WCML Timetable Recast - 2tph Birmingham and Manchester

[Ianno87]

The Oxford - Cambridge arc doesn't really exist yet, not in rail terms. And the journey planner would show Watford as a potential option if it had the calls, and was included in a "LON" type code (per the airports) against key WCML destinations.

I agree on a bit of "drop me at Watford mum" - my dad did that for me often as it was far easier than heading to Euston. I went to uni in Manchester and stayed on for a while.

Watford has northbound demand also. And a lot of big employers in Watford itself, so there is plenty of inbound, from both northwards and from London/counter commuting, including the Southern service and the options that creates. It's not as simple as a dormitory pattern (e.g. Leighton Buzzard or Harpenden), it is much more nuanced.

And MKC has a massive amount of London and London/counter commuting too. I would think not too different.

You'd be surprised how many people railhead by car (via good, relatively uncongested roads) to Milton Keynes from the likes of Aylesbury, Luton, Bedford etc, for a fast link north.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You'd be surprised how many people railhead by car (via good, relatively uncongested roads) to Milton Keynes from the likes of Aylesbury, Luton, Bedford etc, for a fast link north.

Particularly as the timetable north from Bedford is so lacking that you'd almost think they had designed it deliberately to be awful (though it's more the lack of an up fast platform at Bedford).

 

[Bald Rick]

Particularly as the timetable north from Bedford is so lacking that you'd almost think they had designed it deliberately to be awful (though it's more the lack of an up fast platform at Bedford).

It’s more that Birmingham / Manchester are rather bigger draws than Derby / Nottingham / Sheffield.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It’s more that Birmingham / Manchester are rather bigger draws than Derby / Nottingham / Sheffield.

They are, but from Bedford you could go to Manchester via Sheffield were the timetable not set up to make that take forever. Quickest way entirely by public transport would be to wander over to the bus station for the X5 to MKC...

 

[Bald Rick]

They are, but from Bedford you could go to Manchester via Sheffield were the timetable not set up to make that take forever. Quickest way entirely by public transport would be to wander over to the bus station for the X5 to MKC...

Agreed, but it’s still much quicker to drive to MK. Besides, most people doing such a journey won’t be starting from an origin that is walking distance to Bedford station.

 

[30907]

I'm sorry, but this isn't true, or anecdotal to that one occasion at best. Watford was historically a big draw on the WCML. I used it a lot (growing up in NW London, it was often quicker and less faff than via Euston). Every two hours, there were trains to Liverpool, Manchester and Lancs/Glasgow (they used to alternate with Milton Keynes) - and it was a very established railhead for a big area. Always well used.

Watford was a brilliant choice for an outer-suburban pick-up in the 60s-70s; I wonder if the gradual outward move of the commuter belt and the decision to route the M25 further north have had an impact on the northward business traffic. Is there any evidence?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Watford was a brilliant choice for an outer-suburban pick-up in the 60s-70s; I wonder if the gradual outward move of the commuter belt and the decision to route the M25 further north have had an impact on the northward business traffic. Is there any evidence?

The horrendous , now, traffic into Watford Junction - and the very poor quality of the interchange work against this.

 

[6Gman]

In response to tbtc above, if you look at my original post you will see I agree with you about the use of Voyagers. *Personally I would make Avanti an all-electric franchise / contract, and hand the 20 221s en bloc to the Welsh Government. Then they could decide what their priorities are in respect of linking:
1) North Wales to South Wales;
2) North Wales to Manchester and Liverpool
3) South Wales to Manchester and Liverpool
4) Chester / Wrexham / Shrewsbury to London.
By giving the responsibility (and associated costs) to the Welsh Government, that might flush out what their priorities really are. The fact that the hourly Voyager Euston - Crewe is already suspended might indicate which way the wind is blowing as regards that service group.
(*This of course assumes that I am a benevolent deity with the power to re-write contracts at will, which might be a bit of a leap of the imagination!)

