My suggestion to use carnet style ticketing to soften commuter demand on West Coast Mainline

[NotATrainspott]

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hs2-construction.149100/


I know. I'm talking about using carnet ticketing to soften commuter demand on the WCML at Euston for years. It would be costly, but we don't really have any other option other than letting the mistakes of the Victorians and 1960s British Rail continue to ruin Camden for the rest of this century.

Once HS2 opens the nature of the southern WCML will change quite dramatically, and I think that will make it easier for this carnet-based demand softening to work. Compared to long-distance travellers, commuters have more options open to them. Some people living in Tring who currently gets a LNWR service to Euston could, if the incentives are there, switch to a Chiltern service from Aylesbury or a Thameslink service from St Albans. Regular commuters will also find it easier to handle broken journeys, e.g. needing to swap trains at a new station at Willesden Junction.

 

[Ianno87]

I know. I'm talking about using carnet ticketing to soften commuter demand on the WCML at Euston for years. It would be costly, but we don't really have any other option other than letting the mistakes of the Victorians and 1960s British Rail continue to ruin Camden for the rest of this century.

Once HS2 opens the nature of the southern WCML will change quite dramatically, and I think that will make it easier for this carnet-based demand softening to work. Compared to long-distance travellers, commuters have more options open to them. Some people living in Tring who currently gets a LNWR service to Euston could, if the incentives are there, switch to a Chiltern service from Aylesbury or a Thameslink service from St Albans. Regular commuters will also find it easier to handle broken journeys, e.g. needing to swap trains at a new station at Willesden Junction.

A carnet system wouldn't be that effective - mainly because if it was, it sort of defeats the point of HS2. If it were so effective, we'd have done it already.

 

[JonathanH]

Some people living in Tring who currently gets a LNWR service to Euston could, if the incentives are there, switch to a Chiltern service from Aylesbury or a Thameslink service from St Albans.

Why?

Where is the common sense in moving demand from the WCML slow services to the potentially more congested services on the Chiltern line or Thameslink at St Albans? Are you trying to suggest that this would negate the need for HS2?

 

[NotATrainspott]

A carnet system wouldn't be that effective - mainly because if it was, it sort of defeats the point of HS2. If it were so effective, we'd have done it already.

Why?

Where is the common sense in moving demand from the WCML slow services to the potentially more congested services on the Chiltern line or Thameslink at St Albans? Are you trying to suggest that this would negate the need for HS2?

No. HS2 and other rail improvement projects are about providing a significant long-term increase in rail capacity. A flexible carnet season ticketing system is about efficiently rationing whatever capacity we have available so that as many people as possible are able to travel.

The people who advocate cleverer ticket systems as a replacement for HS2 don't value the idea of increased capacity, for whatever reason. Even if a carnet system increases efficiency, that same efficiency boost would apply for carnet ticketing after the opening of HS2 and the additional capacity it provides, so you'd get a double boost. It would need to be the case that the cost of providing extra capacity on HS2 relative to the benefit of that capacity was higher than the relative cost of rationing the existing capacity for carnet ticketing to actually be a worthwhile substitute. We don't believe this to be the case, especially when you consider the other non-capacity benefits of HS2 (speed, resilience, economic development etc).

We would know that our fancy carnet commuting ticket was working if every train was 100% full, and no one was involuntarily not able to get a train. Right now this doesn't happen because working from home doesn't happen in situations where it is optimal and because there is no marginal cost of journeys when you have a season ticket. If you're paying the same whether you do 4 or 5 journeys a week, then you'll feel economically pressured to do the fifth one even though you could just do 4 and leave some space for someone else.

What we can do is use the commuting rationing system to make it easier for us to deliver long-term capacity benefits. Unlike the proposed WCML capacity improvement alternatives to HS2, once these works at Euston were done we would actually be done and made the world genuinely better. After a full rebuild, there won't be any real reason to consider further upgrades. If more capacity is required, then more fundamental changes would be needed like a new cross-city tunnel. Upgrading the WCML, MML and ECML instead of HS2 would mean running just to stand still, as any incremental capacity gains were just swallowed up by extra demand and you'd end up still needing to do the big bang works anyway, just further down the line when they're harder to mitigate.

 

[Ianno87]

No. HS2 and other rail improvement projects are about providing a significant long-term increase in rail capacity. A flexible carnet season ticketing system is about efficiently rationing whatever capacity we have available so that as many people as possible are able to travel.

The people who advocate cleverer ticket systems as a replacement for HS2 don't value the idea of increased capacity, for whatever reason. Even if a carnet system increases efficiency, that same efficiency boost would apply for carnet ticketing after the opening of HS2 and the additional capacity it provides, so you'd get a double boost. It would need to be the case that the cost of providing extra capacity on HS2 relative to the benefit of that capacity was higher than the relative cost of rationing the existing capacity for carnet ticketing to actually be a worthwhile substitute. We don't believe this to be the case, especially when you consider the other non-capacity benefits of HS2 (speed, resilience, economic development etc).

We would know that our fancy carnet commuting ticket was working if every train was 100% full, and no one was involuntarily not able to get a train. Right now this doesn't happen because working from home doesn't happen in situations where it is optimal and because there is no marginal cost of journeys when you have a season ticket. If you're paying the same whether you do 4 or 5 journeys a week, then you'll feel economically pressured to do the fifth one even though you could just do 4 and leave some space for someone else.

What we can do is use the commuting rationing system to make it easier for us to deliver long-term capacity benefits. Unlike the proposed WCML capacity improvement alternatives to HS2, once these works at Euston were done we would actually be done and made the world genuinely better. After a full rebuild, there won't be any real reason to consider further upgrades. If more capacity is required, then more fundamental changes would be needed like a new cross-city tunnel. Upgrading the WCML, MML and ECML instead of HS2 would mean running just to stand still, as any incremental capacity gains were just swallowed up by extra demand and you'd end up still needing to do the big bang works anyway, just further down the line when they're harder to mitigate.

