Poor quality passenger rail service increases demand for private car purchases

[Bletchleyite]

Once you've got a car, there's not much incentive to travel by other means, as car drivers want to get maximum use from the fixed costs of car ownership.

I don't think I've ever heard someone say that in real life.

What it does mean is that the price of a car journey is basically fuel, which means you're more reluctant to pay e.g. the appalling Manchester-London anytime fares, but I think that is often a bit moot, nobody with any sense willingly drives into central London unless it's unavoidable.

 

[Lewisham2221]

I don't think I've ever heard someone say that in real life.

What it does mean is that the price of a car journey is basically fuel, which means you're more reluctant to pay e.g. the appalling Manchester-London anytime fares, but I think that is often a bit moot, nobody with any sense willingly drives into central London unless it's unavoidable.

No, but driving into other major cities, outside of the peak (I.e leisure travel) really isn't all that bad. So if you'd previously used the train for such leisure travel, but then had used the car to avoid the current disruption, it's quite possible that many people may think "you know what, that wasn't all that bad, why bother faffing with the train again when we can make the journey by car and take away the inconvenience of public transport".

Likewise sports (especially football) fans. To my knowledge, football attendances have not dropped as a result of the current issues. Which shows that the thousands of people who used to take the train to football matches have now found some other way of getting to the game (probably some sort of club organised coach full of other like minded people).

What makes you so confident that either of the above will be so ready and willing to come running back to the railways when they eventually get their act together?

 

[Bletchleyite]

No, but driving into other major cities, outside of the peak (I.e leisure travel) really isn't all that bad.

I've driven in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool and I'd not repeat any in a hurry. London is by far the worst but driving in big cities is grim and parking is expensive.

Likewise sports (especially football) fans. To my knowledge, football attendances have not dropped as a result of the current issues. Which shows that the thousands of people who used to take the train to football matches have now found some other way of getting to the game (probably some sort of club organised coach full of other like minded people).

The railway can probably do without drunk football fans, they often cause trouble.

 

[Stewart2887]

I thought this would be this week, next or by Christmas. 2025 Really?

I don't think I've ever heard someone say that in real life.

What it does mean is that the price of a car journey is basically fuel, which means you're more reluctant to pay e.g. the appalling Manchester-London anytime fares, but I think that is often a bit moot, nobody with any sense willingly drives into central London unless it's unavoidable.

I'm not sure about that. Sure-going into london from outside Oxford I have the choice of bus to Oxford station, then either train or Oxford Tube. Until recently, I visited family in edinburgh a couple of times with non-driver daughter. Went once by air from Brum (awful) or by CrossCountry, the worst travel experience I've ever had. Wouldn't want to do 800 mile round trip by car anymore

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure about that. Sure-going into london from outside Oxford I have the choice of bus to Oxford station, then either train or Oxford Tube. Until recently, I visited family in edinburgh a couple of times with non-driver daughter. Went once by air from Brum (awful) or by CrossCountry, the worst travel experience I've ever had. Wouldn't want to do 800 mile round trip by car anymore

For me 400 miles by car is too far in one go, I'd want an overnight stop in that. MK to Keswick or Carlisle is about the most I'll do in one go, and that's only about 260 according to Google.

 

[Jimini]

The railway can probably do without drunk football fans, they often cause trouble.

Can we not do that forum discussion yet again, please?

 

[Mikey C]

Likewise sports (especially football) fans. To my knowledge, football attendances have not dropped as a result of the current issues. Which shows that the thousands of people who used to take the train to football matches have now found some other way of getting to the game (probably some sort of club organised coach full of other like minded people).

I've certainly driven to a couple of away games that I might have taken the train too, but I've never seen that as a permanent shift

And if supporters go by a supporters coach, that to me is almost another form of public transport anyway.

 

[Lewisham2221]

I've certainly driven to a couple of away games that I might have taken the train too, but I've never seen that as a permanent shift

And if supporters go by a supporters coach, that to me is almost another form of public transport anyway.

