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

[urbophile]

.
Instead we seem to prefer to build too few homes, on isolated sites that are public transport deserts. Makes no sense at all.

Not just deserts for public transport. but for many other things too. How many new houses are being built with no shops (or maybe a filling-station with convenience (!) store attached), schools, GPs within a 15 or 20 minute walk? This American-influenced obsession with cartopia is very damaging to our cohesion as a society as well as much else.

 

[NCT]

I'm afraid that if you concentrate all the political and economic power in one corner of the country, it will have to pay for services elsewhere for the good of the Realm. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

There is plenty of rail demand for services in the North. The railway establishment needs to concentrate on getting costs down, such as not having leasing costs for depreciated rolling stock.

Merseyrail and T&W Metro disagree.

From the various sources I can gather, in 2018/19 (choosing a pre-Covid year), London Underground and L&SE commuter operators generally generated 20p per passenger km. Interestingly T&W Metro also generated around that, but Merseyrail was only at 12p per pax km.

In 2018/29, London's Bakerloo line (the Cinderella line) carried 118m passenger journeys (published) and generated ~£200-250m in revenue (my triangulation). In the same year Merseyrail's passenger revenue was £63.5m, T&W Metro's was £64.4m.

Merseyrail required a subsidy of £114m, T&W Metro (if my reading of Nexus accounts is correctly) £24.6m.

In other words, T&W Metro's commercial income (passenger and other) account for around 75% of operating costs; Merseyrail's income accounted for less than half of operating costs.

I *think* the financial figures I've quoted are nominal figures for the year 2018/19 - those from actual year statements almost certainly will be, but I might have missed some notes in some of the data tables in my skim reading.

If the 'best in class' systems only generate a small fraction of Bakerloo line revenues and need this level of subsidy, then this is not sustainable or scalable and Treasury will NOT with to replicate this model. Both systems should in the long run aim to generate Bakerloo line levels of income and require no subsidy.


Going back to the thread question 'what could be done to increase rail usage' - I think Merseyside are making progress. There's a lot of high-density development at Baltic Triangle, which along with the proposed Merseyrail station should hopefully represent a significant extension of Liverpool city centre. Birkenhead is currently an embarrassing wasteland, but the approved masterplans are genuinely encouraging and exciting.

Tyne and Wear seem a bit behind in developing urban regeneration strategies. Gateshead now has a regeneration plan but it looks less mature than the Wirral masterplans. Freight village has started on site which will add some foot passengers to Gateshead Station, but the density is disappointing. Overall the scale of ambition with regards to the town centre of the Baltic Quarter is pointing in the right direction. There are signs of activity in North Tyneside with the biggest current opportunity being the Beacon Centre in North Shields. The biggest impact would come from relocating North Tyneside Council and Cobalt Park to urban settings - around Northumberland Park station and Wallsend town centre seem to have ample developable land.

If Greater Liverpool and T&W can demonstrate ability to reurbanise, grow public transport demand and reduce subsidy requirements, then existing funding sources can be diverted to new corridors and Treasury will feel greater confidence in investing in urban rail outside of London and the South East.


Data sources

Rail industry finance (UK) | ORR Data Portal

This release contains information on rail finance in Great Britain

dataportal.orr.gov.uk

Passenger rail usage | ORR Data Portal

Light rail and tram statistics (LRT)

Data on light rail and tram systems in England, including statistics on Glasgow Underground and Edinburgh Tram systems, produced by Department for Transport.

www.gov.uk

Quarterly performance reports

Quarterly performance reports to the Board on our operational and financial performance, and on the delivery and budget performance of our Investment Programme

tfl.gov.uk

Tube usage

Questions to the Mayor: For each year 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 how many people used each tube line in London?

www.london.gov.uk

https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-trends-in-public-transport-demand-and-operational-performance-acc.pdf

Annual reports and accounts | nexus.org.uk

Nexus' Annual Reports and Accounts appear here along with other Nexus publications available for

www.nexus.org.uk

 

[HSTEd]

Not just deserts for public transport. but for many other things too. How many new houses are being built with no shops (or maybe a filling-station with convenience (!) store attached), schools, GPs within a 15 or 20 minute walk? This American-influenced obsession with cartopia is very damaging to our cohesion as a society as well as much else.

