I'm saying that roads cost more money to maintain than railways, with less throughput. Roads should only be use where absolutely necessary, not everywhere, especially where you can use a train instead that has a much higher capacity.
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Do branch lines contribute much financially to the greater network?
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daodao
Established Member
It very much does - it is a branch line that has outlived its usefulness (north of Clitheroe and its cement works) and should be considered for closure, along with the Settle and Carlisle line (north of Arcow quarry), as the latter serves nowhere of any significance and its through freight traffic has largely disappeared with the demise of coal.
I am not advocating its re-opening (although it shouldn't have been closed), but some are. I would have agreed with Beeching regarding the South Transpennine lines, with retention of the Woodhead and Miller's Dale routes and closure of the Hope Valley line with its problematic tunnels, with diversion of the Woodhead passenger services into Sheffield Midland east of Sheffield Victoria. However, it is unrealistic to turn the clock back.
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If it was open though, it would allow through trains from the Manchester area to the Settle and Carlisle, which might get quite a few passengers - for about six months of the year, at least. Could perhaps be served by seasonal-only extensions of one or two Manchester-Clitheroe services? (northbound in morning, southbound early evening).
Should the Settle and Carlisle *really* be shut, given its tourist traffic? Can't imagine that being popular! Didn't we have that argument in the 1980s, and it was resolved then in favour of remaining open?
daodao
Established Member
Tourism is NOT a justification to retain subsidised rail lines, except where closure would cause unacceptable congestion in a tourist "honeypot" town such as St Ives or Skegness. That is why I would also advocate closure of the West Highland extension and Kyle of Lochalsh lines.
Why not? What about the freedoms that tourists have enjoyed to travel to the Dales by rail since the 1980s and for most of the time before that? That's before the end-to-end Leeds-Carlisle traffic.
While I agree that the events of the past two years have caused the country to be in a poor financial situation, I don't think the solution is to cut rail services which have existed for most of the past 150 years (in the Settle and Carlisle case, excepting a short period from presumably the 60s to the mid-80s).
It's worrying if we're now entering a discourse of further closures to rail lines. It certainly goes against any so-called 'green' agenda and makes a mockery of Boris 'Big Dog' Johnson's aim to present himself as some kind of environmental guru.
Whatever the views are on re-opening old 'Beeching' lines, closure of lines which have had a usable service for 30 or more years is a retrograde and anti-progressive step and needs to be resisted.
daodao
Established Member
It is not green to retain lightly used lines for which electrification is impracticable and unwarranted, and which are currently served by relatively empty diesel multiple units.
Are you saying that because some people can't drive those who can should have their driving restricted? Levelling down?
All of which have a *far* better benefits case than improving the Stranraer line of the Far North of Scotland line.
And what you'd then be disregarding is the fact that a good benefits case drives economic activity and therefore tax revenues which fund the subsidies you demand. Whereas your alternatives don't generate economic activity and do demand subsidy therefore where do you get the subsidy from?
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You'll need to provide some evidence for that because I strongly suspect you are wrong.
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I think in reality very few, if any, lines survive solely due to tourist traffic (heritage lines excepted) - though in that sense heritage lines give a good indication of the kind of the level of service which could be expected if a line were solely for tourist purposes. I.e. limited days, limited hours, no early / late trains etc.
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tbtc
Veteran Member
It all depends on how personally precious you are about seating - I'd find most modern bus seats more comfortable than a "3+2" toaster rack seat on a 150 - I tend to get a much better window view from most buses than most trains - but it's all subjective (partly depends on how long your legs are, how fussy you want to be about these things)
These are all projects that will be used by thousands of people a day
Whereas Stranraer station is used by about eighty departing passengers a day, i.e. half a 158's worth of passengers all day
Not in the same ball park
If you honestly believe that the best way to reduce the billions of subsidy that the railway requires (note, not remove the subsidy entirely, nobody is demanding that the railway operate without any subsidies, there's just a debate about where to use the subsidy to best serve people) is the fact that trains and signs are repainted every five years or so then there seems no point in arguing with you (you probably don't think that there were any rebranding costs with BR and all of the different "sectors" or different versions of InterCity/ NSE liveries or any other tinkering with brands back in the Good Old Days!)
