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Rotterdam - Arneham requires a change. Eindhoven - Amersfoort requires a change. These cross-Utrecht journeys are incredibly similar to cross-Birmingham ones.
What are the passenger numbers for those, out of interest?
Bristol to Manchester appears to be the largest cross-Birmingham flow served by XC (source: https://railalefan.co.uk/labs/flowstats/XC/) yet if some contributors on here are to be believed is part of the reason why New Street "doesn't work" or is the cause of all of Cross Country's woes. If the XC network were to be reorganised as you suggest it would enforce a change at New Street for their largest long distance flow.
Insisting on rationalising longer distance XC routes to either North East/South West or North West/South Coast corridors is a very binary way of trying to solve the problem. It doesn't consider the fact that most long distance customers don't want to change at New Street, which is surely part of the whole point of XC!
There's no reason why half hourly services feeding into New Street and alternating between Reading/Bristol or Manchester/Derby shouldn't work - OBB manage to combine a "takt" interval over certain segments of the Railjet routes into longer distance through services if you want a continental comparison - but it basically just needs longer trains to cater for the mix of long and short distance customers using XC.
More efficient for the railway certainly but for the passenger? The non-enthusiast rail travellers I know far prefer a through train, no matter how slow, than being forced to change, especially when they have children, luggage, or are elderly.
How much is that a natural law, and how much a consequence of the way we manage connections?
Yes, I can understand that when you are less mobile or encumbered by luggage, changing trains is less appealing – although if assistance was more reliable and more readily available then that would mitigate the problems to some extent.
IMX, most people – especially regular travellers – are happy changing trains in London where the tube along with many Overground and mainline routes run frequent services and there are multiple options if there are problems on one line. Whereas out in the provinces, when connecting services are infrequent and poor punctuality means that they are unreliable, it is understandable that people want to steer clear of them. But if connecting services were more frequent, changing trains becomes much less of a burden.
Another factor is people on fixed tickets. A lot of people don't realise that if they miss a connection because their first train is late, any fixed ticket is still valid on another train (although it can still get murky if the route is served by multiple TOCs), which I know does put some people off.
How much is that a natural law, and how much a consequence of the way we manage connections?
Yes, I can understand that when you are less mobile or encumbered by luggage, changing trains is less appealing – although if assistance was more reliable and more readily available then that would mitigate the problems to some extent.
IMX, most people – especially regular travellers – are happy changing trains in London where the tube along with many Overground and mainline routes run frequent services and there are multiple options if there are problems on one line. Whereas out in the provinces, when connecting services are infrequent and poor punctuality means that they are unreliable, it is understandable that people want to steer clear of them. But if connecting services were more frequent, changing trains becomes much less of a burden.
Another factor is people on fixed tickets. A lot of people don't realise that if they miss a connection because their first train is late, any fixed ticket is still valid on another train (although it can still get murky if the route is served by multiple TOCs), which I know does put some people off.
I disagree with that assessment. It's acknowledged as a given that people have to change in London to get between termini, and treated as a grim necessity rather than desirable. That's for experienced (if irregular) travellers - and through alternatives (Thameslink, Crossrail, the former InterCity service to Brighton) frequently seen as alternatives.
That then leads to the next question - how you appeal to irregular travellers. Regulars know the score and have confidence born of experience in dealing with the vagaries of changes of train, ticket restrictions, etc. Those who don't travel regularly lack that experience, and are easily deterred as a result. If you combine luggage, concern over a seat, concern over time, and fear of having an issue with a fixed ticket, it becomes much easier to just get the car.
The railway industry needs to understand and work with that, rather than explain away these issues by building around regular travellers. Get the connections and seat provision right, and ease the fear on ticketing, and perhaps irregular travellers will start to want to travel.
I’m quite prepared to believe that the Dutch do it better - I’ve never been so can’t meaningfully comment. But taking the places I do know, I completely agree that the Derby services are poor at best, and offer significant room for improvement.
There are however multiple reasons for those failings, which highlight the flaws in the obsessive focus on frequency. The obvious one is that the two XC service groups use different train types, with very different performance characteristics.
Those patterns then flow into the question of how services interact. The Cheltenham to Derby service pattern, and its flaws, won’t be resolved by splitting some services at New St when others (the core XC flow) are by definition through services. If I’m travelling between the two, then I’m likely to prefer the through service over the split service, meaning that capacity is further compressed.
