are speed limits treated as targets

[bramling]

I see nothing wrong with using rail speed limits as a target, so long as any other conflicting needs of the train are observed first. I thought that a lot of trains were timetabled on an expectation that the train would be running at linespeed where reasonably possible? If only car drivers would treat their infrastructure with the respect that train drivers do - for many car drivers another driver observing the speed limit in front of them often leads to impatience and frustration!

The big difference with car drivers is there’s the situation where people drive at whatever speed they feel like, and to make this worse many people are simply awful at making a good judgement.

Train driving is completely different, in that (perhaps with a few exceptions which have somehow slipped through the net) everyone is trained and assured to a level where they make a much more scientific choice.

It’s quite right to wish that car drivers would be much more like this.

 

[Egg Centric]

The big difference with car drivers is there’s the situation where people drive at whatever speed they feel like, and to make this worse many people are simply awful at making a good judgement.

Train driving is completely different, in that (perhaps with a few exceptions which have somehow slipped through the net) everyone is trained and assured to a level where they make a much more scientific choice.

It’s quite right to wish that car drivers would be much more like this.

Also, railway speed limits are very carefully assessed for the location + rolling stock (one hopes) while we have a "one size fits all" single national limit for each vehicle + road type combo that is far too low for many roads (eg Alconbury expressway) and far too high for many others (eg Hardknott pass). Authorities can sometimes fix the latter situation but never the former.

 

[Starmill]

Also, railway speed limits are very carefully assessed for the location + rolling stock (one hopes) while we have a "one size fits all" single national limit for each vehicle + road type combo that is far too low for many roads (eg Alconbury expressway) and far too high for many others (eg Hardknott pass). Authorities can sometimes fix the latter situation but never the former.

There are also direct impacts on carbon emissions, air quality and noise which have led to road speeds being lowered 'artificially'. Of course, this has excellent rationale and it is absolutely the right thing to do to obey whatever limits are lawfully posted, but knowing this can make some drivers see themselves as "sticking it to the man" when they offend.

Fortunately nearly all railways are not causing serious negative effects on local air quality, and noise and carbon overall are very small, so these are unlikely to be reasons to look at the permitted speeds.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Not a driver but I do find it interesting how different drivers react to running 5 to 10 minutes late up the GEML, on the timetables with a clear track you could make that up by Colchester as normally to maintain time it's just a cruise up there as driving any faster catches the train in front.

Thursday was interesting with the hold up at ingatestone, got to Ipswich 6 or 7 mins late and then a freight train was let out in front so we lost another 5 mins to Stowmarket. We probably ran through into Norwich at line speed which is rare in my experience, usually it's very steady from Harford bridge.

 

[Shrop]

The big difference with car drivers is there’s the situation where people drive at whatever speed they feel like, and to make this worse many people are simply awful at making a good judgement.

Train driving is completely different, in that (perhaps with a few exceptions which have somehow slipped through the net) everyone is trained and assured to a level where they make a much more scientific choice.

It’s quite right to wish that car drivers would be much more like this.

Yes, if car drivers had anywhere near the training, and enforcement that train drivers do, we'd have a lot less than our present dire statistic of 1650 people killed every year, plus countless thousands hospitalised, and sky high insurance premiums. If only we had a strong Government (of any colour) that wasn't scared of the car industry and our petrol-head tabloid reporters

 

[Bald Rick]

Popular in the mess room then? Do you drive?

There is no reward for arriving early, or even on time.

There is usually tea and busicuits for making an error.

You might dislike the current culture. The current culture would likely have meant people would still be walking around alive today that are not.

I don’t drive trains, no. However, I‘ve been in enough messrooms (how you measure popularity is an interesting question, but I think I get on with most people), and done countless cab rides, and know enough drivers, Driver Instructors and Driver Managers to know what good, and not so good, driving is like. It would be odd if every driver was brilliant, wouldn’t it?

From another perspective, when I managed signallers, I had some brilliant signallers (most of them), and some who frankly weren’t very good. I knew the brilliant ones would almost never have a delay or wrong route (and, coincidentally, their absence record was somewhat better than average). The less good ones had regular issues - “sorry Guv I was unavoidably distracted” (by reading the paper, for example, in more than one case), and often had long absence records with indeterminate reasons. This is the same in in all lines of work, in my experience - some people are simply better than others at their job.