Actually achieving these things within a 15 or 20 minutes walk would require extremely high population density. It would require everyone to live in conditions resembling the denser parts of central London.

Even GP surgeries now serve an average of ~9000 people each.
We already have a huge oversupply of retail space, the last thing we need is to add more inefficient small commercial units.

The people have chosen, and they have chosen online shopping and the supermarket.

 

[The Ham]

Not just deserts for public transport. but for many other things too. How many new houses are being built with no shops (or maybe a filling-station with convenience (!) store attached), schools, GPs within a 15 or 20 minute walk? This American-influenced obsession with cartopia is very damaging to our cohesion as a society as well as much else.

It depends on the size of the development and it's proximity to those services.

A side with over around 600 homes would typically consider having a primary school (with this more likely if the local schools are over subscribed, but it may be noticeable larger if the local school can easily be expanded by the developer contributions).

I've worked on a site with 2,600 homes, that provided 2 primary schools, a secondary school, community buildings, shops and was going to provide a GP surgery (as I understand it, the local NHS providers asked for the funding to expand their existing facilities over having to operate an additional site).

I've worked on smaller sites with a different range of facilities.

I live on a site which in planning was 550 homes, that's provided the settlement with a sports pavilion (used by the local Football and Rugby clubs) and funded the expansion of the local schools, to name things which are obvious without having to dig through legal documents.

Could those sides have been better, yes, most definitely, however it's nothing like the all developments are devoid of anything other than houses. Where they are, that's more likely a fault with the planning policies locally and not requiring developers to do what they should be doing.

 

[NCT]

The other thing I've noticed about Merseyrail is the staff cost, which is only slightly lower than total operator income and higher than farebox income. This is far too much bloat and cannot go on.

 

[coppercapped]

I'm afraid that if you concentrate all the political and economic power in one corner of the country, it will have to pay for services elsewhere for the good of the Realm. That's the way the cookie crumbles.

There is plenty of rail demand for services in the North. The railway establishment needs to concentrate on getting costs down, such as not having leasing costs for depreciated rolling stock.

In other threads I have previously posted explanations of the reasons and structure of leasing for rolling stock.

The costs arise regardless of the ownership of the asset.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Apr 2026 ==

Not just deserts for public transport. but for many other things too. How many new houses are being built with no shops (or maybe a filling-station with convenience (!) store attached), schools, GPs within a 15 or 20 minute walk? This American-influenced obsession with cartopia is very damaging to our cohesion as a society as well as much else.

Not many. The National Planning Policy Framework (which may be found at this URL: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67aafe8f3b41f783cca46251/NPPF_December_2024.pdf ) tries to ensure that facilities do exist close to new housing developments.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Apr 2026 ==

Actually achieving these things within a 15 or 20 minutes walk would require extremely high population density. It would require everyone to live in conditions resembling the denser parts of central London.

Even GP surgeries now serve an average of ~9000 people each.
We already have a huge oversupply of retail space, the last thing we need is to add more inefficient small commercial units.

The people have chosen, and they have chosen online shopping and the supermarket.

Not quite true. The local convenience stores and smaller supermarkets still have a future - ask Aldi and Lidl and Tesco Express.

 

[The Ham]

Actually achieving these things within a 15 or 20 minutes walk would require extremely high population density. It would require everyone to live in conditions resembling the denser parts of central London.

We already have a huge oversupply of retail space, the last thing we need is to add more inefficient small commercial units.

The people have chosen, and they have chosen online shopping and the supermarket.

I live in a settlement with around 9,000 people at the last census.

For the majority of things we need day to day it's possible to get them within a 15 minute walk (25 minutes gets us from one side of the settlement to the other).

