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Thinking about how some on here think Thameslink should be under TfL even though Thameslink serves other cities besides London such as Cambridge and Brighton, perhaps a better alternative would be a TfSEE which could work closely with TfL, I know St.Albans, Bedford, Luton, Peterborough and Cambridge aren’t South East England either but many services serving there begin in London, which is also its own region but geographically is in the SE region.
This would be a soft return to Network South East in many ways, but with railways being nationalised could a TfSEE work?
If only they could get all the Home Counties to kick in, you might get things like Croxley, SE Trains beyond zone 6 etc etc - all done which require parochial fiscal compromise.
It’s all the same broader economy, makes much more sense to be regional than just the LBs.
Plus with the Elizabeth line going all the way to Reading, and as you mention the Croxley works I think such a scheme is more of a necessity at this point.
It depends on whether you’re trying to recreate NSE by the back door, or create a modern form of PTE.
NSE was a BR operation, joining the local (and some less local!) services under common management. It didn’t touch anything else, and was totally detached from politics.
The PTEs reached into non-rail, and were political bodies linked to local authority areas.
A modern day NSE might work, but would depend heavily on getting DfT to permit a sectorisation style approach to the railways, with all of the reorganisation that would underpin that. A PTE would not, unless you moved into much more extensive political reorganisation of London and the South East.
Probably more along the lines of NSE for the points you stated above, a non political entity as services would just be localised with South East of England, but would also include London and East Anglia.
I think we probably would need that. But then you’d need some kind of a regional governing body to oversee it? One thing is I wouldn’t want it called TfSEE. The Transport for X trend needs to stop. London Transport, Welsh Transport (or Railways), sounds much better.
In all seriousness Network South East is a clunky sounding phrase but at least it sounds somewhat striking from a marketing point of view.
Would need proper UK federalisation to work so that the regions of South East and East of England have fiscal powers. It's not unusual in Germany for a small number of states to fund and run joint transport agencies.
Improving quality of life and enabling economic growth
The South East is a powerful driver of the UK economy and the nation's major international gateway for people and businesses. Transport for the South East's ambition is not just to improve but to transform the quality of transport for the South East's residents, businesses and visitors.
Technically Hertfordshire is in the East of England region - using the former governmental regions (probably most famously used as the boundaries for European Parliament elections and as "NUTS" statistical regions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_England
I think the poster is talking about the official region of the South East rather than the colloquial term for the South East. Officially St Albans and Luton are in the East of England region but colloquially and indeed in news articles etc., they are described as being in the South East. Cambridge and Peterborough on the other hand are more likely to colloquially be referred to as being in East Anglia, or in the latter’s case even the East Midlands, although even with Cambridge I occasionally here it referred to as being in the South East - but that is probably more to do with its buoyant economy which shares more in common with the South East, rather than its geographical location which is very much on the northern extremity of what could colloquially be called the South East. Network South East did in fact go as far north as King’s Lynn but that was something of an outlier.
Given that the OP of this thread seems to be focused on Thameslink being a London operation, the entire network of lines it includes only has one terminal in a London borough* i.e. Sutton. All the others certainly operate as regional outer suburban routes, and it is the mixed nature of these services that make it difficult to plant them firmly into one pot or another. Add to that the very tight interdependency of the metro and outer, faster trains, particularly north of the Thames, any attempt to draw borders around what some might regard as metro is problematic.
I think we probably would need that. But then you’d need some kind of a regional governing body to oversee it? One thing is I wouldn’t want it called TfSEE. The Transport for X trend needs to stop. London Transport, Welsh Transport (or Railways), sounds much better.
In all seriousness Network South East is a clunky sounding phrase but at least it sounds somewhat striking from a marketing point of view.
So many rail services in the South East go beyond the region itself and interwork with other regions, in particular London and East of England, even the Central line goes to East of England and the Met enters the Southeast of England region.
This does exist but the problem is the actual South East is still fragmented. Hertfordshire comes under England's Economic Heartland and Essex is under Transport East. Which seems very unnecessary for what functions as one broad region.
