Best and Worst Served Urban Areas in Britain

[yorksrob]

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).

Incidentally, the eight core cities of England outside of the capital together generate as much economic activity as London itself, which seems at the very least to justify a decent cross country service with adequate rolling stock provision.

 

[sheff'd victoria]

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

Great link

See the people of Louth are in for a long drive to catch a train

 

[billio]

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

I note it doesn't include Bury. I know it's on the Metrolink but so is Radcliffe ( a part of Bury metropolitan area) and that is regarded as being without a rail link. Perhaps someone was confused with Bury St Edmunds .

I think it's fair to say that the towns to the North of Manchester - Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham - are poorly served by heavy rail services considering the size of the population.

 

[YorkshireBear]

I think Bolton does just fine.... the rest i agree with though. Although Rochdale will see improvements soon i believe with a bay platform?

 

[bILLOO]

Northampton has a poor service for a 200k+ populated 'county town'... But we all know why that is.

 

[telstarbox]

Sheffield station has a good service but the western half of the city is poorly connected by heavy/light rail (except Hillsborough which is on the Supertram). There are peak regional trains at Dore but otherwise passengers have to get a bus into town, and many of the main routes don't serve the Interchange near to the station.

There are good reasons for this - mainly the hills in the city and to the west which make rail lines tricky, coupled with low population density in the Peak District.

 

[stanley T]

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?

and then the Maidstone East line was built by the penniless LC&DR, to their usual tacky cheap curvy and slow standards.

Yet the fastest line in the country is only a couple of miles away - and Medway Council lobbied hard (and so far successfully) against a Maidstone Parkway station on HS1!

 

[tbtc]

Medway Council lobbied hard (and so far successfully) against a Maidstone Parkway station on HS1!

Didn't know that - wondered why the conurbation wasn't better served by HS1 though!

 

[YorkshireBear]

and then the Maidstone East line was built by the penniless LC&DR, to their usual tacky cheap curvy and slow standards.

Yet the fastest line in the country is only a couple of miles away - and Medway Council lobbied hard (and so far successfully) against a Maidstone Parkway station on HS1!

Bet they feel like idiots now...

 

[RichmondCommu]

In terms of Sheffield I often wonder why Millhouses was closed and the slow lines removed and the rationalisation of Dore took place. Especially given that's where the money is, the student population and the traffic congestion.

 

[Goatboy]

Incidentally, the eight core cities of England outside of the capital together generate as much economic activity as London itself, which seems at the very least to justify a decent cross country service with adequate rolling stock provision.

This seems like an irrelevent point really. If anything it supports the idea that London should have the best network. You need to combine EIGHT cities together just to generate as much activityas one city? And you think thats sound logic for saying that one city doesnt deserve the best transport system?

I have zero London bias - I don't live there, I rarely visit more than once a year and I live hundreds of miles from it. But it is our capital city, it is an important city and like almost every other developed capital city in the world, it therefore has a comprehensive public transport system unmatched by anything in any other city.

Any French cities with a similar metro/suburban system to Paris?

 

[yorksrob]

and then the Maidstone East line was built by the penniless LC&DR, to their usual tacky cheap curvy and slow standards.

Yet the fastest line in the country is only a couple of miles away - and Medway Council lobbied hard (and so far successfully) against a Maidstone Parkway station on HS1!

The majority of stations on the route (including those built by the Maidstone and Ashford railway,later to be subsumed into the LC&DR) were built to a noticably higher standard than was usual for that company (or for the SER for that matter) so they must have been feeling fairly generous.

Geographically though, the route is quite curvy on account of being built as a branch from the LC&DR's Sevenoaks branch.

 

[Par]

Surely Oldham has to be one of the worst. One of the largest (if not the largest) towns in England without a station, a with a population of 100,000 plus. The wider Oldham Borough (population 220,000) has only two stations, Greenfield and Mills Hill, with the latter possibly in the Rochdale Borough.

Even before the Oldham Loop was converted to light rail, the service for a town its size was terrible, athough of the topography doesn't help.

Compare and contrast with nearby Stockport Borough with its 18 stations, more than Manchester!

 

[sheff'd victoria]

Sheffield station has a good service but the western half of the city is poorly connected by heavy/light rail (except Hillsborough which is on the Supertram). There are peak regional trains at Dore but otherwise passengers have to get a bus into town, and many of the main routes don't serve the Interchange near to the station.

