What could be done to increase rail usage outside of London?

[CMS1]

raising fares to a level where a reasonably (but not crush) loaded train covers its operating costs.

I said reduced subsidy, not no subsidy. Given that additional passengers make basically no difference to cost until the trains are full, it is a no brainer to do some decent advertising until full loadings are achieved. Loads of the public haven't even thought about using the train, and just needs the message out there.

 

[LMS 4F]

I'm talking about the potential that exists today, which is massive. Rail is about 9% of passenger miles.

Someone once said it you build it they will come, or in this case travel. The TP service from York to Manchester, via Castleford, has on the times I have used it been quite busy. The time to York is only about 5 minutes longer than the time to Leeds so the direct route is well over 30 minutes quicker and people are using it.
I have only ridden Manchester once but it was busy and again much quicker than via Leeds. These are the sort of services that should be provided and it helps with a decent 3 car 185 to ride on. No new line needed although money was spent on upgrading Castleford station.

 

[NCT]

I said reduced subsidy, not no subsidy. Given that additional passengers make basically no difference to cost until the trains are full, it is a no brainer to do some decent advertising until full loadings are achieved. Loads of the public haven't even thought about using the train, and just needs the message out there.

Trains aren't empty today. Yes, off-peak trains can be lightly loaded, but there will always be this natural all-day demand profile, and promoting off-peak travel will only get you so far. The problem is even with full trains in the peaks, services still don't wash their face. So if every veh km attracts a subsidy, attracting more punters means running more veh km, which means more subsidy.

There's no getting away from improving yields.

Also there's the need to reduce cost per veh km. Running longer trains would be more staff efficient, but filling those longer trains need land use and demographic change.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Mar 2026 ==

Someone once said it you build it they will come, or in this case travel. The TP service from York to Manchester, via Castleford, has on the times I have used it been quite busy. The time to York is only about 5 minutes longer than the time to Leeds so the direct route is well over 30 minutes quicker and people are using it.
I have only ridden Manchester once but it was busy and again much quicker than via Leeds. These are the sort of services that should be provided and it helps with a decent 3 car 185 to ride on. No new line needed although money was spent on upgrading Castleford station.

Sometimes but not always. Merseyrail and T&W Metro are stark counter-examples and they are too mainstream to ignore. You can have a state-of-the-art railway network - which Merseyrail and T&W Metro are - but you are always at the mercy of land use.

 

[Farigiraf]

Alternatively reduce the subsidies needed in the rest of the country by promoting the railway properly and fill the trains already running

There's only so much advertising you can do. Rail definitely needs better press, I agree with you there. But it's not a substitute for investing in improvements.

If a service is little used to this day, it's likely because it's either too slow, too infrequent, doesn't go to places where people want to go, or too expensive. Usually a mix of the 4. But in my experience there are few of these lines, and if you went on the lines with the most potential (commuter lines into cities that need to be metroised, such as those into Manchester, Leeds or Bristol) you'd realise that there are actually more people wanting to use the trains than there is space on the trains for - as a result, the railway prices people off to reduce overcrowding.

The biggest reason people don't use trains more is because they're expensive. The best way to reduce fares (without serious subsidy - which is not sustainable) is to increase capacity. The Channel Tunnel's a good example of this. Avanti, LNER and Eurostar can put prices through the roof because they'll always fill their trains when they want to. If you brought fares down by running longer trains frequently, you'd no longer need to artificially raise the price of your trains to cope with the excess of passengers. Then those passengers who would use the train if it were affordable would start using it, which will raise rail's modal share by a significant few percent.

If you want more off-peak travel, then an equivalent of the Belgian Train+ (a national railcard with major discounts on off-peak fares) would go a long way.

 

[CMS1]

The problem is even with full trains in the peaks, services still don't wash their face. So if every veh km attracts a subsidy, attracting more punters means running more veh km, which means more subsidy.

There's no getting away from improving yields.

In reality it doesn't work like that as costs don't increase proportionately to revenue - if a line becomes popular enough it can start making a profit, or at least swallow much less subsidy.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Mar 2026 ==

There's only so much advertising you can do. Rail definitely needs better press, I agree with you there. But it's not a substitute for investing in improvements.

If a service is little used to this day, it's likely because it's either too slow, too infrequent, doesn't go to places where people want to go, or too expensive. Usually a mix of the 4. But in my experience there are few of these lines, and if you went on the lines with the most potential (commuter lines into cities that need to be metroised, such as those into Manchester, Leeds or Bristol) you'd realise that there are actually more people wanting to use the trains than there is space on the trains for - as a result, the railway prices people off to reduce overcrowding.

