Do direct London services actually matter?

[ChiefPlanner]

Renember Operation Princess where no one seemed to have thought that running half-length trains twice as often would soon result in horrendous overcrowding?

Not to mention a serious increase in train crew etc costs........

 

[The Ham]

Sure, but (a) crew are cheaper than vehicles, and (ii) even if the crew need their breaks then, it still doesn't make sense for doubling of service to require more than doubling of resources. It should be more efficient to keep vehicles in service as much as possible and have crew swap between them instead of having vehicles sitting idle for long periods of time ... they don't need a PNB between journeys!

For example crew need a 30 minute brake they arrive on the xx:00, which then becomes the xx:15, the crew from the previous train (having been on the incoming train 45 minute earlier) run the xx:15 whilst the crew from the xx:00 then run the xx:45.

That allows for a 10 minute delay before there's questions about breaks being too short.

Conversely the xx:00 arrival becomes the xx:35 departure, either you hope that trains are on time all the time so the staff have their 30 minute break or you have to have spare crew anyway to ensure that have at least a 30 minute break (in which case your extra staff costs to go to 2tph from 1tph are definitely not double).

Anyway, if you want to look at where the big costs of the railways are (year to March 2024):
£4.1bn TOC support
£8.3bn NR grant
£9.5bn NR/HS2 investment in enhancement
£0.3bn other

As such, excluding investment, the big railway cost is the NR grant, so if you can do anything to spread that across more passengers the outcome could be a lower per passenger amount of support (even if the TOC level of support increases a little).

If the person tax payer support doubled to £840 but passenger usage was such that everyone made on average 100 trips a year by train (up from 25 now) then far more people would see that as good value.

 

[Trainbike46]

In the context of this thread, I think we need to consider increases in local frequency as an alternative to extra direct London services. Both of these options will increase cost relative to not doing anything, but increased local frequency has a bunch of extra benefits:
- Improved options for using the railway for local journeys
- Improved connections for all destinations, not just London
- Less likely to need to upgrade bottlenecks on mainlines (as no extra mainline services needed)

That is why my preference would be to improve local services, even if it is slightly more expensive than adding in a few direct London services per day

 

[stevieinselby]

For example crew need a 30 minute brake they arrive on the xx:00, which then becomes the xx:15, the crew from the previous train (having been on the incoming train 45 minute earlier) run the xx:15 whilst the crew from the xx:00 then run the xx:45.

So now the crew who arrive on the xx:00 still step back and take out the xx:45 and the crew who arrive on the xx:30 take out the xy:15, and then you add in a train arriving at xx:15 whose crew take out the xy:00 and a train arriving at xx:45 whose crew take out the xy:30. You just repeat the existing pattern but shifted by 15 minutes (if going from a 30 min frequency to 15) or by 30 minutes (if going from an hourly frequency to 30 mins)