There are good reasons for this - mainly the hills in the city and to the west which make rail lines tricky, coupled with low population density in the Peak District.

I used to live in that area and their has been a row with TOC's for years about services from Dore, the fact is you can get a better service to/from Manchester than you can from Sheffield Midland, EMT & TPE are quite happy to stop and pick up passgengers to Sheffield Midland in the morning peak but its a Northern Rail service only at 1714 & 1814 at evening peak going back.

 

[HowardGWR]

In terms of Sheffield I often wonder why Millhouses was closed and the slow lines removed and the rationalisation of Dore took place. Especially given that's where the money is, the student population and the traffic congestion.

I always think Sheffield is almost a clone of Bristol and vice versa. Hilly, public rail transport abandoned, and both cities needing four tracks re-instated. Still Sheffield has its tram but for poor old Bristol still just a pipe dream.

 

[AnonymousUser1]

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?

Newark ? by virtue of being on the ECML and the interchange for the ECML from Nottingham and Lincoln ?

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Incidentally, the eight core cities of England outside of the capital together generate as much economic activity as London itself, which seems at the very least to justify a decent cross country service with adequate rolling stock provision.

Most commuters who take the train in to London do so because the car isn't an alternative for them - if they could drive as easily from door to door as they could in other UK cities then the vast majority would, rather than share space on public transport that wouild be deemed inadequate for cattle (or horse) transportation.

Locals may complain about traffic but it is a joy to drive into Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield compared to driving in to and trying to park in Central London.
Door to door journies by car in and between most provincial cities are far quicker and given the choice people will use their car when it is quicker and more convenient hence there is less demand for rail in the provinces than in London.

 

[yorksrob]

Most commuters who take the train in to London do so because the car isn't an alternative for them - if they could drive as easily from door to door as they could in other UK cities then the vast majority would, rather than share space on public transport that wouild be deemed inadequate for cattle (or horse) transportation.

Locals may complain about traffic but it is a joy to drive into Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield compared to driving in to and trying to park in Central London.
Door to door journies by car in and between most provincial cities are far quicker and given the choice people will use their car when it is quicker and more convenient hence there is less demand for rail in the provinces than in London.

Not entirely true. I know lots of people in Leeds who own a car but commute by train for various reasons. I'm not disputing that London's transport issues are on a different scale, however it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that everyone who has a car in the provinces drives because there isn't the congestion when clearly that isn't the case. Also, Leeds would certainly grind to a halt if it didn't have its commuter railway network and I suspect the other core cities would as well.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Birmingham too. The roads are full to bursting in rush hour as it is, and that is with an extensive suburban heavy rail network and tram line all with frequent trains running along them.
I'm not disputing for a second that it is on the same scale as London because it clearly isn't, but the trains into New Street, Moor Street and Snow Hill keep tens of thousands of cars off of the roads heading into the centre of the second city.

 

[corfield]

As someone who has lived in London or the South East (Chilterns and SWML country) for 2/3rds of my life and the Northwest for the other 1/3rd, I utterly disagree with PR1s predictably tedious gravel-for-breakfast comment.

I found trains in the NW were much better at being direct, or with just 1 change, to get to the places I wanted (Scotland, other NW cities, NE, London, Midlands, South Coast).

In comparison, I think the South/London is great if you're going to London or happen to live on or near the radial line that goes to your destination elsewhere. If you miss that 1 in 11 chance (BML, SWML, GWML, CML, WCML, MML, ECML, WAML, GEML, HS1, SEML which probably isnt all !) then you are pretty stuffed, and almost always require a doubling of cost, time and stress to go into &/or cross London and come out again.

Typically I need 2 or 3 changes of trains to get places (Anglia, South West, Bristol/S.Wales, North West, East Midlands).

I was going to write frequency is better in the South, but then actually thought about it and questioned that - long journeys are always planned in advance so waiting at the outset is rare (and hence why it is/feels longer in the South due to more interchanges where you can't avoid waiting), and short distances (eg within NW or commuting into London has always felt like a 10/15/20max waiting time on a random turn-up-and go basis anyway.

For London and particulalry SW/West of it I'd like to see more development of orbital routes, or at least interchanges where radial routes do overlap (thinking West Hampstead...).

The East-West Rail Link seems a bit too far out, and doesn't link anything north of the GWML to anything south of it any better.