There is reward for arriving on time, albeit not for most train crew. Yet.

But, for the avoidance of doubt, I’m not talking abiut culture. Safety is the first priority. Running trains to time is the second. It is what our passengers want. What I am talking about is the very small minority of drivers who drive - sometimes - well below the linespeed (per this thread topic) or seem to only use step 1 braking and/or accelerate cautiously in good conditions and thus lose time. This is not only a performance issue, but it is also a safety issue. Because following trains will unnecessarily recieve cautionary aspects, thus increasing SPAD risk. (I have personally investigated a SPAD where a contributory factor was that the signal was at danger for longer than it would have been normally due to a train travelling more slowly than noramlly ahead). Also it will cause distuption and potentially increase staion crowding risk.

I completely missed this joke - can you explain?

ATO!

Well, maybe. They won’t be going above 90 on the slows, so I assume you were on the fasts? I know they have a “passenger comfort” policy ir not taking full power below 10mph(?), but it seems a little odd that a driver would choose to drive 20 under the line speed, as it will only lead to more time in the chair, shorter breaks, a later finish etc.

I realise you know your onions, but are you absolutely sure there wasn’t a TSR, a unit with motors out etc.?

Definitely no TSR. Definitely no unit problem.

Yes on the fasts. Barely got above 80. Coasted from Grahame Park neutral, braked for West Hampsted South before Cricklewood (we had the Flashing Yellows, I could see them), and hit the 50 limit for the junction before West Hampsted North (for those that dont know, thats half a mile early). Under 40 through the junction. etc. Perhaps the worst of it all was braking so early for St P, that driver had to retake power to get to the stop marker.

There was probably a reason for this. Some sort of defect which required a maximum speed. Something isolated, or a broken window or something.
Reporting a driver for doing their job correctly

There may well have been a reason. But not a defect in the unit, infrastructure or signalling. Thats why I have reported the delay to investigate. I have not reported the driver, although I hope he/she is asked for their version of events. I’ll have a tenner that the answer that comes back is that the driver can’t recall.

 

[TUC]

a bit of a side note can't imagine it being fun (for want of a better word) for a freight driver to be stuck behind a stopping passenger train

It's also not fun to be a passenger on a long distance service stuck behind a stopper.

 

[Trackman]

Yes, if car drivers had anywhere near the training, and enforcement that train drivers do, we'd have a lot less than our present dire statistic of 1650 people killed every year, plus countless thousands hospitalised, and sky high insurance premiums. If only we had a strong Government (of any colour) that wasn't scared of the car industry and our petrol-head tabloid reporters

hear, hear!

 

[Egg Centric]

hear, hear!

(The alternative view, which I occasionally mention here to the support of basically no one, is that maybe we should look at our roads which are some of the safest in the world, notice that no one is particularly bothered about the deaths on them, and instead try to run a railway with a similar level of safety - where we actually accept quite a bit of carnage - to presumably massive cost savings - as someone who loves both cars and trains but sees the latter constantly hamstrung against the former, the instinct of the "pure rail lover" to hamstring cars has never sat well with me - let's liberate rail instead!)

 

[Adam Williams]

There are also direct impacts on carbon emissions, air quality and noise which have led to road speeds being lowered 'artificially'. Of course, this has excellent rationale

I don't know about excellent, I'd have said a lot of these non-safety reasons for lowering speed are quite hard to defend when new cars are increasingly EVs where there are no tailpipe emissions, and greatly reduced noise.

I'm sure the speeds will be increased back to where they were when ICE cars no longer make up the majority of vehicles on the road..!

 

[godfreycomplex]

(The alternative view, which I occasionally mention here to the support of basically no one, is that maybe we should look at our roads which are some of the safest in the world, notice that no one is particularly bothered about the deaths on them, and instead try to run a railway with a similar level of safety - where we actually accept quite a bit of carnage - to presumably massive cost savings - as someone who loves both cars and trains but sees the latter constantly hamstrung against the former, the instinct of the "pure rail lover" to hamstring cars has never sat well with me - let's liberate rail instead!)

