Dealing with the "luggage problem" - options

[stevieinselby]

To impose a luggage charge, all passengers need to be met routinely by staff or go through a suitable automatic barrier on their entry to the rail network. That doesn't even happen for tickets!

This is the crux of it. In practical terms, it will be impossible to enforce consistently, either at the point of boarding or on the train.

Between London and Manchester and London & Birmingham (Euston - New St) how do you propose lengthening already 8/9/11 car trains ? The infrastructure won't support it in terms of platform lengths, signalling etc. Neither of those flows are "5 car trains".

There is a world beyond the WCML. The ECML, MML, GWML and XCML regularly see 5-car trains (or even 4 in the case of XC) that are often very crowded with both passengers and luggage.

I think you missed the point - is there the demand for people to use a bike *at both ends of their journey* ? Or are they happy to cycle to the station and then get the train plus whatever at the other end?

One of the biggest uses is people going on cycling trips. This is why Scotrail have added the modified class 153s to some services on the West Highland Line, to accommodate people taking their bikes. I suspect that people commuting who need to use a bike at both ends of the journey may be an issue as well, and fear of having their bike stolen or damaged at the station means people are less likely to want to buy two bikes and leave one at either end of their journey.

 

[Peter Sarf]

.......................

One of the biggest uses is people going on cycling trips. This is why Scotrail have added the modified class 153s to some services on the West Highland Line, to accommodate people taking their bikes. I suspect that people commuting who need to use a bike at both ends of the journey may be an issue as well, and fear of having their bike stolen or damaged at the station means people are less likely to want to buy two bikes and leave one at either end of their journey.

For commuters I suspect the bake hire schemes might be preferable, certainly at the city end. But losing ones bike is what putts me off - I do not really have a safe place for it even at home and most people I know are in that situation (flats or small houses).

Granted the predominance of busses in London and my Oyster card make cycling less necessary.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For commuters I suspect the bake hire schemes might be preferable, certainly at the city end. But losing ones bike is what putts me off - I do not really have a safe place for it even at home and most people I know are in that situation (flats or small houses).

Granted the predominance of busses in London and my Oyster card make cycling less necessary.

Bike/train/bike doesn't really work at all for mass urban commuting. You need a lot of bikes for it to work. That's why the London hire stations are mostly deliberately located not directly outside stations, this limits demand to those willing to walk a short way to get one. And taking your own means needing a lot of station storage at the big city end, and if everyone took a folder, even a Brompton, trains would struggle to accommodate them, most commuter trains aren't designed for lots of luggage.

Really, for urban onward travel, you need quality mass public transport like Tubes, buses and trams, with hire bikes and Bromptons being more of a taxi substitute for a minority of passengers.

Cycling to the station at origin does work better as the need for storage at the station is more distributed, buses tend to be sparse or nonexistent when commuters are setting out, and cycle storage takes up less space per user than car parking.

 

[A0]

There is a world beyond the WCML. The ECML, MML, GWML and XCML regularly see 5-car trains (or even 4 in the case of XC) that are often very crowded with both passengers and luggage.

On the genuinely busy corridors apart from on the MML, which will soon be getting new stock with much increased capacity, you don't see many if any 5 car operations.

The ECML is busiest between London and Leeds - the ECML doesn't serve anything like the same level of population as the WCML and its destinations are less popular.

On the GWML the "main" flows aren't run with 5 cars - the peripheral ones are e.g. Oxford to Worcester, beyond Plymouth Cheltenham. The main flows on the GWML are Reading, Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff.

This is why Scotrail have added the modified class 153s to some services on the West Highland Line, to accommodate people taking their bikes. I suspect that people commuting who need to use a bike at both ends of the journey may be an issue as well, and fear of having their bike stolen or damaged at the station means people are less likely to want to buy two bikes and leave one at either end of their journey.

The West Highland line is a complete outlier - in terms of "normal" use a 2 car DMU (156 or 158) is ample capacity. That you have *one* line which represents less than 1% of the journeys on the national rail network is in no way an indication that

One of the biggest uses is people going on cycling trips.

 

[stevieinselby]

On the genuinely busy corridors apart from on the MML, which will soon be getting new stock with much increased capacity, you don't see many if any 5 car operations.

The ECML is busiest between London and Leeds - the ECML doesn't serve anything like the same level of population as the WCML and its destinations are less popular.

On the GWML the "main" flows aren't run with 5 cars - the peripheral ones are e.g. Oxford to Worcester, beyond Plymouth Cheltenham. The main flows on the GWML are Reading, Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff.

On a typical day, you might expect to see up to half a dozen GW trains to Bristol, South Wales and Exeter/Plymouth run with 5-car trains (and I'm talking about daytime trains here, not the dead of night), and likewise on LNER it is far from uncommon to see Leeds/beyond trains as 5-car, not to mention Lumo on a core route to Edinburgh, and HT services are often extremely busy at least as far as Doncaster.

