Do branch lines contribute much financially to the greater network?

[MattRat]

Ah, I can see why you are misunderstanding, I am referring to St Ives (Cambridgeshire) and its Busway.

Not really your fault when they copy and paste names....

But why a Busway and not a tram?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not really your fault when they copy and paste names....

But why a Busway and not a tram?

There are lots of threads on it, but the main reasons/benefits are thus:

1. The buses "fan out" and serve a load of different smaller villages after St Ives. It wouldn't be cost effective to do this with a tram, and none of them (other than possibly Huntingdon) would justify the tram alone, so people would need to change to a bus.
2. It has been very cheap to increase capacity as it has been wildly more popular than expected - Stagecoach have just brought in more conventional buses (including some very large tri-axle deckers) and added guidewheels. A tram or train order takes over a year, potentially.
3. Cambridge railway station is nowhere near the city centre for historic reasons, and so a bus can run on the road into the actual city centre where people want to go.

Gosport is another place where a Busway has been used to "reopen" an old branch line with this sort of feature, as is Leigh. It wouldn't suit all of them (there is, for instance, little point in building one down the Conwy Valley as the main road is typically uncongested, so if you're going to run buses, just run them on the road) but there may be others where the concept would work.

It is in my view worth a ride if you're in the area, as it has a lovely olde-worlde country branch line feel to it, particularly with things like the unlit wooden platforms at Fen Drayton nature reserve.

It has in the past been called things like "the misguided busway" but in reality it is very popular and does far more for the money than the likely alternative, a two-car 1980s DMU (or at best a 170) once an hour terminating at a railway station located nowhere near where people want to go.

 

[simonw]

Someone would have to tot up all of the revenue from tickets to and from stations on a given route and apportion it between the route and the rest of the network somehow. For something like the S&C, which is a secondary route but not a branch, you would need to apportion through revenue to it as well.

I'm not sure that the railway's data systems are sophisticated enough.

really can't see it as that difficult to do, if the will was there.

 

[yorksrob]

really can't see it as that difficult to do, if the will was there.

If you have ten passengers travelling from Manchester to Windermere, how does one know how many of them would still travel from Manchester to Oxenholme if the Branch to Windermere wasn't there ?

 

[simonw]

If you have ten passengers travelling from Manchester to Windermere, how does one know how many of them would still travel from Manchester to Oxenholme if the Branch to Windermere wasn't there ?

That's a different question, but a sample can be asked.

 

[Wynd]

Somewhere further up thread someone pointed out the fact that some bus services are competing for rail travel. If, and bear with me on this, we readjusted the whole transport offering to guarantee connections, and use buses as last mile/5/10 mile additions to the rail network, we would increase rail revenue whilst simultaneously connecting communities better.

In the context of this thread it would be interesting to take a holistic view of a given transport network and establish how much is spent on cars, buses and rail and then ascertain that if a line is loss-making, but a community is spending significant sums on transport, how could the revenue be directed on the rail service.

To put a point on this, there are plenty of instances where local communities are spending vast sums on transport, the bus is being heavily subsidized and rail connections are non existent. Then we get in to discussions of how profitable or not a local branch line is.

Rail infrastructure is a national investment. We are all shareholders in this network. Buses, typically, are owned by private interests and typically export their profits either offshore or in to the hands of a very select few.

Horses and carts spring to mind.

 

[The exile]

A bad example to make such a point - between Newcastle and Edinburgh there really isn't anywhere significant en route.

Even now Morpeth (the biggest place along there) is only 14,000 people. The whole of Northumberland only has a population of 320k even today. Cumbria has almost 500k by comparison.

Back then Edinburgh - London trains could have been diverted via the Carlisle and the WCML with a minimal time penalty - looking at Timetable world, the 1963 Eastern Region timetable shows London - Edinburgh services took ~6 hours Glasgow - Euston ~ 7 hours. Carlisle - Euston in ~ 5 hours - so a via Carlisle, Edinburgh service would have been 6 - 6.5 hours.

No - the “end to end” was Edinburgh to London ( the WCML was to absorb that) - anyone travelling between Edinburgh and anywhere north of Doncaster would have basically been left high and dry.

 

[Starmill]

Someone would have to tot up all of the revenue from tickets to and from stations on a given route and apportion it between the route and the rest of the network somehow. For something like the S&C, which is a secondary route but not a branch, you would need to apportion through revenue to it as well.