And if you resolve that by breaking all the services at New St, you aren’t doing “takt” but implementing an arbitrary interpretation of capacity driven planning that pushes the burden onto passengers.
If you impose interchange, you have to consider the where, when and how of that interchange with reference to the people who make that journey.
I can’t take seriously any proposals that are based on requiring interchange at New St. The station is saturated and overcrowded, as well being deeply unpleasant to wait in at platform level. With prolonged minimum connection times, it is the definition of a poor place to connect.
The discussion, meanwhile, is based on an abuse of the term “takt”. A takt timetable considers the whole network, and is properly planned. Some segments of regular interval, however neatly planned, is not “takt” but a poor pretence of it.
As others have pointed out, the Swiss system of takt mixes long distance and occasional through trains (DB permitting!) with rigorous regular intervals on core sections, aided by consistent train performance characteristics. Vertical integration allows proper consideration of the practical and commercial implications of train planning, rather than applying arbitrary rules of symmetry as if tablets of stone. I believe that the Dutch also have international traffic so must find ways of blending service patterns within the structure.
Started off well. Two sentences of platitudes betrayed by the rest of the post that reveals a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to understand, and forming strong opinions based on the poor understanding.
Nobody is proposing 'breaking all the services at New Street' - you've misconstrued a position and gone on to attach that misconstruction. The kind of service pattern proposed is something like
- Manchester - Northampton crossing Birmingham at 00/30
- South West - North East crossing Birmingham at 15/45
- Cardiff - Nottingham unchanged (Cardiff end upped to 2tph if possible, or partially)
- Southampton - Birmingham
In such a timetable journeys like Cheltenham - Derby become 3tph direct (or 4 if Cardiff/Gloucester 2tph can be implemented), Coventry - Manchester 2tph direct. Those that don't have direct services have 2tph at a minimum. The Dutch do do it better. My Eindhoven - Zwolle and Rotterdam - Arnhem examples are manifestations of the Dutch doing it better. And providing equivalent offerings for Bristol - Manchester and Oxford - Sheffield is how we improve our railway to Dutch standards.
Birmingham New Street is fundamentally similar to Utrecht Centraal. Platforms and escalators/stairs leading up to a shopping centre concourse. The only thing going against New Street is diesel fumes and noises, but that is a time limited problem. Birmingham is currently perceived as a hostile place to interchange because service reliability is poor, and service complexity leads to lack of platforming predictability. In short, passengers aren't able to autopilot like they are Utrecht Centraal. The way a passenger navigates Utrecht Centraal is like between tube platforms. Once you start breaking down 'passengers don't like New Street' into constituent components, the answers become blindingly clear - operate it like Utrecht Centraal. I have been to both Birmingham and Utrecht a similar number of times so I can meaningfully comment.
I've never mentioned Swiss. I've written elsewhere why I believe the Swiss model is not suitable to apply to Metropolitan England, and the version of takt we should adopt is the Dutch one. Again, you betray an unwillingness to engage, move the goalposts, and come to wrong and irrelevant conclusions.
The whole motivation of takt is to provide a network structure that enables and encourages interchanges, and having interchanges at the heart of design principles. I've talked at length about a common national symmetry and strict half-hourly intervals, so your 'some segments of regular interval' and 'poor pretence' are mischaracterisations. Go talk to a continental railway professional and call symmetry an 'arbitrary rule' and see how you get on. Symmetry is precisely the key ingredient for making things work at a national level.
The Netherland's international services are a prime example of single service routings in a polycentric context. Despite the Ranstad having 4 relatively equal constituent members (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht), each international direction only services two of them. Brussels trains only go to Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Frankfurt trains only go to Utrecht and Amsterdam. The British instinct would be to run some Brussels trains to Utrecht and some Frankfurt trains to Rotterdam, and try to extend the Berlin train to The Hague. They don't do it. What's even more remarkable, is that the seat of the national government and capital of South Holland, The Hague, has no international services whatsoever. Passengers are expected to hub-and-spoke through Rotterdam and Utrecht through via their national takt.
The Dutch example shows that, in a polycentric context, simple service routings for operational efficiency and optimised interchanges are not only possible, but desirable.
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What are the passenger numbers for those, out of interest?
