Grand central apply for new routes

[dgl]

A 180 breaking down around Waterloo or Clapham Junction would be fun, would they really want unreliable 180's to operate out of Waterloo?

 

[Zomboid]

A 180 breaking down around Waterloo or Clapham Junction would be fun, would they really want unreliable 180's to operate out of Waterloo?

Have they actually said that they'd plan to use them, or is that just assumption?

 

[gabrielhj07]

I am keen to see LTN served properly from the north again.

 

[Snow1964]

Have they actually said that they'd plan to use them, or is that just assumption?

If the application documents have been submitted, ORR hasn't got around to uploading them yet to its website, so no one can check details.

 

[A S Leib]

I wonder if the Waterloo application would stand a better chance if it were more like the original Regional Railways service and ran through to South Wales.

There's TfW wanting to run Bristol services (and GWR not seeming pleased about that) and potential Lumo Carmarthen services; how much capacity would that leave?

 

[The Planner]

To put this in perspective fast line service departing Waterloo 5pm to 6pm (evening peak) on Tuesday (one of busier days) is following

17:00 to Portsmouth Harbour
17:02 to Guildford (fast to Surbiton)
17:05 to Weymouth
17:09 to Portsmouth Harbour via Eastleigh
17:15 to Portsmouth and Southsea
17:20 to Southampton
17:23 to Exeter St Davids
17:25 to Alton
17:30 to Portsmouth Harbour
17:32 to Guildford
17:35 to Weymouth
17:39 to Guildford
17:45 to Portsmouth and Southsea
17:50 to Basingstoke
17:53 to Yeovil Pen Mill
17:55 to Alton

Just 16 trains in the hour, departing from platforms 7 to 15 (nine platforms), on a route signalled for 2-2.5 minute headways, does not suggest to me that timetable is full, and no room for a 17th train. Off peak would be even easier to find a timetable gap.

You are ignoring performance, and to a massive extent.

 

[anthony263]

Get tfw to extend their west wales to. Bristol tm services

 

[Clarence Yard]

It’s really not the case, nor that simple. See Oxford - Bristol.

I’ll try and put it as simply as I can, with made up round numbers.


A DfT funded TOC, let’s call them ‘Presto’ has income of £500m pa and costs of £500m pa, ie it breaks even.

An Open Access operator, let’s call them ‘Noxo’, identifies a potential opportunity with a new service that covers some of the lines of route that ‘Presto’ serve. This would realise Noxo a total of £50m revenue pa, at a cost (to them) of £40m pa. Clearly with that potential profit margin of 20%, they will want to progress it. Nice earner.

The £50m revenue that Noxo would receive is £30m abstracted, £20m newly generated Leaving to one side for a moment all the other things that an Open Access operator needs to demonstrate in order to get access rights, this revenue mix would pass the ORRs abstraction test (being 60% abstraction, 40% new, ie better than the 70/30 rule).


Now look at it from the DfT / Presto point of view. Two scenarios :

1) Noxo get the access rights. Presto sees £30m of it’s revenue disappear almost overnight, but none of its costs, meaning it goes from a TOC that breaks even to one losing £30m a year; money that the DfT would have to fund as a direct result of the Noxo service. (Alternatively, DfT could require Presto to make cost savings, which means cutting services and jobs). Meanwhile Noxo runs the services proposed, and pays its shareholders £10m a year.

2) DfT could ask Presto to run the services that Noxo propose, by doing so nullifying the Noxo proposal who then don’t run. Presto gains the £20m generated revenue, but obviously not the abstracted revenue (it can’t abstract from itself!). But that would mean that whilst Presto’s revenue would rise to £520m, it’s costs rise to £540m, meaning it requires an extra £20m of Government funding.


Essentially, either way, in this example the presence of the new services, whether provided for by Presto (funded by Government) or Noxo (funded by Open Access), ends up costing the taxpayer money.


Clearly this is illustrative, and it is a lot more complex and nuanced. But this is the principle at stake for open access proposals with high but permitted levels of abstraction.

Total abstraction is a significant item in the assessment. £30m sounds like too big a figure to approve.

This is not a new consideration, despite what Ian Yeowart has said. I produced some cracking OA schemes for GB Railways but they took too much revenue off the franchised operator. They would never have been approved so we didn’t pursue them.

