Whither XC after HS2?

[Bletchleyite]

As for the time savings, it would not be unreasonable to assume that it might take 5 minutes for the infrequent traveller to get off the train and find their way out of New Street, allow 5 minutes to wait for a shuttle, 5 minutes to get to Curzon Street and 5 to find and board the right train - if you are travelling without anything to slow you down. That's 20 minutes without allowing for a delayed connection, for which we'd better add another 10. The time saving by using HS2 to travel north is currently estimated at 45 minutes to Oxenholme and 49 to Edinburgh: so in reality, you might save 15 - 20 minutes overall with a non-trivial change in the middle. That's assuming that the timetable allows an immediate transfer and you don't have to wait for the next train.

A shuttle? Is that the plan? Travelators would be workable and not require the wait, about half the distance is undercover and would easily be able to be "boxed in" for an indoor walkway/travelator with security staffing.

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Best option may be to run South West-Birmingham trains into Moor Street instead of New Street.

Yes, that's true, and would preclude sending them to Liverpool etc but provide what we primarily want, an enhanced connection to HS2.

 

[Aictos]

Do you mean merge all TPE operations or just the East to West?

I meant all current operations as TPE is in my opinion a smaller version of XC especially if you take their Liverpool to Edinburgh service which is similar to the Manchester to Edinburgh service when Virgin XC used to operate it before it was hived off to TPE.

Adding to the fact that TPE sees themselves as a IC operator, the existing TPE operations are in my view very similar eg Manchester Airport to Edinburgh, Stansted Airport to Birmingham, Liverpool to Scarborough, Reading to Newcastle this being the case I can see both operating under the same company in much the same way that you had Virgin Trains West Coast and Virgin Trains Cross Country share common branding or to use another example use the existing Govia Thameslink thinking and thats to have seperate branding for XC and TPE but shared back room facilities.

 

[The Planner]

I literally couldn’t agree more. So I have worked out a plan involving cities in the North West/ North East/ South West. Thus my plan would look like this:

1tph Liverpool - Bristol (- Exeter) via Birmingham

1tph Chester - Oxford via Nuneaton and Leamington

1tph Manchester - Paignton via Birmingham and Bristol

1tph Bradford - Cardiff

1tph Plymouth - Hull

1tph Brighton - Manchester via Reading and Gatwick

Chester to Oxford is bonkers. Oxford is awful to terminate at and you are missing out Birmingham and International. Brighton is never coming back to XC. As @swt_passenger says, the removal of Southampton/Bournemouth makes no sense.

Best option may be to run South West-Birmingham trains into Moor Street instead of New Street.

Also make sure the WLL access at OOC is top notch

Someone needs to find the cash for Kings Norton for that, I'm willing to bet that idea gets quietly dropped.

 

[Purple Orange]

As @Glenn1969, yourself and I have mentioned, what would be the best origin and destinations to provide the best connectivity across the country? Liverpool - Reading and Bournemouth definitely for me.

South of Birmingham should remain unchanged and I’d keep the same service pattern as it is today, with the exception of the additional Bristol-Birmingham service (that could originate in Plymouth perhaps).

North of Birmingham is the predicament and I see it as difficult to justify services continuing to Aberdeen, Newcastle and Manchester on a 2 tph frequency. The south west & south central towns & cities shouldn’t lose their connectivity north, but I suspect many from those regions will switch to HS2 - especially the Reading contingent.

The only route I see being the least affected will be the South West to North East services in terms of Intercity standard, but with a change of destination to Hull.

