A British "Taktfahrplan" - Feasible or Fantasy?

[Sorcerer]

The Swiss railway network is arguably the best in Europe and among the best in the world. Convenience and connectivity are the goals of the network, and much of this made possible by great infrastructure investment and the Taktfahrplan, an integrated timetable on a national scale running to a clockface schedule and is integrated with other forms of public transit. Arrive to a hub station on bus or regional train, board your intercity to another hub station, catch another bus or regional train.

It runs like clockwork most days with SBB boasting up to 94.1% of trains being on time (defined as within 3 minutes of scheduled arrival) and 98.6% connection punctuality. So naturally it's easy to think the UK and many other countries should follow Switzerland as an example, but could a British Taktfahrplan actually be implemented? Well, this is where scale and layout come into play. Switzerland's network is grid-like with multiple hubs and nodes while the UK network is more circle-radial with London as a focal point.

With so many trunk routes I can't see it being easy to implement a national pulse, but I do think it could be possible for the British network to implement regional pulses with some nationwide nodes. Birmingham New Street (WCML, XC), Cambridge (EWR, XC, GEML), Oxford (EWR, GWR), Leeds (TPE, ECML), Reading (GWR, SWML), Manchester Piccadilly (TPE, WCML) and Milton Keynes Central (EWR, WCML) are a few prime examples I can think of with some secondary nodes like Liverpool Lime Street, York and Carlisle.

Some natural disadvantages is that this would take decades to build up and also mean some journeys might either need to speed up which might require investment in infrastructure, or be slowed down so they can work within a pulse of 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes and so on. HS2 and Northern Powerhouse could've potentially made it easier with proper segregation of express and regional traffic, but that looks to be a pipedream by itself, never mind among a massive timetable shift.

But what do we think? Is a British version of a Taktfahrplan mere fantasy? Or is it a feasible plan that could we could see within fifty years? Let me know your thoughts and ideas below.

 

[NCT]

Swiss-takt no, Dutch-takt yes. It's eminently doable. The blocker is politics.

A common misconception is you need to build your way out of infrastructure constraints. You don't - while there are some infrastructure constraints that do need sorting, the biggest problem is timetable complexity making inefficient use of infrastructure. We need to be prepared to accept some journeys will need changes (or more changes), then designing an interchange-optimised timetable becomes much easier and fiscally deliverable.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

I think we'd need a few things:

• Carve services to fit into coherent regions
• Standardise into predictable service types, perhaps:
  • Local: short distance medium to low capacity services calling at every stop, for instance the St Ives branch
  • Suburban: short distance high(er) capacity (both the size of trains and their frequency) and often electric, perhaps like Leeds-Skipton
  • Regional: services that cover a significant distance of a region only stopping at some places like London - Norwich.
• Then above all that is an Intercity network that will need to be built upon a lot of High Speed Lines, although not exclusively
• Something we could do quite easily in many places is to standardise stopping patterns, it's ludicrous to me that trains on, say, the Bittern Line vary their stopping pattern throughout the day. On ECML, the timetable is so delicately put together that we need high speed lines to fix that situation
• We also need to get rid of our desire for direct London trains from minor towns. This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem because the wobblyness of our timetable is worsened by too many complex overlapping direct services, yet people don't want to change trains since changing brings risk to your journey because of the bad reliability.

You see that last contention with Greater Anglia, who arguably operate a sort of Takt system mostly due to the helpful railway geography of that franchise area. People often wrangle on about direct Lowestoft to London services but to do so would detrimental to basically everyone.

Also Takt plans are meant to include buses as well.

 

[FGWHST43009]

I think the concept of Taktfahrplan is sound and is a good idea, but would take time to implement in the UK. It might see the end of services like the London-Edinburgh fast that only calls at York and Newcastle and other fast services. Although there could be a focus on setting journey time targets for both end-to-end and intermediate journeys, but making sure they're a round number and have good connections.

For example, I think the faster London-Edinburgh service should stop at Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington and Newcastle, the main city centre and interchanges. Slower end-to-end but providing better connections from other places. But it could also be a motivation to reduce journey times where possible.

Swiss-takt no, Dutch-takt yes. It's eminently doable. The blocker is politics.