Public transport? Yes, I guess so. But railway? Definitely not

 

[melon68]

My own experience is that as I live in Belfast but have family in Lincolnshire I'm stuck with one way journeys involving EMR trains. I complained to them last month about cutting the services east of Nottingham due to industrial action (not the big strike). Unless I switch to using the car ferry to Liverpool and taking lots of leave to drive each way I don't really have an alternative.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Jan 2023 ==

It does make a very interesting situation, but I can see why this is happening. I think the likes of the standard offering from TPE and Avanti are actually more of an impact than the strikes. At least you can make plans on strike days, even if that is make alternative arrangements. It is interesting that you get people saying "I never use the trains", but also complain there is more traffic on the roads on strike days. In any city we see the same things, difficult to park. congestion etc. I suspect people may find the car isn't as great.

When you look at Rural routes (which are most at risk of closing down altogether as per government policy). I often ask why do people use the train on these routes. Girmsby Town - Lincoln Central is a good example. The route is infrequent, the trains are not the best and you stand a high chance of getting left on the platform. So people either can't afford a car (which isn't going to change) or the fact that they can do other things and not worry about alcohol consumption may be the reason. But I can't see a whole train of alcoholics on a rural route, so I suspect it is parking at the city end that is the challenge.

The situation is bad however, I have a car, I am using it more on journeys to the North West and not considering the train. Mainly because you can't plan and it is acceptable to withdraw journeys at after 2200 the day before travel and leave passengers to figure it out themselves. As I said earlier, I would pick routes using either TPE or Avanti anymore as part of the route options.

As per my last post, I use one -way trains to/from Lincoln to get to East Midlands airport, to travel home to NI. I have a car but it's of no use for a short trip to England

 

[jayah]

I don't think it's necessarily all doom and gloom. Rail still has its advantages over driving; particularly in terms of giving you time back to get some work done, relax, read something that would otherwise be "wasted" being on the look-out for morons switching lanes without indicating or checking you're next to them.

I suspect you'll see folks in this position consider the train less for more local travel though.

When it works rail is excellent. It is very expensive though and long distance is expensive enough to be rejected outright by a majority of the population.

Currently it is self destructing quite spectacularly. There is no point resolving or claiming to resolve the disputes until Sunday working is mandated.

The finances are shot, and have been since COVID. Unions will need to accept ticket office closures, more DOO and general productivity improvements or the service will need to be cut even further. There will not be anything like RPI pay rises in the public sector for the foreseeable.

Government will want to run the railway sans overtime. On this they seem to be in violent agreement with the unions. There will be massive and permanent service cuts to achieve this unless the 35hr working week is increased, as extra people won't be funded.

It's not all doom and gloom, but most of it is.

 

[the sniper]

Friend of mine works for a company with 189,000 employees one of the UK’s biggest tech employers, and they put out a memo last year stating that employees aren’t to take the train unless it’s an emergency as it has become so unreliable it was costing them millions.

They have offered incentives to buy cars and will cover either driving lessons or Ubers for people who don’t drive. Apparently it one team manager doesn’t turn up because of the train it can impact the days productivity to 6 figures.

I didn't think anyone went to work anymore, particularly the IT crowd.

 

[The Ham]

When it works rail is excellent. It is very expensive though and long distance is expensive enough to be rejected outright by a majority of the population.

Currently it is self destructing quite spectacularly. There is no point resolving or claiming to resolve the disputes until Sunday working is mandated.

The finances are shot, and have been since COVID. Unions will need to accept ticket office closures, more DOO and general productivity improvements or the service will need to be cut even further. There will not be anything like RPI pay rises in the public sector for the foreseeable.

Government will want to run the railway sans overtime. On this they seem to be in violent agreement with the unions. There will be massive and permanent service cuts to achieve this unless the 35hr working week is increased, as extra people won't be funded.

It's not all doom and gloom, but most of it is.

Was it doom and gloom in 2009?

That's where we're at in terms of passenger numbers between October 21 and September 22 (1.2bn).

