Future routes for Open Access operators

[Neptune]

Although the only open access services that have got off the ground have involved London, it's worth remembering that among the very first proposals (possibly THE first) was the original iteration of Grand Central with a cross-Pennine service. Can't recall the exact routing or calling points they proposed but York/Hull/Leeds to Preston via the Calder Valley and Manchester Victoria rings a bell.

York - Chester using 158’s was the original proposal.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

York - Chester using 158’s was the original proposal.

Thanks. Thought they'd always planned to use short HST sets which were being handed back by VXC.

Where were they expecting to find spare 158s at that time? I don't think any operators were planning on giving them up anytime soon!

 

[Bald Rick]

Although the only open access services that have got off the ground have involved London, it's worth remembering that among the very first proposals (possibly THE first) was the original iteration of Grand Central with a cross-Pennine service. Can't recall the exact routing or calling points they proposed but York/Hull/Leeds to Preston via the Calder Valley and Manchester Victoria rings a bell.

It’s also worth remembering that it didn’t happen!

 

[Neptune]

Thanks. Thought they'd always planned to use short HST sets which were being handed back by VXC.

Where were they expecting to find spare 158s at that time? I don't think any operators were planning on giving them up anytime soon!

TPE.

The new franchise bids included total fleet replacement whoever won it.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

TPE.

The new franchise bids included total fleet replacement whoever won it.

But that was several years after the initial Grand Central proposal.

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It’s also worth remembering that it didn’t happen!

Well, touché!

 

[mike57]

Although the only open access services that have got off the ground have involved London, it's worth remembering that among the very first proposals (possibly THE first) was the original iteration of Grand Central with a cross-Pennine service. Can't recall the exact routing or calling points they proposed but York/Hull/Leeds to Preston via the Calder Valley and Manchester Victoria rings a bell.

Given the current TPE problems its a shame it isnt in place now. This also raises a question on how ticket revenue is allocated, in a hypothetical world where Grand Central were running from York to Man Vic, how would their share of the Man Vic revenue be allocated? in this case you would then have 3 operators, TPE, Northern and the hypothetical Grand Central. If TPE end up not running 50% of their services (or worse on some days, based on full timetable) do the other operators get a bigger share of the pot? In which case it would be 'bonus' time for the OA operator.

 

[Dr Day]

do the other operators get a bigger share of the pot?

AIUI, they have to formally dispute the allocation and make a claim off the operator who has got more than they 'deserve' given their level of service and provide evidence to that effect.

 

[43096]

In which case it is doomed to fail.

Let’s be honest, it’s been doomed from the start. Unless you are a crayon manufacturer.

 

[Neptune]

But that was several years after the initial Grand Central proposal.

If I remember rightly the York - Chester proposal was around 2003. This would make sense as the bids were in for the new TPE franchise with Arriva bidding 4 car class 180’s to replace the 158’s (there were renders in the internal guff).

The York - Chester routing was via Castleford, Brighouse and Newton-le-Willows IIRC (it is nearly 20 years ago).

 

[mike57]

AIUI, they have to formally dispute the allocation and make a claim off the operator who has got more than they 'deserve' given their level of service and provide evidence to that effect.

Which given the hypothetical York - Man Vic situation would be worth their while, as its a significant level of cancellations over an extended period of time.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Right now I wonder if a winning Open Access proposal would be "lease a load of 800s and just run them on whatever line [Avanti/TPE/whoever] is most screwed up at the time"...

 

[Trainbike46]

Which given the hypothetical York - Man Vic situation would be worth their while, as its a significant level of cancellations over an extended period of time.

Does ORCATS use the previously published timetable rather than the timetable that actually ran?

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Right now I wonder if a winning Open Access proposal would be "lease a load of 800s and just run them on whatever line [Avanti/TPE/whoever] is most screwed up at the time"...

That would be amazing, though clearly exclusively abstractive!

Though I guess you could argue that by keeping the service going they will prevent people giving up on rail, in that way they wouldn't be so much abstracting revenue as supporting its continued existence

 

[JonathanH]

Right now I wonder if a winning Open Access proposal would be "lease a load of 800s and just run them on whatever line [Avanti/TPE/whoever] is most screwed up at the time"...