I'm not sure that the railway's data systems are sophisticated enough.

To be fair, that's exactly what the tool does, and has been doing since the days of the BR Mainframe.

Northern (or their consultants) can inspect the link between Oxenholme and Kendal and see travel volumes and revenue between those two stations. They already know precisely how many Windermere - Manchester, Windermere - London, Kendal - Birmingham and Staveley - Lancaster tickets are sold, along with all of the other combinations. There are even a whole lot of very clever infills to add non-LENNON third party sales and try to correct for specific known anomalies e.g. Everyone buying season tickets from the end of the line where it is the same price, even if they regularly don't use the station at the furthest point.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jan 2022 ==

a two-car 1980s DMU (or at best a 170) once an hour terminating at a railway station located nowhere near where people want to go.

This is almost word for word what the Portishead branch will do. Not good.

 

[MattRat]

Somewhere further up thread someone pointed out the fact that some bus services are competing for rail travel. If, and bear with me on this, we readjusted the whole transport offering to guarantee connections, and use buses as last mile/5/10 mile additions to the rail network, we would increase rail revenue whilst simultaneously connecting communities better.

In the context of this thread it would be interesting to take a holistic view of a given transport network and establish how much is spent on cars, buses and rail and then ascertain that if a line is loss-making, but a community is spending significant sums on transport, how could the revenue be directed on the rail service.

To put a point on this, there are plenty of instances where local communities are spending vast sums on transport, the bus is being heavily subsidized and rail connections are non existent. Then we get in to discussions of how profitable or not a local branch line is.

Rail infrastructure is a national investment. We are all shareholders in this network. Buses, typically, are owned by private interests and typically export their profits either offshore or in to the hands of a very select few.

Horses and carts spring to mind.

Well despite my preference to train over bus, the biggest enemy is the car. If we can find a way to beat the car, all public transport will benefit.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's a different question, but a sample can be asked.

While I think there is no chance of that particular branch closing, you would also want to know how people might feel about a bus in the railway timetable/fare system with decent luggage space, coach seats etc from right outside to Ambleside or Bowness, which are more of destinations than Windermere itself (though it is nicer than it was).

I also think they would get more passengers by public transport to Keswick if the X4/X5 which already serves the station was in the railway systems and e-ticketable.

 

[Bald Rick]

In terms of staffing costs, I do wonder whether that is a bit of a red herring, given that fares have also been rising above inflation for a lot of the period as well. There are generally also mopre passengers who will be paying increased fares at the same time.

Staff costs per employee have increased over the past 30 years for a number of reasons:

1) typically RPI or RPI+ pay rises (except for management for the past 10 years or so)
2) substantially increased pension contributions from employers
3) increased NI costs for employers
4) increased training / competency costs, not just the trainers but the paid time it takes out of each individual’s work year.

It’s also fair to say that more people are needed to deliver the same output in some parts of the railway. Part of that is linked to 4 above.

1. Improved safety standards (not just a rail issue, look at how much a mile of new motorway costs nowadays)
2. Higher construction costs (not just a rail issue, look at how much a mile of new motorway costs nowadays)
3. Staffing costs (not just the hourly pay but also pensions etc)

Safety standards have hurt the most in how work is done on the line. Much work has been shifted to overnight and weekends as a result, and many people are frankly under employed but still need to be. It is not unusual for maintenance teams to do as little as 2-3 hours actual work in an 8 hour shift, because they can’t get safe access to the track for any longer.

Higher construction costs applies right through maintenance, renewal and enhancements. Part of this is improved safety standards and engineering standards. Part is due to delivering on a whole life cost basis - better kit now to save cash in the long run. Part is undoing the ‘wrongs’ of the decades of under investment with BR, where (frankly) many corners were cut which are expensive to put right many years later.

But perhaps the biggest cost driver is that we are running a lot ‘more railway’ than BR ever was. It necessarily more network (although there is more, especially in track mileage), but more trains running to more stations at higher speeds with better track quality (yes really) to much better levels of safety precursor incidents. And until two years ago, many more passengers using them, which brings extra cost. I forget the detail but the rebuilt London Bridge station costs something like three times what the old one did -lots more escalators, much more back of house kit, more people to supervise a much bigger area etc etc. Kings Cross, New Street, Queen St, etc etc will be similar.

