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Currently sitting in the emptiest IET I’ve ever seen, at a time that many people would be willing to travel. I travelled on the first of park service a week ago, and it really made me think that surely it’s time for a change in how peak and off peak works. It makes no sense to have the kinds of conditions people complain about on here, and then just one train earlier have a train carting around fresh air, along with many others. Surely if anything peak times should shift towards the middle of the day, making very early travel cheaper. I’m sure there’s a way this could be achieved where overall profits weren’t affected, maybe by redistributing advances.
Realistically though it isn’t something you can achieve without fares reform, and for all its faults it is something demand based pricing would very much help with.
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Now being the first train through the last stations of the journey, it’s amazing how many people are getting on. Stations which every other time I’ve travelled have been the quietest are the busiest, although not as busy as I’ve seen them at other times. It’s obvious cheaper trains earlier would help shift demand more evenly.
Currently sitting in the emptiest IET I’ve ever seen, at a time that many people would be willing to travel. I travelled on the first of park service a week ago, and it really made me think that surely it’s time for a change in how peak and off peak works. It makes no sense to have the kinds of conditions people complain about on here, and then just one train earlier have a train carting around fresh air, along with many others. Surely if anything peak times should shift towards the middle of the day, making very early travel cheaper. I’m sure there’s a way this could be achieved where overall profits weren’t affected, maybe by redistributing advances.
Realistically though it isn’t something you can achieve without fares reform, and for all its faults it is something demand based pricing would very much help with.
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Now being the first train through the last stations of the journey, it’s amazing how many people are getting on. Stations which every other time I’ve travelled have been the quietest are the busiest, although not as busy as I’ve seen them at other times. It’s obvious cheaper trains earlier would help shift demand more evenly.
Isn’t the only real alternative to peak fares compulsory reservation and fully floating demand lead pricing?
It seems to me that most of those demanding fares reform want their cake and eat it, with the taxpayer picking up a greatly increased tab.
Isn’t the only real alternative to peak fares compulsory reservation and fully floating demand lead pricing?
It seems to me that most of those demanding fares reform want their cake and eat it, with the taxpayer picking up a greatly increased tab.
GWR operate lots of services over 3 hour where units are not equipped with electronic reservations, eg Gloucester-Weymouth, Cardiff-Portsmouth, Cardiff-Penzance etc. Can't do allocated reservations on these
But if have arbitrary cut off time (as now) defined as peak, many services operate mix of both peak and off peak if the service is 3+ hours long.
GWR also have a problem with keeping the 5car, 9car, and 5+5car IETs as scheduled, so reservations on these are unreliable too.
Rather makes it difficult to do optimum yield quantity of advance fares and compulsory reservation, if they have insufficient stock so that late changes never happen.
Isn’t the only real alternative to peak fares compulsory reservation and fully floating demand lead pricing?
It seems to me that most of those demanding fares reform want their cake and eat it, with the taxpayer picking up a greatly increased tab.
GWR operate lots of services over 3 hour where units are not equipped with electronic reservations, eg Gloucester-Weymouth, Cardiff-Portsmouth, Cardiff-Penzance etc. Can't do allocated reservations on these
But if have arbitrary cut off time (as now) defined as peak, many services operate mix of both peak and off peak if the service is 3+ hours long.
GWR also have a problem with keeping the 5car, 9car, and 5+5car IETs as scheduled, so reservations on these are unreliable too.
Rather makes it difficult to do optimum yield quantity of advance fares and compulsory reservation, if they have insufficient stock so that late changes never happen.
I think the point here is that that you would just be tied to a train, it would still work for trains without reservations as how counted places are now, but perhaps renamed.
There could also be a distinction made in journey types, allowing more metro journeys to be undertaken flexibly.
Anyways perhaps a discussion for a different speculative thread.
Passing through Exeter on way home and have observed that passenger numbers in Devon/Cornwall today must be near record levels.