That includes:
Primary school (the secondary school is in the smaller nearby village for historical reasons, but is of a distance that the children are transported by bus)
2 mid sized supermarkets (one with an Argos in, but no clothing)
Post office
Card/gift shop
Travel agent
Selection of pubs
Kitchen design company
Carpet shop
Selection of cafe/fast food locations
2 dentists
Opticians
3 estate agents
5 hair dressers/barbars
2 pharmacies
A large doctors practice
A selection of churches
2 decent sized community buildings
Sports pavilion (football and rugby)
Quite a few offices and industrial buildings

As bit further out in the local cricket club, which isn't really walkable for most.

The big thing missing is a swimming pool, but that's less than 15 minutes away once you board the train at the local station.

The vast majority of the accommodation within the settlement is housing and quite a lot of it is at least 3 beds, and so it's hardly high density.

At such, you can get a lot of facilities for day to day use (the primary goal of 15 minute cities) without having London type density.

Of course having higher density would help with greater opertunities for employment and wider facilities (for example the missing pool).

 

[yorksrob]

The other thing I've noticed about Merseyrail is the staff cost, which is only slightly lower than total operator income and higher than farebox income. This is far too much bloat and cannot go on.

Says who ?

Running costs are a political judgement taken for the sake of the country. Just because a voter in the South East doesn't like contributing towards public transport elsewhere, doesn't mean that there isn't a political imperative for him to do so.

 

[NCT]

Says who ?

Running costs are a political judgement taken for the sake of the country. Just because a voter in the South East doesn't like contributing towards public transport elsewhere, doesn't mean that there isn't a political imperative for him to do so.

Or her, or them.

It depends on who holds the political majority.

 

[Topological]

Says who ?

Running costs are a political judgement taken for the sake of the country. Just because a voter in the South East doesn't like contributing towards public transport elsewhere, doesn't mean that there isn't a political imperative for him to do so.

I suspect you mean societal imperative. Any voter is free to vote for whatever they like.

If those of us outside the South East found a political party to unite behind then the South East would be outnumbered. However, it is asking a lot and it tends to be the marginal constituencies that decide elections are closer to the South East.

However, there is a wider issue here. As the UK we should be identifying as a collective. Political unions only work where people recognise that their taxes will need to support across the whole union. The point works both ways. Outside the South East we should not come across as jealous and vindictive, and in the South East then there needs to be an acceptance that there will be a net outflow of wealth.

Having solved the North-South divide. There is then a problem of colloquialism once you get into regional politics. When our cities were built the 1 hour travel zone was small. We have a lot of cities each with their own unique identity. But in the modern economy regional centres are what define the centre of the 1-hour radius. We are seeing cities like Manchester growing in the North West, Leeds for Yorkshire, Birmingham and Nottingham as the midlands, Bristol in the South West and likely Southampton for the South Coast. But that creates all sorts of issues when planning because the other cities in each region start to get jealous. The same arguments come through. To share prosperity we need radial routes coming out of these regional hubs in exactly the same way we have had radial routes out of small cities and radial routes out of London. This was the vision for NPR (as an example).

Simply sniping because someone else has something different is not going to solve anything.

It is time for a transparent strategy and a government who puts their money where their mouth is.

 

[The Ham]

I suspect you mean societal imperative. Any voter is free to vote for whatever they like.

If those of us outside the South East found a political party to unite behind then the South East would be outnumbered. However, it is asking a lot and it tends to be the marginal constituencies that decide elections are closer to the South East.

However, there is a wider issue here. As the UK we should be identifying as a collective. Political unions only work where people recognise that their taxes will need to support across the whole union. The point works both ways. Outside the South East we should not come across as jealous and vindictive, and in the South East then there needs to be an acceptance that there will be a net outflow of wealth.

Having solved the North-South divide. There is then a problem of colloquialism once you get into regional politics. When our cities were built the 1 hour travel zone was small. We have a lot of cities each with their own unique identity. But in the modern economy regional centres are what define the centre of the 1-hour radius. We are seeing cities like Manchester growing in the North West, Leeds for Yorkshire, Birmingham and Nottingham as the midlands, Bristol in the South West and likely Southampton for the South Coast. But that creates all sorts of issues when planning because the other cities in each region start to get jealous. The same arguments come through. To share prosperity we need radial routes coming out of these regional hubs in exactly the same way we have had radial routes out of small cities and radial routes out of London. This was the vision for NPR (as an example).