Bristol to Manchester appears to be the largest cross-Birmingham flow served by XC (source: https://railalefan.co.uk/labs/flowstats/XC/) yet if some contributors on here are to be believed is part of the reason why New Street "doesn't work" or is the cause of all of Cross Country's woes. If the XC network were to be reorganised as you suggest it would enforce a change at New Street for their largest long distance flow.
Insisting on rationalising longer distance XC routes to either North East/South West or North West/South Coast corridors is a very binary way of trying to solve the problem. It doesn't consider the fact that most long distance customers don't want to change at New Street, which is surely part of the whole point of XC!
There's no reason why half hourly services feeding into New Street and alternating between Reading/Bristol or Manchester/Derby shouldn't work - OBB manage to combine a "takt" interval over certain segments of the Railjet routes into longer distance through services if you want a continental comparison - but it basically just needs longer trains to cater for the mix of long and short distance customers using XC.
I don't have access to Dutch passenger numbers data. Let's put it this way - NS wouldn't be running frequent services with relatively big trains on a break-even contract (i.e. revenue covers operating costs) if their service planning model weren't attracting punters.
The Netherlands is a polycentric country. From the point of view of South Holland (Rotterdam and The Hague plus Gouda), there is no a priori reason to believe the Arnhem - Nijmegen axis is less important than the Amersfoort - Zwolle axis, and yet a design decision was made to lock direct routings to one of the two axes only.
What is more, all 4tph Den Haag - Utrecht services continue to Amersfoort and all 4tph Rotterdam - Utrecht run as shuttles. This is to ensure the 2 services groups operate as independent 4tph circuits. The British instinct would be to equalise the through services between Den Haag and Rotterdam.
These two examples lead me to believe that the presence of an interchange is not a deterrent to demand that it is in Britain, and good interchange between frequent and reliable services is a legitimate (and superior) alternative to infrequent direct services.
OeBB struggles to combine takt with through services. Once train frequencies go beyond Zwolle levels, providing same-platform or cross-platform interchanges between a wide variety of services becomes nigh-on impossible. All RJ/IC services on the Breclav - Vienna - Klagenfurt services are on standard takt timings, however, where the two segments are not on a through-train, the 4 minutes between the arrival of a first train and the departure of a second train on different platform islands are below the minimum connection time at Wien Hbf. The takt integrity is broken. For high frequency nodes like Birmingham New Street, the Dutch approach at Utrecht Centraal is more effective and more efficient.
Connections deserve a separate thread from overcrowding on XC - there have probably been a few over the years. I'd just say that I caught my 3 minute connection today but that managed to get delayed by 10 minutes and a fellow traveller was convinced he was going to miss his connection in Sheffield. He won't have. His next train was 16 minutes late.
Neither of those were XC and that's part of the problem, they connection with hundreds of other services. XC is part of a very big network with asymmetrical traffic flows that vary widely across the day, the year and country.
Before Christmas I made an identical journey to the one I made today. In December my first 4 car train must have been 98% loaded. Today, maybe 35% at most. Second part of my journey today was in 3 car train, full and standing. (I used a different service in December that was also full. No bookable tickets left on that today, full.)
Currently the crowding can come from cancellation of other XC services, short forming of XC services (sometimes due to locked out units), and knock on loads from other TOCs having problems where routes overlap (eg EMR Sheffield - Derby, LNER, TPE York-Newcastle). These issues affect many routes and TOCs but XC is currently suffering more than most others.
Provide more carriages and run more trains on time before tinkering with routes and timetables. Adjust pricing.
Absolutely. Which also requires some humility from those advocating this approach to recognise where existing customers are coming from, and what their reactions may be. The example of the reactions to making flows through London Bridge either to Cannon Street or to Charing Cross illustrates this well.
This would be a change. As with many such changes, the losers will be a clear group and able to focus their protests. The winners, who should be a larger group if the plan is any good, will be more diffuse while stories of lost opportunity are much less politically effective.
Maintaining the status quo is not the neutral state. The burden of case making should be equal between advocates of change and defenders of the status quo. No decisions are without some losers, no omelettes are made without breaking eggs. You weigh up the pros and cons and reach a decision based on the aggregate impact. That's the decision making framework since the beginning of time. It doesn't need reinventing. There are factors affecting the individual and the collective. Even within the individual there are trade-offs and equivalencies. Affected individuals should be making their case within this framework, otherwise the discourse becomes one-sided. It shouldn't be up to proponents of change to tiptoe around or placate defenders of the status quo. As a society we are losing the ability to weight up evidence and make decisions. The governance framework is disintegrating. We are slowly sliding from democracy towards populist mob rule.