Sure, their costs are high as a proportion of the fare income they generate, but are they actually much of a real burden for the rail network as a whole?

No part of the railway is much of a burden as part of the whole, if you break it down small enough. But the savings have to come from somewhere. I’m not advocating any particular course of action by the way!

 

[tbtc]

Firstly, I don't follow your logic as to how the construction of the Skye bridge renders the Kyle of Lochalsh line as serving "little purpose". Surely one needs to actually get to the bridge in order to use it, and the train delivers people to it just as it did the ferry

When people needed to take a ferry over to Kyleakin then the railway could compete with cars/coaches

Now that the cars/coaches can go straight over to Skye, the ferry is no more, so the train only serves a town with a population of a few hundred rather than being a competitive way of getting to the major tourist destination of an island of ten thousand people - whereas in the pre-bridge era, the railway had a fighting chance (if you're going to have to wait for a ferry and factor in that cost then the complication of a car/boat didn't make the train look too bad - whereas nowadays you'd get off the train at Kyle and board the coach to Skye that has come from Inverness in the first place!

The train station was in a great location for ferries, whereas the bridge is some distance away - the train certainly doesn't "deliver" people to the bridge

Similarly, the Stranraer branch now falls between two stools - in an era where most of the Northern Ireland journeys are flights, and the ferries now go from Cairnryan instead, the railway is left serving a redundant ferry terminal on the the fringes of Stranraer - when the markets change we should be able to reassess whether rail is still fit for purpose rather than propping up stations/ services because That's What We've Always Done

We don't want to stop electrification due to the climate emergency, so the sensible option would be to delay or scale down the sorts of projects that would enhance the commuter network, which are likely to be less urgent due to covid related changes to working patterns

You can't play the "climate emergency" card whilst also demanding that we keep running all of these lightly loaded branch lines (where the DMU is more polluting than putting every passenger in a taxi)!

Staffing costs, you have a point, but secondary and branch lines aren't exactly overrun with large numbers of staff

Total staffing costs on a two coach DMU on a rural line can be similar to staffing costs for a two hundred metre EMU (possibly even higher because the EMU may be DOO), but those staffing costs are a much bigger proportion of the ticket revenue for branchline passengers since the staff wages (and other costs) have to be shared between a fairly small number of people, compared to several hundred on a busy EMU

In terms of train leasing costs, the model of ROSCO's doing maintenance etc seems to be relatively new. What do we have to show for the cost of paying for legacy stock over and over again ?

Well, the ROSCOs did pay a price for the "legacy" stock in the first place - it's just like a mortgage - see the property then lease it back - the alternative would be the Government charging TOCs directly?

But I think that it's another example of fixating on a small detail rather than the much bigger areas of cost increases (it's one step up from the people who think that repainting trains every five years when a franchise changes hands is the reason the railway needs billions more subsidy)

 

[quantinghome]

No part of the railway is much of a burden as part of the whole, if you break it down small enough. But the savings have to come from somewhere. I’m not advocating any particular course of action by the way!

Of course, but it's the same dozen or so lightly used rural lines which get name checked whenever cost cutting is mentioned. If that's all we're talking about, how much of a saving would their closure really generate?

 

[MattRat]

Of course, but it's the same dozen or so lightly used rural lines which get name checked whenever cost cutting is mentioned. If that's all we're talking about, how much of a saving would their closure really generate?

Not enough most likely, just like the first time lines were closed. History has a habit of repeating itself.....

 

[Bald Rick]

Of course, but it's the same dozen or so lightly used rural lines which get name checked whenever cost cutting is mentioned. If that's all we're talking about, how much of a saving would their closure really generate?

A few tens of millions pa in operational costs, and then more next time it floods down the Conwy valley.

 

[Starmill]

Of course, but it's the same dozen or so lightly used rural lines which get name checked whenever cost cutting is mentioned. If that's all we're talking about, how much of a saving would their closure really generate?

If we took Tain - Wick and Girvan - Stranraer as examples, from closing both we could expect to save maybe low single figures of percentage points of ScotRail cost, more if we're mothballing the infrastructure entirely. Enough to protect the other little used and heavily subsidised routes such as the West Highland and the Maryhill line.

The quid pro quo is we'd need some capital spend to put new bus terminals in and get some vehicles branded, and I personally would look at battery 380 or 385 units to work to Girvan and build a station at Evanton between Dingwall and Tain.

