Best and Worst Served Urban Areas in Britain

[TixallWanderer]

Thanks to accidents of geography and history it seems that some towns and cities have fantastic levels of service for their size whilst others are really poorly served. I was just wondering what examples people could come up with for the best and worst served locations - relative to size - in the country.

As a starter, two in my local area spring to mind. I live in Stafford, a town with a population of around 63,000. And yet despite this we are extraordinarily blessed for rail services. Our general off-peak service level is as follows:

Two per hour to London (one non-stop and one semi-fast)
Four per hour to Birmingham (one continuing to Bristol and another to Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Bournemouth)
Three per hour to Liverpool
Two per hour to Manchester
One per hour to Crewe via Stoke

A few miles to the south of us is the Cannock/Great Wryley area with a total population of around 83,000. And yet it has a terrible rail service - an off peak service level of one per hour to Rugeley and one per hour to Walsall and Birmingham.

Any other examples?

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Barnham - population 1,732; however its railway station enjoys, among others, 4tph to London (they however join on-route so it's technically 2tph at the northern end), 2tph to Brighton, 2tph to Southampton and 2(3?)tph to Portsmouth. I'd say location plays a giant role here - it's a junction of five lines and as such gets rather a lot of custom - just shy of 1,000,000 passengers in the latest figures.

 

[dvboy]

By that reckoning Wolverhampton is truly blessed but for a city of its size to only have one main central station and no stations anywhere else in the city, especially when it forms a conurbation so has a significant number of cross-border commuters and leisure travellers, I think it's rather poor in that respect.

 

[RPI]

Exeter doesn't do bad, 1 tph to Pad, 1 tph to Wat, 2 tph to Plymouth, 1 tph to Bristol/Brum and a half decent local service. As for Poor, Plymouth, yes it's an hourly service to Pad but it's slow with nearly all trains now calling Tot/Nta/Tvp/Tau.

 

[HowardGWR]

Bournemouth / Poole / Christchurch is a huge conurbation of getting on for half a million. Its easterly connections are reasonable, except no direct service to Folkestone, but west or north (Exeter, Plymouth or Bristol) are non-existent, except by 'great way round' journeys.

A chord at Dorchester and another at Yeovil would sort those two westerly problems. A chord at Brighton would help Southampton and Pompey too.

 

[Northern_Light]

Aberdeen must be one of the poorest served places for its size. The city itself has a population of around 225,000 and growing, but has for all intents and purposes only 1 through line. The surrounding Shire is also growing at a fair rate as well.

There may be a train every hour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, but every single one of them stops at the small fry stations like Stonehaven, Montrose and Arbroath. This means that if you want "express" travel from the North East of Scotland to the Central Belt, you have no choice but to go by road.

 

[LE Greys]

Aberdeen must be one of the poorest served places for its size. The city itself has a population of around 225,000 and growing, but has for all intents and purposes only 1 through line. The surrounding Shire is also growing at a fair rate as well.

There may be a train every hour to Edinburgh and Glasgow, but every single one of them stops at the small fry stations like Stonehaven, Montrose and Arbroath. This means that if you want "express" travel from the North East of Scotland to the Central Belt, you have no choice but to go by road.

Which is ironic, because it used to be one of the best thanks to the combined efforts of the North British Railway (building two massive bridges), the Caledonian Railway (building the fast route through Forfar, now closed) and the Great North of Scotland Railway (building the Buchan Lines and the Deeside Line, now closed). However, Aberdeen isn't so bad compared with Workington, for example, stranded out on the Cumbrian Coast Line; or the Grimsby/Immingham/Cleethorpes areas, one of Britain's biggest ports, but with no London service. Still, it would need extensive improvements to bring Aberdeen up to standard, giving a two-hour time to Glasgow and Edinburgh or reopening the route to Peterhead.

Reading and Oxford both have impressive links throughout the country, largely thanks to their positions on an XC route, and some of the country's fastest suburban trains. Peterborough isn't so bad either, with direct routes to Birmingham, Liverpool, Stansted and Norwich plus all the ECML expresses and plenty of quick suburban electrics. Not so impressed with Lincoln, though.

 

[NSE]

While the services are not overly frequent, I still reckon Ely is very well served considering its size. Direct journeys to London, Manchester, Liverpool, Stansted Airport, Birmingham, Stockport, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leicester, Norwich, Ipswich, Peterborough and Warrington. Admittedly only once an hour on most of those routes, and on a 2/3 car dmu. But even so, thats a huge range of destinations served when you consider its size.

