissions document has transport in 2018 as a larger share than it was in previous years (given that this document gives it as CO2 emissions and total greenhouse gaseseither of which could be the total referred to above, it also doesn't appear to include 2016 either, as such I'll not give actual figures).

For those interested it can be found here:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...8-provisional-emissions-statistics-report.pdf

 

[AM9]

While you're correct on the scale of the issue, rail vehicles with their longer life are more likely to be modified, for instance adding batteries for off wire working, or bi-mode diesel genset packs to allow as much use as possible to be made of existing electrified mileage so there's no excuse for diverting all investment from rail towards road. Rail can play a cost effective part and should receive some appropriate proportion of any notional transportation decarbonisation budget. Even conventional DMUs might have their transmissions converted to electric which could allow bi-mode or battery-backed hybrid operation so urban emissions in particular can be minimised (that may be more about local particulatates and NOx rather than carbon). ...

That was the slant that I was taking in my posts #137 & #147. There should be an immediate ban on ordering any more diesel hydraulic/mechanical stock like the class 195s. DEMU designs have been used successfully since the '50s when the BR class 204/205 'thumpers' were introduced. When they were withdrawn in 2000-2005, it was H&S issues rather than operational unsuitability that caused their demise. Instead of more class 195s, a hybrid of the class 331 could be specified that had a generator instead or the mechanical drive to the axles. The slight increase kin weight would be more than mitigated by the increased reliability and better economy of the transmission, plus the extended life available by converting them to full EMUs (vrtually the same as class 331s), or providing OLE equipment, - pantograph & transformer, and redeploying the traction control electronics to drive the motors in the bogies, - either as a bimode or as a puire EMU.
It is a shame that we have arrived at the commitment to remove CO2 production just a few years after the class 195s were ordered.