Simply sniping because someone else has something different is not going to solve anything.

It is time for a transparent strategy and a government who puts their money where their mouth is.

Indeed, whilst I would love to see my local station have more services, I fully understand that with 2tph of at least 8 coaches in length, that's something which many other areas would love to have.

In fact to the point where if a project which I thought was of great benefit to my local area (for example Crossrail 2 could allow service frequencies to increase to 3tph) was to be paused and the money used to ensure that every station in another area had 2tph rather than 1tph and all services be 4 coaches rather than 3 coaches, I'd be happy for those who would benefit.

(It might not be entirely selfless as such an improvement would likely see a significant increase in rail use and therefore make investment in the railways more likely and so my local scheme might be delayed but would likely still happen - however even if that wasn't the result I would still see it as a good thing for the country and wouldn't be jealous that I hadn't seen the improvements I wanted to see happen. Disappointed, yes, I'm not totally without emotion, but it wouldn't be jealousy or other similarly negative emotions, especially towards those who had benefitted).

 

[William3000]

I suspect you mean societal imperative. Any voter is free to vote for whatever they like.

If those of us outside the South East found a political party to unite behind then the South East would be outnumbered. However, it is asking a lot and it tends to be the marginal constituencies that decide elections are closer to the South East.

However, there is a wider issue here. As the UK we should be identifying as a collective. Political unions only work where people recognise that their taxes will need to support across the whole union. The point works both ways. Outside the South East we should not come across as jealous and vindictive, and in the South East then there needs to be an acceptance that there will be a net outflow of wealth.

Having solved the North-South divide. There is then a problem of colloquialism once you get into regional politics. When our cities were built the 1 hour travel zone was small. We have a lot of cities each with their own unique identity. But in the modern economy regional centres are what define the centre of the 1-hour radius. We are seeing cities like Manchester growing in the North West, Leeds for Yorkshire, Birmingham and Nottingham as the midlands, Bristol in the South West and likely Southampton for the South Coast. But that creates all sorts of issues when planning because the other cities in each region start to get jealous. The same arguments come through. To share prosperity we need radial routes coming out of these regional hubs in exactly the same way we have had radial routes out of small cities and radial routes out of London. This was the vision for NPR (as an example).

Simply sniping because someone else has something different is not going to solve anything.

It is time for a transparent strategy and a government who puts their money where their mouth is.

And the one region that always always gets forgotten is East Anglia.

 

[Topological]

And the one region that always always gets forgotten is East Anglia.

East Anglia is a funny one. For years, I would have agreed. Cast off mainline trains from the WCML and old DMUs rattling to the coast. However, more recent times have at least seen the stock situtation improve and Anglia got new trains.

Cornwall and the South West gets a similar lack of coverage as it is not "north" but very much has the economic conditions of "not London". Project Churchward is on the horizon, and there has been some investment in local lines (e.g Newquay), but there are still a few easy win projects down there that are not getting done.

Coverage naturally follows the population though. The former mill towns and mining areas have a large population. Naturally, that large population makes noise and focuses minds.

If you were referring to my failure to cite Norwich as a regional hub, it is because Cambridge is growing into the role. BUT Cambridge is not a regional hub either. The airport is at Stansted, the trains from Cambridge primarily face London and the development of Cambridge is focusing on the "Golden Arc" or whatever they are calling it today. I think there is a governance issue in East Anglia that risks really leaving some parts, especially on the Norfolk coast, behind. In rail terms, Ely is a massive project that a lot more people should be getting behind. There are many threads on the projects to develop the North West and Yorkshire regions (e.g. NPR, Bradford, Sheffiled to Leeds etc), but I can see that there are few threads looking at how to tie Cambridge into East Anglia.

 

[The Ham]

but I can see that there are few threads looking at how to tie Cambridge into East Anglia.