The Orpington resident who never changes house or jobs is an invented creature that does not exist in real life. A typical modern transport user is one who changes their place of residence and jobs throughout their lives, and dare I say changes their partner who'll have their own lifelong changes. You work at PwC, your department gets moved from Embankment Place to More London, then you decide to change jobs to KPMG in Canary Wharf. The current Southeastern service pattern does not serve this person well. Whereas with a simplified network with simple via/avoid Lewisham routings, this commuter would interact with their transport network in exactly the same manner regardless of place of work.
People's circumstances change all the time. Society breaks down if 'other people can only change after I have changed' becomes the accepted mindset.
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I disagree with that assessment. It's acknowledged as a given that people have to change in London to get between termini, and treated as a grim necessity rather than desirable. That's for experienced (if irregular) travellers - and through alternatives (Thameslink, Crossrail, the former InterCity service to Brighton) frequently seen as alternatives.
That then leads to the next question - how you appeal to irregular travellers. Regulars know the score and have confidence born of experience in dealing with the vagaries of changes of train, ticket restrictions, etc. Those who don't travel regularly lack that experience, and are easily deterred as a result. If you combine luggage, concern over a seat, concern over time, and fear of having an issue with a fixed ticket, it becomes much easier to just get the car.
The railway industry needs to understand and work with that, rather than explain away these issues by building around regular travellers. Get the connections and seat provision right, and ease the fear on ticketing, and perhaps irregular travellers will start to want to travel.
The point is that people do. From the point of view of industry revenue and aggregate social benefits, how people feel while they do it is secondary. To put it another way, if cross-London transfers can be overcome, then a Birmingham New Street interchange can be overcome.
Passengers in London and the Southeast, and the Netherlands, navigate the rail system by understanding the structure. It's that structural understanding that allows them to make complex journeys for a range of journey purposes, that gives them the level of confidence in reacting to disruptions, that leads to many to not have a car altogether.
In contrast, outside of the L&SE, passengers have to rote learn individual journeys, for there is no structure. If your train is disrupted you are screwed. The network is too difficult to comprehend so you give up learning it. People end up not making journeys by rail, or not making journeys at all.
When you look at crowding levels, on train or in stations, in the L&SE, and the very inventive ways people move bulk items on the tube, it becomes clear that what attracts people onto public transport isn't guaranteed seats or no changes, it's the structural simplicity.
We need to redesign the railway for structural understanders, so a far larger range of journey opportunities become available for commuting and business travel. This is how you encourage mode shift, this is how you create high-value agglomerated metropolitan economies (where Cheltenham - Stafford becomes as easy as Den Bosch - Amersfoort). Expanding the regular user franchise is of far more value than chasing after irregular users.
The railway needs to be designed for structural understanders, not rote learners.
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Connections deserve a separate thread from overcrowding on XC - there have probably been a few over the years. I'd just say that I caught my 3 minute connection today but that managed to get delayed by 10 minutes and a fellow traveller was convinced he was going to miss his connection in Sheffield. He won't have. His next train was 16 minutes late.
Neither of those were XC and that's part of the problem, they connection with hundreds of other services. XC is part of a very big network with asymmetrical traffic flows that vary widely across the day, the year and country.
Before Christmas I made an identical journey to the one I made today. In December my first 4 car train must have been 98% loaded. Today, maybe 35% at most. Second part of my journey today was in 3 car train, full and standing. (I used a different service in December that was also full. No bookable tickets left on that today, full.)
Currently the crowding can come from cancellation of other XC services, short forming of XC services (sometimes due to locked out units), and knock on loads from other TOCs having problems where routes overlap (eg EMR Sheffield - Derby, LNER, TPE York-Newcastle). These issues affect many routes and TOCs but XC is currently suffering more than most others.
Provide more carriages and run more trains on time before tinkering with routes and timetables. Adjust pricing.