Since Chester and Shrewsbury are both in England why should the Welsh Government determine their service levels?

 

[cle]

I get that a IATA-style LON code for Watford would be weird, and where to draw the line. I'd say M25 and near enough, and only on long distance destinations. So it would probably only be OOC, Stratford (if Norwich is still far) and Watford Junction. Clapham for the SWT diesels. Stevenage at a push. Slough might sneak in with the Herefords, but it's not really a long-distance station any more.

In any case, it is difficult to say with Watford demand. There is a whole generation of people who don't really see it as an inter-city railhead, except for heading to Birmingham. Which many places in Herts and Bucks have services to also, these days.

The railheading to MKC is just railheading. Nothing to do with this Oxford-Cambridge arcfantasy. Remember the banana? All these things are rather superficial. But with EWR, perhaps it'll be a thing. Until then, it's just a railhead for its region, like every other. There is next to no connection or demand between Cambridge and Milton Keynes today.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I get that a IATA-style LON code for Watford would be weird, and where to draw the line. I'd say M25 and near enough, and only on long distance destinations. So it would probably only be OOC, Stratford (if Norwich is still far) and Watford Junction. Clapham for the SWT diesels. Stevenage at a push. Slough might sneak in with the Herefords, but it's not really a long-distance station any more.

It's be very weird. The best way to handle this is probably to allow entry of your postcode or "click to use my location" and it makes suggestions based on that.

There already is a LONDON (all stations) code though I know not what it is, but it only covers London termini (possibly plus Kenny O) and not Watford Jn, and nor should it.

The railheading to MKC is just railheading. Nothing to do with this Oxford-Cambridge arcfantasy. Remember the banana? All these things are rather superficial. But with EWR, perhaps it'll be a thing. Until then, it's just a railhead for its region, like every other. There is next to no connection or demand between Cambridge and Milton Keynes today.

More of a demand towards Oxford but still not huge.

 

[Bevan Price]

Fair enough, I 'm partly responding to the general trend of such threads (and comments on other threads from people who want to reduce the flagship London - Birmingham/ Manchester services whilst maintaining the same frequencies to Shrewsbury/ Wrexham/ Holyhead etc - so it's nothing personal about your thread, but more of a general grump about the 'contrary' way that people seem keen on thinning out the main routes (which will mean dozens of 390s carriages sat idle) whilst still running diesel trains long distances on the WCML to ensure that the people of Wrexham/ Shrewsbury retain their London service (bearing in mind that a Crewe - Euston round trip must be 300 miles).

It's not just an Avanti thing - there are people on here who want to thin out the busy services and beef up the irregular services on a number of franchises (e.g. if this Forum had its way then I think we'd see TPE reducing the main Leeds - Manchester service to three or four trains per hour but increasing the Liverpool - WCML - Glasgow service to hourly... GWR would have to cut half of the London - Bristol services but massively increase the number of Bristol - Weymouth services)

As I said on one of the other threads where reducing the London - Manchester service had been suggested, my main problem with the twenty minute frequency inherited from VHF days is that it doesn't fit neatly into other services - e.g. XC have to have more like a 20/40 split at the Manchester end because that fits around the Avanti services through Stoke - I could see the merits of a proposal along the lines of amending the services to provide four trains per hour on the Birmingham and Manchester corridors by absorbing stops from some other services (e.g. if you were starting from scratch then maybe you could amend the LNW/Avanti services to provide twelve "fast" services per hour from Euston, maybe a second London - Crewe - Manchester service would take up the stops from the current TfW service through Stockport - maybe with TfW taking on stops currently served by a Northern service north of Crewe - maybe that would balance things out a bit better)...

...but simply cutting the busy electric services between cities whilst keeping all of the diesel services to much smaller places? I can't argue in favour of that.