The biggest reason people don't use trains more is because they're expensive. The best way to reduce fares (without serious subsidy - which is not sustainable) is to increase capacity. The Channel Tunnel's a good example of this. Avanti, LNER and Eurostar can put prices through the roof because they'll always fill their trains when they want to. If you brought fares down by running longer trains frequently, you'd no longer need to artificially raise the price of your trains to cope with the excess of passengers. Then those passengers who would use the train if it were affordable would start using it, which will raise rail's modal share by a significant few percent.

If you want more off-peak travel, then an equivalent of the Belgian Train+ (a national railcard with major discounts on off-peak fares) would go a long way.

This is all sensible, but why does it need a national railcard? Fares should already be dynamic to demand IMO (within parameters) instead of the current nonsense.

 

[NCT]

In reality it doesn't work like that as costs don't increase proportionately to revenue - if a line becomes popular enough it can start making a profit, or at least swallow much less subsidy.

Costs do increase proportionately to revenue if yields stay the same, unless to compensate for depressed yields you go for very uncomfortable crush loading.

Unless you go from a 2-car to an 8-car train, the cost of running a carriage km is pretty constant. The physical dimension of a carriage is fixed. To improve the revenue of a carriage km, there are only two dimensions at your disposal - yield and passenger density.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Mar 2026 ==

The biggest reason people don't use trains more is because they're expensive. The best way to reduce fares (without serious subsidy - which is not sustainable) is to increase capacity. The Channel Tunnel's a good example of this. Avanti, LNER and Eurostar can put prices through the roof because they'll always fill their trains when they want to. If you brought fares down by running longer trains frequently, you'd no longer need to artificially raise the price of your trains to cope with the excess of passengers. Then those passengers who would use the train if it were affordable would start using it, which will raise rail's modal share by a significant few percent.

Comes back to my earlier catch 22 point. Yes there are a few 5-car journeys on the ECML, but even lengthening them all to 9 or 10 cars would only represent a marginal difference in the grand scheme of things and not fundamentally address the excess demand issue.

HS2 was going to be the answer but alas ...

Parts of the network with (theoretical) spare capacity are those with much weaker demand and lower willingness to pay.

 

[Bald Rick]

But when people move house or job they make new decisions on how to travel, that's the opportunity for rail, not trying to persuade a few people currently making journeys by car to switch to rail. Where people live and where people work is dynamic not static. Houses near stations and jobs near stations most help to get them to choose rail.

It's the demand that needs the intervention first.

For whatever reason cities and towns outside of London deurbanised and suburbanised to a much greater extent than London (and much of the South East). Rail works best at bringing commuters in high-ish density urban residential districts to city centre employment and commercial destinations, and facilitating urban-to-urban business and leisure trips. The land use of much of the country is such that a lot of journeys are from sprawling suburbs to office and retail parks at motorway junctions.

Things are improving but still at a disappointing pace. Too much of Greater Bristol's commercial activity is Cribbs Causeway and Aztec; Tyne & Wear prioritised building Barratt estates off dual carriageways over building dense neighbourhoods around Metro stations; too many Merseyrail stations in Birkenhead are still surrounded by dereliction.

Is the right answer. To be fair Manchester is heading in the right direction.

 

[Farigiraf]

This is all sensible, but why does it need a national railcard?

Decreasing fares to match what most people are actually willing to pay for requires huge subsidy (something which I gather you're not a fan of) and can be undone fairly easily - fares increases happen year upon year. Removing a National Railcard would require a really daring politician who wouldn't mind the serious backlash - the D-ticket has stayed all this time for the same reason. Plus if you charge a token fare that quickly pays for itself, it will still require less subsidy than artificially decreasing prices.

Fares should already be dynamic to demand IMO (within parameters) instead of the current nonsense

Be careful what you wish for. Even if it'll fill a few extra local trains with budget-conscious travellers, there'll be far more cases where LNER-style shenanigans take place, where peak time travel is inflated to unreasonable prices. You can see this on SNCF in parts of France - and unsurprisingly rail is not the most popular option in these areas. It doesn't matter if the 08:00 TER to Small Village costs just 1 euro, as most people will be taking the 08:15 TGV to Busy City which will have average peak time fares nearer to 3 digits than 2. Plus having fixed, non-dynamic fares, including price caps, makes rail a much more reliable option. If you start commuting to work, but one day the train you usually take is busier than usual, resulting in having to pay 2x the normal daily fare, you're unlikely to see rail in a positive light.