Long term, doing something like building HS East Coast, with Cambridge being a stop could then focus rail investment in creating a hub from there (especially if the HS station was an edge of town station with links to the city station - think a service like Crossrail from Old Oak Common to places across the city, but also the wider area, like how Crossrail also serves Reading and Heathrow).

 

[NCT]

Anglia has arguably the best TOCs in England. If anything, Anglia suffers from being the south. Felixstowe - Nuneaton, including Ely North Junction has a good business case but wasn't prioritised by the last government because it would be spending money in the south (even though the north would benefit massively from it).

 

[Topological]

Long term, doing something like building HS East Coast, with Cambridge being a stop could then focus rail investment in creating a hub from there (especially if the HS station was an edge of town station with links to the city station - think a service like Crossrail from Old Oak Common to places across the city, but also the wider area, like how Crossrail also serves Reading and Heathrow).

I do agree, but it is imperative that there is a focus East, rather than having a natural flow North to South.

The process of identifying (and agreeing) on which are the regional hubs, and how development gets managed from there outwards, will be imperative to the role of the railways. There is going to be a natural selection of places to be hubs driven in the private sector. If the railways do not follow then there is a danger that development just presses on with a car base.

That said there is a lot of mileage in looking at fares and things in the here and now.

 

[William3000]

Anglia has arguably the best TOCs in England. If anything, Anglia suffers from being the south. Felixstowe - Nuneaton, including Ely North Junction has a good business case but wasn't prioritised by the last government because it would be spending money in the south (even though the north would benefit massively from it).

And it’s not even in the South but is often lumped in with the South-east despite much of it being north of Birmingham. But you’re right - because we always hear about the North and the Midlands- regions like East Anglia and the South West that have even less investment than the North and Midlands get lumped in with London and the South East but don’t get any funding.

 

[Magdalia]

We are seeing cities like Manchester growing in the North West, Leeds for Yorkshire, Birmingham and Nottingham as the midlands, Bristol in the South West and likely Southampton for the South Coast. But that creates all sorts of issues when planning because the other cities in each region start to get jealous. The same arguments come through. To share prosperity we need radial routes coming out of these regional hubs in exactly the same way we have had radial routes out of small cities and radial routes out of London. This was the vision for NPR (as an example).

This is one of the most important economic developments in the UK in recent years.

There is going to be a natural selection of places to be hubs driven in the private sector. If the railways do not follow then there is a danger that development just presses on with a car base.

In many instances, the railway has taken a long time to respond. But it is where the big wins are for increasing rail usage outside London.

Cambridge is growing into the role. BUT Cambridge is not a regional hub either. The airport is at Stansted, the trains from Cambridge primarily face London and the development of Cambridge is focusing on the "Golden Arc" or whatever they are calling it today.

10 years ago I would have agreed, but 10 years hence will look very different, especially if the Development Corporation gets established.

(It is the Oxford-Cambridge corridor now.)

I can see that there are few threads looking at how to tie Cambridge into East Anglia.

Perhaps that's because Greater Anglia (and its predecessors) just get on and do it. Next month we will have new peak hour commuter trains Norwich-Cambridge and Ipswich-Cambridge, and timetable improvements in the Norwich area too. I'd love to see what Greater Anglia could do with the Stansted-Peterborough service if they were given the opportunity.

regions like East Anglia and the South West that have even less investment than the North and Midlands get lumped in with London and the South East but don’t get any funding.

This isn't true. Greater Anglia has a complete fleet replacement. There will be East West Rail. There has been new stations at Cambridge North, Beaulieu Park ad Cambridge South. The East of England also benefits from Thameslink and the Elizabeth Line.

The South West has had Okehampton, Portishead, Brabazon, and various new stations.

Ely is a massive project that a lot more people should be getting behind.

Felixstowe - Nuneaton, including Ely North Junction has a good business case but wasn't prioritised by the last government because it would be spending money in the south (even though the north would benefit massively from it).