 

[DeeGee]

1 tph from Grimsby/Cleethorpes to Doncaster, taking, even without rail replacement buses at the moment, longer by train than by the A180.

Plus the train service from Cleethorpes to Barton, which I assume exists to give Barton a train service it doesn't really need, with buses over the bridge or to Scunthorpe making a far more frequent service.

And the train to Lincoln - again taking longer than driving - which continues to Newark, to join up with the ECML train that could have been caught by taking a train which leaves Grimsy Town later.

Plus, of course, the crazy train via Brigg and Gainsborough which is running to avoid having to close the service completely.

If you're here on a Sunday morning, there's no chance of leaving until nearly 10am.

All to serve a population of at least 120,000. It's good, here!
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Or Leigh. I'm going there this weekend. Godawful faff getting a train!

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Not entirely true. I know lots of people in Leeds who own a car but commute by train for various reasons. I'm not disputing that London's transport issues are on a different scale, however it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that everyone who has a car in the provinces drives because there isn't the congestion when clearly that isn't the case. Also, Leeds would certainly grind to a halt if it didn't have its commuter railway network and I suspect the other core cities would as well.

I don't doubt that there are many people who use public transport when it is more convenient but the majority - and in some provincial cities the vast majority, don't.
I like to travel by train but I commute by car - it takes half the time, I am not wedged in to a carriage like veal off to market, it takes me from door to door and it is cheaper. I am fairly sure that if many of those who commute in to London could use their car instead of public transport then they would as well. You will only see a shift in other cities when, as in London, approaching gridlock traffic conditions forces them to improve public transport and implement congestion charging, restrictive parking and other measures to reduce car usage.

 

[yorksrob]

I don't doubt that there are many people who use public transport when it is more convenient but the majority - and in some provincial cities the vast majority, don't.
I like to travel by train but I commute by car - it takes half the time, I am not wedged in to a carriage like veal off to market, it takes me from door to door and it is cheaper. I am fairly sure that if many of those who commute in to London could use their car instead of public transport then they would as well. You will only see a shift in other cities when, as in London, approaching gridlock traffic conditions forces them to improve public transport and implement congestion charging, restrictive parking and other measures to reduce car usage.

We don't have congestion charging, but Leeds does have fairly restrictive parking and this, together with peak congestion does help to drive public transport use.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

We don't have congestion charging, but Leeds does have fairly restrictive parking and this, together with peak congestion does help to drive public transport use.

Would still be interesting to see what percentage of people drive in to the centre as opposed to use the train.
In sizeable cities like Bristol, Stoke and Derby I would imagine the number of urban rail commuters to be tiny in comparison.

 

[LE Greys]

Would still be interesting to see what percentage of people drive in to the centre as opposed to use the train.
In sizeable cities like Bristol, Stoke and Derby I would imagine the number of urban rail commuters to be tiny in comparison.

It depends on how the market was developed. Newcastle and Glasgow, for instance, have quite high proportions of rail use, thanks to the Metro and Blue Train. Aberdeen by comparison has massively-congested roads, with overcrowded buses and virtually no commuter traffic because of a lack of lines to run on, I seem to remember Bournemouth being similar. Give a city a chance to develop its suburban rail network, and generally the passengers will turn up.

 

[Northern_Light]

It depends on how the market was developed. Newcastle and Glasgow, for instance, have quite high proportions of rail use, thanks to the Metro and Blue Train. Aberdeen by comparison has massively-congested roads, with overcrowded buses and virtually no commuter traffic because of a lack of lines to run on, I seem to remember Bournemouth being similar. Give a city a chance to develop its suburban rail network, and generally the passengers will turn up.

Before Beeching wielded his infamous axe, Aberdeen, for its size was well connected to much of the surrounding towns to the north and west. Since then, the city and surrounding shire has grown quite a bit and as you say the roads here are totally heaving at peak times. Buses are also a joke at the rush hour because they, er well, have to share the roads with the rest of the traffic.

Beats me as to why they're so busy because as well as being painfully slow the fares are unbelievably expensive.

As if the above wasn't bad enough, the future population projections for Aberdeen will cause even more problems. Improvements to the Inverness line and the reopening of Kintore station will help a little bit, but I feel much more will have to be done beyond CP5. Closing the single track between Montrose and Usan must be seen as a priority job for CP6. After that establishing a connection to Peterhead would be really helpful.