Which is pretty good going given:
- most TOC's are still running below 100% of 2019 services with the likes of XC, TPE and Avanti running 60-65% of the service km that they were
- until at least until December 21 there were Covid related calculations within the wider economy (such as Christmas parties)
- lack of staff
- strikes

If the first two quarters of the 2022/23 rail use were repeated we'd see circa 1.4bn passengers in that year (circa 2011), however there appears to have been ongoing growth in Q3:

Domestic Transport Usage by Mode

www.gov.uk

If that is 7% higher than Q2 and Q4 is 7% higher again then we could reach 1.5bn (2012), now this isn't an unreasonable rate of growth as Q1 to Q2 was 8.87%.

If the stikes were dealt and staffing levels werea little better with we could easily suppress those numbers, assuming a 15% (again not an unreasonable rate of growth) growth in Q4 we might justbe at 2014 levels.

Even if growth stopped (or slowed having been slightly less growth to Q4, so we end up at the same point) at that point we'd then be at 2019/20 levels of use in 2023/24 maybe even a tiny bit ahead.

That shows just how close we could be to matching 2019/20 rail use just by a small amount of future growth and getting rid of the poor Q1 and Q2 usage.

 

[mike57]

Once you've got a car, there's not much incentive to travel by other means, as car drivers want to get maximum use from the fixed costs of car ownership.

Once you get outside London and a couple of other big cities, most people don't find trains that useful - they're certainly not cheap, and increasingly unreliable.

I live in a rural settlement (population circa 9,000), it's surrounded by countryside with almost no one in it until the next villages, whilst one is almost abutting it, it's still for quite a lot of farmland and tiny hamlets for the next 2 miles, whilst in another direction there's a small village about 1.5 miles with a school and then it's almost 6 miles until you get to the next place with a school. That's in a location about an hour from London.

We live in a village, population around 750, 4 miles from the nearest town, again with another bordering village, pop. c250. Inland there is really nothing, with just a scattering of small towns (Bridlington, Filey etc) at the coast. We are fortunate to have retained our rail station, we should have an hourly service each way, terminating at Scarborough to the north and southbound calling at Beverley, Hull and with most services carrying on to Sheffield. There are only 2 buses per day, these were cut once the train went hourly in about 2018

Before the current problems the train was useful, two settlements totalling under a 1000 are never going to justify a service but as a stop on an existing line its useful. Passenger numbers had been rising and on the whole the service was good. Roads in the area are not good, and get busy and congested in summer so for trips into the bigger towns rail is an attractive option. Fares are reasonable, Hull is about £18 anytime/£15 off peak return, and its around 35 miles each way, and obviously cheaper with a rail card. So rail can work in a rural area if the infrastructure already exists. Again prior to the current disruption trains were fairly well loaded, even packed in the summer, with only the start and end of service trains carrying mainly fresh air. By changing at Hull, Doncaster or Sheffield a lot of places are accessable. Travel environment is OK, the route is mainly cl 170s which seem well suited and comfortable.

Fast forward to the last few months and usage has plummeted. As an example just before Xmas I needed a quick trip Beverley to pick an order up. Plan had been to use the train, it was a quick in and out. I had to drive as there were no trains, journey time was similar, parking was a pain (as in tried 2 car parks before I found one with space) and cost an extra £2. One journey lost, and plenty of others lost locally as well. No its not going to make much difference in the grand scheme, but its like this over most of the north, TPE and to a lesser exent Northern issues have decimated services prior to the current disputes and latest round of strikes have really just meant that train is now not an option.

I think the current issues have set the railways back decades and it will take a long time to recover, its not like the bounce back after covid, that was people told not to travel, this is people not being able to travel due to lack of trains and once people make alternative arrangements the railways would have to win that customer back.

 

[Cross City]

I don't think I've ever heard someone say that in real life.

What it does mean is that the price of a car journey is basically fuel, which means you're more reluctant to pay e.g. the appalling Manchester-London anytime fares, but I think that is often a bit moot, nobody with any sense willingly drives into central London unless it's unavoidable.