 

[Clip]

Thanks to accidents of geography and history it seems that some towns and cities have fantastic levels of service for their size whilst others are really poorly served. I was just wondering what examples people could come up with for the best and worst served locations - relative to size - in the country.

As a starter, two in my local area spring to mind. I live in Stafford, a town with a population of around 63,000. And yet despite this we are extraordinarily blessed for rail services. Our general off-peak service level is as follows:

Two per hour to London (one non-stop and one semi-fast)
Four per hour to Birmingham (one continuing to Bristol and another to Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Bournemouth)
Three per hour to Liverpool
Two per hour to Manchester
One per hour to Crewe via Stoke

A few miles to the south of us is the Cannock/Great Wryley area with a total population of around 83,000. And yet it has a terrible rail service - an off peak service level of one per hour to Rugeley and one per hour to Walsall and Birmingham.

Any other examples?

Im of the opinion that the size of a town/city shouldnt determine the level of service. What you have to consider is the connections that can be made from each station and what people will commute in and out of each station and Stafford is in a very strategic location on the WCML for a whole host of connections to be made around the North of England. The same can not be said of Cannock hence why the service levels differ so much.

 

[Howardh]

Oxenholme must be the smallest place (a little hamlet on the outskirts of Kendal) with the best service, regular stop for pendolinos!

Biggest place - worst service....is thre a bigger town/city than Bolton not served by inter-city? Used to be, clapped-out old diesels used to stop, but at least they were inter-city trains (think they used to be on the Glasgow/Edinburgh - Birmingham run???). Now we can get to Glasgow/Edinburgh direct, but on the three-coach sore-bum, stiff-neck, buffetless, pointless first-class Transpennine Expresses.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Biggest place - worst service....is thre a bigger town/city than Bolton not served by inter-city?

Northampton (save 2tpd), Portsmouth, Norwich *, Walsall, Southend, Huddersfield, Poole, Middlesbrough and Blackpool are all larger by population (as a town in its own right) than Bolton and have no IC services.

NB - Luton technically retains IC services but it's usually just Corby services, with very few towards Leicester.
(* - That depends if you call the London services IC, I personally wouldn't.

 

[mister-sparky]

All of the good and bad examples listed in the posts previously are down to their locations. Of course Stafford's going to have good mainline services, it's on the west coast mainline. Of course Aberdeen isn't going to have a service to every part of the country, it's in the north east of scotland! It's impossible to do proper comparisons like this as it's always going to be down to location. Either what line your town/station happens to be on, or on what part of the line (at a junction etc).

 

[PR1Berske]

Best - London
Worst - Northern England

[/thread]

 

[pompeyfan]

Not only in terms of volume of service, but in terms of fast trains calling at 4 out of 5 stations on the island (yes I know Cosham is off the island) I'm voting for Portsmouth. A decent train connection is never more then a 10 min bus ride wherever you live, but I suppose that has something to do with the density of the city...,

On a side note, does anybody know if there is a TSR through Cosham at the moment due to the bridge works?

 

[Cab2Cab]

Hi,

My choice as one of the best would be Chesterfield for a town station.

Pick the right trains and you can get to the south west, north east, London, east anglia, and the west side of the country without normally having to change trains.

Cheers

 

[Zoe]

Exeter doesn't do bad, 1 tph to Pad, 1 tph to Wat, 2 tph to Plymouth, 1 tph to Bristol/Brum and a half decent local service. As for Poor, Plymouth, yes it's an hourly service to Pad but it's slow with nearly all trains now calling Tot/Nta/Tvp/Tau.

Although Plymouth doesn't do too bad during the day with two trains per hour to Exeter, in the evening the service is surprisingly poor at two trains per five hours after the the last Paddington service leaves at around 1930. On Saturday when the sleeper doesn't run, there's only one evening train after the last Paddington service resulting in the last train to Exeter leaving at 2115. It would be quite surprising if the demand for travel in east of Plymouth in the evening is so low. Newton Abbot retains an hourly service to Exeter throughout the evening.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Another surprising one is Maidstone, the service to London is slow and only hourly in the evenings and on Sundays. I've seen it said that there is no demand for improved service but this is quite surprising considering the population is over 100000 and the town is relatively close to London. You can arrive in London in the morning from Ramsgate earlier than you can from Maidstone.

 

[tbtc]

Depends whether you are talking about "service within the urban area" or "links to places further afield".

The second category is simple - there are plenty of towns that are at busy junctions that get a disproportionately good service (Crewe, Doncaster, Stafford, Rugby, Darlington etc). In terms of "size of population" and "long distance service" then I'd have to mention Carstairs though!