What's the difference between Swiss-takt and Dutch-takt?

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

I think we'd need a few things:

• Carve services to fit into coherent regions
• Standardise into predictable service types, perhaps:
  • Local: short distance medium to low capacity services calling at every stop, for instance the St Ives branch
  • Suburban: short distance high(er) capacity (both the size of trains and their frequency) and often electric, perhaps like Leeds-Skipton
  • Regional: services that cover a significant distance of a region only stopping at some places like London - Norwich.
• Then above all that is an Intercity network that will need to be built upon a lot of High Speed Lines, although not exclusively
• Something we could do quite easily in many places is to standardise stopping patterns, it's ludicrous to me that trains on, say, the Bittern Line vary their stopping pattern throughout the day. On ECML, the timetable is so delicately put together that we need high speed lines to fix that situation
• We also need to get rid of our desire for direct London trains from minor towns. This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem because the wobblyness of our timetable is caused by too many direct services, yet people don't want to change trains since changing brings risk to your journey because of the bad reliability.

You see that last contention with Greater Anglia, who arguably operate a sort of Takt system mostly due to the helpful railway geography of that franchise area. People often wrangle on about direct Lowestoft to London services but to do so would detrimental to basically everyone.

Also Takt plans are meant to include buses as well.

I also agree that the direct trains from London to *insert tiny village name here* should be binned. They are just a waste of capacity and do not need to exist. Both of Grand Central's routes fall into this category. While GC does provide intercity connectivity end-to-end, they also stop at a load of tiny places that don't justify direct London services. Furthermore, Bradford is now connected with a 2-hourly LNER service, while in the case of Sunderland, there's now a half-hourly service to Newcastle most of the day, and it's just as fast to change at Newcastle as it is to go direct. I think the best model is providing a consistent intercity service then a consistent connecting regional service at key interchanges. How that would work in practice is hard to tell.

 

[NCT]

What's the difference between Swiss-takt and Dutch-takt?

The Swiss takt is a low frequency model where at each node a small number of services converge and diverge. Very few services operate more than (combined) half-hourly. (Simplifying slightly) you can concentrate all arrivals within xx50 and xx00 and all departures within xx00 and xx10, every hour or every half hour.

The Dutch is a high-frequency network. The basic building block is half hourly, and there are lots of sections with combined 4, 6, or 8tph services. At such frequencies it's no longer desirable to concentrate arrivals and departures around 00 or 30.

The British network is much closer to the Dutch than to the Swiss one. At Birmingham, for instance, 2tph to Manchester and 2tph to Liverpool create a combined 4tph to Stafford. Similarly (with a minor evolution upon the current timetable) you can have 2tph to Bristol and 2tph to Cardiff with a combined 4tph to Cheltenham. It would make more sense for both Stafford and Cheltenham to be every 15 minutes (or as close to as possible). In such a model, if Liverpool connects well with Cardiff, the connection to Bristol will be 15 minutes longer.

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

I agree, this is what we ultimately need. I think for now with the existing IC network we could start differentiating between the faster and slower services. For example, the London-Edinburgh fast could be an ICE while the semi-fast and the Newcastle terminator could be standard IC.

This has nothing to do with takt vs non-takt.

In terms of high-speed rail, I think we should opt for the German model of trying to connect up as many large cities as possible but try to avoid high-speed trains using large parts of the existing network and overloading the system.

This has nothing to do with takt vs non-takt.

 

[Sorcerer]

You see that last contention with Greater Anglia, who arguably operate a sort of Takt system mostly due to the helpful railway geography of that franchise area. People often wrangle on about direct Lowestoft to London services but to do so would detrimental to basically everyone.

Some routes do lend themselves better to a Takt system than others. The Great Eastern and East Coast Main Line are both linear routes with little branches except Leeds in the latter case, which still lends itself to being a node station for both the ECML and TransPennine route. Networks like CrossCountry meanwhile would mostly operate on already established GWML, WCML, MML and ECML nodes since it wouldn't need to create too many of it's own.

For example, I think the faster London-Edinburgh service should stop at Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington and Newcastle, the main city centre and interchanges. Slower end-to-end but providing better connections from other places. But it could also be a motivation to reduce journey times where possible.