The economics of adding carriages can be tricky, as crowding relief in itself tends not to generate sufficient additional passengers to cover marginal costs, at least initially. What you would hope to do is to implement a bundle of changes that not only addresses crowding but reduces other terms of the generalised journey time. At the same time you want your operation to be as cost efficient as possible, and that means maximising the use of cheap, straight EMUs on 100% electrified services. This is where simplifying service patterns and improving interchanges (and interchange reliability) comes in. You reconfigure the railway for structural understanders as opposed to rote learners and massively increases the regular user base, and these are what you need to make the economics of running additional carriages add up.
How about this for an alternative along the NE corridor?
1) Terminate the XC via Leeds service at York
2) Re-arrange the TPE services to get 2ph from Leeds to Newcastle (preferably half-hourly) and extend one to Edinburgh
3) Make the XC via Doncaster hourly to Newcastle.
This separates the Birmingham-Leeds, Birmingham-Newcastle annd Leeds-Newcastle/Edinburgh flows onto separate services and frees up some units so more of the XC services can run as double Voyagers. The only real losers would be Derby/Sheffield losing direct services to Edinburgh and a question mark over whether TPE could cope with the additional demand.
How would you suggest this to be done - doubling the frequency and extending the NCL-EDB shuttle to Leeds, or granting another hourly Lime Street-Newcastle train?
How would you suggest this to be done - doubling the frequency and extending the NCL-EDB shuttle to Leeds, or granting another hourly Lime Street-Newcastle train?
As part of the TransPennine Route upgrade the hourly Manchester Airport to Newcastle service will be reintroduced to supplement the existing Liverpool to Newcastle service.
As part of the TransPennine Route upgrade the hourly Manchester Airport to Newcastle service will be reintroduced to supplement the existing Liverpool to Newcastle service.
How would you suggest this to be done - doubling the frequency and extending the NCL-EDB shuttle to Leeds, or granting another hourly Lime Street-Newcastle train?
There are currently 3ph TPE to York - I would send 2ph to Newcastle (with one continuing to EDB, separate to the NCL-EDB shuttle), and 1ph to Redcar (as today). Scarborough can revert to a shuttle service to/from York.
There are currently 3ph TPE to York - I would send 2ph to Newcastle (with one continuing to EDB, separate to the NCL-EDB shuttle), and 1ph to Redcar (as today). Scarborough can revert to a shuttle service to/from York.
I have had a view for a while that Liverpool-Newcastle should be 2tph "true InterCity", maybe even operating under the IC brand under GBR (or whatever they do for that). That would fit with that idea.
Scarborough has been a shuttle before and I'm fairly sure it was said at the time that this is because most traffic is to/from Leeds and York but not really the other side of the Pennines.
Scarborough has been a shuttle before and I'm fairly sure it was said at the time that this is because most traffic is to/from Leeds and York but not really the other side of the Pennines.
It was a shuttle, and one of the key benefits of the TPE contract change pre-Covid was intended to be proper integration rather than treating as a stub.
As for traffic, there's rather a difference between Leeds and York - and if traffic is not trans-Pennine, then the impact of a change at York will be disproportionately larger as a share of the journey.
The first question has to be, what alternatives are there to reduce overcrowding, can it be quicker to go via London, using other operators? so to reduce the number of people using Cross-country services?
second. can existing units be strengthened either by adding a coach or by doubling up on diagrams, adding a coach might mean having to up engine some units, will making them standard class only add more seats?
I would argue that trying simple fixes before looking to cutting routes, or changing paths, stands a better chance of success before changing calling points
The Blackpool-York could be a candidate to extend to Scarborough if demand to Leeds is considered too high to lose the direct link. Alternatively, a 2ph York-Scarb shuttle would improve connections for everyone.
How about this for an alternative along the NE corridor?
1) Terminate the XC via Leeds service at York
2) Re-arrange the TPE services to get 2ph from Leeds to Newcastle (preferably half-hourly) and extend one to Edinburgh
3) Make the XC via Doncaster hourly to Newcastle.
This separates the Birmingham-Leeds, Birmingham-Newcastle annd Leeds-Newcastle/Edinburgh flows onto separate services and frees up some units so more of the XC services can run as double Voyagers. The only real losers would be Derby/Sheffield losing direct services to Edinburgh and a question mark over whether TPE could cope with the additional demand.
Not sure what problems this solves. The biggest issue on the NE axis is the massive overcrowding south of York. Your idea to free up rolling stock then pushes the problem onto TPE (which you rightly ask whether it could cope with the additional demand). So ultimately it comes down to getting enough rolling stock on TPE and XC. Until that happens we're just playing musical chairs. One would hope that GBR will be thinking in a joined up way and ordering enough new stock for its non-London inter-city routes.