For "service within the urban area", that's a harder one - some cities have a good suburban railway (Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff, Liverpool), some cities have a fairly poor suburban railway (Edinburgh had virtually nil until Edinburgh Park, Brunstane and Newcraighall opened in recent times).

However you then get into the problem of how you count things - Sheffield/ Nottingham/ Newcastle/ Sunderland have fairly poor "heavy" suburban railway services but do have frequent light rail services.

 

[sheff'd victoria]

Lincoln, but their is another thread for that subject

 

[mister-sparky]

Although Plymouth doesn't do too bad during the day with two trains per hour to Exeter, in the evening the service is surprisingly poor at two trains per five hours after the the last Paddington service leaves at around 1930. On Saturday when the sleeper doesn't run, there's only one evening train after the last Paddington service resulting in the last train to Exeter leaving at 2115. It would be quite surprising if the demand for travel in east of Plymouth in the evening is so low. Newton Abbot retains an hourly service to Exeter throughout the evening.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Another surprising one is Maidstone, the service to London is slow and only hourly in the evenings and on Sundays. I've seen it said that there is no demand for improved service but this is quite surprising considering the population is over 100000 and the town is relatively close to London. You can arrive in London in the morning from Ramsgate earlier than you can from Maidstone.

Ramsgate is on a mainline. The Maidstone stations are not. simples.

 

[Zoe]

simples.

It may well be quite simple as far as operational convenience is concerned but that doesn't explain the lack of demand for Maidstone and why there isn't any demand for an improved service from Maidstone.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

This is slightly wayward from the topic, but wasn't Maidstone originally meant to be on the original South Eastern Main Line from London-Dover, but the local landowners didn't want anything to do with the development and as such the line was routed via Staplehurst?

 

[callum112233]

Best - London
Worst - Northern England

[/thread]

How mature. :roll:

 

[yorksrob]

This is slightly wayward from the topic, but wasn't Maidstone originally meant to be on the original South Eastern Main Line from London-Dover, but the local landowners didn't want anything to do with the development and as such the line was routed via Staplehurst?

I believe the South Eastern Railway were originally forced by parliament to share the Brighton mainline south to Redhill as they felt that one route South was enough at the time, hence the unusual route through Staplehurst. It got it's branch from Paddock Wood relatively early on in the 1840's

 

[Goatboy]

Although Plymouth doesn't do too bad during the day with two trains per hour to Exeter, in the evening the service is surprisingly poor at two trains per five hours after the the last Paddington service leaves at around 1930. On Saturday when the sleeper doesn't run, there's only one evening train after the last Paddington service resulting in the last train to Exeter leaving at 2115. It would be quite surprising if the demand for travel in east of Plymouth in the evening is so low. Newton Abbot retains an hourly service to Exeter throughout the evening.

I think this one is a result of Plymouth being predominately Intercity served - FGW operate relativey few 'local' services from Plymouth towards Exeter, with almost every service to Exeter being either XC or a Paddington HST.

So, they've all got long journeys to make meaning they end disproportionately sooner than they would if there were more 'local' services.

Note that although hardly anything leaves Plymouth Northbound after 19:30 the opposite is the case for arrivals, Exeter has a very good service towards Plymouth in the evening, it just doesnt work the other way, as its all formed of long distance IC trains reaching journeys end.

 

[PR1Berske]

How mature. :roll:

But accurate.

 

[Goatboy]

But accurate.

Very few cities in the world have worse public transport in the capital than they do elsewhere though. It's fairly obvious that the capital city will always have the best transport network (and even though I live hundreds of miles from London I can't disagree with that as a premise, either).

 

[Matt Taylor]

Not only in terms of volume of service, but in terms of fast trains calling at 4 out of 5 stations on the island (yes I know Cosham is off the island) I'm voting for Portsmouth. A decent train connection is never more then a 10 min bus ride wherever you live, but I suppose that has something to do with the density of the city...,

On a side note, does anybody know if there is a TSR through Cosham at the moment due to the bridge works?

No TSR at the moment as the work does not affect the track yet.

 

[asylumxl]

Very few cities in the world have worse public transport in the capital than they do elsewhere though. It's fairly obvious that the capital city will always have the best transport network (and even though I live hundreds of miles from London I can't disagree with that as a premise, either).

The original comment is a tad ironic especially considering that many people have already cited places in this thread with a good service that are up north.

I personally think that the home counties, while being near to London, are not well served. I say this not due to tph but due to the fact it suffered from a lot of closures. If you're going anywhere but London or the principle stops you'll almost certainly require a slow, slow bus somewhere just to go a town over.

 

[crispy1978]

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/nonrail/towns!a.html may be of some interest

 

[pompeyfan]

Cheers for that Matt.