Peterborough, Doncaster, York and Newcastle already themselves to being node points, so the key here would be timing consistent intervals. In Switzerland you would need journey times to be sums of 15 minutes which might dictate fewer or extra stops. For example, Peterborough to Doncaster right now takes about 50 minutes stopping at Newark Northgate. That would need to either remove NNG to bring it down to 45 minutes, or dwell longer to bring it up to 60 minutes.

 

[30907]

I have been a fan of Taktfahrplan since it was first described by RH Foster in Modern Railways around 1975, and indeed started to plan one using the then Cross-Country interchange at New Street as a basis.
It works brilliantly in polycentric Switzerland and the Netherlands, and would make sense (theoretically) in equally polycentric Germany.

The major problem is that Britain (or certainly England) is much more London-centred, so you have significant numbers of trains which carry a full load for a couple of hours from London; any intermediate stops are relatively insignificant. (France is the same, even more so!)

Effectively our "Takt" would serve the important second-string flows (XC,TPE...) and do so potentially better than now, but you have to combine them with the EC and WC London routes - and those are the ones that make money and understandably get prioritised.

 

[edwin_m]

A Swiss Takt is likely to need more platforms at main stations, because they need a train on every route to be in a platform simultaneously for connections to be made. Most of our interchanges are too busy to do that - much busier than when the idea was suggested in the 1970s - and adding more platforms would be very costly and often not feasible.

 

[Farigiraf]

The major problem is that Britain (or certainly England) is much more London-centred, so you have significant numbers of trains which carry a full load for a couple of hours from London; any intermediate stops are relatively insignificant. (France is the same, even more so!)

High Speed rail solves that though, doesn't it?
The busiest corridor in Switzerland, Geneva - Zurich, is facing the same issue. The solution is just to build a new HSR (doesn't actually have to be High speed, but faster trains = more capacity) paralleling the existing mainline. Mainline can take semifast trains, while the high volumes of end to end passengers can take the high speed train. With high enough frequencies it doesn't even need to be integrated to the takt, it'd just be effectively an airline route paralleling the railway. The reason they haven't done it yet is because they decided that their finite budget is better spent on other projects, but I'm sure they'll get round to it.

WRT the thread topic - a complete overhaul is a monumental task and if you set out with the goal of a nationwide taktfahrplan, even with the best will in the world, you'll get overwhelmed and run out of money to pay the planners. Best way to do it is to implement local taktfahrplans where it's easy and where nodes are already possible (GA's the best example) and once enough of the network is covered, fill in the gaps (even if you need to build infrastructure to make that happen) and congrats you have a taktfahrplan.

For the mainline corridors where reducing the number of airline-style end to end fast trains would be too politically unpopular, build the HSR first then add in connectivity. That way you keep the fast services while also connecting all the branch lines properly and frequently.

 

[Sorcerer]

Effectively our "Takt" would serve the important second-string flows (XC,TPE...) and do so potentially better than now, but you have to combine them with the EC and WC London routes - and those are the ones that make money and understandably get prioritised.

CrossCountry and TPE wouldn't really need a lot of their own Takt nodes once you establish the ones on the main trunk routes out of London. The terminus stations like Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross themselves would mostly be anchor points for the trunk routes rather than nodes, but the major intermediates would mostly suffice for both TPE and XC.

• CrossCountry: Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly could already be West Coast Main Line nodes, Sheffield a Midland Main Line one, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh could be East Coast Main Line ones, Cambridge an East-West Rail and Great Eastern node, Reading a Great Western and South West Main Line one, and even Oxford as a potential Great Western and East-West Rail node, plus the other GW and SWML hub points.
• TransPennine Express: Manchester might complicate things with both Piccadilly and Victoria needing to either act as separate or closely synchronised pulses, but otherwise it would still have Preston, Carlisle, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Doncaster and Sheffield. Glasgow Central could already be a major ScotRail and WCML node as well.

High Speed rail solves that though, doesn't it?
The busiest corridor in Switzerland, Geneva - Zurich, is facing the same issue. The solution is just to build a new HSR (doesn't actually have to be High speed, but faster trains = more capacity) paralleling the existing mainline. Mainline can take semifast trains, while the high volumes of end to end passengers can take the high speed train. With high enough frequencies it doesn't even need to be integrated to the takt, it'd just be effectively an airline route paralleling the railway. The reason they haven't done it yet is because they decided that their finite budget is better spent on other projects, but I'm sure they'll get round to it.