The Ely Capacity Enhancement does not get my support. It is a classic case of "something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do this". What was in the 2021 consultation is based on what was thought was required 10 years ago. One big part, 2tph to Kings Lynn at peak times, is already delivered at very little expense. Another big part, more capacity for freight, can be delivered by East West Rail. Back then its cost was more than £0.5bn, now it is probably nearer to £1bn. If the business case was recalculated now, there would be a very different result. Ely Capacity Enhancement is past its sell by date, there are better things to do with £1bn based on what we know now in 2026.

 

[HSTEd]

The other thing I've noticed about Merseyrail is the staff cost, which is only slightly lower than total operator income and higher than farebox income. This is far too much bloat and cannot go on.

Guard operation and fully staffed stations add up very rapidly in that department.

And Merseyrail apparently doesn't want to introduce e-tickets to protect ticket office sales, which seems unlikely to be a sensible policy in the long run.

 

[urbophile]

Guard operation and fully staffed stations add up very rapidly in that department.

And Merseyrail apparently doesn't want to introduce e-tickets to protect ticket office sales, which seems unlikely to be a sensible policy in the long run.

So if the people of Merseyside want guards on trains, and stations permanently staffed , to ensure safety, why should we be denied them? If people weren't employed in these roles, many of them would possibly end up on benefits. Better to spend that money on something useful.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

If you made the Sunday service usable (i.e. the Saturday service) you'd massively increase rail usage.
In London I barely even noticed that it was a Sunday, meanwhile in Manchester you go from 33 pretty reliable trains per day to 8 that get cancelled when it's a sunny day.

 

[NCT]

So if the people of Merseyside want guards on trains, and stations permanently staffed , to ensure safety, why should we be denied them? If people weren't employed in these roles, many of them would possibly end up on benefits. Better to spend that money on something useful.

What the people of Merseyside want are funded by other people's money. The problem with this model is you eventually run out of other people's money.

 

[JamesT]

So if the people of Merseyside want guards on trains, and stations permanently staffed , to ensure safety, why should we be denied them? If people weren't employed in these roles, many of them would possibly end up on benefits. Better to spend that money on something useful.

If the people of Merseyside want that, maybe they should pay for it? Rather than taking a substantial grant from central government.
If these employees would otherwise be unemployed, that doesn’t say much for the skills these people have if they wouldn’t be able to find another job. Is using the railway as a job creation scheme truly the most useful way that money could be spent?

 

[AndrewE]

Guard operation and fully staffed stations add up very rapidly in that department.

quite possibly, but it's a publicly-funded railway and is presumably doing what the "elected representatives" support or require. So if that is what they have decided is needed to get bums on seats and to avoid potential passengers avoiding the railway because it feels deserted and threatening I am certainly not going to oppose it or criticise their staffing policy.

Maybe it needs to be copied more widely, I suspect that the problem is in the funding model: If you want good, safe, clean late (evening) public transport then the fare-box and local taxation aren't the only sources of money. A proper progressive national tax regime (and especially property and wealth taxes) would go a long way to providing what is needed to keep our cities clean and healthy, also more passengers flowing on public transport, which should be the default in all conurbations.

 

[JamesT]

quite possibly, but it's a publicly-funded railway and is presumably doing what the "elected representatives" support or require. So if that is what they have decided is needed to get bums on seats and to avoid potential passengers avoiding the railway because it feels deserted and threatening I am certainly not going to oppose it or criticise their staffing policy.

Maybe it needs to be copied more widely, I suspect that the problem is in the funding model: If you want good, safe, clean late (evening) public transport then the fare-box and local taxation aren't the only sources of money. A proper progressive national tax regime (and especially property and wealth taxes) would go a long way to providing what is needed to keep our cities clean and healthy, also more passengers flowing on public transport, which should be the default in all conurbations.

Don’t Merseyrail employ dedicated security to deal with antisocial behaviour rather than it being the guards?
As for whether it’s something that should be copied, have Merseyrail managed to increase their passenger numbers significantly ahead of other areas?
The contention from the other side of the debate is that if you can reduce the costs of each train, you can probably afford to run more trains. Which is likely to drive rail usage more than anything else.