Fair enough, I 'm partly responding to the general trend of such threads (and comments on other threads from people who want to reduce the flagship London - Birmingham/ Manchester services whilst maintaining the same frequencies to Shrewsbury/ Wrexham/ Holyhead etc - so it's nothing personal about your thread, but more of a general grump about the 'contrary' way that people seem keen on thinning out the main routes (which will mean dozens of 390s carriages sat idle) whilst still running diesel trains long distances on the WCML to ensure that the people of Wrexham/ Shrewsbury retain their London service (bearing in mind that a Crewe - Euston round trip must be 300 miles).

It's not just an Avanti thing - there are people on here who want to thin out the busy services and beef up the irregular services on a number of franchises (e.g. if this Forum had its way then I think we'd see TPE reducing the main Leeds - Manchester service to three or four trains per hour but increasing the Liverpool - WCML - Glasgow service to hourly... GWR would have to cut half of the London - Bristol services but massively increase the number of Bristol - Weymouth services)

Yes, some people here do suggest impracticably high levels of service on secondary routes. But, even before it started, some of us realised that Trans Pennine trying to run 5 or 6 trains per hour between Manchester & Leeds was never going to work satisfactorily with the existing infrastructure.

 

[cle]

It's be very weird. The best way to handle this is probably to allow entry of your postcode or "click to use my location" and it makes suggestions based on that.

There already is a LONDON (all stations) code though I know not what it is, but it only covers London termini (possibly plus Kenny O) and not Watford Jn, and nor should it.



More of a demand towards Oxford but still not huge.

I suppose Google Maps offers this, which many use for travel plans. So it would suss out if a Watford or similar option was better.

OOC will be a 'London Stations' though, I'm sure. But that is zone 2/3 - a Shinagawa/Ueno if you will. Only Haymarket in Edinburgh really comes close, I'll be curious if HS2 calls there from the Carstairs direction, the split train should fit.

 

[CW2]

Since Chester and Shrewsbury are both in England why should the Welsh Government determine their service levels?

At Chester, with the exception of the services to Manchester via Altrincham, Merseyrail electrics, and Crewe shuttle, everything that serves the place is either going to or from some part of Wales. The timetable and service frequency should be determined by the frequency and stopping patterns set down by the Welsh Government.

Shrewsbury is similar, with services to the north, south and west all going to / from Wales.

So in both locations the majority of the services will be determined by the Welsh Government.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, some people here do suggest impracticably high levels of service on secondary routes. But, even before it started, some of us realised that Trans Pennine trying to run 5 or 6 trains per hour between Manchester & Leeds was never going to work satisfactorily with the existing infrastructure.

I don't know what the motivation is for this sort of stupidity - it just increases costs and ruins the service in aid of running short trains round at unnecessary frequencies. Yes, 10-minute frequency is nice on a metro service, but TPE isn't a metro service. But there is just something about railway management that seems to think that things like that will work when everyone who uses the service knows full well it won't. The mess that was made of the LNR service was another case in point - "it won't work" was being posted on here long before it was proven that, er, it indeed wouldn't work, and it took COVID to save us from having to put up with another year of the debacle before it could be fixed.

So I suppose to answer the question of "why reduce to 2tph to Brum/Manc?" - the answer is that if demand doesn't require 3 (and off-peak it indeed doesn't, both those routes do carry a lot of fresh air off-peak) then why not have the spare paths to make the WCML that bit more reliable? Nobody is going to avoid travelling by train long-distance just because a service is reduced from every 20 minutes to every 30 - that sort of change makes a difference for a local journey, but not an IC one. Downgrading to hourly would be something quite different.

 

[Bald Rick]

Nobody is going to avoid travelling by train long-distance just because a service is reduced from every 20 minutes to every 30

There’s a lot of evidence that shows that frequency is important on longer distance flows too, and that some people do choose alternative modes when the frequency drops.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There’s a lot of evidence that shows that frequency is important on longer distance flows too, and that some people do choose alternative modes when the frequency drops.