The rush of applications now is quite simple to explain. It’s all about GBR taking over the process, which will be assessed under different and more stringent rules. Applicants are trying to get their schemes approved by the ORR before they cease to deal with them.

I suspect the DfT may have something to say about all this, perhaps asking the ORR to not approve any new rights past the May 2028 timetable. Anything that wants to run past December 2028 would then have to be approved by GBR.

 

[SeanM1997]

Re Manchester - St Pancras - surely using the chord south of Derby and not serving Derby would speed up journey times and have less revenue abstraction given the lack of direct services from Leicester to the North West?

 

[mrcheek]

I wonder if the Waterloo application would stand a better chance if it were more like the original Regional Railways service and ran through to South Wales.

or how about if it then extended to Manchester, as it once did?

Maybe Grand Central could just do that instead of wanting a separate St Pancras-Manchester service!

 

[JamesT]

Re Manchester - St Pancras - surely using the chord south of Derby and not serving Derby would speed up journey times and have less revenue abstraction given the lack of direct services from Leicester to the North West?

But quite possibly the proposal needs to go via Derby in order to pick up enough passengers to make a profit.

 

[duffield]

Re Manchester - St Pancras - surely using the chord south of Derby and not serving Derby would speed up journey times and have less revenue abstraction given the lack of direct services from Leicester to the North West?

Avoiding Derby and the reversal by taking the route from Sheet Stores to Stenson Junction to get to the Uttoxeter route would maybe save up to 15 minutes and bring the journey time down to around 2hr45m versus 3hrs but that's still versus around 2hrs on the WCML. But avoiding Derby might make the service unviable anyhow. However, as per above this is pretty much fantasy territory due to the lack of paths at the London end of the MML.

 

[A S Leib]

A three hour journey time would beat the Trent Valley stopper and changing at Crewe by around half an hour, as well as not needing to change.

 

[The Planner]

A three hour journey time would beat the Trent Valley stopper and changing at Crewe by around half an hour, as well as not needing to change.

If its aiming to eat into that market, the margins will be paper thin. What service are you changing into at Crewe? The Northern via Styal? You would have to be so budget concious to make that sort of journey that the numbers will be tiny.

 

[DDB]

I assumed when I first read the title of the routes that it would skip Derby station both to do something different to the exisiting TOC offer and also because only platforms 3 and 4 at Derby have the right access for the reverse and they seem pretty busy to me with the exisiting services doing that move and using that point work.

 

[A S Leib]

If its aiming to eat into that market, the margins will be paper thin. What service are you changing into at Crewe? The Northern via Styal? You would have to be so budget concious to make that sort of journey that the numbers will be tiny.

I meant the end-to-end London to Manchester market looking for an option cheaper than Avanti and faster than coaches.

 

[MatthewHutton]

If its aiming to eat into that market, the margins will be paper thin. What service are you changing into at Crewe? The Northern via Styal? You would have to be so budget concious to make that sort of journey that the numbers will be tiny.

Also it’s worth noting that when you look at the passenger flows e.g Moor Street - Marylebone has only 10% of the Euston - New Street passenger numbers and it’s only 40 minutes slower and more reliable.

 

[Failed Unit]

Also it’s worth noting that when you look at the passenger flows e.g Moor Street - Marylebone has only 10% of the Euston - New Street passenger numbers and it’s only 40 minutes slower and more reliable.

Depending on where you are really going that difference reduces as well, I was once doing a journey from the Snow Hill area of Birmingham (5 mins walk) to the end Marble Arch. The shorter walk made Chiltern a no-brainer. Euston and St Pancras are too close, however if you need somewhere on the West of London, the 40 minute difference for Chiltern isnt as bad.

 

[SeanM1997]

A concern of the proposed Manchester - London St Pancras service, is that it means any potential for a second hourly stopping service between Manchester and Macclesfield would be removed. This is a popular commuter route which was meant to be introduced in 2018 but alas is still has not happened.

To compensate, the service could operate via Crewe (which has more 4 track sections for overtaking), then to Stoke and beyond. To offset timings, reduce the Derby call and then the departure times at both Manchester and London would not be impacted.

This would also improve connectivity between Liverpool and Leicester, which requires 2 trains today but a Crewe stop would improve connectivity vastly. It would also not dilute any potential revenue between Derby and Leicester/London.

 

[JonathanH]

I meant the end-to-end London to Manchester market looking for an option cheaper than Avanti and faster than coaches.

