Not at all surprised - it would be interesting to know why it became a 'new station' project when considerably enhancing the other transport options (e.g. dedicated, more frequent, bus link and separated cycleways) would probably have been far more useful to more people in Soham?
I guess because they know that (a) it would make a massive loss, (b) it would likely damage any other paralleling bus services, resulting in reductions in service and/or increased subsidies to those communities at current bus stops not convenient to a railway station and (c) this may lead to demands for other DfT subsidised road transport services elsewhere.
And yet they do just that, all the time. They've not stopped a large expansion on EMR regional going ahead in two months time, despite it having been clear for most of the planning stage that the pandemic means long-term damage. The cost of these enhancements is orders of magnitude larger than the what any bus replacement contract could call for. Also, such services can officially be called 'trials' and let on fixed two year terms to see how much use they actually get. There ought be no particular concern over competing with an existing bus service either - if the Department were eager to avoid that, they erm, wouldn't pay to introduce a train service. If a bus were run in the interim before an hourly train service can be procured, when the full train service eventually did start it would have a very significantly larger user base, and therefore need less subsidy long-term. Obviously there's no real sense in starting such things in a pandemic, but if we're expecting the industry to recover passenger numbers...
I guess that this is because the line only just remained for passengers (by about three trains a day in each direction, at awkward times, one of which was the North of England to Parkeston Quay Continental express). The reason why the station closed was because very few passengers used it, and the sparse local service was hopelessly uneconomic, almost certainly not covering its movement costs. What local traffic there ever was had been lost to splendid omnibus services in the late 20s/early 30s.
I don't think EMR regional expansion [presumably you are referring to the Corby services?] is quite comparable with rural train services. Mistakes in one part of the network do not give a green light to more elsewhere.
I actually had the North Staffordshire line in mind first and foremost, plus the forthcoming expansion of services between Lincoln and Cleethorpes, and Lincoln and Doncaster next year, which all count as little used rural services, plus very early morning and late night services between Nottingham and Norwich or Sheffield, which cannot possibly hope to cover their own costs. The Department were also pretty recently perfectly happy to increase the service between Bridlington and Scarborough to 1tph, between Hazel Grove and Buxton to 2tph and to add a number of services to Whitby, the Cumbrian Coast and the Bentham line and the Settle & Carlisle. Greater Anglia themselves also saw increases in rural services in the last decade with everything from later trains to Sheringham to better Sunday service and 1tph on the East Suffolk line. All of these count as slow rural services. Newer and costlier rolling stock is also being rolled out or is already in place on EMR and Greater Anglia rural services despite the existing Sprinter rolling stock not being life expired. Again this is an increase in cost the Department were quite happy to accept. It's also worth nothing that an existing stage carriage service, if viable, could be diverted to station forecourts and contracted in to the rail franchise service. This would be even cheaper than hiring a bus and a driver. Certainly it's costs pale into insignificance compared with the long-term expensive leases the DfT are on the hook for for the class 755 stock that will work to Soham, and the train has two crew rather than one.
Perhaps once the have spent their money on these they won't have any for anywhere else? A day of reckoning may be beckoning anyway. None of these are new services, and none involve buses.
This is true, but not very likely to happen effectively in the current legislative framework (and wouldn't fulfil the 'permanency' criteria).
Make them reverse at Ely, and then go to Cambridge and back
I seek to highlight the greater value for money that rail infrastructure enhancements if bus services were procured alongside them. With respect 'there isn't enough money' is thus not a sensible rebuttal, because the current government have spent vast quantities of money on new services which will generate very small benefits indeed. When contributions such as running an extra train that just works Ely to Soham and back are on the table I think it provides balance to consider alternatives.
Chiltern achieved it long-term between Oxford Parkway and Oxford, this is a similar situation where a rail replacement bus can run long-term. There are also a number of buses in the WTT on Sundays on some routes, and GWR complimented trains to Severn Beach with a bus for a while. Finally, there are a number of existing examples of the local bus operator being contracted-in with the rail provision.
This is a really complex problem I think, because it repeats itself in slightly different froms well across the country. The most likely causes are probably related to election campaigning in relation to transport, snobbery from some quarters about the use of a bus that doesn't so much affect a train, and the fact that railway stations are usually very large and visible assets, wheras bus services are less tangible, even if their practical value is much greater.
I have to disagree with you there RT. There is a difference between a station with a hopelessly inadequate catchment area and one with a decent catchment not choosing to use it.
Yes it's true that some people are strongly put off by the perceived or actual quality issues with buses, but there are relatively inexpensive solutions to that by comparison with the cost of new rail provision. I agree that not having minimum quality standards for buses means they've all earnt a bad reputation, and this needs to be carefully worked on for people's perceptions to be changed over time. If the objection to a bus isn't related to quality, and only to prejudice, then I definitely think don't think can be measured as a benefit arising from building a new station which will attract few users.
