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We were talking about the 17:33 and 18:33 departures from Kings Cross - these are peak departures and they leave Kings Cross full (with some standing in the vestibules). Lots get off at Stevenage and quite a few get on heading north. The trains don't leave Stevenage conveying fresh air, far from it based on my regular observations.
There are evening peak capacity busters for Stevenage - they leave Kings Cross at xx12 and xx42 and run non-stop to Stevenage. But these are normally full and standing as well!
The 19:06 is the first off-peak trains for Peterborough and stations north (there are (currently) no evening peak restrictions to Stevenage!). It is a bit of a faux-pas this train being a 5-car BUT in fairness to LNER it is a Lincoln train so only calls Stevenage, Peterborough, Grantham, Newark and Lincoln, it's not as though it's going to Edinburgh.
That is still a faux par isn’t it though. It reflects the problem. They have sized it to the destination not the calling points.
I totally understand the Stevenage, Reading etc crowds wanting to board long distance services. Of course I would be the same if I lived in such a place. It is objectively a waste of long distance capacity at a critical moment in the day though. My fairly firm view is that the railways need to better play their part in servicing the economy of the north and other regions. That means better priced fares.
I don’t want to see Stevenage passengers put onto slow stoppers which is why I favour a better network of peak express busters. The flows feel big enough from those stations to fill them with maybe 1 or 2 stops at other major local stations.
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I’m not saying there’s a separate peak, but that there’s a shift in the demand pattern. As a commuter, the difference in custom is noticeable. When I travel earlier, the full loadings are very noticeable.
I choose to travel on the 1933 because I can reduce the cost to my employer while also getting a 91/Mk4.
That is my whole point through. The load has shifted to an other time artificially because of the crazy peak pricing. Covid came along and lots of people have called the privatised pricing’s bluff. Now is the time to sort it all out.
Virgin’s removal of the Friday peak was a step in the direction and an acknowledgement that otherwise you had peak loading shifted onto shoulder off-peak services.
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I totally agree with this. It is a ridiculously insular debate with no stepping back. Obviously the Gov have their part to play in that change as well. The current approach has no doubt resulted in so much tinkering and playing around at the small scale that passengers are left with a completely confusing fare and ticketing landscape.
If we look at the railway as a resource to benefit the greater well being of the Nation and its economy, then there has to be a consistency in what is offered, rather than just offering value at the convenience of the railway.
This is the problem with this debate - too often it's framed around what the railway can provide, what revenue the railway can make or lose etc...
The railway doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists to serve society as a whole, so having the railway picking and choosing who it wants to offer value for money to, doesn't really fit with that objective.
I totally understand the Stevenage, Reading etc crowds wanting to board long distance services. Of course I would be the same if I lived in such a place. It is objectively a waste of long distance capacity at a critical moment in the day though.
I think you perhaps misunderstand quite how much demand there is, quite how busy these services become and how capacity constrained the railway is
Reading in particular is not some adjuct of Greater London - it's quite far out and acts as a sort of regional traffic hub.
Have a look at the timetable for today, ignoring EL, between 7am and 9am there's 24 services stopping at Reading on the way to Paddington. 16 of those are "long distance" or IC.
Of the 8 others, 6 depart from platform 15 and go down the RL to provide a semi-fast for Twyford, Maidenhead etc. They are not intended for the majority of Reading commuters.
So that's 2 "crowd buster" services.
If one were to have a moratorium on Reading passengers boarding IC services, how are you proposing to replace that capacity given the lack of paths between Reading and Paddington?
I think you perhaps misunderstand quite how much demand there is, quite how busy these services become and how capacity constrained the railway is
Reading in particular is not some adjuct of Greater London - it's quite far out and acts as a sort of regional traffic hub.
Have a look at the timetable for today, ignoring EL, between 7am and 9am there's 24 services stopping at Reading on the way to Paddington. 16 of those are "long distance" or IC.
Of the 8 others, 6 depart from platform 15 and go down the RL to provide a semi-fast for Twyford, Maidenhead etc. They are not intended for the majority of Reading commuters.
So that's 2 "crowd buster" services.