All counties surrounding London and counties with decent commuter to London should be under one organisation, that way its much easier to work with TFL and ensure both areas get the services and infrastructure they need.
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Exactly I refuse to believe anywhere in Hertfordshire is east, we are South East as we border London. Essex is not east either, apart from maybe the northern parts next to Suffolk. Cambridge definitely looks towards the South East and seems out of place with most of the towns nearby and in Norfolk and Suffolk.
St Albans is 20m from St Pancras, Watford is 17m from Euston and about 3m west of St Albans, - both towns are in Eastern England, like Cambridge. Banbury is about 70m from Marylebone, and it is located in South-East England. Strange really.
This is why the official regions don't add up, they tried to use whole counties as building blocks with no thoughts of splitting any of them up to make it make sense.
St Albans and the towns nearby all across South Herts are increasingly London. Herts is really built up, up to 10 miles from London, despite the Shire part of it.
I just find it hard to understand how Milton Keynes and Northampton are seen as South East despite being half way to the Midlands and yet I'm 2 miles from Greater London and somehow is not.
A better compromise would be one region around London I would've though. An Ile de France type arrangement.
This is why the official regions don't add up, they tried to use whole counties as building blocks with no thoughts of splitting any of them up to make it make sense.
St Albans and the towns nearby all across South Herts are increasingly London. Herts is really built up, up to 10 miles from London, despite the Shire part of it.
I just find it hard to understand how Milton Keynes and Northampton are seen as South East despite being half way to the Midlands and yet I'm 2 miles from Greater London and somehow is not.
A better compromise would be one region around London I would've thought. An Ile de France type arrangement.
This does exist but the problem is the actual South East is still fragmented. Hertfordshire comes under England's Economic Heartland and Essex is under Transport East. Which seems very unnecessary for what functions as one broad region.
All counties surrounding London and counties with decent commuter to London should be under one organisation, that way its much easier to work with TFL and ensure both areas get the services and infrastructure they need.
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Exactly I refuse to believe anywhere in Hertfordshire is east, we are South East as we border London. Essex is not east either, apart from maybe the northern parts next to Suffolk. Cambridge definitely looks towards the South East and seems out of place with most of the towns nearby and in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Cambridge is most definitely an East Anglian city - but its affluence is more akin to the South East, though locally, the accent is more East Anglian than South Eastern. It has been diluted though through huge influx of people from other regions and around the world.
This does exist but the problem is the actual South East is still fragmented. Hertfordshire comes under England's Economic Heartland and Essex is under Transport East. Which seems very unnecessary for what functions as one broad region.
All counties surrounding London and counties with decent commuter to London should be under one organisation, that way its much easier to work with TFL and ensure both areas get the services and infrastructure they need.
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Exactly I refuse to believe anywhere in Hertfordshire is east, we are South East as we border London. Essex is not east either, apart from maybe the northern parts next to Suffolk. Cambridge definitely looks towards the South East and seems out of place with most of the towns nearby and in Norfolk and Suffolk.
It doesn't really matter which regional name tag is attached to a town, any administrative body for an area's transport should be based on the traffic flows through it. Nor should we get hung up on the names of what will be defunct TOCs, for instance, Southern, until recently ran trains to MK, but few would see MK as in the south-east, (unless speaking from well north of Watford Gap! ).
This is why the official regions don't add up, they tried to use whole counties as building blocks with no thoughts of splitting any of them up to make it make sense.
St Albans and the towns nearby all across South Herts are increasingly London. Herts is really built up, up to 10 miles from London, despite the Shire part of it.
I just find it hard to understand how Milton Keynes and Northampton are seen as South East despite being half way to the Midlands and yet I'm 2 miles from Greater London and somehow is not.
A better compromise would be one region around London I would've though. An Ile de France type arrangement.
That would need a definition of 'commuter belt' which can differ greatly across various travel modes. Since the pandemic, the permanent trend to wfh (including hybrid wfh+office) blurs the definition even more.
This is what I mean in transport terms, the official regions don't make any sense. All 3 of these towns are strongly connected with each other but somehow in 3 separate regions, seems so arbitrary!