Many trains regional and mainline full and standing. 1A84 PNZ PAD not calling Taunton or Reading and all passengers at Exeter for Tiverton, Taunton, Reading, London advised to join 1327 XC (7-car HST) and change at Bristol Parkway due to overcrowding (1327 departed full and standing!).
When the HSTs are gone, it’s going to be very interesting!
It’s not so much privatisation but it is what happens when the money gets tight with any industry that needs so much government support. It was the same in BR days.
Passing through Exeter on way home and have observed that passenger numbers in Devon/Cornwall today must be near record levels.
Many trains regional and mainline full and standing. 1A84 PNZ PAD not calling Taunton or Reading and all passengers at Exeter for Tiverton, Taunton, Reading, London advised to join 1327 XC (7-car HST) and change at Bristol Parkway due to overcrowding (1327 departed full and standing!).
When the HSTs are gone, it’s going to be very interesting!
Hopefully, the remaining class 221 units with AWC will go to XC, once the class 805 and 807 units are introduced or that XC will get the class 222 units from EMR when the class 810 units have been introduced.
But I do think that GWR needs more stock, but this really depends on how and when parts of the network they use are electrified.
With the growth in passenger numbers in SW, have some immediate problems of severe overcrowding which can't really wait for electrification extensions.
A lot of potential diesel units come free elsewhere, but not really within 18 months, and in many cases nearer 2-3 years time. So not a quick fix, but potentially one for 2025-26. Many of those displaced units will be 35-40 years old so probably only buys extra 1-5 years anyway.
For the longer distance stock (spare 221s, 222s) remaining life is nearer 10-15 years
If the plan to convert some old D stock (ex District line) for some Thames valley routes goes ahead then some 165s can move west, but again going to be a delay. The 165s will be close to 35 years old by time they move, so again only really a 1-5 year solution.
There are many IET services to south west where they would still be busy if you lengthened them to 11cars tomorrow. Not that it's possibly to magic some intermediate vehicles quickly. But in a rational world would work out what will be needed for next 20+ years you would lengthen about 15 of the 5car sets to 11cars, and fix depot to be able to accommodate them.
Really need to get the electrification done to Oxford to make better use of 387s, the move of a few to GTR was classic example of having too many of wrong type of train, but insufficient of what you need. Hopefully can finish the Oxford part, get the 387s back and move bi-modes to help out elsewhere.
If electrification gets restarted to Bristol (both routes) then really need an electric IET, it's clear the heavy use of the engines in the bimode version are causing maintenance backlogs which reduces availability of serviceable trains. Of course quickest way to boost your stock is use what you have rather than stuck in a depot awaiting parts. Does rather suggest not been enough focus on ensuring good pool of spares for next few years. There is a cost of buying too many parts, but bigger cost of not being able to use the trains because short of parts
Then short to medium term (say 3-7 years) there will Project Churchward solution, which has its own thread will not go into detail here, but is battery EMUs, a short distance version (hopefully at least 3car and no 2car), and a regional train (for 3+ hour journeys, and hopefully nearer 5 or 6car). The regional one was almost certainly dual voltage to allow services to Portsmouth (and maybe Weymouth). But would also need these extra capabilities on the local version if going to use it on Reading-Gatwick.
At the moment, everything seems to be in a sort of black hole limbo, lots of ideas and potential solutions, but nothing clear about a definite solution for 3-6 months time, let alone any agreed plan for 3-6 years time. All rather depressing really.
There is nothing to stop the train companies changing the times at which off peak tickets can be used. They could do it tomorrow if they wanted to and it would stop some trains carrying fresh air around when there are others that are packed to the rafters.
I am not in favour of demand based pricing. Although it sounds great in principle we are talking about the railway industry here. You just know that the prices of popular trains would sky rocket. That's before a cash strapped TOC decides to increase fares to raise a bit of extra revenue.
Don't believe me - just look at the price increases we've seen through the back door at LNER when they introduced single leg pricing. And that isn't even proper demand based pricing!
