Holding (or not) connections?

[Bletchleyite]

There may be the odd instance where it doesn't affect anything else, but given how intensively used our railways are it seems unlikely you can make a general rule from it.
I very much doubt whether removing DR would have any bearing on whether trains are held. More important would be the setup of the franchise system where payments to TOCs were related to punctuality. The nationalised operator(s) don't have the same contractual incentive, but I bet if the rail minister sees the stats falling because trains are being held then that course would be reversed very quickly.

The stats really should be about complete journeys made on time rather than about individual trains, to be honest. I suppose DR does give you that to some extent.

With increasing moves towards Advances for breakfast, dinner and tea, it should be entirely feasible to manage connection-holding much more closely. You after all then know to a pretty good level of certainty how many people are going to want to make a given connection and thus can do calculations on whether holding or not is of best benefit (also based on who might want any connection it might break doing so) and even potentially do stuff like automatically order the appropriate number of taxis if a last connection is not to be held.

It seems an ideal job for AI.

 

[RT4038]

The stats really should be about complete journeys made on time rather than about individual trains, to be honest. I suppose DR does give you that to some extent.

With increasing moves towards Advances for breakfast, dinner and tea, it should be entirely feasible to manage connection-holding much more closely. You after all then know to a pretty good level of certainty how many people are going to want to make a given connection and thus can do calculations on whether holding or not is of best benefit (also based on who might want any connection it might break doing so) and even potentially do stuff like automatically order the appropriate number of taxis if a last connection is not to be held.

It seems an ideal job for AI.

Which presumably the airlines do all the time at their hubs?