If one were to have a moratorium on Reading passengers boarding IC services, how are you proposing to replace that capacity given the lack of paths between Reading and Paddington?
Its often said that the paths lost to Heathrow Express can't be reused elsewhere due to signalling constraints westward. Perhaps in this instance it would be worthwhile resignalling to Reading to enable them to be reused as a Reading crowd buster.
(Now that we have the Elizabeth line, Heathrow Express is little more than a pointless bauble designed to fleece tourists).
I don’t want to see Stevenage passengers put onto slow stoppers which is why I favour a better network of peak express busters. The flows feel big enough from those stations to fill them with maybe 1 or 2 stops at other major local stations.
Its often said that the paths lost to Heathrow Express can't be reused elsewhere due to signalling constraints westward. Perhaps in this instance it would be worthwhile resignalling to Reading to enable them to be reused as a Reading crowd buster.
It’s nit signalling constraints, its the timetable structure.
In the off peak, the train immediately in front of every other down HEX is the Didcot service; this switches to the Relief Line at Dolphin Jn, or calls at Slough (Main Line platform), and then swaps to the Relief line. Either way, the slowing down for the junction / station call means that the train following the HEX is on minimum headway behind. In the peak its a bit more complicated, but much the same in principle.
While I agree that we still ought probably to be paying more for subsidy (this is where benchmarking against sensible continental neighbours ought to be done) I dispute that as a society we ought to be waiting for a "sometime/never" uplift in services that may or (likely) may not ever happen. As I've mentioned previously, the bus services are pants, yet we seem to be paying for travel to be affordable on those, and very popular and transformative it is too.
That’s because bus travel serves the lowest economic groups in Britain. It’s why they’ve been prioritised for this sort of financial assistance to ease the cost of living crisis, and it helps out people living away from a railway in rural areas. You’ll note that bus journeys aren’t priced or capped by mile as a result, by the way!
Britain’s railways are in a terrible state. So many journey opportunities no longer exist after decimation during Covid, and the service remains unreliable.
Last weekend a friend who is car-less and visiting from the USA came to visit. He was over one hour late arriving thanks to a single failure at Berkhamsted and his return trip was cancelled, causing half an hour of delay. This is not atypical. Another friend lives in Milton Keynes, and is about to buy a car to travel further afield. He can afford the train, even though it’s expensive. The issue is the local bus network’s lack of connections and distance to his stop. That’s the missing link there for a lot of carless people.
There are pinch points and areas where it should do better (the rolling stock situation is clearly broken looking at XC for example, but even there I usually manage to avoid them) but rail fares are very much a priority for those who don't already receive free or discounted travel.
In terms of a per mile cap, I'm still struggling to see how a cap set to avoid the worst excesses of the main lines would suddenly make it commercially or politically desirable to hike prices and empty out the trains in somewhere like the west country.
You need to decide if customers are price sensitive to the point of “emptying out trains” because part of your argument is that if you made huge cuts in fares on many desirable expensive flows it wouldn’t cause problematic crowding. Are passengers price sensitive, yes or no?
Lastly, there are many options for making rail fares affordable as seen in different parts of this country and abroad. Just defending the status quo against any and every potential alternative, just doesn't cut it.
I don’t think anyone here is defending the status quo against any and every potential alternative. Rather it’s being explained that some specific proposals are unworkable and have unintended consequences, which is why nobody serious ever talks about them. And, earlier in the discussion, it’s been explained how and why the cost of rail travel is not a political priority. And it isn’t a priority. You know this. That’s why fares remain high and why fuel duty freezes happen for motorists.
Rail has to understand its utility. It isn’t there to make money, and exists mostly as a social good to boost economic and social development. But it has severe capacity restrictions which have to be resolved *first* and urgently and this requires money. I’d like to pay more taxes to fund it, but I also know that’s politically unrealistic. You can only play the field as it lies. The high fares aren’t going away, fares caps aren’t coming in either; if you’re passionate about railways there are much bigger and better wins available.
That’s because bus travel serves the lowest economic groups in Britain. It’s why they’ve been prioritised for this sort of financial assistance to ease the cost of living crisis, and it helps out people living away from a railway in rural areas. You’ll note that bus journeys aren’t priced or capped by mile as a result, by the way!