Switzerland already has built a few new routes such as between Solothurn and Bern to Olten which was built to ensure a consistent 45 and 30 minute travel time respectively. In the UK's case, high-speed rail segregating the express traffic from slower classic trains would definitely allow for a more Takt-like timetable. Even the high-speed routes themselves could be carefully integrated into it since most of the journey times fit into the 15-minute sum journeys.

HS2 if done in full could've brought journeys of 1h45 London to Manchester, 1h30 to Leeds, and 4h to Glasgow. Birmingham would've probably been an oddball with 49 minutes but since Curzon Street is separate from New Street it can have a bit of leeway for connecting passengers to walk and bring it to about one hour. Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS3 could've made Manchester to Leeds a neat 30 minute journey time as well.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

I know it's a bit trite but it is worth remembering that Switzerland is this big:

You could imagine that the urban North is a kind of polycentric matrix like region rather than the country as a whole

 

[FGWHST43009]

Birmingham would've probably been an oddball with 49 minutes but since Curzon Street is separate from New Street it can have a bit of leeway for connecting passengers to walk and bring it to about one hour. Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS3 could've made Manchester to Leeds a neat 30 minute journey time as well.

Round Birmingham either up to 50 minutes or down to 45?

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

CrossCountry and TPE wouldn't really need a lot of their own Takt nodes once you establish the ones on the main trunk routes out of London. The terminus stations like Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross themselves would mostly be anchor points for the trunk routes rather than nodes, but the major intermediates would mostly suffice for both TPE and XC.

• CrossCountry: Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly could already be West Coast Main Line nodes, Sheffield a Midland Main Line one, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh could be East Coast Main Line ones, Cambridge an East-West Rail and Great Eastern node, Reading a Great Western and South West Main Line one, and even Oxford as a potential Great Western and East-West Rail node, plus the other GW and SWML hub points.
• TransPennine Express: Manchester might complicate things with both Piccadilly and Victoria needing to either act as separate or closely synchronised pulses, but otherwise it would still have Preston, Carlisle, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Doncaster and Sheffield. Glasgow Central could already be a major ScotRail and WCML node as well.

Switzerland already has built a few new routes such as between Solothurn and Bern to Olten which was built to ensure a consistent 45 and 30 minute travel time respectively. In the UK's case, high-speed rail segregating the express traffic from slower classic trains would definitely allow for a more Takt-like timetable. Even the high-speed routes themselves could be carefully integrated into it since most of the journey times fit into the 15-minute sum journeys.

HS2 if done in full could've brought journeys of 1h45 London to Manchester, 1h30 to Leeds, and 4h to Glasgow. Birmingham would've probably been an oddball with 49 minutes but since Curzon Street is separate from New Street it can have a bit of leeway for connecting passengers to walk and bring it to about one hour. Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS3 could've made Manchester to Leeds a neat 30 minute journey time as well.

I do think that under any Taktfahrplan approach there should be a greater focus on improving non-London flows such as Birmingham-Leeds, Birmingham-Manchester, Leeds-Newcastle, Bristol-Birmingham etc. Will have to try and string some of these together akin to the current XC model.

If journey times are to be set in mutiples of 5 minutes, i.e. 15, 20, 25 mins etc, surely dwells must be 5 mins to enable more user-friendly journeys?

 

[Sorcerer]

I know it's a bit trite but it is worth remembering that Switzerland is this big:
View attachment 203509
You could imagine that the urban North is a kind of polycentric matrix like region rather than the country as a whole

This is where scale probably makes a single national pulse not as possible or practical compared to regional nodes. Switzerland also has only a single trunk route on the north-south and east-west axis as far as I know, both having a clean intersection at Olten and Zurich, two central hubs that fit neatly into the Takt pulse.

Round Birmingham either up to 50 minutes or down to 45?

Under HS2 it can be safely assumed that Old Oak Common would become something of an urban node for HS2 and the Elizabeth Line, so bringing it down to 45 minutes probably wouldn't be feasible without sacrificing a stop there. But 50 minutes would be fine since there is a walk to New Street that can bring actual end-to-end journeys at 60 minutes.