I nearly always drive to London from where I live in south Birmingham. Usually a quick (2hr) and easy journey down the M40 and A40, park all day at Westfield Shepherds bush for a tenner and jump on the tube from the adjacent White City, Wood Lane or the Overground at Shepherds Bush. The whole day's travel easily costs less than £50 if going alone, even cheaper if travelling with others and the fuel cost is split.

Compare that with a 15 minute walk and 20 minute train ride, or 45 minute bus ride from outside my house into Birmingham and then a 1:15-2:00hr trip into the horrendous Euston or extremely small and busy Marylebone, with the added bonus of not knowing whether your journey is likely to be cancelled or now and it makes less than zero sense for me to attempt train travel into London.

There's no incentive; I can go and leave when I want, its cheaper and more comfortbale in my car.

Manchester is similar, you can park at the Trafford Centre just off the motorway all day for (i think) free and use the tram to get into the centre. Again cheaper easier and quicker than attempting train travel.

There aren't many cities in England and Wales where I would choose to take a train over a car when coming from a central location like Brum. Maybe Leeds, York and Newcastle depending on the price of the train. Scotland I'd probably choose to fly however I do like the drive and having a car up there is very handy when I'm visiting family.

 

[Adam Williams]

There will not be anything like RPI pay rises in the public sector for the foreseeable.

Perhaps not under this government. I don't see why the public sector wage shouldn't increase in line with e.g. CPIH though, as a matter of general principle.

I don't buy the wage-inflation spiral nonsense that keeps getting brought up (and nor do a number of economists), but it is a convenient way to defend a policy of continued austerity.

 

[yorksrob]

When it works rail is excellent. It is very expensive though and long distance is expensive enough to be rejected outright by a majority of the population.

Currently it is self destructing quite spectacularly. There is no point resolving or claiming to resolve the disputes until Sunday working is mandated.

The finances are shot, and have been since COVID. Unions will need to accept ticket office closures, more DOO and general productivity improvements or the service will need to be cut even further. There will not be anything like RPI pay rises in the public sector for the foreseeable.

Government will want to run the railway sans overtime. On this they seem to be in violent agreement with the unions. There will be massive and permanent service cuts to achieve this unless the 35hr working week is increased, as extra people won't be funded.

It's not all doom and gloom, but most of it is.

The finances were shot to pieces on the Tory government's watch. They allowed costs to spiral.

They're punishing passengers with cuts for their own failure.

 

[Dai Corner]

Perhaps not under this government. I don't see why the public sector wage shouldn't increase in line with e.g. CPIH though, as a matter of general principle.

I don't buy the wage-inflation spiral nonsense that keeps getting brought up (and nor do a number of economists), but it is a convenient way to defend a policy of continued austerity.

The money's going to those on minimum wage and/or benefits who are getting inflation-linked increases, plus in the case of the latter additional cost of living payments. Borrowing money (or creating it out of thin air), to pay people more for the same work must surely be inflationary?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I nearly always drive to London from where I live in south Birmingham. Usually a quick (2hr) and easy journey down the M40 and A40, park all day at Westfield Shepherds bush for a tenner and jump on the tube from the adjacent White City, Wood Lane or the Overground at Shepherds Bush. The whole day's travel easily costs less than £50 if going alone, even cheaper if travelling with others and the fuel cost is split.

Compare that with a 15 minute walk and 20 minute train ride, or 45 minute bus ride from outside my house into Birmingham and then a 1:15-2:00hr trip into the horrendous Euston or extremely small and busy Marylebone, with the added bonus of not knowing whether your journey is likely to be cancelled or now and it makes less than zero sense for me to attempt train travel into London.

There's no incentive; I can go and leave when I want, its cheaper and more comfortbale in my car.

Manchester is similar, you can park at the Trafford Centre just off the motorway all day for (i think) free and use the tram to get into the centre. Again cheaper easier and quicker than attempting train travel.