I suspect that the opposite is often true: the enthusiast knows the system well and can make swift transfers with confidence, and knows what to do when a connection is missed. The infrequent traveller sees a connection as a point of uncertainty (particularly as there is a general assumption that British trains run late). The Western Route Study published by Network Rail in 2015 noted this:



As for the time savings, it would not be unreasonable to assume that it might take 5 minutes for the infrequent traveller to get off the train and find their way out of New Street, allow 5 minutes to wait for a shuttle, 5 minutes to get to Curzon Street and 5 to find and board the right train - if you are travelling without anything to slow you down. That's 20 minutes without allowing for a delayed connection, for which we'd better add another 10. The time saving by using HS2 to travel north is currently estimated at 45 minutes to Oxenholme and 49 to Edinburgh: so in reality, you might save 15 - 20 minutes overall with a non-trivial change in the middle. That's assuming that the timetable allows an immediate transfer and you don't have to wait for the next train.

Perhaps ‘enthusiast’ is the wrong word for us to use here. Changing trains on London Underground and in other metro networks is not an issue. Frequent travellers v infrequent travellers is the issue and does the size of the infrequent traveller market justify keeping things as they are? Or does XC need to change it’s model completely in order to validate it’s existence?

 

[JonathanH]

The infrequent traveller sees a connection as a point of uncertainty (particularly as there is a general assumption that British trains run late).

Who are these 'infrequent travellers' who are unable to make connections? How infrequently do they travel?

While I appreciate that there are people for whom making connections is difficult, what is special about people living in place A that they can't change but people in place B have to. Even if there was a Liverpool to <somewhere on the south coast> service, there wouldn't be a Liverpool to <somewhere else on the south coast> service.

Let's not forget that Operation Princess didn't go wrong just because of short trains, it also went wrong because the service patterns were too complicated and didn't fit the network. It isn't the basis for an XC network post-HS2.

 

[Purple Orange]

Going off MER plans should XC focus it’s long distance services on SW-NE flows and hand the Manchester leg to LNW for electrified WCML services (or a similar semi-fast operator)?

• Plymouth - Hull via Doncaster
• Plymouth - Nottingham
• Plymouth - Scarborough via Leeds
• Cardiff - Leicester
• Bournemouth - North Wales

 

[Metrolink]

Chester to Oxford is bonkers. Oxford is awful to terminate at and you are missing out Birmingham and International. Brighton is never coming back to XC. As @swt_passenger says, the removal of Southampton/Bournemouth makes no sense.


Someone needs to find the cash for Kings Norton for that, I'm willing to bet that idea gets quietly dropped.

I’m not sure you saw my post explaining I forgot to mention that Southampton/ Bournemouth to Manchester is included.

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Going off MER plans should XC focus it’s long distance services on SW-NE flows and hand the Manchester leg to LNW for electrified WCML services (or a similar semi-fast operator)?

• Plymouth - Hull via Doncaster
• Plymouth - Nottingham
• Plymouth - Scarborough via Leeds
• Cardiff - Leicester
• Bournemouth - North Wales

I agree I would like to see an LMWR service to Manchester implicated, and the XCs you have mentioned seem a good fit.

 

[JonathanH]

• Plymouth - Hull via Doncaster
• Plymouth - Nottingham
• Plymouth - Scarborough via Leeds

How many Cross Country trains an hour is that from Plymouth to Birmingham? Presumably they would pick up calls at Ivybridge in place of GWR if they ran more than once an hour taking up the third Plymouth - Taunton path.

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Bournemouth - North Wales

Three operators on the North Wales coast with services from London, Manchester, Cardiff and Bournemouth?

 

[Bletchleyite]

While I appreciate that there are people for whom making connections is difficult, what is special about people living in place A that they can't change but people in place B have to. Even if there was a Liverpool to <somewhere on the south coast> service, there wouldn't be a Liverpool to <somewhere else on the south coast> service.

True, but a Liverpool to Bristol or Oxford/Reading service does have its uses. And the main point of it would really be to provide Liverpool with an InterCity quality fast service to Birmingham rather than just two regionals; sending it somewhere else after Brum is more about it being a useful side-effect of joining across Brum to reduce platform occupancy there. (4C is all very well, but I believe only takes a 4-car set so isn't that useful).