Not sure what problems this solves. The biggest issue on the NE axis is the massive overcrowding south of York. Your idea to free up rolling stock then pushes the problem onto TPE (which you rightly ask whether it could cope with the additional demand). So ultimately it comes down to getting enough rolling stock on TPE and XC. Until that happens we're just playing musical chairs. One would hope that GBR will be thinking in a joined up way and ordering enough new stock for its non-London inter-city routes.
There are currently 3ph TPE to York - I would send 2ph to Newcastle (with one continuing to EDB, separate to the NCL-EDB shuttle), and 1ph to Redcar (as today). Scarborough can revert to a shuttle service to/from York.
That is quite a bad option. Capacity is long needed on the Huddersfield Line (so another Lime Street-Newcastle train), while NE stretch is susceptible to delays down the south on TPE and XC. (keeping things simple and run the shuttle to Leeds, doubling it to hourly)
By substituting XC and 1tph direct service I would say one of the two issues should be solved, but your option doesn't. You're just switching the roles of running under wires to 185s until new rolling stock comes.
Started off well. Two sentences of platitudes betrayed by the rest of the post that reveals a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to understand, and forming strong opinions based on the poor understanding.
Nobody is proposing 'breaking all the services at New Street' - you've misconstrued a position and gone on to attach that misconstruction. The kind of service pattern proposed is something like
- Manchester - Northampton crossing Birmingham at 00/30
- South West - North East crossing Birmingham at 15/45
- Cardiff - Nottingham unchanged (Cardiff end upped to 2tph if possible, or partially)
- Southampton - Birmingham
In such a timetable journeys like Cheltenham - Derby become 3tph direct (or 4 if Cardiff/Gloucester 2tph can be implemented), Coventry - Manchester 2tph direct. Those that don't have direct services have 2tph at a minimum. The Dutch do do it better. My Eindhoven - Zwolle and Rotterdam - Arnhem examples are manifestations of the Dutch doing it better. And providing equivalent offerings for Bristol - Manchester and Oxford - Sheffield is how we improve our railway to Dutch standards.
Birmingham New Street is fundamentally similar to Utrecht Centraal. Platforms and escalators/stairs leading up to a shopping centre concourse. The only thing going against New Street is diesel fumes and noises, but that is a time limited problem. Birmingham is currently perceived as a hostile place to interchange because service reliability is poor, and service complexity leads to lack of platforming predictability. In short, passengers aren't able to autopilot like they are Utrecht Centraal. The way a passenger navigates Utrecht Centraal is like between tube platforms. Once you start breaking down 'passengers don't like New Street' into constituent components, the answers become blindingly clear - operate it like Utrecht Centraal. I have been to both Birmingham and Utrecht a similar number of times so I can meaningfully comment.
I've never mentioned Swiss. I've written elsewhere why I believe the Swiss model is not suitable to apply to Metropolitan England, and the version of takt we should adopt is the Dutch one. Again, you betray an unwillingness to engage, move the goalposts, and come to wrong and irrelevant conclusions.
The whole motivation of takt is to provide a network structure that enables and encourages interchanges, and having interchanges at the heart of design principles. I've talked at length about a common national symmetry and strict half-hourly intervals, so your 'some segments of regular interval' and 'poor pretence' are mischaracterisations. Go talk to a continental railway professional and call symmetry an 'arbitrary rule' and see how you get on. Symmetry is precisely the key ingredient for making things work at a national level.
The Netherland's international services are a prime example of single service routings in a polycentric context. Despite the Ranstad having 4 relatively equal constituent members (Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht), each international direction only services two of them. Brussels trains only go to Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Frankfurt trains only go to Utrecht and Amsterdam. The British instinct would be to run some Brussels trains to Utrecht and some Frankfurt trains to Rotterdam, and try to extend the Berlin train to The Hague. They don't do it. What's even more remarkable, is that the seat of the national government and capital of South Holland, The Hague, has no international services whatsoever. Passengers are expected to hub-and-spoke through Rotterdam and Utrecht through via their national takt.
The Dutch example shows that, in a polycentric context, simple service routings for operational efficiency and optimised interchanges are not only possible, but desirable.