Competing in the coach market isn't going to be lucrative either. The number of people using coaches each day would most likely fit in one or two Avanti services.

To compensate, the service could operate via Crewe (which has more 4 track sections for overtaking), then to Stoke and beyond. To offset timings, reduce the Derby call and then the departure times at both Manchester and London would not be impacted.

There is still a single track section on the line via Alsager which has fairly high occupancy (and any spare capacity is needed for engineering diversions).

I am not entirely sure that somewhat crazy roundabout services are appropriate just to enable an open access operator to be able to say they aren't primarily abstractive.

 

[MatthewHutton]

A concern of the proposed Manchester - London St Pancras service, is that it means any potential for a second hourly stopping service between Manchester and Macclesfield would be removed. This is a popular commuter route which was meant to be introduced in 2018 but alas is still has not happened.

The Manchester-Stoke stopper serves some pretty big stops and would do well half hourly to be fair.

There’s a lot getting several hundred thousand passengers a year which is really not awful.

 

[stevieinselby]

Re Manchester - St Pancras - surely using the chord south of Derby and not serving Derby would speed up journey times and have less revenue abstraction given the lack of direct services from Leicester to the North West?

Surely providing a direct service between Derby and Manchester is the most important rationale for the proposal? There's likely to be more demand for that journey than for travel between Leicester and Manchester, so it would be odd to sacrifice that flow entirely in order to save a few minutes for a smaller number of passengers.

 

[Iskra]

Surely providing a direct service between Derby and Manchester is the most important rationale for the proposal? There's likely to be more demand for that journey than for travel between Leicester and Manchester, so it would be odd to sacrifice that flow entirely in order to save a few minutes for a smaller number of passengers.

It would probably be better going via the Hope Valley

 

[Zomboid]

It would probably be better going via the Hope Valley

As was recently discussed at length in a thread about reopening the Bakewell route...

 

[swt_passenger]

Get tfw to extend their west wales to. Bristol tm services

Not so straightforward either. There’s already a dedicated thread about it though. GWR can still object to another TOC, ie not an OA proposal. This has always been possible, as seen by various disputes over the years such as Virgin vs Southern in the WCML suburban area.

 

[The Planner]

A concern of the proposed Manchester - London St Pancras service, is that it means any potential for a second hourly stopping service between Manchester and Macclesfield would be removed. This is a popular commuter route which was meant to be introduced in 2018 but alas is still has not happened.

To compensate, the service could operate via Crewe (which has more 4 track sections for overtaking), then to Stoke and beyond. To offset timings, reduce the Derby call and then the departure times at both Manchester and London would not be impacted.

This would also improve connectivity between Liverpool and Leicester, which requires 2 trains today but a Crewe stop would improve connectivity vastly. It would also not dilute any potential revenue between Derby and Leicester/London.

I expect the Derby call is at the minimum it can be in their plans, you won't be able to reduce it. It would add a load of time via Crewe and Kidsgrove as well as getting a path across the single line and P1 at Crewe.

 

[Cach17]

Manchester to four-platform St Pancras? Dead on arrival.

 

[cle]

Leicester and Derby to Manchester have always felt to me worth serving. People howl about much smaller station pairs on here - must be two of the bigger unconnected cities, especially so close.

Serving Congleton is worthwhile, and Uttoxeter, why not. Wellingborough doesn't have services north of Kettering on the MML so it's a good one to include. Derby-Crewe is an underused piece of railway so it's good to see it here. Hope it goes through but paths and platforms at St P will be interesting.

 

[danielhogg2005]

According to the RAIL article Alton Towers resort support the Piccadilly-St Pancras service as Uttoxeter is only 10 miles from the resort, which could be the market for stopping there as it could potentially encourage people to get there by train instead of car (the only thing that would need to happen is a shuttle bus to meet the trains from the resort).

Would that be enough of a market to justify the service and pass the abstraction test?

 

[Zomboid]

According to the RAIL article Alton Towers resort support the Piccadilly-St Pancras service as Uttoxeter is only 10 miles from the resort, which could be the market for stopping there as it could potentially encourage people to get there by train instead of car (the only thing that would need to happen is a shuttle bus to meet the trains from the resort).

Would that be enough of a market to justify the service and pass the abstraction test?

Not on its own it wouldn't.