But these will not be cheap fixes and I have my doubts about them ever coming to pass. Guess we're stuck with all those jams!

 

[MidnightFlyer]

...

As if the above wasn't bad enough, the future population projections for Aberdeen will cause even more problems. Improvements to the Inverness line and the reopening of Kintore station will help a little bit, but I feel much more will have to be done beyond CP5. Closing the single track between Montrose and Usan must be seen as a priority job for CP6. After that establishing a connection to Peterhead would be really helpful.

But these will not be cheap fixes and I have my doubts about them ever coming to pass. Guess we're stuck with all those jams!

I seem to recall double-tracking Usan-Montrose would actually require the complete closure of the current alignment, with a new line built further inland. Needless to say as a result the costs are astronomical and it means such a development in future is very unlikely.

As for Peterhead, I would agree that it'd be great to reopen the old railway line up there, and I believe it would sustain a market as a town itself. However, it suffers from the same issue that lot of other remote towns in the UK do - you have to cross miles of emptiness in order to reach them. I seem to recall the cost of a newly-opened railway per standard mile (i.e. no stations, bridges etc) is over £10,000,000, making schemes like Peterhead, Glastonbury and Bude somewhat unlikely

 

[LE Greys]

I seem to recall double-tracking Usan-Montrose would actually require the complete closure of the current alignment, with a new line built further inland. Needless to say as a result the costs are astronomical and it means such a development in future is very unlikely.

As for Peterhead, I would agree that it'd be great to reopen the old railway line up there, and I believe it would sustain a market as a town itself. However, it suffers from the same issue that lot of other remote towns in the UK do - you have to cross miles of emptiness in order to reach them. I seem to recall the cost of a newly-opened railway per standard mile (i.e. no stations, bridges etc) is over £10,000,000, making schemes like Peterhead, Glastonbury and Bude somewhat unlikely

The coastal route via Cruden Bay seems more promising, with a slight extension from Boddam to Peterhead itself. It currently sustains a 2bph operation by Stagecoach invovling massive six-wheel coaches running along the A90. Ideally, the route could extend to Fraserburgh, but that would involve cutting accross Rattray Head, so the old route from Ellon makes more sense (this supports 1bph).

 

[PaulLothian]

...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!

Not a lot of long distance trains stopping there nowadays! Most journeys to Carlisle suggest travelling via Glasgow Central. I did particularly like the idea of the itinerary of the 19.11 from Carlisle, which takes you via Glasgow Central (change) to Kirknewton, even smaller than Carstairs, and leaves you there for nearly an hour and a half, before approaching Carstairs from the northeast on the only route you hadn't already traversed. I'd use the bus!

 

[Northern_Light]

I seem to recall double-tracking Usan-Montrose would actually require the complete closure of the current alignment, with a new line built further inland. Needless to say as a result the costs are astronomical and it means such a development in future is very unlikely.

Another problem has been the growth in traffic at Aberdeen station in recent years. When the figures for 2011/12 are released (anyone got any idea when these are due?) there is a good chance that passenger numbers will have doubled over the last 10 years. For an area where travelling by rail isn't even an afterthought for the vast majority of the population, I think that this is amazing.

The question then becomes: What happens if this trend continues? Longer trains? Price the Aberdeen fare paying public off the line, leading to even greater road congestion?

If this problem cannot be addressed, I cannot see the point of ever electrifying this line.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The coastal route via Cruden Bay seems more promising, with a slight extension from Boddam to Peterhead itself. It currently sustains a 2bph operation by Stagecoach invovling massive six-wheel coaches running along the A90. Ideally, the route could extend to Fraserburgh, but that would involve cutting accross Rattray Head, so the old route from Ellon makes more sense (this supports 1bph).

This looks a very difficult call to make. The Formartine-Buchan line has been left intact in the hope that one day it will reopen to rail traffic. But it takes such a roundabout route that I doubt that this will ever come to pass. Also it would place even greater stress on the station at Dyce.

There would be significant extra work required to get the more direct Cruden Bay line back in action, but with substantial population growth forecast for both Peterhead and Ellon, this may be worth at least investigating. Perhaps they could even open a station to serve the Bridge of Don?

Sad to say, I cannot at this moment state a case for extending the line to Fraserburgh. This is a town that has missed out on the oil boom and appears to be in something of a slow decline.