A new OA idea coming up by three business students

[Altandi]

NWE (North West Express) – student project idea for Glasgow/West Scotland to Leeds/Bradford & Manchester

Hi all,

This isn’t a serious proposal (sadly!) – just a business school case study a few of us are working on. The three of us are rail fans as well as students, so when we were asked to come up with a model for a “new entrant in a constrained market”, we naturally turned to open access rail as our example. We hope to verify its possibility before further study.

We’ve been calling our idea North West Express (NWE) and sketched out two possible arms:

1) Glasgow – Calder Valley – Leeds/Bradford (3 tpd)

• Route: Glasgow Central – Lancaster – Preston – Blackburn – Accrington – Burnley (Copy Pit) – Sowerby Bridge – Halifax – Bradford – Leeds.
• Rationale: Bradford ↔ Scotland is unserved today, and Carlisle/Lancaster/Preston ↔ Leeds is only possible on slow commuter stoppers. An intercity-style service (say 802 5-car sets) could give a step up in comfort.

2) Ayr/Kilmarnock – Dumfries – Carlisle – Lancaster – Preston -Manchester Victoria (2 tpd)

• Rationale: southwest Scotland ↔ Manchester (and any other big cities except Glasgow) has no direct link. Running into Victoria avoids the Castlefield bottleneck and positions better for cross-Pennine connections.

Why we thought this was an interesting case study:

• Bradford ↔ Scotland: currently zero provision – this would be the first through link.
• Carlisle/Lancaster ↔ Leeds/Bradford: today only slow Northern services – an intercity product would capture a different market segment.
• Southwest Scotland ↔ Manchester (any large cities outside Scotland): also completely new.
• Not London-focused: almost every OA bid chases London; we wanted to model something cross-regional instead, which ties into “levelling up” narratives.
• Modest scale: only three 5-car units, about five trains per day per direction in total – manageable as a niche operator, not a franchise-sized operation.
• （We’re well aware it’s “fantasy land” and ignores all the messy reality，but it should fit the structure of OA regulation)
• Curious to know: if something like this were put forward in real life, would anyone here actually use it? Will it be a little bit beneficial (Basically better than the financial condition of Transpennine)

 

[Zomboid]

There was some chat around here a while ago about using the S&C to do a Leeds - Settle - Carlisle - WCML - Glasgow service, no doubt using some of the infinite spare voyagers. That was some fun crayoning.

I think your route serves more places of note, but would the journey time be too slow for Leeds/ Bradford to Glasgow compared to the ECML?

 

[Bertie the bus]

I can’t see either of those ideas being anything other than spectacular failures.

The journeys from both Carlisle & Lancaster to Leeds would take longer than the existing Northern direct services, with Lancaster – Leeds taking significantly longer. The proposed service from Preston – Leeds would take the same amount of time and have only 1 less stop than the hourly Northern service. Bradford – Scotland isn’t going to be a large flow, and the reason OAOs are London-centric is because services to London are much busier and the fares are priced at a premium – compare Preston to Glasgow fares to Preston – London ones. You also have to bear in mind on many of your proposed flows you would be competing with Northern and Northern offer some pretty decently priced fares so if you wanted to undercut them to gain custom you would have to carry large numbers of passengers.

The Ayr – Manchester service makes no sense at all. What market does it serve? Not having a direct service isn’t a good justification for providing one, in fact in many cases there are no direct services for a very good reason, i.e. there is no demand.

 

[30907]

"Preston-Leeds is only possible on slow commuter stoppers" - so you offer a class 802 making the same stops (give or take New Pudsey), and a slightly faster Lancaster-Bradford (100 min compared with 105 via Bentham all stations).
I don't see a significant benefit.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I can’t see either of those ideas being anything other than spectacular failures.
....
The Ayr – Manchester service makes no sense at all. What market does it serve? Not having a direct service isn’t a good justification for providing one, in fact in many cases there are no direct services for a very good reason, i.e. there is no demand.

Other points made by Bertie aside, I really question the idea of a serving Ayr directly instead of Glasgow Central (and still going south on the G&SW route). Unless, of course, there are capacity concerns north of Kilmarnock or worries about abstraction form Scotrail if trains went to Glasgow Central?

Looking up the passenger journeys from Ayr here

Labs - Flow Statistics - Ayr

Carlisle gets a mere 10 pssengers per WEEK from Ayr, and neither Preston nor (suprisingly) Manchester appear among the top 100 destinations from the place.

Now, of course the services currently are poor (slow and must change at Kilmarnock and Carlisle), maybe the figures are somewhat skewed by split ticketing and diluted across the various Manchester stations. And true, even a mere two direct trains a day would surely improve matters, but enough to make such a service anywhere near viable?