If we wanted to offer more frequent services between Girvan and Ayr and between Tain and Inverness, which I'd suggest would absolutely be needed in order to sell such a package, that would then take back some of the annual subsidy too.

 

[quantinghome]

A few tens of millions pa in operational costs, and then more next time it floods down the Conwy valley.

Out of a total industry expenditure of £20bn per year.

 

[A0]

No - the “end to end” was Edinburgh to London ( the WCML was to absorb that) - anyone travelling between Edinburgh and anywhere north of Doncaster would have basically been left high and dry.

Not necessarily.

There could have been Edinburgh - Newcastle via Carlisle, there could have been York / Leeds via Preston.

 

[MattRat]

Not necessarily.

There could have been Edinburgh - Newcastle via Carlisle, there could have been York / Leeds via Preston.

Ah yes, becuase circles are the new straight lines.....

 

[tbtc]

Out of a total industry expenditure of £20bn per year.

We're at the stage where people complain that closing something like the Conwy Valley is both "full Serpell" and also "pointless because it's only a few million quid" - i.e. anyone suggesting a minor closure is both accused of wanting to close everything and also chastised for being too modest

We have a railway where people complain about the cost of repainting trains and replacing signage every five years or so but also there's no point in cutting services that'll only save a few million quid...

...should the same apply in the opposite direction too - e.g. there's no point in re-opening any line unless it brings in at least a million passengers a year? Or are minor expansions essential but minor contractions pointless?

 

[quantinghome]

We're at the stage where people complain that closing something like the Conwy Valley is both "full Serpell" and also "pointless because it's only a few million quid" - i.e. anyone suggesting a minor closure is both accused of wanting to close everything and also chastised for being too modest

We have a railway where people complain about the cost of repainting trains and replacing signage every five years or so but also there's no point in cutting services that'll only save a few million quid...

...should the same apply in the opposite direction too - e.g. there's no point in re-opening any line unless it brings in at least a million passengers a year? Or are minor expansions essential but minor contractions pointless?

I think it's a distraction ultimately. Lightly used rural lines are neither here nor there. They are clearly a financial basket case but ultimately neither their continued operation nor possible closure will alter the key issue that the passenger railway will require billions of pounds of government support, just like pretty much every other passenger railway in the world. Closing the rural lines won't save the core network from a government intent on cost-cutting.

 

[A0]

Ah yes, becuase circles are the new straight lines.....

Given that Carlisle is further East than Edinburgh it really isn't the issue you're trying to make out as Newcastle - Edinburgh isn't a straight line by a long chalk.

 

[yorksrob]

We have a railway where people complain about the cost of repainting trains and replacing signage every five years or so but also there's no point in cutting services that'll only save a few million quid...

That's because the train service is sort of what the railway is actually there for, rather than exciting corporate rebrandings.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Jan 2022 ==

When people needed to take a ferry over to Kyleakin then the railway could compete with cars/coaches

Now that the cars/coaches can go straight over to Skye, the ferry is no more, so the train only serves a town with a population of a few hundred rather than being a competitive way of getting to the major tourist destination of an island of ten thousand people - whereas in the pre-bridge era, the railway had a fighting chance (if you're going to have to wait for a ferry and factor in that cost then the complication of a car/boat didn't make the train look too bad - whereas nowadays you'd get off the train at Kyle and board the coach to Skye that has come from Inverness in the first place!

The train station was in a great location for ferries, whereas the bridge is some distance away - the train certainly doesn't "deliver" people to the bridge

Similarly, the Stranraer branch now falls between two stools - in an era where most of the Northern Ireland journeys are flights, and the ferries now go from Cairnryan instead, the railway is left serving a redundant ferry terminal on the the fringes of Stranraer - when the markets change we should be able to reassess whether rail is still fit for purpose rather than propping up stations/ services because That's What We've Always Done



You can't play the "climate emergency" card whilst also demanding that we keep running all of these lightly loaded branch lines (where the DMU is more polluting than putting every passenger in a taxi)!



Total staffing costs on a two coach DMU on a rural line can be similar to staffing costs for a two hundred metre EMU (possibly even higher because the EMU may be DOO), but those staffing costs are a much bigger proportion of the ticket revenue for branchline passengers since the staff wages (and other costs) have to be shared between a fairly small number of people, compared to several hundred on a busy EMU



Well, the ROSCOs did pay a price for the "legacy" stock in the first place - it's just like a mortgage - see the property then lease it back - the alternative would be the Government charging TOCs directly?