There is nothing to stop the train companies changing the times at which off peak tickets can be used. They could do it tomorrow if they wanted to and it would stop some trains carrying fresh air around when there are others that are packed to the rafters.
I am not in favour of demand based pricing. Although it sounds great in principle we are talking about the railway industry here. You just know that the prices of popular trains would sky rocket. That's before a cash strapped TOC decides to increase fares to raise a bit of extra revenue.
Don't believe me - just look at the price increases we've seen through the back door at LNER when they introduced single leg pricing. And that isn't even proper demand based pricing!
It might help on some of the longer distance routes, but it is unlikely to fix the overcrowding due to lack of train lengths on services such as Trowbridge - Bath - Bristol TM -Filton Abbey Wood corridor where many people are already on anytime returns at 50p - £1 per mile.
There are lines in other parts of the country where you would be getting First class and free refreshments for those kind of rates, which makes it a postcode lottery for fares.
Which proves what exactly? If you're saying that your "gold plated" Cotswolds area has more or a similar number of 2nd homes compared to Devon and Cornwall please show me some evidence.
Now who's using names? You certainly seem to have a pathological dislike for anyone who doesn't agree with your points regarding the said area. Personally we're seeing plenty of 9 car IET's down in Devon and Cornwall so I don't see why why you had to mention my name as such. By the way, I don't mind if you do of course. Of course the Cotswolds and Hereford have plenty of visitors and probably comparable with Devon and Cornwall during quieter months but certainly not now. The Oxford and Cotswolds line was originally getting the 7 extra 9 cars 802`s and originally the Penzance route was never going to see any 9 cars at all. That is what started all this in the first place Irishrail, myself and others pointed out how bloody silly this was going to be in the summer months and lo and behold. Or did none of this happen?
Just try going round some Cotswold villages on a weekday evening in the winter and see how many of the houses have lights on. You will find a bit of light reading about the Cotswolds and second homes online as well.
Yes, you are seeing lots of 9-car trains - almost the entire West Country service to and from London in fact, ie far more 9-cars than were operating to and from the West Country in 2019. The number of booked lone 5-car semi-fast duties can be counted on the fingers of one hand. So what more is GWR supposed to do in terms of providing capacity on the route?
And were it not for the after-effects of the Covid pandemic on travel patterns - and developments like the extra London-Carmarthen services, which require the use of 2x5 formations east of Swansea - many of the 9-cars would most likely still be operating somewhere else.
As Clarence Yard has pointed out here previously, those seven 9-car 802s were ordered to help in various roles across the GWR network, not as some captive mini-fleet for the Cotswold Line, where their job was to ensure that sufficient capacity was provided on the busiest trains in the peaks, after the DfT left GWR short of what was needed with the Class 800 order. As soon as they reach London every weekday morning, the IETs that have spent the night at Hereford or Worcester go straight into the depot for servicing, not straight back to Worcester or Hereford.
No one in the Cotswolds has ever expected 9-car IETs around the clock on either the Worcester/Hereford or Cheltenham/Gloucester routes - same as there weren't HSTs all day previously. But we do expect them to be available at the times of day when the loadings justify their use.
No matter how many times irish_rail goes on about 9-car IETs and Hereford, it's a fact that just 30% of all services on the Cotswold Line timetable plan for pre-Covid days were 9-car, and that figure is down to about 20% in the current timetable after the May timetable change.
I wouldn't even rise to replying. Jimm just cannot accept that passengers standing for 3 hours is worse than passengers standing for half an hour, and until he is able to accept that a full and standing train on the Wofe is worse than a full and standing train on the cotswold we are wasting our time.
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Yeah like I'm going to put that information on a public forum. Just trust me yeah.
Half an hour, an hour... make your mind up. My view is that full and standing trains, wherever they are, are not a good thing, though they are inevitable in some situations - yes, even on the London-West Country services in the summer, which right now appear to be getting just about all the resources that GWR can manage to throw at them, while maintaining its services elsewhere.