There aren't many cities in England and Wales where I would choose to take a train over a car when coming from a central location like Brum. Maybe Leeds, York and Newcastle depending on the price of the train. Scotland I'd probably choose to fly however I do like the drive and having a car up there is very handy when I'm visiting family.

I suppose what you're doing there is park-and-ride, not driving into the centre. That's a fair bit different. I suspect many wouldn't do that because of the complexity of finding out where to do it if you don't know, but P&R is a viable solution for cities, certainly smaller ones.

Of course if too many people do that at those commercial places where the parking is intended for shoppers rather than at a station car park, the parking shysters will be along soon...

 

[Dai Corner]

I wouldn't drive into central London and can't speak for Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham, but would have no hesitation in driving into the centres of my two nearest large cities; Cardiff and Bristol.

Evidently many others are the same as they're congested and can charge quite high fees in the main car parks.

 

[43066]

I wouldn't drive into central London and can't speak for Liverpool, Manchester or Birmingham, but would have no hesitation in driving into the centres of my two nearest large cities; Cardiff and Bristol.

Evidently many others are the same as they're congested and can charge quite high fees in the main car parks.

Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street mentioned that rail is the dominant method of commuting into Birmingham city centre when being interviewed on Newsnight.

 

[Cross City]

Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street mentioned that rail is the dominant method of commuting into Birmingham city centre when being interviewed on Newsnight.

While true it's certainly not that bad to drive in and park in the city centre if you can find a cheap parking spot, especially out of peak times. On a standard off peak trip for me its around 25-30 minutes for me to get into town from my house. Much quicker than the bus and comparable to the train once I've walked to the station. That being said the train is much more stress free than driving in the West Mids, the local network is pretty decent IMO.

Ironically the worst times to drive into Birmingham is my experience is at the evening rush hour when you'd expect most cars to be coming away from the city.

 

[Bletchleyite]

One thing you do find about the regional cities with good rail networks is that parking at stations is generally cheap or totally free. If for example you live in Skem and want to go to Liverpool, there's a fairly strong case for parking up for free at Maghull North (just off the motorway, so an easy, stress free drive). This will be both cheaper and quicker than driving all the way in due to the swingeing cost of parking in the city centre.

Similarly, it might not be a bad plan if going from somewhere in the North West south of Liverpool to Manchester to drive in to East Didsbury via the M56 (this is generally the least congested way into Manchester from the Liverpool side in my experience despite being a bit further than the M62 route) and park up and take the tram in. Again parking is free.

 

[GS250]

Most of us will support the railways where possible. However to the 'normal' the railways are often perceived as an expensive, unreliable mess. Someone at work pointed out that the UK railway seems most comfortable when its advising people not to travel. Cutting critique and one of which is hard to defend against.

 

[12LDA28C]

When it works rail is excellent. It is very expensive though and long distance is expensive enough to be rejected outright by a majority of the population.

Is it? If you can plan far enough ahead you can get some good advance deals, for example less then £40 one way from London to Edinburgh, £30 one way Edinburgh to London, £47 London to Swansea, £36 Birmingham to Glasgow, and so on. Of course walk-on fares are expensive but how many people make a long-distance journey on the spur of the moment?

 

[ar10642]

I didn't think anyone went to work anymore, particularly the IT crowd.

Most still go in some of the time, just not every day anymore. In my office some are there every day as they live close and just don't like WFH. Some a few times a week, some every couple of weeks. I work from home most of the time as the office is so far away (I applied for the job on a mostly remote/hybrid basis) but I'd go mad if it was 100% again.

Office is generally around 75% occupied when I go there but there is not enough space for everyone to go in at once even if they wanted to.

I'd hoped to use the train to get there when I signed up for the job before all the strikes started, but recently I've had to drive it as the railway isn't providing a service on the days I've been going.

 

[43066]

Is it? If you can plan far enough ahead you can get some good advance deals, for example less then £40 one way from London to Edinburgh, £30 one way Edinburgh to London, £47 London to Swansea, £36 Birmingham to Glasgow, and so on. Of course walk-on fares are expensive but how many people make a long-distance journey on the spur of the moment?