Prior to the cap bus journeys largely were priced by vehicle distance. This was done using fare stages rather than actual miles, but it's basically how it worked.
In the Netherlands they actually are priced by line of route kilometre plus a starting fee.
It’s nit signalling constraints, its the timetable structure.
In the off peak, the train immediately in front of every other down HEX is the Didcot service; this switches to the Relief Line at Dolphin Jn, or calls at Slough (Main Line platform), and then swaps to the Relief line. Either way, the slowing down for the junction / station call means that the train following the HEX is on minimum headway behind. In the peak its a bit more complicated, but much the same in principle.
No, as it would bump into the train in front at Dolphin Jn / Slough. And it cant have pathing time added to avoid thst, as then the train following it would bump into it. And so on.
No, as it would bump into the train in front at Dolphin Jn / Slough. And it cant have pathing time added to avoid thst, as then the train following it would bump into it. And so on.
That’s why fares remain high and why fuel duty freezes happen for motorists. [...] But it has severe capacity restrictions which have to be resolved *first* and urgently and this requires money.
Perhaps ironically, increasing fuel duty would be a relatively straightforward way to provide the necessary funds to improve public transport such that people didn't need to drive as much. But the political realities mean that this only works if you apply the stick (fuel duty) first, with the promise of a carrot (better public transport) at some point in the future. Which is hardly a vote-winning proposition.
Perhaps ironically, increasing fuel duty would be a relatively straightforward way to provide the necessary funds to improve public transport such that people didn't need to drive as much. But the political realities mean that this only works if you apply the stick (fuel duty) first, with the promise of a carrot (better public transport) at some point in the future. Which is hardly a vote-winning proposition.
A Government at some point will need to address that with the move to EVs anyway...that tax income cannot be lost, I seem to recall vaguely working it out as being equivalent to increasing VAT to 30%.
If only we had some kind of scheme to move the fast services to another line, allowing them to get to Leeds or York faster while freeing up space on the network for more semi-fast services. We could call it "HS2".
Every other? So what about the other path? Where was the Bristol Superfast supposed to fit when that was envisaged?
Regardless I'm in favour of just removing HEx and if there's no way to fill the paths then the white space will give remaining services a bit of extra room to recover from disruption.
Has the £3 cap had any unintended consequences though? Have any short journeys that used to be cheaper been effectively "levelled up" to the cap? Has there been any impact on service provision as a result? I'm mindful of other government schemes like 30 hours free childcare, NHS dentistry, and the situation with social care where the funding doesn‘t quite cover the cost of providing the service, resulting in higher costs being passed on to everyone else or providers only taking on private customers going forward.
There's more nuance than that. Some places are falling apart. Other places were falling apart, but have largely resolved their issues. Some have reinstated their pre-pandemic service in full, some even have an improved service (Lizzie line being the most obvious improvement)
You need to decide if customers are price sensitive to the point of “emptying out trains” because part of your argument is that if you made huge cuts in fares on many desirable expensive flows it wouldn’t cause problematic crowding. Are passengers price sensitive, yes or no?
I think that the Paddington-Reading discussion has established that excessively high peak fares are indeed distorting the market, leading to overcrowding on off peak trains while peak trains are underutilised.
I think that the Paddington-Reading discussion has established that excessively high peak fares are indeed distorting the market, leading to overcrowding on off peak trains while peak trains are underutilised.
That happens pretty much everywhere where peak fares are inflated. See the WCML in the morning peak for an example - there's so much space that they can easily fill it with MKC commuters without causing overcrowding.
LNER, of course, are promoting a scheme to reduce the differential, but unfortunately this is by way of increasing the fares off peak, not reducing the peak ones. They claimed it would involve the latter but if you spend 5 minutes looking they clearly have not done so. But much as I'm no fan of this scheme it probably is the only way of getting rid of the peak/off peak cliff - a revenue-negative one like ScotRail's political decision to just set the Anytimes down to the former Off Peak price and bin the Off Peaks would never be accepted by the DfT.