As I've said before, given loadings either side of Oxford at certain times of the day/week, people travelling hereabouts can find themselves on overcrowded trains for rather longer than you keep claiming is the case.
The problem is that you keep claiming to possess some sort of deep insight about the route and persist in sharing this 'knowledge' here, but year after year keep posting things about it that are wrong, often repeatedly, long after people have pointed out your errors. So why should we believe you? See below for yet another instance.
Don't forget the Cotswold was 150s and 166s in the 90s. I think it has done rather well out of the past few years and rightly so. A 5 car IET is a big step up on what they had before, perhaps the 2010s there was a bit of overprovision with all the HSTs going down there, but historically, a 5 car IET suits the line well, with standing only ever likely for very short periods. On the WofE , standing is often in excess of 2 to 3 hours. This is morally not acceptable in my view, though I take the point on board that commercially its not always the best thing to do. Id argue there is a fine line between commercial profit and moral provision of an essential service, although I suppose it is a grey area.
Ah yes, let's pretend that Cotswold Line trains don't also serve places the size of Reading and Oxford on the way to and from Hanborough (a station that itself saw a mere 239% growth in passenger traffic between 2003 and 2015 - 72,000 per year to 243,000), so no allowance needs to be made for people using those two stations (and Didcot on Sundays) when allocating stock to Cotswold Line trains that call at them. But then I'm forgotting that as you have kindly informed us previously, everyone travelling from anywhere west of Oxford gets off or on there...
The reason for the preponderance of dmus - which actually started in the early 1980s - was because day-round loco-hauled London-Worcester/Hereford services were ditched and largely replaced by dmus running to/from Oxford or Reading, due to the state of sections of the track between Oxford and Worcester. Only a rearguard action by the CLPG saved the two peak trains each way between Hereford and Paddington.
Unsurprisingly, when the 166s arrived in 1993 and through running all day to and from London was reinstated, passenger numbers surged. So much so that just a few years later the 166s were often overcrowded, with FGW moving in the 180s a matter of months after taking over in 2004. Now, almost 20 years on from that change, a 5-car IET offers a "big step up" of, er, 44 seats per train, or, if you are referring to the 166s, about 75 seats (not that normal humans fitted with arms can actually fit properly in the 166 seats when a train is full).
We had some extra HSTs off-peak for a few months in 2009, when they replaced 180s after FGW decided to get shot of them, but most were soon replaced by 166s, with HST running costs being an issue even then. Moving those 166s back from the Thames Valley led to even worse peak overcrowding there, so back came five 180s in 2012 - though there were still plenty of Turbo duties on the Cotswold Line until the IETs began to appear.
How many more times do I need to correct your inaccurate, sketchy versions of history, that are used to justify your half-baked claims and theories about current conditions?
Currently sitting in the emptiest IET I’ve ever seen, at a time that many people would be willing to travel. I travelled on the first of park service a week ago, and it really made me think that surely it’s time for a change in how peak and off peak works. It makes no sense to have the kinds of conditions people complain about on here, and then just one train earlier have a train carting around fresh air, along with many others. Surely if anything peak times should shift towards the middle of the day, making very early travel cheaper. I’m sure there’s a way this could be achieved where overall profits weren’t affected, maybe by redistributing advances.
Realistically though it isn’t something you can achieve without fares reform, and for all its faults it is something demand based pricing would very much help with.
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Now being the first train through the last stations of the journey, it’s amazing how many people are getting on. Stations which every other time I’ve travelled have been the quietest are the busiest, although not as busy as I’ve seen them at other times. It’s obvious cheaper trains earlier would help shift demand more evenly.
It is August and passenger numbers in the peak periods always fall off a cliff in GWR land at this time of the year anyway.
There is clearly a case for someone to get to grips with the entire fares system and what peak and off-peak periods mean these days - but be careful what you wish for. Just look at airline ticketing and demand-based pricing on flights.
And yet it’s still possible to get a cheap flight last minute to many places in Europe. It would need to be kept in check carefully but it’s not a blanket it wouldn’t work.