 

[JonathanH]

And the main point of it would really be to provide Liverpool with an InterCity quality fast service to Birmingham rather than just two regionals

What service is going to continue 2tph at Liverpool South Parkway and Hartford which now seems established (although isn't running at present due to Covid-19)?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What service is going to continue 2tph at Liverpool South Parkway and Hartford which now seems established?

A pattern that might work is 2 x Crewe locals (perhaps connect one of them to the existing service "via the wobble" to Brum?) and one IC.

No reason an IC couldn't stop at South Parkway, anyway (and indeed the second Avanti is going to), we're hardly talking about making them all-stations, and it's only really Liverpool's equivalent of Stockport in a way.

 

[JonathanH]

A pattern that might work is 2 x Crewe locals (perhaps connect one of them to the existing service "via the wobble" to Brum?) and one IC.

No reason an IC couldn't stop at South Parkway, anyway (and indeed the second Avanti is going to), we're hardly talking about making them all-stations, and it's only really Liverpool's equivalent of Stockport in a way.

So that is two Euston trains, an XC and two Crewe locals plus the TfW Halton curve train to fit in between Runcorn and Liverpool plus four trains on the CLC from Liverpool South Parkway (and freight).

In other threads you advocate not filling up capacity and leaving some white space in the timetable.

 

[Bletchleyite]

So that is two Euston trains, an XC and two Crewe locals plus the TfW Halton curve train to fit in between Runcorn and Liverpool plus four trains on the CLC from Liverpool South Parkway (and freight).

In other threads you advocate not filling up capacity and leaving some white space in the timetable.

That's fairly obviously flightable - the XC just behind/in front of one of the Eustons, and the two sets of stoppers (CLC and Crewe) right behind each other.

Also, there are two tracks between Allerton Jn and Liverpool that are hardly used, time to get them back in service? That isn't exactly a service that would tax a 4-track mainline, not even slightly.

 

[Devonian]

A shuttle? Is that the plan?

I confess I don't know: there are mentions of joining HS2 to the tram network and having pedestrian links to the adjacent Moor Street, but I can't find anything concrete about links to New St; I was using 'shuttle' as a broad term for some form of surface transport, which I was assuming would need to exist. For what it's worth, I believe the current minimum connection time New St - Moor St is 25 minutes, and HS2 will be a smidge further.

Frequent travellers v infrequent travellers is the issue and does the size of the infrequent traveller market justify keeping things as they are? Or does XC need to change it’s model completely in order to validate it’s existence?

Who are these 'infrequent travellers' who are unable to make connections? How infrequently do they travel?

Good questions - and hard to answer. The only hard statistic I can find is that 64% of XC's passengers are leisure travellers, but not where from and to.

I make no claim that passengers are unable to make changes: only that many prefer not to, a claim backed up by Network Rail's study. I suspect that most long-distance leisure travellers are individually infrequent travellers on any particular route, but there are a lot of different leisure travellers over the same route. As an analogy, relatively few people travel from London to Majorca frequently, but enough do it occasionally to make it worthwhile to schedule flights. I would expect that the longer the journey, the less frequently a particular passenger makes that particular journey. In other words the passengers making shorter journeys on the busy central core are more likely to be frequent travellers and either destined for Birmingham or willing to change to HS2 or another classic service; the longer distance passengers less so.

CrossCountry's key overcrowding points are around that central core: HS2 should relieve a good chunk of that (thank goodness) by taking traffic from Birmingham-York and potentially Reading-Birmingham via Old Oak Common, but the trains are busy enough outside that core to suggest significant demand that won't go away. In fact, I'd venture that it offers opportunities to explore markets that cannot be tapped at present because of a lack of central capacity, and find many of the suggestions made in this thread interesting. I suspect that 'flight shaming' and people's experiences of holidaying in Britain this year and last will only increase demand for long-distance internal travel in the long run.

And I agree that Operation Princess isn't the perfect model for XC after HS2: it's not perfect now. By all means revise the frequency and routes of long-distance trains to improve the overall areas covered and tap into new sources of passengers, but not at the expense of replacing all N-S cross-country intercity routes with spurs from Birmingham.