Open Access isn't just some magic bullet that makes the railway's problems all go away. What you suggest is almost the equivalent of using staff with different terms and conditions, possibly worse, to break industrial relations issues.

 

[Iskra]

Right now I wonder if a winning Open Access proposal would be "lease a load of 800s and just run them on whatever line [Avanti/TPE/whoever] is most screwed up at the time"...

That doesn’t solve a lack of trained drivers, and would actually probably make the situation worse in the short term, not better.

 

[Trainbike46]

Open Access isn't just some magic bullet that makes the railway's problems all go away. What you suggest is almost the equivalent of using staff with different terms and conditions, possibly worse, to break industrial relations issues.

that depends on why the service is falling apart.

In the case of Avanti, except on strike days this is because there are nowhere near enough (trained) drivers employed

 

[Iskra]

Open Access isn't just some magic bullet that makes the railway's problems all go away. What you suggest is almost the equivalent of using staff with different terms and conditions, possibly worse, to break industrial relations issues.

Do rail passengers really care what contracts the staff are on? They just want a reliable service, and as the people who pay for it, they ought to have it, and it’s in everyone’s interest to deliver it.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Open Access isn't just some magic bullet that makes the railway's problems all go away. What you suggest is almost the equivalent of using staff with different terms and conditions, possibly worse, to break industrial relations issues.

You can always rely on this forum to come up with a humourless response to a tongue-in-cheek comment with a smiley after it, can't you? Hey ho.

 

[zwk500]

Do rail passengers really care what contracts the staff are on? They just want a reliable service, and as the people who pay for it, they ought to have it, and it’s in everyone’s interest to deliver it.

They might not care about contracts, but they'll start caring when everybody decides the job isn't worth it anymore and driver shortages get worse and maintenance slips further.

 

[Iskra]

They might not care about contracts, but they'll start caring when everybody decides the job isn't worth it anymore and driver shortages get worse and maintenance slips further.

Driver jobs are extremely popular.

 

[zwk500]

Driver jobs are extremely popular.

Unfortunately you need more than drivers to run a railway.

 

[Iskra]

Unfortunately you need more than drivers to run a railway.

True. You need passengers too, and if they’re driven away by the poor service, there’ll be no need for anyone else… One way of solving the staff shortages I suppose

 

[zwk500]

True. You need passengers too, and if they’re driven away by the poor service, there’ll be no need for anyone else… One way of solving the staff shortages I suppose

Indeed. However the solution to ending the strikes is not to create new conflicts by undercutting contracts.

 

[Purple Train]

To make a very silly suggestion (in response to the London-centric OA perspective, which I albeit agree with to a degree), what about a service from Dartford to Richmond, calling at Sidcup, Mottingham, Hither Green, and New Cross, before descending to the ELL and calling at a few selected stops there (Surrey Quays, Canada Water, Shadwell, Whitechapel, Dalston Junction, Highbury & Islington perhaps) then Gospel Oak, West Hampstead, Willesden Junction, Acton Central and then Richmond, using whatever spare stock they have on the depot

It'd never work but I suppose it does highlight how complex the "primarily abstractive" dynamic is from the perspective of creating a successful service.

 

[mike57]

Right now I wonder if a winning Open Access proposal would be "lease a load of 800s and just run them on whatever line [Avanti/TPE/whoever] is most screwed up at the time"...

Certainly if you offered this option to TPE customers they would I suspect be more than happy. A train that turns up, is on time, and is formed of enough coaches to ensure a seated journey (or even to be able to board in some case I have personally experienced) would definately be 'luxury service' on the York - Manchester route.

It also raises a supplementary question, is the management mindset different at the OA operators. After all if the trains dont run, or are not well patronised the operation fails, quickly, and with no bailouts. Contrast this with TPE or Avanti, dreadful service now for an extended period of time, but still in business.