It needs to be carefully kept in check, but demand based pricing can be a good thing, keeping down demand for certain services. In a very basic version every train starts off relatively cheap, and as it gets towards no seats left it becomes expensive, at or slightly above the current anytime rate. This makes people look at other trains which are cheaper. I’m only suggesting this for long distance tickets. Anytime fares are already a very very crude and basic form of demand based pricing
as for the suggestions of it making the taxpayer pay more, I’m not suggesting cheaper overall fares, but fares actually dynamically changing based on demand. The government has enough data to create a system that is neutral for their income, and any system which is neutral for them is also neutral for consumers.
Just try going round some Cotswold villages on a weekday evening in the winter and see how many of the houses have lights on. You will find a bit of light reading about the Cotswolds and second homes online as well.
Yes, you are seeing lots of 9-car trains - almost the entire West Country service to and from London in fact, ie far more 9-cars than were operating to and from the West Country in 2019. The number of booked lone 5-car semi-fast duties can be counted on the fingers of one hand. So what more is GWR supposed to do in terms of providing capacity on the route?
And were it not for the after-effects of the Covid pandemic on travel patterns - and developments like the extra London-Carmarthen services, which require the use of 2x5 formations east of Swansea - many of the 9-cars would most likely still be operating somewhere else.
As Clarence Yard has pointed out here previously, those seven 9-car 802s were ordered to help in various roles across the GWR network, not as some captive mini-fleet for the Cotswold Line, where their job was to ensure that sufficient capacity was provided on the busiest trains in the peaks, after the DfT left GWR short of what was needed with the Class 800 order. As soon as they reach London every weekday morning, the IETs that have spent the night at Hereford or Worcester go straight into the depot for servicing, not straight back to Worcester or Hereford.
No one in the Cotswolds has ever expected 9-car IETs around the clock on either the Worcester/Hereford or Cheltenham/Gloucester routes - same as there weren't HSTs all day previously. But we do expect them to be available at the times of day when the loadings justify their use.
No matter how many times irish_rail goes on about 9-car IETs and Hereford, it's a fact that just 30% of all services on the Cotswold Line timetable plan for pre-Covid days were 9-car, and that figure is down to about 20% in the current timetable after the May timetable change.
Half an hour, an hour... make your mind up. My view is that full and standing trains, wherever they are, are not a good thing, though they are inevitable in some situations - yes, even on the London-West Country services in the summer, which right now appear to be getting just about all the resources that GWR can manage to throw at them, while maintaining its services elsewhere.
As I've said before, given loadings either side of Oxford at certain times of the day/week, people travelling hereabouts can find themselves on overcrowded trains for rather longer than you keep claiming is the case.
The problem is that you keep claiming to possess some sort of deep insight about the route and persist in sharing this 'knowledge' here, but year after year keep posting things about it that are wrong, often repeatedly, long after people have pointed out your errors. So why should we believe you? See below for yet another instance.
Ah yes, let's pretend that Cotswold Line trains don't also serve places the size of Reading and Oxford on the way to and from Hanborough (a station that itself saw a mere 239% growth in passenger traffic between 2003 and 2015 - 72,000 per year to 243,000), so no allowance needs to be made for people using those two stations (and Didcot on Sundays) when allocating stock to Cotswold Line trains that call at them. But then I'm forgotting that as you have kindly informed us previously, everyone travelling from anywhere west of Oxford gets off or on there...
The reason for the preponderance of dmus - which actually started in the early 1980s - was because day-round loco-hauled London-Worcester/Hereford services were ditched and largely replaced by dmus running to/from Oxford or Reading, due to the state of sections of the track between Oxford and Worcester. Only a rearguard action by the CLPG saved the two peak trains each way between Hereford and Paddington.