 

[Purple Orange]

How many Cross Country trains an hour is that from Plymouth to Birmingham? Presumably they would pick up calls at Ivybridge in place of GWR if they ran more than once an hour taking up the third Plymouth - Taunton path.

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Three operators on the North Wales coast with services from London, Manchester, Cardiff and Bournemouth?

I’m using Plymouth as a proxy for South West here, but there are 2 tph to the south west as it stands and MER are proposing an additional path from Birmingham towards Bristol. Therefore while XC today operates 4 tph from the south to Brum, it is proposed that will become 5 tph, essentially giving 2 tph from Reading and 3 tph from Bristol. It is then an open question as to where they originate south of Bristol & Reading, and where they head to north of Birmingham.

Regarding operators, is it a bad thing to have 3 operators? It doesn’t need to be split that way of course.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Apr 2021 ==

And I agree that Operation Princess isn't the perfect model for XC after HS2: it's not perfect now. By all means revise the frequency and routes of long-distance trains to improve the overall areas covered and tap into new sources of passengers, but not at the expense of replacing all N-S cross-country intercity routes with spurs from Birmingham.

I’m not sure anyone is proposing terminating all trains in Birmingham, but rather questioning whether the current northern destinations are the right destinations after HS2.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I’m not sure anything be is proposing terminating all trains in Birmingham, but rather questioning whether the current northern destination nations are the right destinations after HS2.

Though as someone mentioned, it may actually be better to terminate the Bristols and Readings in Birmingham because they can then be terminated at Moor St, which eases the connection to HS2.

 

[Purple Orange]

Though as someone mentioned, it may actually be better to terminate the Bristols and Readings in Birmingham because they can then be terminated at Moor St, which eases the connection to HS2.

Could they not pass through Moor Street in some cases? I think the 3rd train from Bristol could do that and perhaps one of the Readings, but there still needs to be a level of service that passes through.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Could they not pass through Moor Street in some cases? I think the 3rd train from Bristol could do that and perhaps one of the Readings, but there still needs to be a level of service that passes through.

Are the Snow Hill lines connected to anything else, i.e. could you actually get back onto the mainline?

 

[JonathanH]

Therefore while XC today operates 4 tph from the south to Brum, it is proposed that will become 5 tph, essentially giving 2 tph from Reading and 3 tph from Bristol.

I think the Cardiff should be included as an extra limb of 5tph from the south of Birmingham at present. So perhaps 2tph from Reading and 4tph from the Cheltenham direction (but you still need to fit in a Cheltenham to Worcester service and a Hereford to Birmingham service).

 

[HSTEd]

Could they not pass through Moor Street in some cases? I think the 3rd train from Bristol could do that and perhaps one of the Readings, but there still needs to be a level of service that passes through.

You would have to reverse to reach anything north of Birmingham.

Not to say it couldn't be done though

 

[JonathanH]

You would have to reverse to reach anything north of Birmingham.

...and build a new chord unless you are going to reverse at Tyseley.

 

[Purple Orange]

Looking at the map, it doesn’t appear that Snow Hill connects to the WCML north, or anything north for that matter.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the Cardiff should be included as an extra limb of 5tph from the south of Birmingham at present. So perhaps 2tph from Reading and 4tph from the Cheltenham direction (but you still need to fit in a Cheltenham to Worcester service and a Hereford to Birmingham service).

I'm not sure I wouldn't just give Cardiff to TfW, assuming they would take it. Could perhaps be operated through to Aberystwyth/Pwllheli, removing the issue of where to terminate that, and ticking a WG box of connecting everywhere to Cardiff (albeit via England)?

 

[Metrolink]

Could they not pass through Moor Street in some cases? I think the 3rd train from Bristol could do that and perhaps one of the Readings, but there still needs to be a level of service that passes through.