I very much doubt that would be the case to any significant extent when going from 3 to 2tph, though. I bet quite a lot of people wouldn't even notice; it's a maximum of 10 minutes' additional waiting time.

I don't doubt it would if you went to 1tph, though, and even more so if you went as far down as 0.5tph or randomly timed trains.

 

[Ianno87]

I very much doubt that would be the case to any significant extent when going from 3 to 2tph, though. I bet quite a lot of people wouldn't even notice; it's a maximum of 10 minutes' additional waiting time.

I don't doubt it would if you went to 1tph, though, and even more so if you went as far down as 0.5tph or randomly timed trains.

That 10 minutes is of relative importance on on shorter duration Pendolino journey; such as from Coventry or Birmingham International to Euston, where the extra waiting time is proportionately a much higher chunk of the perception of the overall journey time (which is only 60 minutes to Coventry, 70 minutes to International)

 

[Bald Rick]

I very much doubt that would be the case to any significant extent when going from 3 to 2tph, though. I bet quite a lot of people wouldn't even notice; it's a maximum of 10 minutes' additional waiting time.

It absolutely matters, in the concept of Generalised Journey Time. It is a significant factor.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That 10 minutes is of relative importance on on shorter duration Pendolino journey; such as from Coventry or Birmingham International to Euston, where the extra waiting time is proportionately a much higher chunk of the perception of the overall journey time (which is only 60 minutes to Coventry, 70 minutes to International)

Or it would be if the walk-up fares were affordable. If you've had to book, waiting time due to frequency is largely irrelevant because you have to use the one you've booked.

 

[Ianno87]

Or it would be if the walk-up fares were affordable. If you've had to book, waiting time due to frequency is largely irrelevant because you have to use the one you've booked.

A) Walk on fares are affordable (which is a relative term, not an absolute term) to quite a few people (even if not to you or others) and people can, and do, pay a premium for the choice of departure. I see that Coventry-Euston still offers an Any Permitted Super Off Peak Return fare for £37 which strikes me definitely in the "Affordable" box but permitting walk up, albeit time-restricted, travel.

B) More frequency = More availability of services for Advance fares.

 

[Purple Orange]

Or it would be if the walk-up fares were affordable. If you've had to book, waiting time due to frequency is largely irrelevant because you have to use the one you've booked.

The open return fares are eye watering and when travelling for leisure I always book on a specific London service. However if travellng for business, which is the vast majority of my trips down south, then open return is what I go for. The knowledge that my work day is not constricted by a train time is very important and the 3 tph means that whenever I leave the office, or whatever obstacles I encounter on the tube, my journey home is more in my control. This is the same situation when I travel to Leeds. The high frequency is the most appealing aspect of the service.

 

[Ianno87]

The open return fares are eye watering and when travelling for leisure I always book on a specific London service. However if travellng for business, which is the vast majority of my trips down south, then open return is what I go for. The knowledge that my work day is not constricted by a train time is very important and the 3 tph means that whenever I leave the office, or whatever obstacles I encounter on the tube, my journey home is more in my control. This is the same situation when I travel to Leeds. The high frequency is the most appealing aspect of the service.

Pre-Covid, there was certainly a band of Coventry commuters fully happy to pay £17k+ for a First Class season ticket (or £10k+ standard) because of basically being able to walk straight on a train at Euston universally all day and be home faster than getting to somewhere like Shepperton or Epping)

 

[Bald Rick]

Or it would be if the walk-up fares were affordable. If you've had to book, waiting time due to frequency is largely irrelevant because you have to use the one you've booked.

Walk up fares are affordable to many. New St to Euston £58 off peak return? less than40 with a railcard? Seems reasonable to me for a 230 mile round trip.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The open return fares are eye watering and when travelling for leisure I always book on a specific London service. However if travellng for business, which is the vast majority of my trips down south, then open return is what I go for. The knowledge that my work day is not constricted by a train time is very important and the 3 tph means that whenever I leave the office, or whatever obstacles I encounter on the tube, my journey home is more in my control. This is the same situation when I travel to Leeds. The high frequency is the most appealing aspect of the service.