 

[Bevan Price]

It isn't actually only Sunday that is a problem. With Merseyrail having a standard 4tph (2 on Sundays), the 1tph weekdays (plus the odd peak extra), 0.5tph Sundays on the Chat Moss line is an absolute joke, and if I lived along there I'd indeed be driving. 1tph has no place in large cities. It needs to be an absolute minimum of 2, preferably 4 with an aim to get to 6 where infrastructure improvements permit.

(As an aside Metrolink needs to look to change from its clumsy 5tph to 6. It makes times much more memorable).

As a bare minimum, the second hourly train (Liverpool-Warrington BQ stopper) urgently needs to be reinstated.

Liverpool - Warrington BQ was a waste of money. Very few passengers used it south of Earlestown. What is needed is a second stopping train over Chat Moss between Liverpool and Manchester Victoria (possibly extended to Huddersfield or Leeds when electrification is complete. )

 

[Cricketer8for9]

The Bakerloo Line trains are very much over 40 years old. The thing about fleet replacement is that it is cyclic.

And the Piccadilly line…

 

[Bletchleyite]

Liverpool - Warrington BQ was a waste of money. Very few passengers used it south of Earlestown. What is needed is a second stopping train over Chat Moss between Liverpool and Manchester Victoria (possibly extended to Huddersfield or Leeds when electrification is complete. )

Warrington BQ was just a terminus of convenience. You could terminate it at the west-south platform at Earlestown if that saved a unit. The key is a half hourly stopping service on Chat Moss between the suburbs and Liverpool. It was as much about going to Warrington as the Milton Keynes Central-Euston stopping service is about actually going between MKC and EUS, i.e. not really at all.

I'd have no issues with sending it to Manchester if there are paths. But hourly services have no place in urban areas. Half hourly minimum 7 days a week is needed.

 

[Cricketer8for9]

Close town/city centre car parks and close out of town shopping centres, or at the very least big box supermarkets. (Stands back with a gentle smile).

 

[Transilien]

If we are willing to go down the S-bahn rabbit hole..... how far do we push it?

Obviously some German S-bahn journeys are very long.
Trams/Tram trains (if a tram train is running on a route with only tram trains, is it still a tram train?) are available with toilet modules for a reason!

Now obviously freight would restrict just how much of the railway network could be converted, but there are an awful lot of possibilities.

Personally, I think you might be able to make a case for a conversion of the northern half of the Penistone line into a Supertram line sharing a connection to the existing network with a Stocksbridge route. Then you'd either operate the remaining southern section as a stub from Barnsley, or just as a Supertram shuttle (I doubt Sheffield to Barnsley via Penistone would be a through route!)

One could integrate the railways of Liverpool and Manchester with the surrounding area as one S-Bahn network with trains from as far south as Crewe to Southport being branded as such.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Mar 2026 ==

The North-West could therefore be the Rhein-Ruhr region of England. A similar thing could be done in the central belt, East Midlands and with Sheffield and Leeds

 

[eldomtom2]

It's the demand that needs the intervention first.

There is a degree of the chicken-and-egg problem here - it is difficult to make people, businesses, and planners to make decisions based around living and working somewhere with rail connectivity when the existing service is not at a sufficient level of frequency etc.

 

[Krokodil]

Warrington BQ was just a terminus of convenience. You could terminate it at the west-south platform at Earlestown if that saved a unit. The key is a half hourly stopping service on Chat Moss between the suburbs and Liverpool. It was as much about going to Warrington as the Milton Keynes Central-Euston stopping service is about actually going between MKC and EUS, i.e. not really at all.

I'd have no issues with sending it to Manchester if there are paths. But hourly services have no place in urban areas. Half hourly minimum 7 days a week is needed.

The alternative (if the reason for not running through to Manchester is that the path needs to be broken to allow fast trains to pass) could instead be to run Liverpool-NLW-Wigan. One train a day does this at the moment, the 18:31 from Liverpool. Newton-le-Willows offers more connections than Earlestown does because the TPEs stop there.

 

[Farigiraf]

I know Golborne is a Manchester-facing town, but is there any demand for a Liverpool service? Liverpool - NLW - Golborne - Wigan NW. Provides Golborne with 2tph when it opens, albeit only 2tph towards Wigan as the two services would branch off just south of the station.

 

[The exile]

Close town/city centre car parks and close out of town shopping centres, or at the very least big box supermarkets. (Stands back with a gentle smile).

Well, you don’t need to close them. Just impose a levy per car-parking space that amounts to £10 - £15 per day. An couple it with an online order delivery tax.