 

[AndrewE]

Don’t Merseyrail employ dedicated security to deal with antisocial behaviour rather than it being the guards?

I don't know, but visible staff (whatever their uniform) is a good thing in my view.

As for whether it’s something that should be copied, have Merseyrail managed to increase their passenger numbers significantly ahead of other areas?

Dunno. Is it relevant? Lots of factors govern passenger numbers including things as diverse as bus service quality and the relative poverty of the surrounding population...

The contention from the other side of the debate is that if you can reduce the costs of each train, you can probably afford to run more trains. Which is likely to drive rail usage more than anything else.

So what? My feeling (from using it) is that Merseyrail gets busier year by year, but it is difficult to see how they can run more trains. I suspect the Loop and the Link are already at or near maximum utilisation, maybe they could increase capacity by investing in extra units (if they can work in mult) or by lengthening the stock they now have?

 

[JamesT]

I don't know, but visible staff (whatever their uniform) is a good thing in my view.

Yes, but as noted on many threads before, visibility of staff and method of operation are not always correlated.

Dunno. Is it relevant? Lots of factors govern passenger numbers including things as diverse as bus service quality and the relative poverty of the surrounding population...

It’s very relevant. If you’re suggesting a particular TOC is the one that should be copied, shouldn’t there be some evidence as to why they are the example of best practices? Some of those other factors can be worked out to make the figures more directly comparable.

So what? My feeling (from using it) is that Merseyrail gets busier year by year, but it is difficult to see how they can run more trains. I suspect the Loop and the Link are already at or near maximum utilisation, maybe they could increase capacity by investing in extra units (if they can work in mult) or by lengthening the stock they now have?

The entire point of this thread is how to drive usage of rail outside of London. The class 777s can and do run in pairs, so if more capacity could be used then more trains would be an option. Except there isn’t any money for more trains…

 

[NCT]

quite possibly, but it's a publicly-funded railway and is presumably doing what the "elected representatives" support or require. So if that is what they have decided is needed to get bums on seats and to avoid potential passengers avoiding the railway because it feels deserted and threatening I am certainly not going to oppose it or criticise their staffing policy.

Maybe it needs to be copied more widely, I suspect that the problem is in the funding model: If you want good, safe, clean late (evening) public transport then the fare-box and local taxation aren't the only sources of money. A proper progressive national tax regime (and especially property and wealth taxes) would go a long way to providing what is needed to keep our cities clean and healthy, also more passengers flowing on public transport, which should be the default in all conurbations.

And the public funding is ultimately at the national level, and the nationally elected government takes the view that rail subsidy must go down. Public opinion isn't what people say they want, but what they are prepared to pay for out of their own money.

I don't know, but visible staff (whatever their uniform) is a good thing in my view.

Dunno. Is it relevant? Lots of factors govern passenger numbers including things as diverse as bus service quality and the relative poverty of the surrounding population...

So what? My feeling (from using it) is that Merseyrail gets busier year by year, but it is difficult to see how they can run more trains. I suspect the Loop and the Link are already at or near maximum utilisation, maybe they could increase capacity by investing in extra units (if they can work in mult) or by lengthening the stock they now have?

Merseyrail is carrying about one quarter of the infrastructure capacity. The system and its cost base is effectively two London tube lines and it needs to carry the equivalent of two tube line's worth of passengers to wash its face. That means running 24tph of 8-car trains, carrying 4 standees to the square metre at peak times with passengers paying London fares, and cost base controlled so the system is run on DOO and station staffing is leaner.

Now, this kind of financial performance won't happen overnight, but there needs to be visible progress towards it. Until this happens Treasury will view Merseyrail and T&W Metro as expensive mistakes, and will remain reticent of replicating such metro systems elsewhere.

 

[Krokodil]

Or we could just accept (like the rest of the world does) that urban metros shouldn't be run for profit.

 

[NCT]

Or we could just accept (like the rest of the world does) that urban metros shouldn't be run for profit.

In a railway context fares and taxes come from the same demographic. Collecting one is politically easier than collecting the other.

If a Labour government says railway must reduce subsidy, the writing is on the wall.