The local train service ran to/from Newmarket, so didn't serve any regional flow; in 1958 Soham boasted a Friday night stop in the overnight Colchester-Glasgow, and a stop (about the same time!) in the day Newcastle-Colchester; I suspect military travel was a significant factor back then?
Really? I doubt that very much.
Quite possibly.
The Sunday buses in the WTT and the GWR at Severn Beach are replacements of existing trains. The Oxford Parkway-Oxford buses were operated because of infrastructure delays. I cannot think of any DfT sponsored bus services of new services that have not fallen by the wayside. I think there were some SWT services Winchester-Romsey and Bentley-Bordon at one time, which were franchise commitments. The DfT will be very wary at taking on ongoing funding commitments for bus services (except where replacing an existing train service), which are normally a Local Government matter for funding. If they aren't, why are they not doing it all over the country?
You are right, and there are other examples across the country e.g Melksham and Ashchurch. Stations don't have to have hourly services (there are plenty that don't), and the places being served by trains proposed serving Soham probably having little demand for that flow.
Funding largesse for railways nationally, and very little funding for buses, is a manifestation of this problem.
I think this is true, and I think that it would be acceptable if there were genuine honesty about the reason for using the station only option rather than any blended or bus related options. Unfortunately that honesty is missing from our discourse, both widely and locally. I'm in favour of the station on entirely personal grounds obviously, because in the event that I ever need to go to Soham (which I admit looks pretty unlikely, but never say never) I'd be able to get there using the mode that I most prefer, despite the likelihood that timing would be inconvenient. But that's a quite different matter to whether it's value for money.
Soham is on an already active line which is well used by freightliners and Ipswich to Peterborough services.
From a financial point of view, the result is the same - no passengers using the trains.
The Southern did not have a substantial freight traffic, nor many lines passing substantial lengths of green fields where faster trains were an imperative and the local stations moribund.
There was no evidence to suggest that running a semi fast service like this would have been anywhere economic. There were no places the size of Yeovil or Salisbury without other faster trains to bolster the revenue. At the time (1964) any additional train mileage that could be afforded would have gone into increasing Inter-City fast train frequency, not no-hoper secondary services.
No. The route was transferred from Intercity to London and Southeast Sector shortly after Sectorisation in the 1980's
The financial situation on day I is the same, but good management can rectify the situation with one scenario but not with the other.
This is for the Waterloo - Exeter service, which would include a proportion to revenue between London and Basingstoke, and virtually all of it between London and Andover and Salisbury. In 1973, (and for some years afterwards) the Waterloo-Exeter service were the only through trains between London and Salisbury, augmented by a two hourly stopping service from Basingstoke to Salisbury connecting with a London train. It can be expected that the Waterloo-Exeter service took the lion's share of the traffic and revenue and would be crucial to the finances of the route. At this time Salisbury and Andover had, by far, the least frequent London service [for that distance] of any comparable places on the Southern Region.
On the contrary, it is all about Salisbury (and its environs). Taking your proposed semi-fast Paddington-Exeter service versus the semi-fast Waterloo-Exeter route. From London, the stops at Reading and Newbury are roughly equivalent (traffic wise) to those of Basingstoke and Andover on the Waterloo line. West of Newbury the Paddington train would stop at multiple stations the equivalent of the Tisburys, Gillinghams and Crewkernes of the Waterloo line. However, the Waterloo line also has the large places of Salisbury and Yeovil to provide traffic. On the Paddington line, Taunton can be discounted as the bulk of passengers would travel by the other express trains.
No, the situation on Day 1 is much worse. In the closure scenario, the staffing of some stations would be immediately saved, and the movement costs of the infrequent trains. Some revenue would have been lost, but this certainly wouldn't have paid for that. In the semi-fast scenario, some of the revenue may still have been lost (the two hourly clockface timetable not coinciding with the local travel needs) and a bucket load of extra movement costs (as the service being replaced only ran sporadically) and precious little generated revenue (how many Wellington to Bruton tickets sold on Day 1?). No chance for 'good management' to gradually win revenue - they would have been sacked in short order and the service soon cancelled.
"Revenue generated per coach mile" is a most unreliable guide to overall profitability. An overcrowded short train may have large revenue per coach but a less crowded train with eight coaches will generate far more revenue. A service which shares route costs with other services will normally be more profitable than one which has a route to itself. A service providing two or more trains an hour will normally accrue more earnings than one with a train every two hours. The Waterloo to Exeter service was a three car train once every two hours and shared the route costs between Wilton Junction and Exmouth Junction with no other service. It is inconceivable that it was an especially profitable service.
I think in the locomotive hauled era the Waterloo-Exeter trains every two hours had more than 3 carriages?
Yes, the core service was 8 or 9.