They've sized it to traffic, bearing in mind the constraints on the fleet. When I've used the 19:06, it has been full - but not overflowing. Which, incidentally, suggests that the argument of a secondary peak when fares drop isn't consistently true. Talking of which
That is my whole point through. The load has shifted to an other time artificially because of the crazy peak pricing. Covid came along and lots of people have called the privatised pricing’s bluff. Now is the time to sort it all out.
The load reflects the patterns of people going up to London for leisure trips. They travel post-peak, having had a meal out or such like. This is not the cliff edge that Euston used to enjoy.
Obviously the Gov have their part to play in that change as well. The current approach has no doubt resulted in so much tinkering and playing around at the small scale that passengers are left with a completely confusing fare and ticketing landscape.
Because the government both demand greater income from the railway (the current policy of demanding a proportion of costs be funded by fares was set by Alastair Darling), and also apply caps on certain fares that lead to pricing managers looking to drive income through other means, complicated by the whole system being frozen at the structure of 1994 so leaving great big gaps in fares that leave barn door sized holes for split ticketing, and can only be resolved by significant fares reform - in which case, be very careful what you ask for.
That’s because bus travel serves the lowest economic groups in Britain. It’s why they’ve been prioritised for this sort of financial assistance to ease the cost of living crisis, and it helps out people living away from a railway in rural areas. You’ll note that bus journeys aren’t priced or capped by mile as a result, by the way!
Britain’s railways are in a terrible state. So many journey opportunities no longer exist after decimation during Covid, and the service remains unreliable.
Last weekend a friend who is car-less and visiting from the USA came to visit. He was over one hour late arriving thanks to a single failure at Berkhamsted and his return trip was cancelled, causing half an hour of delay. This is not atypical. Another friend lives in Milton Keynes, and is about to buy a car to travel further afield. He can afford the train, even though it’s expensive. The issue is the local bus network’s lack of connections and distance to his stop. That’s the missing link there for a lot of carless people.
You may be unlucky, however that's not my general experience. I travel almost everyday, and I've only found it worthwhile putting in for delay repay two or three times this year.
Considering we still have a fair few single sections and mechanically signalled lines up here that's not bad going really - not to say that there aren't problems, however I don't find the service to be in a "terrible state" by any stretch of the imagination
No they aren’t! Very few people would think this is a priority. They’re a priority for *you*.
You need to decide if customers are price sensitive to the point of “emptying out trains” because part of your argument is that if you made huge cuts in fares on many desirable expensive flows it wouldn’t cause problematic crowding. Are passengers price sensitive, yes or no?
So you move in circles who can generally afford our off peak fares or find an alternative. That is not the same for everyone. For a person on a limited income who needs to travel a medium or long distance, price will absolutely be a priority.
In terms of price sensitivity, somewhere like Cornwall, or many areas in the North, with relatively high levels of deprivation, rail use will be very price sensitive, of course it will.
That's not to say that there aren't areas of deprivation in London and the South East, however on a typical radial route from London thinking of price sensitivity in terms of off-peak travel:
- there are likely to be a lot of people on advance purchase anyway, so won't be affected.
- there are fewer people not eligible for discounted travel due to the network card, so there's probably less scope for increased demand.
- road congestion, London commuting and an overall higher proportion of higher income individuals mean that a greater proportion of people inclined to use the train in the off peak, will probably already be using it.
So off peak travel is probably a lot less price sensitive on the busy radial routes out of London than in the West country.
That said, just because it's the South East doesn't mean that off peak trains are always packed out. I travel around Kent a lot and there are always plenty of seats available.
I don’t think anyone here is defending the status quo against any and every potential alternative. Rather it’s being explained that some specific proposals are unworkable and have unintended consequences, which is why nobody serious ever talks about them. And, earlier in the discussion, it’s been explained how and why the cost of rail travel is not a political priority. And it isn’t a priority. You know this. That’s why fares remain high and why fuel duty freezes happen for motorists.
There are a whole range of possibilities. If all else fails, a National railcard would probably be the line of least resistance.
The industry and country needs to move away from ever more restrictions and ever more advanced purchase being a panacea. It's not.