 

[yorksrob]

Trains aren't empty today. Yes, off-peak trains can be lightly loaded, but there will always be this natural all-day demand profile, and promoting off-peak travel will only get you so far. The problem is even with full trains in the peaks, services still don't wash their face. So if every veh km attracts a subsidy, attracting more punters means running more veh km, which means more subsidy.

There's no getting away from improving yields.

Also there's the need to reduce cost per veh km. Running longer trains would be more staff efficient, but filling those longer trains need land use and demographic change.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Mar 2026 ==



Sometimes but not always. Merseyrail and T&W Metro are stark counter-examples and they are too mainstream to ignore. You can have a state-of-the-art railway network - which Merseyrail and T&W Metro are - but you are always at the mercy of land use.

How much new land take does filling a longer train actually need ? Some platforms may need extending, but the point of longer trains is that they generally fit in the existing infrastructure (particularly on the regional railway where short trains have been the default for years).

If we want to reduce the cost per veh km, better to get rid of the structural requirement to pay leasing costs on rolling stock that should be fully depreciated.

 

[ChrisC]

It isn't actually only Sunday that is a problem. With Merseyrail having a standard 4tph (2 on Sundays), the 1tph weekdays (plus the odd peak extra), 0.5tph Sundays on the Chat Moss line is an absolute joke, and if I lived along there I'd indeed be driving. 1tph has no place in large cities. It needs to be an absolute minimum of 2, preferably 4 with an aim to get to 6 where infrastructure improvements permit.

(As an aside Metrolink needs to look to change from its clumsy 5tph to 6. It makes times much more memorable).

As a bare minimum, the second hourly train (Liverpool-Warrington BQ stopper) urgently needs to be reinstated.

I completely agree with you that 1tph has no place in large cities. I would also add that 1tph has no place in large towns.
Mansfield in Nottinghamshire was once the largest town in England without a station until the line was reopened in 1995 with a service of 2tph to Nottingham. During Covid the service was cut to 1tph and except for a couple of peak time extras, and a recent reintroduction of 2tph on Saturdays, the 2tph Mon-Fri has never been restored. Is Mansfield now the largest town with only 1tph?

Mansfield has a population of 110,000. The Ashfield district also served by stations along the line has a population of 126,000. 1tph is not good enough to attract people out of their cars. I used to use the line quite regularly but now use my car or more often the regular bus services instead.

 

[Bletchleyite]

One could integrate the railways of Liverpool and Manchester with the surrounding area as one S-Bahn network with trains from as far south as Crewe to Southport being branded as such.

BR of course used the brand Network NorthWest...

 

[HSTEd]

It's all very well suggesting that society needs to be remade to be more convenient for the railway to serve, but that is obviously never going to happen. It's a far larger challenge than any of the mad engineering schemes I have proposed on these pages.

The housing stock we have will still be the bulk of the housing stock we have in 2100, substantial land use change is not going to happen.
Likewise, you aren't going to see a resurrection of the halcyon days of the 1950s high street, which in any case was only sustained by a surfeit of cheap labour.

The railway must serve the people as they are, not as they hope them to be.

So my list of suggestions is:
1. Metrolinkify, Merseyrailify or Tyne and Wear Metroify as much as practical.
2. Coupled to the above, use technological solutions (new signalling, new rolling stock etc) to cut personnel headcount.
3. Targeted infrastructure development to reinforce success, linked to rationalisation of infrastructure enabled by the above.
4. Fares reform to reduce the mess we have now, integrate split ticketing. We can reduce the complexity of the system without sacrificing much revenue that isn't already lost.

I think I'd take these points much further than most. But if the industry does not get radical on its own, it risks radicalism being imposed upon it from without.

 

[The exile]

It's all very well suggesting that society needs to be remade to be more convenient for the railway to serve, but that is obviously never going to happen. It's a far larger challenge than any of the mad engineering schemes I have proposed on these pages.

It’s not a matter of remaking society to be more convenient for the railway. It is a matter of designing reduced car dependence into new large-scale planning .Obviously you can’t do it for the two new houses being built on the edge of Trumpton, but when 2500 new homes are proposed for the site of Chigley Barracks (formerly known as Pippin Fort) you can - and should.

 

[mike57]

4. Fares reform to reduce the mess we have now, integrate split ticketing. We can reduce the complexity of the system without sacrificing much revenue that isn't already lost.

