How can Paddington - Penzance services be sped up

[dk1]

Why would you skip the second busiest station on the GWR network?

Something I’m struggling to fathom.

 

[HSTEd]

I doubt a Great Western high speed line would even go via Reading in the first place!

You don't gain much advantage travelling from Reading over the conventional line, it borders on pointless duplication unless you are planning to axe the GWML or something. If the high speed line proceeded via Oxford you would enable major improvements to Oxford at the cost of only a minor detriment to Reading.

EDIT:

There is also the option of going via Basingstoke so you can relieve the SWML too, given you won't ever have enough traffic to fill the line.

 

[stuu]

Traffic at Reading is largely heading towards London, or is people changing trains to double back somewhere on the GWR network or to points north. The London passengers would be catered for since you wouldn't be closing the existing line, changing for HS2 at Old Oak Common would already have dealt with passengers changing to points north, and passengers changing to head back westwards would simply have less far to go to make the connection. I'd go as far as to say the whole enterprise is (even more) pointless if it goes via Reading.

Catch a train from the south west to London. You might be surprised how many people get off at Reading

 

[takno]

Catch a train from the south west to London. You might be surprised how many people get off at Reading

I catch them all the time. The number isn't exactly incredible, certainly compared to the number of people making the rest of the journey into London a misery and making it impossible to reserve through tickets. For the people getting off, it's also worth considering whether their eventual destination is Reading, or whether they are changing. Reading is undoubtedly an important station, but in many ways it's a menace for longer distance trains.

 

[stuu]

I catch them all the time. The number isn't exactly incredible, certainly compared to the number of people making the rest of the journey into London a misery and making it impossible to reserve through tickets. For the people getting off, it's also worth considering whether their eventual destination is Reading, or whether they are changing. Reading is undoubtedly an important station, but in many ways it's a menace for longer distance trains.

Impossible to reserve through tickets? From where to where?

 

[irish_rail]

Catch a train from the south west to London. You might be surprised how many people get off at Reading

This. I'm all for speeding up Plymouth to London, as I frequently make clear on here, but Reading is huge. Lots and lots do change here, you often get 50 to 100 get off at Reading. The connections to Oxford, Gatwick, Basingstoke, local Thames Valley, the list goes on. It is a major interchange and in my view is the most important stop between Plymouth and London.

 

[30907]

Apologies if this has already been suggested - upthread or somewhere similar - but I wonder if this pattern is worth considering:
1tph PAD-PLY with present stopping pattern PLUS possibly alternating Newbury/Westbury (for connections, but also allowing the PGN to keep clear)
1tp2h PAD-EXD as at present, extending to Paignton (only as required?)
1tp2h PAD-PNZ calling only RDG EXD PLY and as now (probably requires a full 9 cars, keeping @irish_rail happy This would catch up the hourly Plymouth so between PLY-PNZ alternate with a local.

Note: I haven't looked at pathing in detail.

 

[Irascible]

This. I'm all for speeding up Plymouth to London, as I frequently make clear on here, but Reading is huge. Lots and lots do change here, you often get 50 to 100 get off at Reading. The connections to Oxford, Gatwick, Basingstoke, local Thames Valley, the list goes on. It is a major interchange and in my view is the most important stop between Plymouth and London.

Not only that, Reading is still a fair distance from London anyway, so why shouldn't it get a good supply of fast trains? I'd be more agreeable to dropping Reading stops on down services though ( although, for obvious reasons, not many ).

 

[irish_rail]

Apologies if this has already been suggested - upthread or somewhere similar - but I wonder if this pattern is worth considering:
1tph PAD-PLY with present stopping pattern PLUS possibly alternating Newbury/Westbury (for connections, but also allowing the PGN to keep clear)
1tp2h PAD-EXD as at present, extending to Paignton (only as required?)
1tp2h PAD-PNZ calling only RDG EXD PLY and as now (probably requires a full 9 cars, keeping @irish_rail happy This would catch up the hourly Plymouth so between PLY-PNZ alternate with a local.

Note: I haven't looked at pathing in detail.

I suspect the 1tp2 hrs Padd to PZ very fast would end up being way over subscribed , though I do quite like the idea in all honesty.

 

[Geoff DC]

Catch a train from the south west to London. You might be surprised how many people get off at Reading

Maybe changing now that the Gatwick service is even worse & Crossrail/Farringdon much better.