In terms of political priority. It doesn't have to be this way. Look at Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Scotland...
All have adopted different ways of achieving affordable rail travel. One would have to be an English exceptionalist to assume that the Establishment in London's way is the only way.
Rail has to understand its utility. It isn’t there to make money, and exists mostly as a social good to boost economic and social development. But it has severe capacity restrictions which have to be resolved *first* and urgently and this requires money. I’d like to pay more taxes to fund it, but I also know that’s politically unrealistic. You can only play the field as it lies. The high fares aren’t going away, fares caps aren’t coming in either; if you’re passionate about railways there are much bigger and better wins available.
A couple of weeks ago, I was astonished to find that a XC service between Plymouth and Bristol was only four carriages and consequently ram packed. Yet I managed to have a seat all the way because there were other services. I wonder how many people on that packed XC train could have moved to my less busy train if they'd had an affordable walk on option ?
I'm passionate about the railways serving the good of the country, not being a "rich man's toy".
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leaving great big gaps in fares that leave barn door sized holes for split ticketing, and can only be resolved by significant fares reform - in which case, be very careful what you ask for.
That is still a faux par isn’t it though. It reflects the problem. They have sized it to the destination not the calling points.
I totally understand the Stevenage, Reading etc crowds wanting to board long distance services. Of course I would be the same if I lived in such a place. It is objectively a waste of long distance capacity at a critical moment in the day though.
Only if people are reserving seats between London and Stevenage. I'd suggest few people do, and if they do it is only because journey planners do this automatically and without asking even when retailing flexible tickets (and then the passenger probably doesn't use the reservation anyway). I don't know how you solve it, but it is quite unnecessary to automatically give seat reservations to people going from London to Stevenage at peak times if they select an LNER train when buying a flexible ticket.
People travelling on those trains without a reserved seat are not stopping long distance passengers booking onto those trains, nor should they be (and I suspect they're not) preventing those passengers sitting down when they board at Kings Cross. Most of them are standing in the vestibules, as @Hadders has explained. And even if they did occupy seat reserved by a long distance passenger, they wouldn't prevent that passenger sitting down when the train reaches Stevenage. What would be a waste of capacity would be running those trains without utilising the standing room in the vestibules (and, where necessary, the aisles) between London and Stevenage - people travelling further don't want to stand.
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My sister (not a rail enthusiast) was complaining to me about the cost of the fare between Canterbury and Ashford recently (I mentioned it earlier). I said write to the MP.
The railway is a captive market, this is a non-starter. You're going to use the train anyway because you have little choice. It has been ever thus.
There's a good social argument for people on the lowest incomes to receive some sort of transport vouchers to take the sting out of distress purchases, or perhaps for Anytimes to be abolished and the railway to finally grip the shoulder peak. But even so, a wholesale foisting of burden onto the taxpayer during a time when rail cannot even build one high speed line without scandal isn't going to fly, and you have to direct your energies elsewhere.
Becoming bigger should absolutely be the aim, but it's not a precondition of being able to make and win the argument.
The motorist lobby was extremely small in the 1950s when it was able to persuade politicians to knock down people's houses (among other things) so that other people could pay for the construction of roads for a tiny minority to drive their private cars on. Far more people walked, cycled or used public transport at that time than drove cars. The growth in the number of car owners and drivers followed on from those successes - it wasn't required in order for successful lobbying and campaigning to take place.
Advocates of greater subsidy of rail have a much better argument than the road lobby ever did at that time.
The railway is a captive market, this is a non-starter. You're going to use the train anyway because you have little choice. It has been ever thus.
There's a good social argument for people on the lowest incomes to receive some sort of transport vouchers to take the sting out of distress purchases, or perhaps for Anytimes to be abolished and the railway to finally grip the shoulder peak. But even so, a wholesale foisting of burden onto the taxpayer during a time when rail cannot even build one high speed line without scandal isn't going to fly, and you have to direct your energies elsewhere.
No one's talking about "wholesale foisting of burden" onto the taxpayer. Passengers already pay several billions towards the service. That's not going to change.