Looking at the map, it doesn’t appear that Snow Hill connects to the WCML north, or anything north for that matter.

Is there room for a chord at Smethwick from Moor Street so the Reading services could pass through and towards Wolves, and onto the WCML? The South West services could run through New Street towards Aston and Rugeley and onto the WCML there. Is that possible?

 

[Purple Orange]

Is there room for a chord at Smethwick from Moor Street so the Reading services could pass through and towards Wolves, and onto the WCML? The South West services could run through New Street towards Aston and Rugeley and onto the WCML there. Is that possible?

Anything is possible with money behind it, but what’s the chances of a chord being built to take Snow Hill services to the WCML? I think the DfT would say just use New Street. It’ll either be a split station operation between New St and Moor St, all terminate at Moor St or all pass through New Street.

 

[JonathanH]

I'm not sure I wouldn't just give Cardiff to TfW, assuming they would take it. Could perhaps be operated through to Aberystwyth/Pwllheli, removing the issue of where to terminate that, and ticking a WG box of connecting everywhere to Cardiff (albeit via England)?

Cardiff to Aberystwyth / Pwllheli via Birmingham is not sensible on any stretch, even to create a through service for ideological reasons.

Is there room for a chord at Smethwick from Moor Street so the Reading services could pass through and towards Wolves, and onto the WCML? The South West services could run through New Street towards Aston and Rugeley and onto the WCML there. Is that possible?

It would be an incredible feat of engineering to put a chord there, even more so if it was to be grade separated - have you seen the drop to the valley floor on the viaduct approaching Smethwick Galton Bridge from the Snow Hill lines? It isn't going to happen.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Cardiff to Aberystwyth / Pwllheli via Birmingham is not sensible on any stretch, even to create a through service for ideological reasons.

The 170 services don't fit XC as they are regional expresses, not InterCity services. It's fairly clear the other one should probably go to EMR because they are a long-term Class 170 operator, though WMT would do. That one in my view fits TfW better than WMT, and they of course are also Class 170 operators. The suggestion was just that you could link the two for pure operational convenience, and it also ticks a political box.

 

[Metrolink]

Cardiff to Aberystwyth / Pwllheli via Birmingham is not sensible on any stretch, even to create a through service for ideological reasons.


It would be an incredible feat of engineering to put a chord there, even more so if it was to be grade separated - have you seen the drop to the valley floor on the viaduct approaching Smethwick Galton Bridge from the Snow Hill lines? It isn't going to happen.

What about running South West - North West via Rugeley as I mentioned?

 

[JonathanH]

The 170 services don't fit XC as they are regional expresses, not InterCity services. It's fairly clear the other one should probably go to EMR because they are a long-term Class 170 operator, though WMT would do.

The Cardiff to Nottingham service really isn't that different from the other Bristol to Derby services now that the local stops on the Newport to Gloucester stretch have mainly passed to TfW. You are seeing it as a 170 operation but Voyagers wouldn't be out of place on it.

Post-HS2, the parts of the XC network North of Birmingham will be closer to Regional services than Intercity ones.

 

[Purple Orange]

The Cardiff to Nottingham service really isn't that different from the other Bristol to Derby services now that the local stops on the Newport to Gloucester stretch have mainly passed to TfW. You are seeing it as a 170 operation but Voyagers wouldn't be out of place on it.

Post-HS2, the parts of the XC network North of Birmingham will be closer to Regional services than Intercity ones.

If they are closer to regional services north of Brum, what rolling stock should be used?

Taking this a little further on, what should really become of the Manchester - Birmingham and Leeds - Birmingham XC routes?

Both will have 2 tph in to Curzon Street, but intermediate stations still require a service to Birmingham at least. I’d have thought that 1 tph would work best or 2 tph with significantly more stops. Given the routes south of Brum are not electrified I’d say the Leeds-Birmingham service is best for continuing south, whereas the Manchester-Birmingham service should either go to London or terminate.