Unsurprisingly, when the 166s arrived in 1993 and through running all day to and from London was reinstated, passenger numbers surged. So much so that just a few years later the 166s were often overcrowded, with FGW moving in the 180s a matter of months after taking over in 2004. Now, almost 20 years on from that change, a 5-car IET offers a "big step up" of, er, 44 seats per train, or, if you are referring to the 166s, about 75 seats (not that normal humans fitted with arms can actually fit properly in the 166 seats when a train is full).
We had some extra HSTs off-peak for a few months in 2009, when they replaced 180s after FGW decided to get shot of them, but most were soon replaced by 166s, with HST running costs being an issue even then. Moving those 166s back from the Thames Valley led to even worse peak overcrowding there, so back came five 180s in 2012 - though there were still plenty of Turbo duties on the Cotswold Line until the IETs began to appear.
How many more times do I need to correct your inaccurate, sketchy versions of history, that are used to justify your half-baked claims and theories about current conditions?
It is August and passenger numbers in the peak periods always fall off a cliff in GWR land at this time of the year anyway.
There is clearly a case for someone to get to grips with the entire fares system and what peak and off-peak periods mean these days - but be careful what you wish for. Just look at airline ticketing and demand-based pricing on flights.
OK, so you want to bring up Hanborough. Fine. A whole 8 minutes from Oxford. And yes, I have experienced overcrowding from Hanborough into Oxford and vice versa, but needless to say, once west of Hanborough, there is rarely standees. And if there are any, there certainly aren't after another 10 minutes or so when Charlbury is passed. So standees for 8 minutes, as inevitably at Oxford plenty get off. The issue , as others have pointed out is getting Oxford electrified to give it decent long EMUs to London, with hourly 5 car IETs on into the Cotswolds. And yes , that may still mean Hanborough passengers standing for 8 minutes (within the Dfts 20 minute standee parameters).
Also didn't see this, but as I mentioned as soon as we got to stations where the Off-Peak restriction allowed people to board, it got busier, and I was still near the station for the first Off Peak train from London, which arrived standing, that wasn't even Super-Off Peak. Not to mention my train home was also standing.
Just try going round some Cotswold villages on a weekday evening in the winter and see how many of the houses have lights on. You will find a bit of light reading about the Cotswolds and second homes online as well.
Yes, you are seeing lots of 9-car trains - almost the entire West Country service to and from London in fact, ie far more 9-cars than were operating to and from the West Country in 2019. The number of booked lone 5-car semi-fast duties can be counted on the fingers of one hand. So what more is GWR supposed to do in terms of providing capacity on the route?
And were it not for the after-effects of the Covid pandemic on travel patterns - and developments like the extra London-Carmarthen services, which require the use of 2x5 formations east of Swansea - many of the 9-cars would most likely still be operating somewhere else.
As Clarence Yard has pointed out here previously, those seven 9-car 802s were ordered to help in various roles across the GWR network, not as some captive mini-fleet for the Cotswold Line, where their job was to ensure that sufficient capacity was provided on the busiest trains in the peaks, after the DfT left GWR short of what was needed with the Class 800 order. As soon as they reach London every weekday morning, the IETs that have spent the night at Hereford or Worcester go straight into the depot for servicing, not straight back to Worcester or Hereford.
No one in the Cotswolds has ever expected 9-car IETs around the clock on either the Worcester/Hereford or Cheltenham/Gloucester routes - same as there weren't HSTs all day previously. But we do expect them to be available at the times of day when the loadings justify their use.
No matter how many times irish_rail goes on about 9-car IETs and Hereford, it's a fact that just 30% of all services on the Cotswold Line timetable plan for pre-Covid days were 9-car, and that figure is down to about 20% in the current timetable after the May timetable change.
OK so whether or not you and I agree that those seven 9 car units were for various parts of the network you say I`m pretty sure I remember them not being for the Penzance route as originally 9 car trains were never intended to go there. I think we can both agree that loadings haven't worked out very well in both cases and clearly not on the Hereford line. We can blame covid for various issues but there was always going to come a time when things picked up again, especially on lines linked to leisure travel. Clarence yard is always insightful in how the loadings and distribution of stock works but I still believe ( my opinion by the way) GWR are a service and should not just be looking just at costs regarding leisure travel in these areas even if they are having to work around a DfT mandate. This clearly doesn't bode well.