But would you find it substantially less usable if it was 2tph with peak extras rather than 3tph all day? I'm really not sure I would myself. A drop to 1 or loss of clockface would certainly be a problem, though.

As for TPE, would 4tph across the Pennines not do?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Nov 2020 ==

Walk up fares are affordable to many. New St to Euston £58 off peak return? less than40 with a railcard? Seems reasonable to me for a 230 mile round trip.

Half that in diesel to drive (and Birmingham isn't a car-unfriendly city if you're going that way). I would agree that Railcards make walk-up fares reasonably-priced (i.e. most of them are about a third overpriced), but that is one for another thread!

I would suspect that the majority of journeys on Avanti West Coast these days are on Advances, though the Brum route could well be an exception.

 

[Purple Orange]

But would you find it substantially less usable if it was 2tph with peak extras rather than 3tph all day? I'm really not sure I would myself. A drop to 1 or loss of clockface would certainly be a problem, though.

As for TPE, would 4tph across the Pennines not do?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Nov 2020 ==



Half that in diesel to drive (and Birmingham isn't a car-unfriendly city if you're going that way). I would agree that Railcards make walk-up fares reasonably-priced (i.e. most of them are about a third overpriced), but that is one for another thread!

I would suspect that the majority of journeys on Avanti West Coast these days are on Advances, though the Brum route could well be an exception.

In practice TPE isn’t 5 tph from Manchester. You either find yourself at Piccadilly or Victoria, where you’ve got 3 tph or 4 tph heading east respectively. I’m discounting the stoppers. Returning it is far better, because there are 5 tph and missing a train, a last min change of plans or an overrunning meeting has very little impact.

With regards to London I certainly feel a benefit of having just a 20 min gap. I know it’s just 10 minutes, but it has the same impact as what I described above about returning from Leeds.

Pre-Covid, there was certainly a band of Coventry commuters fully happy to pay £17k+ for a First Class season ticket (or £10k+ standard) because of basically being able to walk straight on a train at Euston universally all day and be home faster than getting to somewhere like Shepperton or Epping)

No doubt there will be many who still do post covid as well. I know it’s anecdotal, but I know a guy who commutes from Leamington several times a week on a day of his choosing and makes the decision to go to London at a drop of the hat if needed. Other days he goes to Birmingham.

 

[The Planner]

Pre-Covid, there was certainly a band of Coventry commuters fully happy to pay £17k+ for a First Class season ticket (or £10k+ standard) because of basically being able to walk straight on a train at Euston universally all day and be home faster than getting to somewhere like Shepperton or Epping)

Birmingham International would be a better example, its an expensive car parking week for a Birmingham or Coventry commute. £12 a weekday, £9 on a weekend. £1200 a year season ticket now according to the website. 2100 spaces too.

 

[Bald Rick]

Half that in diesel to drive

In diesel yes, for an economical one, then add in the congestion charge, ULEZ charge (coming to Birmingham next year), parking, and that driving into central London will take ‘some time’ - most people travelling to central London from Birmingham, or vice versa, will use the train. The extra cost, and less hassle during the journey more than outweighs the door to door convenience.

But if that effective journey time increases due to lower frequency, the equation will shift for some.

 

[Ianno87]

In diesel yes, for an economical one, then add in the congestion charge, ULEZ charge (coming to Birmingham next year), parking, and that driving into central London will take ‘some time’ - most people travelling to central London from Birmingham, or vice versa, will use the train. The extra cost, and less hassle during the journey more than outweighs the door to door convenience.

But if that effective journey time increases due to lower frequency, the equation will shift for some.

Plus the ability to work, read, sleep or otherwise be productive on the train. Which you can't in a car (for obvious reasons). That has a value too.