You mentioned money raised by stopping in Beds? The Beds stations are actually FCC stations, not EMT, and therefore any ticket purchased to travel to London from Bedford or Luton must surely go to FCC and not EMT? I gather that on the West Coast and East Coast lines that travel on the long distance services from, say, Milton Keynes or Peterborough cost extra as both towns are served by frequent electric local services, as is Bedford and Luton. Therefore, in fairness to those of us who are being 100% monopolised in Northants by EMT why can't they make those joining in Beds pay a supplement? It can be done and is done on other lines.
It depends on who sets the fares, not on who manages the station. Here are some Off Peak Day Return examples:
[P'Boro - London]: An
ANY PERMITTED ticket costs £24.50 (fare set by NXEC), and a
FCC ONLY ticket costs £20 (fare set by FCC).
[MK Central - London]: An
ANY PERMITTED ticket costs £20, and a
LDN MIDLND.ONLY ticket costs £14.50 (both fares set by LMR).
[Bedford - London]: An
ANY PERMITTED ticket costs £16 (fare set by FCC).
Roughly speaking, there is a rule which decrees that whoever sets the fare for an inter-available ticket (generally of the
ANY PERMITTED type) may not set a lower fare (with a restrictive routeing) for that same type of ticket, unless it is for a short trial period.
With that in mind:
[P'Boro - London]: NXEC services are more frequent than FCC services, so the control of fares here is no surprise. In total there are 7 'walk-up' tickets (including First/Standard season tickets) which can be sold with either routeing.
[MK Central - London]: The cheaper ticket only exists because it is a trial, although it has been around for some months and I don't know how much longer it will be sold for. In any case, there are 8 other widespread 'walk-up' tickets (including First/Standard season tickets), all of which are sold
only with the
ANY PERMITTED routeing, so MKC pax will continue to use Virgin services at no additional cost (however high peak Virgin services run fast through MKC anyway!).
[Bedford - London]: All inter-available ticket fares are set by FCC, and judging by the MK Central scenario, I wouldn't expect them to change the fares in order to lure Bedfordshire pax away from EMT services anytime soon.
If a ticket is inter-available (i.e. it is accepted by multiple TOCs on the same overall route) then revenue is determined by the speed and frequency of their services. In
majorly simplified terms, the proportion of revenue a TOC is due (in a single day) is related to the proportion of services (in that same day) that they are responsible for; however, services that are overtaken by services of another TOC en-route do not count.
The typical off-peak frequency between Bedford and London is 6tph, of which 4tph belong to FCC and 2tph to EMT. 2 of the FCC services are overtaken by the 2 EMT services, so FCC only get half of the Bedford-London revenue made from selling inter-available tickets for that particular flow in that hour. OK, it's a simplified figure (and situation), but the fundamental point still stands - EMT make loadsa money from Bedford pax! (And also from Luton/Parkway pax, albeit to a lesser degree).
At the end of the day both Luton and Bedford are served perfectly well by FCC, but as we know many people won't use the trains and prefer to cram onto faster EMT services. In Northants we don't have that choice.
There are undoubtedly many EMT services that do become crowded thanks to Beds calls, but you seem to imply that this is always the case regardless of the time. I was on the 5-car 1500 ex-STP to Parkway today (and the 5-car 1600 ex-STP 1 week ago), and they were not crammed at all; however I have not used Luton (Central) in a while so I can't remember how crowded the semi-fast Nottingham services are compared to the semi-fast Derby services which I use.
In addition, Meridians and HSTs offer better accomodation than the 319s FCC have (even the refreshed ones, which aren't bad at all) - perhaps EMT should get some Pacers and even if they can somehow uprate them to 125mph, Beds passengers will flock back to FCC in no time!
Why then don't they just extend the Thameslink service up to Corby/Kettering, at least then EMT can stop serving Northants and the folk up north can speed by without the inconvenience of stopping!
A good idea, but I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime.