And that might work if trains were owned by private individuals and parked on people’s driveways and rarely had more than single figure number of occupants. But they aren’t, so it doesn’t.

 

[Egg Centric]

And that might work if trains were owned by private individuals and parked on people’s driveways and rarely had more than single figure number of occupants. But they aren’t, so it doesn’t.

That's not relevant at all for saying X numbers of fatalities are acceptable. Unless you're saying that people think very differently about the risks incurred to them from public transport than they do to the risks incurred to them from private transport. Which I agree describes peoples' behaviour. But perhaps a cultural shift is possible. Anyway I'm happy to discuss this further but in another thread please as this one is awesome

 

[Cricketer8for9]

I don't know about excellent, I'd have said a lot of these non-safety reasons for lowering speed are quite hard to defend when new cars are increasingly EVs where there are no tailpipe emissions, and greatly reduced noise.

I'm sure the speeds will be increased back to where they were when ICE cars no longer make up the majority of vehicles on the road..!

As for noise, there’s engine noise and tyre noise. Above about 30 mph tyre noise is dominant and applies whatever the engine used.

 

[trundlewagon]

(The alternative view, which I occasionally mention here to the support of basically no one...

Can't imagine why!

 

[Starmill]

That's not relevant at all for saying X numbers of fatalities are acceptable. Unless you're saying that people think very differently about the risks incurred to them from public transport than they do to the risks incurred to them from private transport. Which I agree describes peoples' behaviour. But perhaps a cultural shift is possible. Anyway I'm happy to discuss this further but in another thread please as this one is awesome

Roller-coaster, ship and aircraft operators are "hamstrung" in the same way as railway companies too.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Oct 2024 ==

I don't know about excellent, I'd have said a lot of these non-safety reasons for lowering speed are quite hard to defend when new cars are increasingly EVs where there are no tailpipe emissions, and greatly reduced noise.

I'm sure the speeds will be increased back to where they were when ICE cars no longer make up the majority of vehicles on the road..!

As others have said the reduction in carbon emissions and noise aren't very big for switching to full EV, which won't happen for a very long time anyway. Reduction to harmful local emissions are quite big but exactly what the scale is on these is really a matter for another thread. Railways produce less of all three in general.

 

[Adam Williams]

As others have said the reduction in carbon emissions [...] aren't very big

Have they said this? I'm not necessarily sure it's supported by the science.

Railways produce less of all three in general.

I think it's actually very dependant on the route and rolling stock.

If we look at the Green Travel Pledge data that RDG itself has produced: Leamington to Marylebone is quoted at 4.6 KGCO2e.

Real world driving efficiency for, let's say - a Nissan Leaf is 0.33 kWh/mi. So, 28.26 kWh for that journey. Using today's carbon intensity (which would be even lower in July/August), that's 3.4 KGCO2e for doing the trip in an electric car. Cleaner than taking the train, in terms of carbon emissions.

Even less if you charge at home and you've fitted solar panels.

Does this mean I think travel by car is better? No. But I think it does mean that the rail industry has more to do here and I also think it means that sweeping statements about rail always being greener (or even, being better on average) are potentially misleading. The better news: it's incredibly likely that I'd have got completely the opposite conclusion for something like Coventry to Euston.

 

[Starmill]

Have they said this? I'm not necessarily sure it's supported by the science.


I think it's actually very dependant on the route and rolling stock.

If we look at the Green Travel Pledge data that RDG itself has produced: Leamington to Marylebone is quoted at 4.6 KGCO2e.

Real world driving efficiency for, let's say - a Nissan Leaf is 0.33 kWh/mi. So, 28.26 kWh for that journey. Using today's carbon intensity (which would be even lower in July/August), that's 3.4 KGCO2e for doing the trip in an electric car. Cleaner than taking the train, in terms of carbon emissions.

Even less if you charge at home and you've fitted solar panels.