If journey times are to be set in mutiples of 5 minutes, i.e. 15, 20, 25 mins etc, surely dwells must be 5 mins to enable more user-friendly journeys?

The Swiss Takt works in multiples of 15 minutes, but 5 or 10 minute multiples might work as long as the journeys are properly coordinated and running at the same time every hour. The journey times aren't exactly that mind you (Bern to Basel is 55 minutes rather than 60 as I understand it) but as long the services can be syncronised to line-up within a ten minute window on each side of the hour, half hour or quarter hour then it should be fine.

 

[Magdalia]

East Anglia has been doing a basic version of this since long before Takt was "invented". It helps that, from a passenger point of view, the only ways in and out are now Peterborough and Royston.

See this from Trains Illustrated January 1959:

There are certain outstanding features of the Great Eastern plan. The first is to concentrate locomotive-hauled trains on the principal main lines only. For this reason through working between Liverpool Street, Cromer and Sheringham is abandoned, save only for the "Broadsman" in each direction. Standard nine-coach sets, interchangeable between the various workings, are used throughout on the London Norwich service, terminating at Norwich; as a result four of these sets are able to complete two double journeys daily, totalling 460 miles, and the average of all nine sets is 332 miles a day. All Cromer and Sheringham connections, "Broadsman" excepted, are made by diesel trains from Norwich. The same principle applies also on the Cambridge main line. On each of the principal services a nine-coach set leaves Liverpool Street, with buffet car in the centre. Four coaches and the buffet car are left at Ely, and the remaining four proceed to Kings Lynn. The "Fenman" is the only train in each direction still having through coaches to and from Hunstanton; also, except for one or two early morning and night workings, no through coaches run any longer between Liverpool Street and Norwich via Cambridge; passengers change at Ely into and out of diesel multiple units. Not all passengers appreciate the changing, of course, but the diesels are so much faster than the previous steam workings that even including the change most through journeys are quicker than previously. Similarly, by changing from the main line expresses into diesel trains at Ipswich, and vice versa, passengers between the smaller intermediate stations and London, Norwich and elsewhere get a far faster and more ample service than ever before in Great Eastern history.

It fell apart somewhat in the cutback periods of the 1970s and early 1980s, but north of Cambridge and Ipswich/east of Peterborough is quite close now to a regular hourly cycle.

The difficulty is that demand is not spread evenly through the day, and peak time commuting flows are now significant at Cambridge and Norwich. Infrastructure constraints prevent a 2tph timetable all day, so additional peak time trains are now being inserted to supplement the all day hourly timetable.

And closer to London, the capacity constraints mean that regularity within the hourly cycle is impossible hence the timetables south of Ipswich and Cambridge.

 

[30907]

High Speed rail solves that though, doesn't it?
The busiest corridor in Switzerland, Geneva - Zurich, is facing the same issue. The solution is just to build a new HSR (doesn't actually have to be High speed, but faster trains = more capacity) paralleling the existing mainline. Mainline can take semifast trains, while the high volumes of end to end passengers can take the high speed train.

The parts that have been built (essentially Bern-Olten, plus the slower 60's cutoff through Lenzburg and the Heitersberg tunnel) achieved the target of approx 55min between nodes. It's a measure of the Swiss approach that they were built to implement an hourly-interval service and a generation later the busiest section still only carries 5tph. They are of course high capacity, but still the Bern-Basel-Zurich triangle is predicated on half-hourly services.

I can't imagine a HSL business case here being built on 4tph - hence we have HS2 asxplanned attempting to serve (almost) everywhere.

 

[Farigiraf]

I can't imagine a HSL business case here being built on 4tph - hence we have HS2 asxplanned attempting to serve (almost) everywhere.

With a fully built HS2, moving the fastest London - Scotland Avanti/Lumo/LNER services already releases a significant amount of capacity on the ECML and WCML which makes the project worth it. Add in the 2-3 extra fasts you can start running to Liverpool and Manchester alongside the existing Trent Valley services, and you end up being able to run twice the amount of airline style expresses without reducing the existing rail network's capacity. That's what high speed railways are best at. The issue in France/Spain/Italy is that a lot of the legacy routes are being left to decline over time, so they aren't making good use of the released capacity and trying to cram every potential passenger flow onto their high speed lines.