But I think that it's another example of fixating on a small detail rather than the much bigger areas of cost increases (it's one step up from the people who think that repainting trains every five years when a franchise changes hands is the reason the railway needs billions more subsidy)

In terms of Skye, I can think of a lot of people (myself included) who would rather do the bulk of the journey by train, rather than have to get a coach all the way. Perhaps this is a case where a bus service on skye connecting with the train would work well.

In terms of climate emergency, I'm sure that a less carbon intensive solution will be found for rural railway lines. Keeping diesels on would only be for a few routes that really couldn't operate with an alternative (assuming that this is the case - In only taking @Starmill 's word for it).

In terms of staying costs, your conveniently forgetting the greater numbers of staffed stations on non-rural routes and indeed the greater number of train staff on inter-city routes. Something like the Whitby line really isn't over-staffed, even compared to a bus service.

The alternative to the Rosco's would be the railway opening its rolling stock and running it into the ground once it's value has depreciated.

 

[Falcon1200]

Given that Carlisle is further East than Edinburgh it really isn't the issue you're trying to make out as Newcastle - Edinburgh isn't a straight line by a long chalk.

Newcastle-Edinburgh direct is not a straight line by any means, of course, but it is considerably more direct than going via Carlisle, which incurs additional running time of at least an hour and is in no way an acceptable alternative, except in unavoidable circumstances.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Newcastle-Edinburgh direct is not a straight line by any means, of course, but it is considerably more direct than going via Carlisle, which incurs additional running time of at least an hour and is in no way an acceptable alternative, except in unavoidable circumstances.

I suspect that had the Berwick route been closed, the Newcastle-Carlisle line would have been upgraded, electrified and had all the local stations closed, which would have meant it not quite as bad as an hour - but it would have still been considerably longer. Carlisle is indeed (a tiny bit) east of Edinburgh (it's easy to forget that the UK is on a bit of a slant) but the WCML goes a long way west to Carstairs before it goes back east towards Edinburgh, it is not a straight line either, far from it.

There are closures that would make sense (though only a few, maybe low single-figures, which is why the same ones - the Conwy Valley and Stranraer - keep coming up repeatedly, rather than any sensible* new ones being identified). But this one was absolutely nuts, but it is totally unsurprising to see our resident anti-rail posters, @A0wen and @daodao, attempting to justify this kind of thing.

Closing a little one-train-every-three-hours branch line with an uncongested main road next to it capable of maintaining the exact same timetable with a bus is one thing, closing part of one of the UK's premier InterCity routes is quite another, and the mind boggles as to how that proposal could possibly be seen as anything other than a serious error.

* Kyle is a valid point, but in a sensible world there would be through ticketed connecting buses from there onto Skye over the bridge, not a competing Citylink coach.

 

[tbtc]

I think it's a distraction ultimately. Lightly used rural lines are neither here nor there. They are clearly a financial basket case but ultimately neither their continued operation nor possible closure will alter the key issue that the passenger railway will require billions of pounds of government support, just like pretty much every other passenger railway in the world. Closing the rural lines won't save the core network from a government intent on cost-cutting.

Can we have a threshold over which a cost is "neither here nor there" then?

Because people on here love to complain about minor expenditures, e.g. repainting signs when a franchise changes hands or a handful of people who calculate/assign "delay minutes", but happily shrug off lightly used branch lines that soak up millions of pounds in subsidy on the grounds that it's only a small fraction of the billions that the Government spend propping the railway up

That's because the train service is sort of what the railway is actually there for, rather than exciting corporate rebrandings

...and yet you get so worked up about the cost of a bit of new vinyl every five years, yet turn a blind eye to the millions spent elsewhere...

In terms of Skye, I can think of a lot of people (myself included) who would rather do the bulk of the journey by train, rather than have to get a coach all the way

I thought that the Forum mantra was that "passengers like direct services, having to change en-route makes journeys unattractive"?

Or is it okay to change, as long as that means more time spent on trains, rather than taking a direct coach?