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I don't have access to Dutch passenger numbers data. Let's put it this way - NS wouldn't be running frequent services with relatively big trains on a break-even contract (i.e. revenue covers operating costs) if their service planning model weren't attracting punters.
The Netherlands is a polycentric country. From the point of view of South Holland (Rotterdam and The Hague plus Gouda), there is no a priori reason to believe the Arnhem - Nijmegen axis is less important than the Amersfoort - Zwolle axis, and yet a design decision was made to lock direct routings to one of the two axes only.
What is more, all 4tph Den Haag - Utrecht services continue to Amersfoort and all 4tph Rotterdam - Utrecht run as shuttles. This is to ensure the 2 services groups operate as independent 4tph circuits. The British instinct would be to equalise the through services between Den Haag and Rotterdam.
These two examples lead me to believe that the presence of an interchange is not a deterrent to demand that it is in Britain, and good interchange between frequent and reliable services is a legitimate (and superior) alternative to infrequent direct services.
OeBB struggles to combine takt with through services. Once train frequencies go beyond Zwolle levels, providing same-platform or cross-platform interchanges between a wide variety of services becomes nigh-on impossible. All RJ/IC services on the Breclav - Vienna - Klagenfurt services are on standard takt timings, however, where the two segments are not on a through-train, the 4 minutes between the arrival of a first train and the departure of a second train on different platform islands are below the minimum connection time at Wien Hbf. The takt integrity is broken. For high frequency nodes like Birmingham New Street, the Dutch approach at Utrecht Centraal is more effective and more efficient.
That is quite a bad option. Capacity is long needed on the Huddersfield Line (so another Lime Street-Newcastle train), while NE stretch is susceptible to delays down the south on TPE and XC. (keeping things simple and run the shuttle to Leeds, doubling it to hourly)
By substituting XC and 1tph direct service I would say one of the two issues should be solved, but your option doesn't. You're just switching the roles of running under wires to 185s until new rolling stock comes.
Like most things, it doesn't need more trains it just needs longer trains.
Options like terminating the NE services or splitting the NW services are born out of the 'impossiblity' of using 222s, lengthening the Voyagers or even just using the stored ones.
Indeed. This thread has gone round in circles, but the simple answer is "a fleet of 80x, even if it's just a vehicle for vehicle replacement with 5 car sets and even if they're the shorter 810s".
Put bluntly, the Voyagers are just not fit for purpose. They're reliable, but the passenger accommodation just has nothing good about it bar the big windows.
Indeed. This thread has gone round in circles, but the simple answer is "a fleet of 80x, even if it's just a vehicle for vehicle replacement with 5 car sets and even if they're the shorter 810s".
Put bluntly, the Voyagers are just not fit for purpose. They're reliable, but the passenger accommodation just has nothing good about it bar the big windows.
Yes. Even if more voyagers/meridians were leased to XC, there would still be short formations, and the 4 car 220s and 221s, with only 2 and a half coaches of standard class and no unreserved seating, are simply not fit for purpose.
Yes. Even if more voyagers/meridians were leased to XC, there would still be short formations, and the 4 car 220s and 221s, with only 2 and a half coaches of standard class and no unreserved seating, are simply not fit for purpose.
It's a shame the 220 didn't end up being the original 67+stock formation that was proposed, as at least it'd have a blunt end vehicle at one end with a full coach of passenger accommodation rather than barely half of one.
Or trains that aren’t so thirsty. There can be no doubt that thousands, if not tens of thousands of pounds can be saved each day by using the electrification where it exists. Especially when you consider that most stretches of track on the XC network with a linespeed of over 100mph are already electrified.
Not sure what problems this solves. The biggest issue on the NE axis is the massive overcrowding south of York. Your idea to free up rolling stock then pushes the problem onto TPE (which you rightly ask whether it could cope with the additional demand).
I find that very hard to believe. If it's true it must be a consequence of either 1) appalling service, or 2) shocking prices, or maybe split ticketing hiding the real numbers.
See the link in post 451 above
I’m not sure I would call it an appalling service-hourly interval, competitive journey times, decent ride and seats. I used to travel to Edinburgh a couple of times a month when it was introduced and it was one of the early benefits of privatisation-the BR offering was one through train a day otherwise travel from Edinburgh on the MK1 4s with horrible original seats and change at York onto a packed DMU.
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