 

[The Ham]

This. I'm all for speeding up Plymouth to London, as I frequently make clear on here, but Reading is huge. Lots and lots do change here, you often get 50 to 100 get off at Reading. The connections to Oxford, Gatwick, Basingstoke, local Thames Valley, the list goes on. It is a major interchange and in my view is the most important stop between Plymouth and London.

As I said, Basingstoke could be better of heading west then north. There's only 1.5tph to Reading which manages it in 18 minutes, otherwise it's 27 minutes. Conversely Salisbury is 36/42 minutes, but you're heading in the right direction (to get to Newbury with zero change time is an extra 17 minutes on the Reading journey time for a non stop service, which is 35/42 minutes but it's much further east than Salisbury).

Add to the above, we are likely to be in a post Crossrail 2 world, where Salisbury could well be 3tph (maybe even more), which will then reduce the waiting times making it most likely that it would be noticeable faster.

Farnborough is likely to be much closer (although Farnborough North is 1tph there's other stations nearby which are 2tph), but likely to at least attract some to go to Salisbury over Reading.

Conversely, Southampton would be so much faster that it'll probably be quicker from Bournemouth to change twice (Southampton and Salisbury) than only once (Reading).

That's going to reduce the numbers who need to change at Reading.

However, chances are the retained services would still be fairly frequent (given the existence of the semi fasts, I would be surprised if the fast services - which would likely gain Newbury, Taunton and Tiverton on all services, fell below 0.5tph).

That shouldn't be impossible to add to the line between Exeter and Plymouth, I'd suggest given the slow nature of the line through Cornwall there's little to justify all the HS services to run the services beyond Plymouth, so at least some of those retained services are likely to end up going into Cornwall.

Given were taking about a 30+ year timeframe (30 years at 1.5% growth would be 150 passengers for every 100 currently) there's a good chance rail growth would mean we may well need to significantly improve capacity.

 

[JonathanH]

Maybe changing now that the Gatwick service is even worse & Crossrail/Farringdon much better.

The Gatwick service is being made more frequent but slightly slower from December. Crossrail / Farringdon isn't better for all, or indeed necessarily quicker.

 

[30907]

I suspect the 1tp2 hrs Padd to PZ very fast would end up being way over subscribed , though I do quite like the idea in all honesty.

Yes, I wondered - but the daytime Penzance service is 2-hourly at present, and wouldn't have the Taunton etc traffic. You would of course run 9 cars
You could even omit Exeter but I think you'd be up the back of the Plymouth by Totnes - and do you change crews there?

The other problem is that daytime and morning/evening "peak" demand is probably different, with demand for Cornwall more in the daytime and for further East in the "peak," so a pure Taktfahrplan doesn't work.
Perhaps the super-fasts should just run at (say) 1034/1234/1434 down and 0810/1010/1210 ex PNZ Up, with other services being much as now. And yes, this does have a slightly retro feel to it, the important difference being that you also have the Plymouth hourly
(Whether you attempt to run a Golden Hind-equivalent I don't know - would there be enough demand?)

It does require increased resources, which would be problematic at present

 

[Peter Mugridge]

I would agree, I think that the first stop after Old Oak Common should be Newbury from there serve Southampton etc....

Slight difficulty there in that the Newbury to Southampton line was closed 60 years ago...

 

[cle]

Not sure why people are banging on about Salisbury. It's a fairly unimportant little place and not even on the mainline. It has barely scraped 2m users at its peak.

 

[Matt P]

Arguably you'd skip past Reading and have your first stop further out. In the past I've suggested the Wales and West HS line run Old Oak Common, Salisbury and then fab or from there to serve Southampton, Wales, Cornwall, Bristol, etc.

Still probably in second place to the cloning of dinosaurs in the chances of being done though.

 

[takno]

Not sure why people are banging on about Salisbury. It's a fairly unimportant little place and not even on the mainline. It has barely scraped 2m users at its peak.

2m passengers even though it's not on the main line. Imagine how it could grow if it was afforded the kind of service Reading has. Great access to London and the opportunity to act as a second regional hub for the southwest. We might actually have some development outside of the southeast if we were to explore ideas like this.

 

[The Ham]

Not sure why people are banging on about Salisbury. It's a fairly unimportant little place and not even on the mainline. It has barely scraped 2m users at its peak.

I've used it as an example location. Another suggested Newbury.