I live in a vllage which has an hourly service to Doncaster and Sheffield, which give good connections for a lot of onward journeys, so train is potentially an option from a time/convenience point of view. Certainly talking to potential users locally ticket and fares complexity does put people off. They dont want the hassle of split ticket for example, which given that a lot of journeys from here involve both Northern and LNER means that split tickets do save money.

My view is all tickets should be issued by 'GBR' to a standard set of rules. There should be no mention of ToC. If you want to encourage passengers to use particular services you do that by making the advance fares on that service cheaper. With no 'ToC' in the event of disruption ticket acceptance is no longer a consideration, you just proceed by the next service that will get you where you were headed, which is another worry people have.

 

[cle]

Warrington BQ was just a terminus of convenience. You could terminate it at the west-south platform at Earlestown if that saved a unit. The key is a half hourly stopping service on Chat Moss between the suburbs and Liverpool. It was as much about going to Warrington as the Milton Keynes Central-Euston stopping service is about actually going between MKC and EUS, i.e. not really at all.

I'd have no issues with sending it to Manchester if there are paths. But hourly services have no place in urban areas. Half hourly minimum 7 days a week is needed.

Were connections onto the WCML not good?

I would have thought that a non-stop journey to Euston would be very appealing for folks from the likes of Huyton and St Helens etc.

Heading north - Wigan/Preston does the same roughly and the latter offers more routes. So the benefits are southbound largely. The Scotland / Birmingham / Euston service gives a slightly quicker journey time but folks can railhead from South Parkway.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Were connections onto the WCML not good?

I would have thought that a non-stop journey to Euston would be very appealing for folks from the likes of Huyton and St Helens etc.

Heading north - Wigan/Preston does the same roughly and the latter offers more routes. So the benefits are southbound largely. The Scotland / Birmingham / Euston service gives a slightly quicker journey time but folks can railhead from South Parkway.

The mentality for those on the Merseyrail map is to travel via Lime St aside from those who would drive to one of the WCML stations (quite often Wigan). And now this has 2tph reasonably quick to London (rather than one fast and one very slow) when you couple this with the increased attractiveness of boarding at a non-windswept terminus station this is even more attractive.

 

[yorksrob]

when you couple this with the increased attractiveness of boarding at a non-windswept terminus station this is even more attractive.

Wigan North Western says "meeeow !"

 

[Bletchleyite]

Wigan North Western says "meeeow !"

Wigan NW and Warrington BQ are equally unpleasant in this regard (though at least Wigan NW is reasonably central in terms of retail etc; Bank Quay is in the sticks).

That's why I'm suggesting people might prefer the superior experience (frequency and civility) of Lime St. And I don't think a lot of people book through tickets or even think you can, they put in Lime St-Euston and sort the local ticket on the day.

 

[mmh]

Wigan NW and Warrington BQ are equally unpleasant in this regard (though at least Wigan NW is reasonably central in terms of retail etc; Bank Quay is in the sticks).

The unpleasantness (and poor connection times) of Bank Quay is why I generally change at Manchester Oxford Road on journeys between North Wales and Scotland now.

Oxford Road isn't a great station, but the toilets will always be open, there'll always be a coffee shop open, and there's a pub I like if it turns into an extended wait. Bank Quay has none of this.

That's why I'm suggesting people might prefer the superior experience (frequency and civility) of Lime St. And I don't think a lot of people book through tickets or even think you can, they put in Lime St-Euston and sort the local ticket on the day.

I think that's right. Also, when people are making long distance journeys they'll often get a lift from family/friends or a taxi to the station, and there's the appeal on a journey like Liverpool to London of not having a change if you start from Lime Street.

Prior to the Glasgow low emission zone I'd often get a lift to the Central rather than get a local train in. At the other end, most people doing for example Llandudno to London are driven to Llandudno Junction for a direct train rather than starting at Llandudno Station.

 

[Bald Rick]

Some platforms may need extending, but the point of longer trains is that they generally fit in the existing infrastructure (particularly on the regional railway where short trains have been the default for years).

We’re at the point now where longer regional trains into some regional hubs (Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle to name but three) are increasingly difficult to accommodate at those regional hubs. Previosuly short trains could be stacked on platforms, but longer trains can’t do that, and there arent enough platfor s.

 

[yorksrob]

Wigan NW and Warrington BQ are equally unpleasant in this regard (though at least Wigan NW is reasonably central in terms of retail etc; Bank Quay is in the sticks).

That's why I'm suggesting people might prefer the superior experience (frequency and civility) of Lime St. And I don't think a lot of people book through tickets or even think you can, they put in Lime St-Euston and sort the local ticket on the day.

The pubs near Wigan NW are certainly very good to wait for a train in.