Does this mean I think travel by car is better? No. But I think it does mean that the rail industry has more to do here and I also think it means that sweeping statements about rail always being greener (or even, being better on average) are potentially misleading. The better news: it's incredibly likely that I'd have got completely the opposite conclusion for something like Coventry to Euston.

It's good of you to go to the effort to write all this out but I'm afraid it doesn't really show us there's an economic case for noisier, more energy-intensive roads, not even if you think you could derive benefits from improvement to journey times by this means. Higher limits on roads also often don't translate into improving anyone's journey times at all, whereas when money is spent on increasing limits on the railway it's always well-targeted to journey time improvement. I'll have to leave it there because the reality is you didn't start a new thread and it's too far off topic.

 

[12LDA28C]

Have they said this? I'm not necessarily sure it's supported by the science.


I think it's actually very dependant on the route and rolling stock.

If we look at the Green Travel Pledge data that RDG itself has produced: Leamington to Marylebone is quoted at 4.6 KGCO2e.

Real world driving efficiency for, let's say - a Nissan Leaf is 0.33 kWh/mi. So, 28.26 kWh for that journey. Using today's carbon intensity (which would be even lower in July/August), that's 3.4 KGCO2e for doing the trip in an electric car. Cleaner than taking the train, in terms of carbon emissions.

Even less if you charge at home and you've fitted solar panels.

Does this mean I think travel by car is better? No. But I think it does mean that the rail industry has more to do here and I also think it means that sweeping statements about rail always being greener (or even, being better on average) are potentially misleading. The better news: it's incredibly likely that I'd have got completely the opposite conclusion for something like Coventry to Euston.

Are these figures per person?

 

[Adam Williams]

What is the result if you multiply by all the car journeys that would need to be made to match the capacity of the train?

I think you've misunderstood, the Green Travel Pledge data is average emissions per standard class passenger.

Are these figures per person?

Yes.

To be clear, I do not point this out for any reason other than to highlight that this is a challenge that the rail industry is going to need to face from some sceptics (and alistairlees has said as much as well). The cost comparisons don't help either - and the reasons for those differences are probably best explored in another thread.

We know from the data that electrified lines like the WCML fare considerably better than the electric car in this dataset - precisely because of the increased capacity, and we know that rail is better in terms of non-emissions factors (traffic congestion, more efficient use of infrastructure).

 

[12LDA28C]

I think you've misunderstood, the Green Travel Pledge data is average emissions per standard class passenger.


Yes.

Indeed, edited.

 

[Starmill]

I think you've misunderstood, the Green Travel Pledge data is average emissions per standard class passenger.


Yes.

To be clear, I do not point this out for any reason other than to highlight that this is a challenge that the rail industry is going to need to face from some sceptics (and alistairlees has said as much as well). The cost comparisons don't help either - and the reasons for those differences are probably best explored in another thread.

We know from the data that electrified lines like the WCML fare considerably better than the electric car in this dataset - precisely because of the increased capacity, and we know that rail is better in terms of non-emissions factors (traffic congestion, more efficient use of infrastructure).

I don't think anyone's meaningfully disagreeing that short DMUs are bad for the environment as well as being inefficient uses of subsidy and very wasteful to run on a lot of routes where they'll always be lightly loaded. Just that increasing the speed of road traffic will make everything worse, not better.

 

[Egg Centric]

evidently not from my train this morning. Our driver was consistently driving well under the limit, on green signals, and managed to lose a chunk of time and delay thousands of passengers (on our train and those behind) as a result.

Reported for investigation, obviously.

The manner of driving of the Met line train I'm currently on (especially the braking which is all over the place) reminded me of this post. But then I thought... is this a human driving? Is it automatic north of Harrow yet?

 

[12LDA28C]

The manner of driving of the Met line train I'm currently on (especially the braking which is all over the place) reminded me of this post. But then I thought... is this a human driving? Is it automatic north of Harrow yet?

No. Even the in-cab signalling hasn't been introduced yet.

 

[Egg Centric]

No. Even the in-cab signalling hasn't been introduced yet.

Right. Well more practice needed for said driver methinks (something about the way they interacted with colleagues makes me think they were pretty new to the job - and hey everyone needs to start somewhere)