The reason I suggested it is it's a useful hub location, in that (unlike Newbury) you've got existing rail lines to other locations. For example getting to Salisbury from Southampton and Portsmouth is easier than Reading, it's likely to be able to have a more frequent service in a post Crossrail 2 world, making connections to Basingstoke and the SWML more frequent (and only marginally slower than getting to Reading, but a lot further west, so journey times would be faster).

With existing lines heading in 4 directions, it certainly has the potential to connect to a lot of places. As such the purpose of suggesting it is for the reason of interchanges rather than for serving the local area.

Averaging 125mph on HS lines is easy, so London to Salisbury in 41 minutes is possible , 150mph should be doable so could be 36 minutes. Putting it "closer" than Basingstoke in terms of journey time (36 minutes would put it in a par with Reading). Even using the existing (stopping) journey time from Southampton to Salisbury for determining journey time would reduce the journey time from there to London by at least 10 minutes (the reality is that at least some extra track would be built and so Southampton could be sub 60 minutes from London, which could make it "closer" than Winchester).

You then create a new line towards Bristol/Bath (with a short term solution of a junction to the B&H for your West Country services - potentially near Westbury), however as Salisbury to Bristol Airport is about 50km shorter than Reading that line may not need to average much faster than the via Reading route to see speed improvements.

To Westbury is currently 1:08 with only one stop at Reading, is (again using existing journey times from Salisbury) a comparable journey time (only it would be every service and not just once a day) so would certainly be no slower heading west and almost certainly faster (averaging 100mph Salisbury to Westbury would mean the journey time could be at least 15 minutes faster, maybe even 20 minutes faster if you do 150mph to Salisbury and 125mph to Westbury).

 

[stuu]

I know this is a fantasy thread but come on, we can't even build a high speed line to the second biggest city in the country. Sticking to vaguely realistic solutions that are likely within the next century is probably best

 

[Bartsimho]

I know this is a fantasy thread but come on, we can't even build a high speed line to the second biggest city in the country. Sticking to vaguely realistic solutions that are likely within the next century is probably best

We can dream and if the political landscape changes it could become more realistic

 

[irish_rail]

We can dream and if the political landscape changes it could become more realistic

I disagree. The South West will always be forgotten about politics wise, if money becomes available it will always be thrown at the North, and Scotland. Personally I'm not convinced a high speed line is even needed to the west. London to Bristol and Cardiff is already pretty quick. I would like to see speeded up trains between London and Plymouth, by incremental linespeed improvements , but a high speed line would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

 

[The Ham]

I disagree. The South West will always be forgotten about politics wise, if money becomes available it will always be thrown at the North, and Scotland. Personally I'm not convinced a high speed line is even needed to the west. London to Bristol and Cardiff is already pretty quick. I would like to see speeded up trains between London and Plymouth, by incremental linespeed improvements , but a high speed line would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

London to Bristol/Cardiff would be more about providing extra capacity rather than necessarily reducing journey times.

I know this is a fantasy thread but come on, we can't even build a high speed line to the second biggest city in the country. Sticking to vaguely realistic solutions that are likely within the next century is probably best

I wouldn't be so sure. The "problem" with reduced business travel will likely improve significantly once the strikes are resolved - as who wants to plan a business trip by rail if you can't be fairly sure that there's not going to be a strike.

Likewise, general rail use is likely to improve noticeable with the strikes resolved.

Finally, if you look at the GWR numbers they are typically better than other TOC's even though it's been the most impacted by Crossrail. As such there's likely to be quite a bit of pressure to do something for the GWML over the next 15 years or so.

 

[Bald Rick]

The "problem" with reduced business travel will likely improve significantly once the strikes are resolved

Thats rather fanciful, and not what the research says.

As it happens most business travel within the UK is planned and arranged within 2 weeks of travel. The strikes are affecting long distance leisure traffic more.

 

[The Ham]

Thats rather fanciful, and not what the research says.

As it happens most business travel within the UK is planned and arranged within 2 weeks of travel. The strikes are affecting long distance leisure traffic more.

Most may well be, but that still allows the potential for a lot which is planned longer or than that.

Current business use of the railways is about 48% of pre pandemic levels, even that rising to 58% would be a significant increase. Such an increase would be ~20% of current user, so would still mean that ~80% was planned sort term.

However even short term planning is likely to be impacted by the strikes, which would mean that 10 percentage points raise was probably smaller still for long term planned trips as at least some would be those planning within two weeks and then going by train.