This is what I mean in transport terms, the official regions don't make any sense. All 3 of these towns are strongly connected with each other but somehow in 3 separate regions, seems so arbitrary!
Until a government is willing to not base everything on old counties, annoyingly seems unlikely but definitely needs to happen as it's essential for future prosperity. Fragmentation only holds places back.
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It doesn't really matter which regional name tag is attached to a town, any administrative body for an area's transport should be based on the traffic flows through it. Nor should we get hung up on the names of what will be defunct TOCs, for instance, Southern, until recently ran trains to MK, but few would see MK as in the south-east, (unless speaking from well north of Watford Gap! ).
I meant the transport bodies that currently exist which presumably aren't going anywhere despite being as arbitrary as anything else here.
Transport for the South East, England's Economic Heartland and Transport East are not rail companies, they are supposed to cover all transport matters but because of the areas they cover, arbitrarily keep neighbouring places apart.
I agree it should be based on traffic flows but this is not what currently happens, its all fragmented around the capital which particularly hits buses, but also not great for trains either.
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Why does Britain struggle with this? Political and economic areas will naturally be different but that should mean the political ones are flexible enough to not negatively hit a places transport and services. A certain amount of overlap from one place to another should be expected.
Technically Hertfordshire is in the East of England region - using the former governmental regions (probably most famously used as the boundaries for European Parliament elections and as "NUTS" statistical regions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_England
The regions were an EU requirement. The UK is a very centralised country, apart from the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within England the main objectives were to hold the European Parliament elections and deliver the statistics.
Would need proper UK federalisation to work so that the regions of South East and East of England have fiscal powers. It's not unusual in Germany for a small number of states to fund and run joint transport agencies.
This is why the official regions don't add up, they tried to use whole counties as building blocks with no thoughts of splitting any of them up to make it make sense.
The regions were an EU requirement. The UK is a very centralised country, apart from the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within England the main objectives were to hold the European Parliament elections and deliver the statistics.
Even the devolved countries are highly centralised! We aren't going to see a change in policy for a while, as centralisation is a core tenet of British political culture.
This is what I mean in transport terms, the official regions don't make any sense. All 3 of these towns are strongly connected with each other but somehow in 3 separate regions, seems so arbitrary!
Do any towns or suburban areas in any of these German examples see sudden drops in level of public transport, like we see with buses in places near London?
I would care less about boundaries if bus frequencies between say London and Herts didn't fall off a cliff seemingly after the first town in Herts. At least with Germany, these wider regions around cities have formal names to identify them, Home Counties or South East England are too broad.
And see what you mean with Hamburg and Pinneberg for example. But if both the buses and trains are broadly comparable in both towns/ cities, it's not like the UK where a change of county amounts to a postcode lottery.
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Because of how London and the surrounding areas function and interact with each other, this is precisely what is happening though. With no will to address it.
Maybe but Cambridge feels different to places like Peterborough, Bury St Edmunds, Kings Lynn, Ipswich, Norwich, even Ely etc. It's hard to explain. I agree with Cambridge being in East Anglia though but Herts and Essex being put with all these places in the East definitely feels wrong.
Maybe but Cambridge feels different to places like Peterborough, Bury St Edmunds, Kings Lynn, Ipswich, Norwich, even Ely etc. It's hard to explain. I agree with Cambridge being in East Anglia though but Herts and Essex being put with all these places in the East definitely feels wrong.
Cambridge may feel different now, but that is a very recent phenomenon. I grew up in Cambridge and it was a shire county town like most others, apart from having a university attached. In most other respects Cambridge was very similar to Norwich in Norfolk, Ipswich in Suffolk, or other shire county towns like Bedford or Northampton.
St Albans is 20m from St Pancras, Watford is 17m from Euston and about 3m west of St Albans, - both towns are in Eastern England, like Cambridge. Banbury is about 70m from Marylebone, and it is located in South-East England. Strange really.
The old NSE boundaries are far too broad to make any political and economic sense. Weymouth and Luton are very different places with different public transport needs. We can’t be looking back at everything that BR did and say "let’s do that" because BR wasn’t perfect.
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