Whether the majority of the population would reject it as too expensive is neither here nor there, as we are always being told the railway isn’t used by the majority of the population in the first place.

It self evidently isn’t expensive enough to be rejected by enough people for it not to be very well patronised, most likely for the reasons you mention. This is now well evidenced by the fact that long distance travel has bounced back extremely well and is (AIUI) now in excess of pre Covid numbers.

EDIT: I had also meant to quote @jayah ’s post #130 here.

 

[Thirteen]

I nearly always drive to London from where I live in south Birmingham. Usually a quick (2hr) and easy journey down the M40 and A40, park all day at Westfield Shepherds bush for a tenner and jump on the tube from the adjacent White City, Wood Lane or the Overground at Shepherds Bush. The whole day's travel easily costs less than £50 if going alone, even cheaper if travelling with others and the fuel cost is split.

Compare that with a 15 minute walk and 20 minute train ride, or 45 minute bus ride from outside my house into Birmingham and then a 1:15-2:00hr trip into the horrendous Euston or extremely small and busy Marylebone, with the added bonus of not knowing whether your journey is likely to be cancelled or now and it makes less than zero sense for me to attempt train travel into London.

There's no incentive; I can go and leave when I want, its cheaper and more comfortbale in my car.

Manchester is similar, you can park at the Trafford Centre just off the motorway all day for (i think) free and use the tram to get into the centre. Again cheaper easier and quicker than attempting train travel.

There aren't many cities in England and Wales where I would choose to take a train over a car when coming from a central location like Brum. Maybe Leeds, York and Newcastle depending on the price of the train. Scotland I'd probably choose to fly however I do like the drive and having a car up there is very handy when I'm visiting family.

You're still using trains/public transport when you're in London as well as the car, that would be much harder if the rail network was closed down.

It's the reason I don't think a car driven society without public transport is remotely possible in large urban areas.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You're still using trains/public transport when you're in London as well as the car, that would be much harder if the rail network was closed down.

It's the reason I don't think a car driven society without public transport is remotely possible in large urban areas.

While this is heading into thread crossover with the "could we close the railways" thread, I think a reasonable conclusion of that thread (which I think is no longer active, or at least is a bit quiet) was that you probably could get away with closing branch lines and the InterCity railway and replacing with road coaches and flights, but that major cities like London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and the likes can barely function with a bus-only transport solution unless you start doing stuff like BRTs which are incredibly close to being (and not a lot cheaper than) urban railways.

Indeed, that's what you see in places like the USA, Canada, Australia etc - well developed urban and suburban networks but hardly anything in between.

I mentioned above that some who buy a car will choose to railhead/P&R rather than do something insufferably grim/expensive and drive into central London, to be fair, which does take income from the InterCity railway, but given that it's overcrowded most of the time that's probably not a terrible thing. But then again, it's 8 hours to drive from Edinburgh to London legally if you're lucky and the train takes 4, which are you going to choose? (Much less of a thing if you live in Birmingham, though - 2 hours vs. about 90 minutes, say).

 

[ar10642]

But then again, it's 8 hours to drive from Edinburgh to London legally if you're lucky and the train takes 4, which are you going to choose? (Much less of a thing if you live in Birmingham, though - 2 hours vs. about 90 minutes, say).

If the train is actually running and they don't want stupid money for it, which on both points the general perception is the railway isn't doing very well on that. There is also the matter of whether someone actually *needs* to do that journey or is it for leisure? If it's too difficult to do they might just not bother with it at all.

 

[43066]

If the train is actually running and they don't want stupid money for it, which on both points the general perception is the railway isn't doing very well on that. There is also the matter of whether someone actually *needs* to do that journey or is it for leisure? If it's too difficult to do they might just not bother with it at all.

Define “stupid money”.

LNER services are well used and (pre strikes) Avanti were overcrowded to the point they were no longer selling cheap advances. Some people are clearly willing and able to pay what’s being asked.