HS2 attempting to serve everywhere is primarily because phase 1 is little more than an extra 2 tracks onto the WCML south, so there won't be space to run much more on top of today's Avanti services. That changes once the legs to Manchester, Leeds and ownwards are built.

On a Swiss high speed railway, keep in mind that there's a lot of untapped potential in cross-alps international services. Sure, it unlocks space for a quarter-hourly Zurich-Geneva, but there's also potential for more (highly profitable) services from north of Switzerland to Milan, which are currently infrequent and not too fast as they eat up so much capacity.

 

[cle]

The timetable simplicity is of course one of the benefits and drivers of such high rail usage.

But all the endless Takt romanticising on this board misses a lot of the social and equity aspects that also ensure a higher uptake and more rail-friendly society:
- Switzerland has the national railcard which gives a massive discount to many (our fares system is a mess and incredibly expensive)
- CH and NL both have integrated trams, buses and connections nationwide. We don’t have the right environment for a seamless experience inc last mile/s
- Stock, stations and service are consistent in both. Whereas ours can be ok, or completely dilapidated.
- polycentric nodes don’t apply to us, hugely centralized at a national and regional level. Only maybe Warrington and Huddersfield are material for consideration on this, and some Central Belt.

TLDR - The timetable alone wouldn’t see us become a rail society, the experience is inconsistent and downright terrible, as is the integration of modes, and the cost. And it’s all too complex and punitive.

 

[Sorcerer]

But all the endless Takt romanticising on this board misses a lot of the social and equity aspects that also ensure a higher uptake and more rail-friendly society:
- Switzerland has the national railcard which gives a massive discount to many (our fares system is a mess and incredibly expensive)
- CH and NL both have integrated trams, buses and connections nationwide. We don’t have the right environment for a seamless experience inc last mile/s
- Stock, stations and service are consistent in both. Whereas ours can be ok, or completely dilapidated.

These aren't really technical limitations of working towards a Taktfahrplan, and there's no real reason we can't fix these issues by themselves anyway. If anything it would actually complement a new integrated clockface timetable.

- polycentric nodes don’t apply to us, hugely centralized at a national and regional level. Only maybe Warrington and Huddersfield are material for consideration on this, and some Central Belt.

Warrington and Huddersfield aren't exactly great candidates for node points, and even though our network isn't as decentralised or grid-like as Switzerland's and consists more of major trunk routes all leading towards London, there are many stations that would lend themselves well to being one. Nodes are major hubs stations with onward connections like Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds, not intermediate stops like Warrington and Huddersfield.

TLDR - The timetable alone wouldn’t see us become a rail society, the experience is inconsistent and downright terrible, as is the integration of modes, and the cost. And it’s all too complex and punitive.

Solving these problems isn't impossible, it's just a question of whether or not there is the political will to do so.

 

[cle]

These aren't really technical limitations of working towards a Taktfahrplan, and there's no real reason we can't fix these issues by themselves anyway. If anything it would actually complement a new integrated clockface timetable.

Warrington and Huddersfield aren't exactly great candidates for node points, and even though our network isn't as decentralised or grid-like as Switzerland's and consists more of major trunk routes all leading towards London, there are many stations that would lend themselves well to being one. Nodes are major hubs stations with onward connections like Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds, not intermediate stops like Warrington and Huddersfield.

Solving these problems isn't impossible, it's just a question of whether or not there is the political will to do so.

I know - that was precisely my point... a timetable alone would do nothing without these other things. Of course we could do it - they are, to me, the real drivers behind transforming towards the transit mindset of these example countries.

Warrington and Huddersfield were my examples of equidistant / polycentric places, not the nodes themselves of course. My point was that they are rare exceptions, and most places are in the orbit of one place. Our economic activity is not as distributed as the Randstad.

 

[NCT]

A Swiss Takt is likely to need more platforms at main stations, because they need a train on every route to be in a platform simultaneously for connections to be made.

The Netherlands doesn't do this, and nor should (much of) Britain.