Which proves what exactly? If you're saying that your "gold plated" Cotswolds area has more or a similar number of 2nd homes compared to Devon and Cornwall please show me some evidence.
4% Cotswold District Council, 5% Cornwall Council UA. Counts as “a similar number” in my book (in fact they’re colour-coded the same on the chloropleth).
The North Cots was difficult because of some off peak and shoulder peak loadings west of Oxford - posters on here are tending to think only in terms of peak loads when looking at the all the year round base diagrams. There are other trains where you had to go load 9 and then you had to diagram the balances and any inter working with other routes. The North Cots is not quite as simple as it seems.
So much this. I don’t think people appreciate how much North Cotswold loadings have changed in the last few years. Call it the Soho Farmhouse effect maybe…
4% Cotswold District Council, 5% Cornwall Council UA. Counts as “a similar number” in my book (in fact they’re colour-coded the same on the chloropleth).
This is not an accurate comparison. Many seaside town have up to 80% holiday home ownership, not to mention other beauty spots. Cotswold district council doesn't cover nearly so large an area as Cornwall Council.
This is not an accurate comparison. Many seaside town have up to 80% holiday home ownership, not to mention other beauty spots. Cotswold district council doesn't cover nearly so large an area as Cornwall Council.
Indeed, and don't forget much of the Cotswolds is far easier to reach via the south cotswold line, or even the Oxford to Leamington line, and Bristol to Cheltenham line. Whereas Devon and Cornwall have one core spine running through it with everywhere within the catchment area.
Indeed. What a shame Bombardier didn't get to the bi mode market before the likes of Hitachi. The inter city bi mode Aventra option looked a good option to me.
So much this. I don’t think people appreciate how much North Cotswold loadings have changed in the last few years. Call it the Soho Farmhouse effe
ct maybe…
Indeed, and don't forget much of the Cotswolds is far easier to reach via the south cotswold line, or even the Oxford to Leamington line, and Bristol to Cheltenham line. Whereas Devon and Cornwall have one core spine running through it with everywhere within the catchment area.
Absolutely. Again conveniently forgotten. I foolishly drove from Cornwall to Bristol yesterday and wish I hadn't. Took over 5 hours to get back and 2 to get as far as Weston Super Mare from Bristol. The point is that I doubt the Cotswolds area ever get's that bad. More people to the west.? I think so?
Indeed. What a shame Bombardier didn't get to the bi mode market before the likes of Hitachi. The inter city bi mode Aventra option looked a good option to me.
Passing through Exeter on way home and have observed that passenger numbers in Devon/Cornwall today must be near record levels.
Many trains regional and mainline full and standing. 1A84 PNZ PAD not calling Taunton or Reading and all passengers at Exeter for Tiverton, Taunton, Reading, London advised to join 1327 XC (7-car HST) and change at Bristol Parkway due to overcrowding (1327 departed full and standing!).
When the HSTs are gone, it’s going to be very interesting!
Presumably, if it becomes inevitable (or at least very likely) that travelling to and from the SW will involve standing in very cramped conditions for several hours, or in many cases not being able to board at all, this will eventually feed through to reduced passenger numbers. The cynic in me suspects that this is the sort of logic that would appeal to the DfT.
Presumably, if it becomes inevitable (or at least very likely) that travelling to and from the SW will involve standing in very cramped conditions for several hours, or in many cases not being able to board at all, this will eventually feed through to reduced passenger numbers. The cynic in me suspects that this is the sort of logic that would appeal to the DfT.
I have often wondered if there is some curious inverted logic floating around in government or private sector circles as if to deliberately run down the GWR regions as well as others. GWR and the government can only blame railways so far but this is a mess a long time in the making. Of course it could just as well be a case of Occam's Razor.
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