I don't think there are any John Major fan boys here... yet another straw man... the initial version of privatisation didn't last very long (Railtrack, tiny franchises like Gatwick Express/ Valley Lines/ Island Line) and we've been through many models since then - we now have GBR - move on
One of the arguments in favour of focussing on the tourist market is the economic boost to rural places
If we are talking about somewhere like Skegness then you are say that without the trains the Holiday Camps would be without hundreds of residents, which would have quite an economic impact (people may stay a week there and spend a lot of money in local places) - the line is also a main way of getting to the rest of a country for a town of around twenty thousand people
However, in the case of the S&C, there aren't any particularly large intermediate places, and the kind of "tourists" it attracts are more likely to be going for a walk in the countryside, maybe buying a meal in a pub before getting the train home again, but not huge spenders - so is spending a tenner on subsidising each train passenger a great way of regenerating the rural economy? Seems a fairly blunt way of doing it to me
It wouldn't be "popular", no, I'm sure lots of people who barely use the line a handful of times a decade would be outraged, but if we only focussed railway resources on where they'd be most popular then we'd invest in lots of quaint rural branch lines and ignore modern travel patterns - do we do what's right or not?
Absolute nonsense. Railways are far more specialised infrastructure needing enormously more maintenance than roads. There are thousands of miles of road carrying more than the branch lines discussed which get essentially no maintenance beyond hedge cutting and the occasional pothole filled in every year.
Much as I like country branch lines and wouldn't advocate mass closures, they are absolutely not a strength of rail
daodao
Established Member
Ditto Kyle of Lochalsh, and that's a longer line to maintain. Mallaig isn't much more either.
This is true on urban and trunk routes yes. Definitely not in the case of Girvan - Stranraer.
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I meant in the sense that there's effectively no passenger service.
However the point about the line between Clitheroe Cement and Hellifield is certainly true.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The line has been open with only DalesRail as a passenger service for many, many years. I'd be interested to know how much it costs to retain it for that purpose, given that DalesRail could be run via either Leeds or Lancaster and still be viable. It can't be much, as closing lines with no passenger service bar once a week in summer and no stations is not that difficult, and there would be unlikely to be many objections.
The S&C as a whole - no chance - too political. Wouldn't rule out the Bentham Line if things got really bad, but not the rump S&C from Leeds.
Mallaig (discussed above) certainly seems to be a good candidate for an actually integrated bus*, or even as a preserved line given its tourist popularity.
* But again, with precisely no such permanent** examples in the UK and no desire to properly integrate modes...
** Though a temporary one exists on the Marston Vale and Abbey Lines.
Legislation such as disability access etc have added such costs. You can't have it both ways - you can't on the one hand argue railways serve an important social need and therefore need to be accessible to all and in the next breath argue that the rail industry should cust costs which by their very nature would mean compromising on those very things.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
With a bit of thought they can sometimes be designed out, though. The quirky planned layout of Kirkby Headbolt Lane for instance allows for lifts not to be required while the station is fully accessible.
How can I read this other than blatant lyeing? Again, look at the USA. Thousands of miles of roads in suburbia, that is less maintained than Boris Johnson's hair.
Railwaysceptic
Established Member
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What are you talking about? We're discussing the situation in this county, not in America. If road are "less maintained," that undermines your original assertion "that roads cost more money to maintain than railways, with less throughput."
Because they can't afford to maintain them, and it's simply more obvious in America where there are more roads.
The average cost of maintaining a road capable of moving 1000 people per day is vastly lower than the cost of an equivalent railway. It just is.
What's the lie?
geordieblue
Member
There are also more miles of railway in America...