Look at Groningen, the through local services are happily queued through the entire hour. The 2tph IC and 2tph Sprinter to Zwolle are distributed at Groningen. This means when and inbound train comes in there's always something to connect to but not everything.

This is the sort of pragmatic compromise that's acceptable in a network of high-frequency services and dense nodes where it's not practical to have all segments to have 'system' journey times that are multiples of 15 minutes, or where the nodes are too close together for fast and slow services to open up a sufficient journey time differential.

 

[JohnofWessex]

I suggest that we need to have a serious look at bus services with services laid down by law as they are in Switzerland and Germany plus some sort of national passenger transport authority as in Ireland

 

[NCT]

I suggest that we need to have a serious look at bus services with services laid down by law as they are in Switzerland and Germany plus some sort of national passenger transport authority as in Ireland

Same with the 'how to encourage rail use outside London' thread - with the mammoth amount of suburbanisation that's still to be corrected, any such attempt at writing service levels into law would place a huge pressure on the public purse and would almost certainly be vetoed by Treasury.

 

[HSTEd]

I think there is plenty of scope, provided realistic dialogue can be held with the unions, government and other transport interests, to provide a something more closesly resembling the Dutch model without a major increase in net subsidy. Such a system would probably achieve major traffic growth.

But all sides are pretty entrenched on their positions, so I doubt such a dialogue is possible.

 

[GraphitProjekt]

with the mammoth amount of suburbanisation that's still to be corrected,

There's a whole can of worms to be had about land-use around public transport stations/stops, considering the radius of a 10 minute walk, cycle ride of bus journey to a train station and how many residencies and destinations (retail/commercial properties) can be fit into that space.
On suburbs in particular, they have most often been built with the cul-de-sac street design model specifically to limit ran-running by cars, but this also has the effect of making bus lines unsuccessful and also lengthening walking times from people's houses to get out of the suburb to go to any amenity or local destination. We should really bring back the grid design of pre-car housing developments.

 

[PTR 444]

There's a whole can of worms to be had about land-use around public transport stations/stops, considering the radius of a 10 minute walk, cycle ride of bus journey to a train station and how many residencies and destinations (retail/commercial properties) can be fit into that space.
On suburbs in particular, they have most often been built with the cul-de-sac street design model specifically to limit ran-running by cars, but this also has the effect of making bus lines unsuccessful and also lengthening walking times from people's houses to get out of the suburb to go to any amenity or local destination. We should really bring back the grid design of pre-car housing developments.

I strongly disagree with American-style grids which create car dependency. Rather I’d plan estates with maximum walkability, where cul-de sacs for cars continue as a footpath to avoid pedestrians having to double back. Private vehicles would only be able to access via a single access road, while buses could use bus-only roads between different estates to provide seamless travel between them.

 

[Austriantrain]

One aspect I would like add to the question of „Swiss or dutch-style“ is rail‘s competitive position vs the private car.

On a 30-minute base interval after all, if you include a 5 minute minimum connecting time (which needs infrastructure precautions by itself), in a Dutch-style system, your connecting time will range between 5 and 35 minutes, ie 20 minutes on average.

In a place like Switzerland, and indeed Austria, where rail services are generally slow and car trips rather fast - because road congestion is often not that much of an issue - having an average connection time of 20 minutes - or a multiple thereof if you have to change more than once - will significantly reduce rail‘s competitiveness.

While I am not an expert on Dutch road traffic in the slightest, I imagine that the equation, due to slow roads in the central parts of the country, will be very different. It certainly will be in most of England, where in addition intercity rail is - sometimes very - fast.

 

[RT4038]

I strongly disagree with American-style grids which create car dependency. Rather I’d plan estates with maximum walkability, where cul-de sacs for cars continue as a footpath to avoid pedestrians having to double back. Private vehicles would only be able to access via a single access road, while buses could use bus-only roads between different estates to provide seamless travel between them.

I think you'll find that the Police have a different view of such footpaths (i.e. don't like them), in order to aid law enforcement.

 

[Magdalia]

There's a whole can of worms to be had about land-use around public transport stations/stops, considering the radius of a 10 minute walk, cycle ride of bus journey to a train station and how many residencies and destinations (retail/commercial properties) can be fit into that space.