Face it, the opening of the bridge to Skye, and the removal of tolls makes the railway redundant for most of the journeys that it used to be competitive for - move on and focus resources on routes where rail can compete better

In terms of climate emergency, I'm sure that a less carbon intensive solution will be found for rural railway lines

Even if you electrify it, you're still operating mass transportation for passenger numbers that'll struggle to half fill a minibus a lot of the time - this is the danger with people tempted to play the "climate emergency" card, it works both ways, a lightly used train isn't very "green" if the passengers would emit less pollution if they travelled by other means

In terms of staying costs, your conveniently forgetting the greater numbers of staffed stations on non-rural routes and indeed the greater number of train staff on inter-city routes. Something like the Whitby line really isn't over-staffed, even compared to a bus service

Even if you add on the people working at staffed stations and the slightly increase in staff numbers on some InterCity services (mainly catering), those wages are still spread between hundreds of people on a typical InterCity service, the thousands of people who use that station each day - whereas even if a rural DMU only has two members of staff (and no cleaner/ trolley, no staffed stations), the two members of staff are being paid for by a much smaller number of people who use that service over the course of the day

A ten/twelve coach train is much more efficient to run than a two coach train because there's still only one driver/conductor to pay for, but that driver/conductor has ten times more people on board their service - even if you add in several ticket office staff and a second conductor, the InterCity route wins hands down

The alternative to the Rosco's would be the railway opening its rolling stock and running it into the ground once it's value has depreciated.

So the Government would own all trains and lease them to TOCs? The Government would set up an open market where TOCs would have to compete for the stock that they wanted? The Government would control all new builds of trains too, and the taxpayer left with the waste of money spent on modern stock that nobody wants to touch (e.g. 350/2s)? Do you think that a Government that had inflicted a decade of austerity on public services would be keen to invest hundreds of millions of taxpayers money on new trains?

Ah, not, wait, I've got it... you know deep down that by forcing all train orders to be entirely funded/ordered by the Government, we'd see very little in the way of new trains other than when old ones were literally falling apart, which means we'd have to be stuck with all of your favourite childhood trains... sneaky!

 

[Wynd]

...closing part of one of the UK's premier InterCity routes is quite another, and the mind boggles as to how that proposal could possibly be seen as anything other than a serious error.

* Kyle is a valid point, but in a sensible world there would be through ticketed connecting buses from there onto Skye over the bridge, not a competing Citylink coach.

Surely no one who spends any time on the ECML can be proposing such an idea.....?

Ah, yes, buses working with trains, delighted to see I'm not alone.

 

[quantinghome]

Can we have a threshold over which a cost is "neither here nor there" then?

Because people on here love to complain about minor expenditures, e.g. repainting signs when a franchise changes hands or a handful of people who calculate/assign "delay minutes", but happily shrug off lightly used branch lines that soak up millions of pounds in subsidy on the grounds that it's only a small fraction of the billions that the Government spend propping the railway up

You'd have to speak to the people complaining about minor expenditure.

I'm arguing against the idea that we can lop off the lightly used parts of the network and voila! the network's funding problems are solved. It's not where the main problem is.

 

[daodao]

But this one was absolutely nuts, but it is totally unsurprising to see our resident anti-rail posters, @A0wen and @daodao, attempting to justify this kind of thing.

I never proposed closure of the ECML north of Newcastle - see my post 65 in this thread. https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ly-to-the-greater-network.226749/post-5481157

 

[Bletchleyite]

I thought that the Forum mantra was that "passengers like direct services, having to change en-route makes journeys unattractive"?

Or is it okay to change, as long as that means more time spent on trains, rather than taking a direct coach?

I think there are very, very few people who, if given the choice between a long coach journey, or a long rail journey followed by a short bus journey, with the modes well-integrated, would choose the former.

The reason people don't like changing trains in the UK is that integration is poor even between TOCs. If you go to London you'll see loads of people making connectional journeys on the Tube quite happily because the effort of doing so is low.

Edit: it might be worth the saving to close the Kyle line, but it would be fantasy to suggest that all users would switch to a coach service, in practice most will switch to a car. It might even change the overall journey for some from rail to flight+hire car.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Jan 2022 ==

I never proposed closure of the ECML north of Newcastle - see my post 65 in this thread. https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ly-to-the-greater-network.226749/post-5481157

It was a general point that you and @A0wen are generally quite anti-rail (or perhaps rather very right wing on how it should be funded). I should maybe have worded it better, as it was @A0wen who proposed it in this case.