The West Highland line is a complete outlier - in terms of "normal" use a 2 car DMU (156 or 158) is ample capacity. That you have *one* line which represents less than 1% of the journeys on the national rail network is in no way an indication that

Sorry, when I said "biggest uses", I was meaning of people taking a bike on a train rather than of all passengers. Sure, on most lines the proportion of passengers taking a bike with them is very low, out of the people who do take their bike on a train a lot of them will be going somewhere to ride their bike, rather than just using it for convenience at the other end of the journey.

 

[43066]

On the genuinely busy corridors apart from on the MML, which will soon be getting new stock with much increased capacity, you don't see many if any 5 car operations.

This is just factually incorrect.

On the ECML Lumo, GC and LNER all run five car trains, the former three exclusively so.

On the MML EMR’s new stock may have increased capacity, but will still mostly as run as five cars.

 

[J-2739]

This is just factually incorrect.

On the ECML Lumo, GC and LNER all run five car trains, the former three exclusively so.

On the MML EMR’s new stock may have increased capacity, but will still mostly as run as five cars.

Though I suppose on the busiest flow on the ECML (London - Edinburgh), the vast majority of capacity is supplied with the nine car Azumas (with maybe the odd substitution with a ten car).

Apart from airport express trains (obviously), are there any particular services that seem to attract the most luggage per passenger? I'm thinking the longest services such as London - Inverness, and these are pretty much always the nine car Azuma?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Apart from airport express trains (obviously), are there any particular services that seem to attract the most luggage per passenger? I'm thinking the longest services such as London - Inverness, and these are pretty much always the nine car Azuma?

The GWR Cornwall services are one of the worst in my experience. This service really could do with a dedicated 9 car subfleet with luggage racks in all four door pocket spaces and other improvements for long distance like better seats, a proper buffet and a sit down restaurant European style. Possibly even a dedicated area for surfboards and the likes.

I think once you get further than London-Manchester/Bristol and the likes most people are going away for long enough to need a reasonably sized bag.

 

[A0]

This is just factually incorrect.

On the ECML Lumo, GC and LNER all run five car trains, the former three exclusively so.

On the MML EMR’s new stock may have increased capacity, but will still mostly as run as five cars.

On the ECML - GC and Hull Trains aren't serving "the genuinely busy corridors".

LNER run 5 cars on quieter routes - not usually Leeds for example.

I didn't say there *weren't* 5 car operations, I did say they weren't on the primary flows - which ordinarily they aren't (occasionally it *might* happen).

 

[J-2739]

The GWR Cornwall services are one of the worst in my experience. This service really could do with a dedicated 9 car subfleet with luggage racks in all four door pocket spaces and other improvements for long distance like better seats, a proper buffet and a sit down restaurant European style. Possibly even a dedicated area for surfboards and the likes.

Perhaps this type of service would even warrant its own dedicated carriage to fit all the surfboards and baggage of passengers heading down to their second homes, like an active travel class 153 on steroids...

I think once you get further than London-Manchester/Bristol and the likes most people are going away for long enough to need a reasonably sized bag.

I think I agree here.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Perhaps this type of service would even warrant its own dedicated carriage to fit all the surfboards and baggage of passengers heading down to their second homes, like an active travel class 153 on steroids...

I don't think that's a smiley. In more sensible days, it'd probably have a full BG (brake guard) for luggage.

People moan about the seats on IETs, but actually the biggest flaw in the IET project was having commuter* interiors for long distance services. It simply doesn't work. Yes, Lumo sort of make it work for their services by restricting luggage to basically what a traditional airline offers to carry on, but they're an add on you can use to save money if their restrictions are acceptable to you, which kind of works because most of their traffic is going to be short city breaks, it's not the main service and it's not primarily people going for their annual bucket and spade which the Penzance very much is in summer. Bristol to London isn't much more than West Midlands Trains with a pointy nose, to be fair, and the IET as built is fine for those, but the GWR services that turn left at Reading (bar the Bedwyn) are very, very different things indeed.

It is very notable how doubling the size of most luggage racks on Pendolinos has largely fixed the luggage-in-doorways problem on those. The only place it hasn't is Coach A where the rack hasn't been expanded, funnily enough.

* Yes, with end doors, but things like luggage provision aren't really much better on the GWR units than a Desiro.

 

[Indigo Soup]

People moan about the seats on IETs, but actually the biggest flaw in the IET project was having commuter* interiors for long distance services.

I don't know how much interworking there is between the Bristol & South Wales sets and the South West sets, but I expect that LNER-spec trains for the South West routes - with a small buffet and about double the luggage space - would go down well.

Having said that, after experiencing the 1700 Paddington to Bristol the other week, I can see why they were specified as commuter trains!