This can of worms was opened a few months ago with proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework. It was discussed here starting at #671:

Sites for Labour's New Towns that already have rail connections

The MK one will probably just be building on surface car parks (there's basically a ring of them around CMK, this will be the periphery it's talking about). The "rapid transit system" proposed is a sham, just involving bodykitted bendybuses like Liverpool's nonsensical scheme on a limited set...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[The Ham]

There's a whole can of worms to be had about land-use around public transport stations/stops, considering the radius of a 10 minute walk, cycle ride of bus journey to a train station and how many residencies and destinations (retail/commercial properties) can be fit into that space.
On suburbs in particular, they have most often been built with the cul-de-sac street design model specifically to limit ran-running by cars, but this also has the effect of making bus lines unsuccessful and also lengthening walking times from people's houses to get out of the suburb to go to any amenity or local destination. We should really bring back the grid design of pre-car housing developments.

A lot of development is based on a grid (just not formed of roads) often with some odd shapes due to land constraints.

For the very simple reason that houses are rectangular, people like regular shaped gardens and cars are also rectangular.

I think you'll find that the Police have a different view of such footpaths (i.e. don't like them), in order to aid law enforcement.

It depends on the design of the link, if it is narrow, likely unit and goes round corners (or worse has multiple junctions) that's going to be of significant concern.

Conversely, a (say) 8m wide area (although the actual path would be much narrower) overlooked by housing which has clear sight lines from one end to the other and is appropriately lit is going to be much less concerning.

There's lots of good design guidance in "secured by design" which is what should be being used. Whilst there's still going to be risks, especially in areas where there's high crime rates, following best practice can mitigate (or at least reduce) a lot of the risks.

The more tricky element in the last mile provision is that often there's a break in what otherwise could be a good route across a town or between two key locations.

You're not going to be able to fix all of them, however, if they were identified then these are the sorts of small scale schemes which developers like to fund (i.e. cheap to deliver, but let them claim their site is well-connected with key sites).

Even so there still maybe breaks in the route, as long as these are limited in number and distance or shouldn't act as too much of a barrier.

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With regards to what could need to happen to improve rail connectivity, one thing I've suggested before is looking at lines which are lightly used and seeing if more services could be run on them, ideally this may include adding in a new junction to link two otherwise poorly connected lines.

By doing this you reduce the change time penalty (typically taken as 1/2 the time between services). This means that a journey where there's 2 changes between hourly service would have 60 minutes of penalty (even if the connections are timed well - as if a service is late or is cancelled then that's an hour of extra time to make the journey).

Someone doing the same journey but with 2tph on each leg and the penalty is 30 minutes, and at 3tph it's 20 minutes.

Likewise, it also depends on the risk. If there's 1tph direct to the nearest city and 1tph which requires a change at a station which the direct service doesn't call all, the risk of delay is high enough that people will just wait for the direct service.

However, if that second option involves a change where if the user misses their connection they just join the direct service, then the risk is low andthat service will be used as if it were a second service within the hour (as long as it permits a leave later arrive sooner journey option and there's a reasonable time difference over waiting).

For example the direct services
Minor Town 07:30 and 08:30
Change Point station 08:00 and 09:00
Major City 08:10 and 09:10

Whist the change services option is
07:50 Minor Town
08:20 Change Point
08:30 Change Point
08:40 Major City

The risk is that they'll be late to work (9am start) if they miss the change, however as long as that doesn't happen too often, that shouldn't be an issue.

However, that's the same risk as the earlier direct service without the other option. As such, even if most people would still aim for the earlier service, they have a fallback option if the earlier service gets cancels.

This means that because their personal "reliably get to work on time" factor is much more likely to be met, it means that rail use increases, especially when traffic congestion becomes the significant risk factor for getting to work on time when looking at how to get to work.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I strongly disagree with American-style grids which create car dependency. Rather I’d plan estates with maximum walkability, where cul-de sacs for cars continue as a footpath to avoid pedestrians having to double back. Private vehicles would only be able to access via a single access road, while buses could use bus-only roads between different estates to provide seamless travel between them.

That sort of describes a Radburn layout. The problem with these is that crime tends to flourish because police chases become difficult if not impossible.