Whilst a lot of business travel is semi flexible, not all (for example training, events, trade shows, etc.), so a year out from the strikes being called off there's likely to be at least a noticeable increase in business use of the railways, quite probably a significant increase.

I would however state that I'm not expecting business rail use to be 100%, as things have changed due to online meetings, even 70% of pre pandemic rail use would be unlikely (possible, but significantly unlikely). 58% may even be a little high, but it'll be nice to not have the strikes to be able to know the actual outcome.

 

[stuu]

I wouldn't be so sure. The "problem" with reduced business travel will likely improve significantly once the strikes are resolved - as who wants to plan a business trip by rail if you can't be fairly sure that there's not going to be a strike.

It is quite a leap to go from "passenger numbers will grow," to "let's build another high speed railway"

The Hs2 debacle has put back the prospect of any future high speed lines by several generations.

 

[The Ham]

It is quite a leap to go from "passenger numbers will grow," to "let's build another high speed railway"

The Hs2 debacle has put back the prospect of any future high speed lines by several generations.

I would argue that the HS2 mess, probably isn't as bad as some would like it to be. For example the increased costs, there's been little evidence of what these relate to (other the doubling of costs at Euston), it's mostly "costs have spiralled" "it could cost £1xx bn", and the like. At the last assessment the money in the HS2 budget for use as reserves for phase one hadn't all been used, and certainly the money set aside for the overspend in the governments budget was untouched.

Now I'm not so naive to think that things haven't got worse, then why not put an actual number on it (at least somewhere)? I'm happy for someone to highlight where this has been provided (as it could well be that I've missed it).

Likewise why, until just before it was cancelled, was the Treasury still supportive of it going ahead? Which would also lead me to think that there aren't some missing numbers, as otherwise they would have been told about them.

The delays in opening have almost entirely been down to government slowing down parts of the project. Most of the rest is broadly on track as far as it can be seen.

At I've said before, even if we only make it back to 2019 rail use by 2030 we'd still be on track with the HS2 growth model.

Assuming 2009 = 100

growth model was 2.5% per year

2019 London - West Midlands/Northwest/Scotland was 170

21 years of rail growth at 2.5% is 168

2009 (year of HS2 announcement) plus 21 years is 2030

In fact 13 years of growth (2009 to 2022) would be 138

Whilst 80% of 170 is 136

Therefore even with a 20% reduction in rail use (with ongoing strikes and a major change in travel patterns, due to the pandemic) the actual rail use numbers aren't that far off the model used to justify HS2.

OK business travel (which justified a lot of the benefits) is down significantly, however that's only one element. The main thrust from government is all rail use is down (also note they use data from early this year when the data shows that it's likely that rail use had improved.

As the COVID modal travel data had the 30 day rolling average up until mid April at no higher than 95% for national rail (except for one day were it was 96%). Conversely it's not be lower than 95% since mid August.

If you look at the 30 day rolling average during February it was no higher than 91% for most of the month, with the latter week or so being marginally higher at 92%.

Whilst it may not sound a lot, it takes a lot to see much of a change when you're averaging over 30 days. As such why use data from the start of the year (yes it's probably more accurate, but I'd imagine not by very much) unless you were looking for the answer you want.

However even in the publicly available data for ICWC shows Jan - Mar 2023 was 11% higher than the same period in 2022. Even if growth is a quarter that rate it would still be +2.75% and so still above the model for HS2.

 

[I'm here now]

Could you double the West of England line and have that for most slow stopping services to London and have more frequent fast services on the Westbury Line. Would that even be attractive?

 

[dk1]

Could you double the West of England line and have that for most slow stopping services to London and have more frequent fast services on the Westbury Line. Would that even be attractive?

The cost of redoubling would be enormous. Works quite well as it is since the additional long loop was added at Axminster. Plans are afoot in cooperation with Devon CC to extend Barnstaple services there so offering half hourly links to Exeter.

 

[I'm here now]

The cost of redoubling would be enormous. Works quite well as it is since the additional long loop was added at Axminster. Plans are afoot in cooperation with Devon CC to extend Barnstaple services there so offering half hourly links to Exeter.

Is there still the trackbed to enable doing this?

 

[dk1]

Is there still the trackbed to enable doing this?

In places for much of the route yes. Would be a massive undertaking so I can't see it being done personally.