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Pretty much all of which would be closed by the standards applied on this thread...
geordieblue
Member
Most of them are already 'closed' in the sense of not having a passenger service anyway!
Regardless of the economic activity building roads generates, they are harmful projects to the environment that will encourage more people to drive, leading to more congestion and more pollution (both tailpipe and tire particulates). Therefore they should be cancelled.
Er no they wouldn't. Most of them are commercially funded by the freight they carry.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The passenger services are not.
Notwithstanding, the lines are running withput subsidies because the freight volumes are covering the cost of the infrastructure. That's not the case with the branch lines being talked about here.
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Utter nonsense.
And since my pervious post was deleted, I'll let others discuss the lack of viability of your comments from an economic perspective.
The fact by your own admission you don't pay to use the public transport neywork which many of us do, means whilst such measures might not negatively affect you, they would have a huge impact on others and since those others pay the taxes which subsidise your travels you may like reflect what would happen if people started paying a bit less.
Most of the lines Amtrak services use are owned by freight companies who operate on commercial terms. They're required by law to give access to Amtrak services. If you remove Amtrak's services from those lines they'll unquestionably remain open, just without passenger service.
Amtrak itself is expected to recover a reasonable proportion of its costs from passengers, but it receives a not-insignificant subsidy from both the federal government and a number of states - circa US$1.9 billion in operational subsidy for intercity trains alone in 2018 - but as in the UK that includes some very-lossy services and some that are profitable on their own.
It's also worth nothing that the three or four most reliably profitable Amtrak services are all on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington DC via New York City (that is to say, an enormous string of high-density conurbations), which Amtrak unusually owns itself - but in most years the profit from those services is entirely consumed by the infrastructure costs.
So what's your point? A lot of the routes have no, or almost no, passenger services. The routes aren't really there because of the weekly Amtrak sleeper.
I doubt the three-ish (?) DMUs necessary to operate the S&C are going to make that much of a negative impact on the environment in the scheme of things. It would also result in more people driving to that part of the Dales from the Leeds area, and unless we're talking electric cars, is that more green than the train? Remember Horton gives access to the Three Peaks area, which is amongst the most popular for walkers.
If they wanted to remove the service for two years as a temporary austerity measure, or, less extreme, run the line with just a single unit, timed to best meet demand, that is one thing (though even that I would disagree with) but completely closing the line means it isn't there as a travel option when we hit good times again.
Should the railway system only comprise high-frequency, high-profit lines or, in a more social model of the railway, should the branches still be there too? What's the answer to the question "if branches were deemed worthy of keeping open in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, a period of high car ownership, then why not now?" (recognising that post-Covid austerity might unfortunately necessitate temporary cuts, but not permanent closures).
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Probably. The costs of it must be enormous (how much did that embankment collapse south of Carlisle cost?).
I'm probably one of the few, here and overall, who used it for a business trip a while ago. London-Doncaster-Carlisle-London. Apart from the impossibility of getting sensible ticketing for such, I had an alternative that if the first meeting ran on and I missed the one practical afternoon train from Leeds to Carlisle, going via Newcastle was a very reasonable alternative. The "tourist traffic" comprised taking the whole of one car of the 2-car 158 as reserved, for a coach party who only used the train between Hellifield and Kirkby Stephen (while their coach drove, empty, along parallel roads). Everyone else was squashed into the back car, where the largest load was north of Skipton, with standees (fine view for tourists that, all they would see was the ballast), but by the time we got to Carlisle there were just about a dozen passengers. I doubt the coach party contributed much to the overall end-to-end costs of a whole dmu car from Leeds to Carlisle. It also seemed to come as quite a surprise to the railway that if you provide a service in an area well known for hiking and backpacking, your passengers might bring their backpacks with them, and thus need provision for them ...
The accident at Ais Gill in 1995, out of the tourist season, is instructive for showing just a couple of passengers in each of the two trains.
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