And why should an inability to control large scale infrastructure costs affect provision of affordable travel, any more than the cost of the latest by-pass affects the bus fare cap ? The two are unrelated.
Becoming bigger should absolutely be the aim, but it's not a precondition of being able to make and win the argument.
The motorist lobby was extremely small in the 1950s when it was able to persuade politicians to knock down people's houses (among other things) so that other people could pay for the construction of roads for a tiny minority to drive their private cars on. Far more people walked, cycled or used public transport at that time than drove cars. The growth in the number of car owners and drivers followed on from those successes - it wasn't required in order for successful lobbying and campaigning to take place.
Advocates of greater subsidy of rail have a much better argument than the road lobby ever did at that time.
The motor lobby back then had the advantage of being able to point to Britain's post war ruin with its public transport becoming necrotic. The car was newly democratising and spreading among the middle class. That isn't to say they had a better argument, but like everything else it's a function of its time. Picking the right battles to fight, when, really matters. Rail enthusiasts are extremely bad at this.
I mean you could just look at the motor lobby and say "hmm, well people who drove in the 50s...it was mostly middle class professionals on good incomes and political relevance (everyone listens to the GP or the surveyor or the headmaster!)" but actually what is being asked for here is just "lower fares" - it's kidding oneself. It's actually much easier to fix many of the problems around the edge which are stopping rail from realising its potential than keep bellowing "LOWER FARES" but I appreciate the latter can be more fun.
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And why should an inability to control large scale infrastructure costs affect provision of affordable travel, any more than the cost of the latest by-pass affects the bus fare cap ? The two are unrelated.
Because if you had any idea of how poorly rail is received politically, especially when we've just had to postpone our humiliating HS2 project at least another two years, you'd realise going with the begging bowl to the government is a waste of your time.
Because if you had any idea of how poorly rail is received politically, especially when we've just had to postpone our humiliating HS2 project at least another two years, you'd realise going with the begging bowl to the government is a waste of your time.
That's because of our London-centric political class.
Fifteen years ago I was having this same conversation and was told that the political class still distrusted the railway because of the Modernisation plan. Then it was Great Western electrification. Now its HS2.
The political class need to get it through their thick skulls that many of us rely on the day to day bread and butter railway. We didn't ask for HS2 or its management. We were asking for something like the Bahncard before HS2 was even considered.
As with Beeching, the political class is punishing passengers for its own failure.
The political class need to get it through their thick skulls that many of us rely on the day to day bread and butter railway. We didn't ask for HS2 or its management. We were asking for something like the Bahncard before HS2 was even considered.
Asking for affordable fares is not utopia (certainly not as much as the range of infrastructure improvements you seem to be calling for as a pre-condition for meaningful fares reform).
Perhaps if more people made the argument for affordable fares, instead of parroting the Westminster party line, there might be more movement.
Just picking up on this one point, though not wanting to go off-topic - TfL's travel research shows there are certain demographics (lower income backgrounds and black passengers) who disproportionately use the bus even when it's not the best value or most convenient way to make their journey.
They struggled to get to the bottom of the reason for this, particularly on the cost front, but did note the following, which is going to affect migrants more (who are in turn more likely to be on lower incomes):
Level of integration (defined as the degree to which people have assimilated or interacted with mainstream society) was found to be a key factor impacting upon travel patterns. Less integrated participants (often older people) concentrate their travel ‘close to home’, affecting the mode of transport used. These people rely heavily on buses, even to complete longer journeys, with alternative transport modes seen as being ‘confusing’ and ‘difficult to use’ due to language barriers and a lack of confidence [17].
That quote was from research in 2012 mind, so may be less relevant in the world of Google/Apple Maps/Citymapper/etc.
Agree with your post though. And I've travelled enough on long distance trains and Megabus/Flixbus/NX long distance coaches to know that there are plenty of people who would take the train for long distance journeys should it be more affordable (and publicly recognised as such).
Not to mention that it would help our environmental impact, given long-distance electrified rail trumps coaches for emissions. They fall behind for shorter journeys running DMUs. So if anything, the long distance journeys would help us more with our environmental targets, as well as making comfortable travel more affordable for passengers, regardless of level of income.