But we're already delivering an intervention with a long term capacity benefit - HS2 - without having to ration commuting demand.

 

[JonathanH]

If you're paying the same whether you do 4 or 5 journeys a week, then you'll feel economically pressured to do the fifth one even though you could just do 4 and leave some space for someone else.

That is nonsense. My sister has an annual season ticket even though she works one day a week at home and only does a four day week. She doesn't feel any economic pressure to go into her office five days a week. The season ticket is just about more efficient than three day returns.

However, I concede that if season tickets were abolished, it might be possible to revise the fare structure to discourage five days a week travel (and probably travel at the weekend too).

 

[HSTEd]

Why would we want to discourage weekend travel?

Weekend travel is a positive for the railway and society more generally.

We must be careful to not let panic over coronavirus and climate change reduce us to neo-serfs who never travel beyond the manor/town where we live and serve the ruling class.

 

[JonathanH]

Why would we want to discourage weekend travel?

Weekend travel is a positive for the railway and society more generally.

We must be careful to not let panic over coronavirus and climate change reduce us to neo-serfs who never travel beyond the manor/town where we live and serve the ruling class.

I think the OP is trying to make weekend travel something people pay for in addition to their journeys during the week.

 

[NotATrainspott]

But we're already delivering an intervention with a long term capacity benefit - HS2 - without having to ration commuting demand.

That's because HS2 is deliberately designed to be isolated from the rest of the rail network so that it can be built without disrupting existing services. Over time, the plans for Euston (where the majority of the NR disruption from HS2 occurs) have been amended to reduce even more disruption.

What we're talking about here is the reconstruction of the NR side of Euston to improve the station operations and experience for both passengers and locals. We can't really avoid affecting the existing services while we do it. London Bridge is probably the closest we've got to a complete and unavoidable station rebuild of this nature.

That is nonsense. My sister has an annual season ticket even though she works one day a week at home and only does a four day week. She doesn't feel any economic pressure to go into her office five days a week. The season ticket is just about more efficient than three day returns.

However, I concede that if season tickets were abolished, it might be possible to revise the fare structure to discourage five days a week travel (and probably travel at the weekend too).

We're talking about marginal effects here. Someone who already only commutes four days a week isn't the target. It's the person who's just on the edge of swapping to a four day commute who would be persuaded to if there was some money to be saved by doing so. Putting a cost figure on each extra day's worth of commute in a working week will also filter through the employment markets. Knowing that your policy of requiring 5 days attendance in the office each week effectively decreases your workers' income by some £X a year without saving you any money is going to cause changes in businesses.

Why would we want to discourage weekend travel?

Weekend travel is a positive for the railway and society more generally.

We must be careful to not let panic over coronavirus and climate change reduce us to neo-serfs who never travel beyond the manor/town where we live and serve the ruling class.

When did I say we wouldn't have weekend travel? What I said is that we'd use fancier ticketing techniques to maximise the societal benefit of the limited capacity we were able to run during a period of major improvement works. Once these improvement works are done, there would be even more capacity available in future for discretionary travel. Society would pay a little cost now for the sake of major long-term benefits.

Being realistic I would expect the NR side of Euston would run a two-track service for the duration of the rebuild. HS2 would soak up nearly all passenger demand north of Birmingham Interchange - ticketing would incentivise switching to HS2 services rather than using direct ones to Euston. Some long-distance services might be able to continue but stop short - e.g. at WCML platforms re-instated at Willesden Junction. The service running into NR Euston would be heavily rationalised with consistent max-length commuter rolling stock, stepping back to minimise platform usage times etc. We couldn't possibly hope to run a service like that if we had all the long-distance passengers with their luggage and children and so on making a mess of it.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the OP is trying to make weekend travel something people pay for in addition to their journeys during the week.

Not very many people use their season ticket to make the same journey on a Saturday or Sunday as they do on a weekday. Why on earth would they want to do that? They will want to go somewhere different.

 

[30907]

Not very many people use their season ticket to make the same journey on a Saturday or Sunday as they do on a weekday. Why on earth would they want to do that? They will want to go somewhere different.

Different from their workplace, yes, but not necessarily different from their (mainline) destination. Purely hypothetical examples:
supposed you worked within walking distance of Euston - you might well choose to head up to town for weekend leisure, rather than head to Birmingham;
or you might start your country walk at Tring rather than Long Buckby.
And if you had a travelcard-type season, the incentive would presumably be greater - I don't know if there's evidence to support that though.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Inboundary Travelcards (or outboundary ones from very near London) are probably a bit of an exception as they're more like buying a car - you're buying unlimited travel where you like (within London) rather than a specific journey.

I would maintain, though, that most commuters hate their daily journey enough that they won't be wanting to do it on the weekend without a very good reason. They'll mostly make a leisure journey by car.

I've had outboundary Travelcard seasons before, and when I did I barely ever went to London on the weekend - I just didn't want to. Though I probably on odd occasions used it as part of a cross-London split to go somewhere else.

 

[causton]

A carnet already exists for the southern WCML, no? Part of the WMT franchise.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A carnet already exists for the southern WCML, no? Part of the WMT franchise.

They've released one but it's basically useless due to the tiny discount it offers. You can get more discount by using a Network Railcard and buying an Anytime Single out and a discounted Off Peak Single back. (Off Peaks on the south WCML mostly have no evening restrictions).

A very clear case of following the letter of the franchise agreement to tick a box by finding the least-impact way of doing something you don't want to do.