 

[tbtc]

I do know from my own job that some passengers will go completely out of their way to avoid changing at New Street and what's more if the operator offered cheap fares it could tempt people a bit more

That’s the problem in these threads. I Don’t think that anyone “enjoys” changing at New Street, I think we’d all prefer a direct service to our destination instead of one that dumps us at a bewilderingly big station (especially because people unfamiliar with modern Birmingham may still think it’s the dirty/ unsafe hole in the ground that it felt like in the 1990s, perception matters)

However, the limited number of paths available through the tunnels (and a West Midlands generally) means that we currently have paths for (just?) two trains per hour from Merseyside/ greater Manchester/ Yorkshire/ Nottinghamshire/ Leicestershire/ Thames Valley/ West County and one from Cumbria/ South Wales (all of this is based on the pre-covid timetable because that seems the fairest definition to use but happy to pick another if you’d prefer?)

Now, if we try to adopt some consistent definition and say that “north” and “south” are based on the tracks that services use to approach New Street (I.e. the Stansted route is therefore “north” of Birmingham), then that’s eleven from the north versus five from the south, so it’s not possible for everywhere to get a cross-Birmingham service

As you’ll see, some through journeys are possible, some aren’t, there’s no real reason why Basingstoke to Stoke on Trent is a through train, or Alnmouth to Plymouth but not Alnmouth to Portsmouth - just coincidence

You could probably tinker with each of the routes further away from Birmingham but it’d generally be robbing Peter to pay Paul…

…you could have direct services from Portsmouth by extending the bi-hourly Reading terminators but any laudable plan to run Birmingham services to places like Middlesbrough/ Hull/Bradford would be at the expense of some Newcastle trains…

…more Leeds trains come at the cost of fewer Doncaster trains…

…giving Chester a proper fast Birmingham train via Stafford (rather than the painfully slow Welsh service that now goes via Shrewsbury/ Wrexham) would only happen if you cut the frequency to Liverpool…

And even if you did decide to reduce the frequency to Newcastle/ York/ Basingstoke/ Southampton by introducing an hourly Hull to Brighton train then it’d still mean changing at New Street for a journey like Hull to Cardiff/ Bournemouth or Liverpool to Brighton, it wouldn’t mean that Hull and Brighton had through trains to everywhere

(There’s also the problems of trying to match up EMU routes - one day we’ll have sufficient bi-modes but I don’t like running diesel trains under the wires from Birmingham to Manchester - trying to match together trains of similar lengths - the Cumbrian service is often a nine/ eleven coach electric 390 so winning some kind of “nationalist” kudos by running that onto the two/ three coach diesel Gloucester trains to provide regular direct trains from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Cardiff has obvious flaws… plus the reliability issue of keeping such a long distance service on time, assuming you could get paths into and out of New Street St similar times)

Maybe there are some flows where enough people would genuinely do long distance journeys often enough but I think that the fact that the Aberdeen-Penzance train links Inverkeithing (for Rosyth) to Plymouth (another naval place) is coincidence, rather than shy huge market of long distance Sea men

I think that some people want a timetable where everywhere in “the north” gets direct trains to everywhere in “the south” but this kind of markets are best served by National Express etc, the “put your Granny on a coach in Swansea and it’ll take her home to Peterborough” journeys aren’t going to sustain train services, they tend to only happen a couple of times a year for a start

Focus on giving all significant corridors a frequent/Reliable enough service to Birmingham, if it matches up with something on the other side (e.g. hourly/ five coach / diesel) then you might get through journeys but that’s a “bonus” - living in South Yorkshire I’d be fine with all of our trains terminating at New Street if need be, or running to Cardiff instead of Plymouth, as long as we retain the half hourly Birmingham frequency that we currently have

Same applies to services from significant corridors into Manchester/ Leeds etc, people get rather hung up on things like whether Middlesbrough trains should run through to Manchester Airport or to Liverpool, but the important thing is that Middlesbrough has a decent enough service to Leeds (and to a lesser extent to Manchester), after which any additional stops are a bonus, we can’t squeeze through direct trains from everywhere to everywhere

As for your second point about how you’d need to keep it cheap, yes, you would, but at the same time you’re not taking on a share of an existing busy flow (GC/HT had a share of markets like York/Doncaster to London from day one so knew that there was some guaranteed revenue… whereas you’re in the situation where your fares are going to have to be so cheap that I genuinely don’t know if you’d break even with every seat taken -beating in mind how expensive a lot of XC fares are and busy their trains are yet they still need subsidised - Megabus seem to have successfully evolved from being a “£1” operator to charging briefly in line with National Express but trains are much harder to operate and if you’d only make a profit if you pretty much sold every seat on board then that’s a very dangerous game!

It also raises a supplementary question, is the management mindset different at the OA operators. After all if the trains dont run, or are not well patronised the operation fails, quickly, and with no bailouts. Contrast this with TPE or Avanti, dreadful service now for an extended period of time, but still in business.

One of my fears of nationalisation (which Northern’s abandoning of a few local routes in Yorkshire hasn’t dissuaded me of - if Arriva had behaved like that then there have been outrage but because it’s all government controlled people merely accept these cuts)

 

[zwk500]

To make a very silly suggestion (in response to the London-centric OA perspective, which I albeit agree with to a degree), what about a service from Dartford to Richmond, calling at Sidcup, Mottingham, Hither Green, and New Cross, before descending to the ELL and calling at a few selected stops there (Surrey Quays, Canada Water, Shadwell, Whitechapel, Dalston Junction, Highbury & Islington perhaps) then Gospel Oak, West Hampstead, Willesden Junction, Acton Central and then Richmond, using whatever spare stock they have on the depot

It'd never work but I suppose it does highlight how complex the "primarily abstractive" dynamic is from the perspective of creating a successful service.

This one isn't a great example of that, though, because you're replicating existing services along every section of the route. Dartford-New Cross is a SE route, New Cross-Highbury is ELL, then Highbury-Richmond is NLL. The journey times won't be any faster because you'll be stuck behind the all-stations ahead.

The difficulty of the abstractiveness test is better shown by somebody like Lumo, who had to put Morpeth and Stevenage stops in and avoid York to make their case.

 

[Sonik]

Certainly if you offered this option to TPE customers they would I suspect be more than happy. A train that turns up, is on time, and is formed of enough coaches to ensure a seated journey (or even to be able to board in some case I have personally experienced) would definately be 'luxury service' on the York - Manchester route.

I agree, I think there is significant pent up demand on the Transpennine routes - you only have to look at the traffic on the M62. These routes cover the largest center of population outside the London area.

The main issue though is capacity, which an OAO isn't going to fix.

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It also raises a supplementary question, is the management mindset different at the OA operators. After all if the trains dont run, or are not well patronised the operation fails, quickly, and with no bailouts. Contrast this with TPE or Avanti, dreadful service now for an extended period of time, but still in business.

You raise a good point, look also at how the largely unsubsidized freight sector has transformed over the last few years.

It would be useful to find a way for franchise operators to have more 'skin in the game' IMO.

 

[zwk500]

Certainly it would be useful to find a way for franchise operators to have more 'skin in the game' IMO.

Be careful what you wish for. Exposing the franchise operators to greater risk could lead to a commercial decision to take a step back.

 

[Iskra]

I agree, I think there is significant pent up demand on the Transpennine routes - you only have to look at the traffic on the M62. These routes cover the largest center of population outside the London area.

The main issue though is capacity, which an OAO isn't going to fix.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Nov 2022 ==


You raise a good point, look also at how the largely unsubsidized freight sector has transformed over the last few years.

It would be useful to find a way for franchise operators to have more 'skin in the game' IMO.

A lot is wasted through the use of 3 coach trains. Admittedly, the situation has improved with 5 car trains appearing and subsequently more 6 car 185 workings, but the situation is still far from an optimal use of the existing capacity.

 

[Trainbike46]

Be careful what you wish for. Exposing the franchise operators to greater risk could lead to a commercial decision to take a step back.

To some extent we saw this starting before covid, with the number of companies bidding for franchises decreasing...