Interesting that people seem happy to leave ScotRail as one brand, even though they probably operate a bigger variety of service types than most UK TOCs - other than the relatively recent introduction of a bit of "seven cities" branding onto their HSTs, they've had the same branding applied to the Cathcart Circle as the flagship Falkirk High service as the long distance routes from the Central Belt to Inverness/ Aberdeen and also the picturesque stuff to Thurso/ Kyle/ Mallaig/ Larkhall * - ScotRail don't seem to want to complicate things by splitting the five routes from Edinburgh to Glasgow into several different types of "regional"/"regional express" etc - so I don't know why people want to do the same to services around other cities (any more than they already are).
Either have around twenty brands, based on current franchises (where each franchise has its one brand) or have one brand across GB (for everything not directly controlled by Holyrood/ Cardiff Bay).
Wouldn't anyone care if the trains were painted in all over grey with a contrasting door colour and the only branding was a darker grey British Rail arrow logo?
That'd be fine - either treat everything in the same livery/branding or retain the "twetntyish" different franchises that we currently have - don't mind which (but most of the suggestions on this thread to "simplify" things end up creating more brand/division!)
What no-one has yet explained, is WHY. Why do we need separate brands, what does it achieve?
For example, if I were to suggest that we were to pick an arbitrary selection of London bus routes, say those over a certain length, and give them a different branding, everybody would be saying what a stupid idea.
To say that Bristol to London is Intercity but Bristol to Birmingham isn't would be stupid. Likewise Cardiff to Birmingham. Although having to paint 3 car sprinters into Intercity livery might prompt the introduction of some decent stock for the service (like painting class 73s into Intercity livery did with Gatwick Express!).
Well, BR did operate two coach 158s on "InterCity" routes (e.g. the Cross Country services from Edinburgh/ Glasgow to Manchester... from Liverpool to Portsmouth too IIRC)
Trying to come up with a binary "Intercity"/"not Intercity" world is just going to complicate things far too much - remember that BR's definition for InterCIty was essentially "profitable" vs "not profitable". That's why Gatwick Express was InterCity whilst many routes between actual cities (e.g. Liverpool - Manchester - Leeds - Newcastle) weren't InterCity.
It is a factor of fast long distance trains in the UK being priced at the same level as slow stopping trains, which is actually unusual in the world context.
It seems we are moving towards a model that is similar to the TfL one; a few different brands operated as concessions.
The question is how many brands and how many concessions ?
At TfL you have "buses" as one brand identity with several concessions for routes, Overground as another, DLR as another, Crossrail (TfL rail currently) as another etc..
The question is are the current rail franchies to be treated as bus routes and absorbed into "one brand", or are they to be all kept as different brands (which to me is stupid) or should they be grouped into fewer brands in order to make marketing a bit easier and cost effective.
Even with TfL, I would actually argue that you don't really need Crossrail as a separate brand - couldn't you argue that it is just another part of London Overground ?
I agree with the international comparison - I think that a few people are trying to impose a continental operating model on the UK and ignoring the fact that we'd have to rip a lot of things up and start again before we could do that (e.g. to ban short distance passengers from long distance services, you're going to have to come up with new short distance services over parallel routes but where's the spare capacity for that?).
As for fewer brands being cheaper and easier, that depends on how many companies you have operating services. If the plan is to keep an element of private sector involvement (albeit without all of the current risk/revenue elements, more akin to a concessionary model) then you'd turn one TOC into having potentially three different brands.
At the moment, Northern can run their finite stock more efficiently by having one DMU that comes into Leeds on a slow local and goes out as a faster long distance service - insisting on certain routes being "local" and some being "regional" and others being "longer distance" could mean a lot more DMUs required, a lot more laying over at Leeds (since an inbound "local" service couldn't depart as a "regional" service)... it'd make things a lot more complicated for minimal actual benefit - e.g. a Leeds - Manchester service over the Calder Valley line can be pretty much a "local" train for the duration of its journey, it's just that the journey takes it a long time and crosses from one region of England to another - does that fit neatly into the "local" train definition? And there are different levels of service pattern along the Calder Valley - do they all fit into the same pigeon hole? Or do we tweak the service patterns to fit the different types of branding? i.e. come up with the different levels of branding first and then insist that the actual timetable is rejigged to fit neatly?
As has previously been pointed out, in the UK there is no distinction between long distance and local, and the same product/train serves both functions. It is not the exception, it is the norm.
But I think you may inadvertently hit on the one reason why a different brand may be necessary. There are currently many fares that are TOC specific, purely for the purposes of maximising revenue for the TOC concerned. I would hope such fares would disappear under a concession model (but am not holding my breath). However, it makes sense to offer discounted fares on some services, to attract custom to them, for example the West Midlands stopping services between Birmingham/Crewe and London. Currently these can be advertised as not available on the fast services by saying they are not valid on Avanti, but if trains cease to be branded as Avanti how are passengers going to know which service their ticket is and isn't valid on?
The obvious answer to situations like this is that you give the fast services a separate brand. How about "express"? I think people are far more likely to accept that they have to pay a premium fare for travelling on an Express service, rather than something called Avanti which means nothing to most people. Okay, you would still get the chancers, but express is a term that most people recognise, like first class and off-peak. And it would only be needed where there is a fare differential between fast and slow services, although there may be some marketing cachet in advertising certain services as Express.
That's an interesting point - at the moment our capacity is set up on the understanding that some people will trade "time" for "price" (and take slower services to save a few quid). Introducing just one brand would force them onto the more expensive services, either cramming more people onto the busy InterCity trains or turning people away from trains (since they'd have to pay the full fare).
But then some services are "fast" at some points and "slow" at others. TPE are the fastest way over the Pennines from Liverpool/ Manchester/ Leeds, but the slowest trains from York to Darlington/ Newcastle. So I don't know how that'd work in a two tier system.
I think my idea would be something along the lines of 4 sub brands
- Metro - short range stopping services intended to serve commuters and local travellers, particularly into major towns and cities - e.g short distance London commuter routes. In some areas these might be run by PTEs.
- Regional - longer distance services, and those intended to serve wide rural areas, but which aren't really express - for example, Settle to Carlisle, the West Highland and Far North lines, or the Hope Valley stoppers
- Regional express- similar in length to regional or longer, fewer stops and more comfort-focussed - for example, Weston to Cardiff (and for that matter quite a lot more of GWR and most of XC)
- InterCity - the premium "big train" experience - Avanti, LNER, ScotRail's HSTs, some EMR, and high speed railways among others would fall into this category
This is a little bit like the German system (where their categories are S, RB, RE, IRE, EC, IC, ICE)
For consistency I would suggest that they should use the same livery in different colour schemes, to differentiate them.
As for what the wider organisation should be called - RailUK seems to fit the bill nicely (and not just because it's the name of this website!) but I'm sure other can come up with better ideas.
This also makes the discount tickets for taking slower trains easy. You just sell tickets which are "not valid on InterCity" to encourage use of regional express services or "Only valid on Metro" to stop commuters filling up long distance trains for example.
Could you elaborate a little?
The reason I split it up was that I thought the regional category would be too large. You see, it encompasses everything from the Hope Valley Line stoppers between Manchester and Sheffield, to the Weston-super-Mare to Cardiff HSTs, and probably most of CrossCountry's operations.
I think combining them would probably involve pushing the bottom of regional into Metro, and the top of regional express into InterCity, so that the categories are a reasonable size.
The problem with the Hope Valley services (in this binary world) is that they are the same stock as (and can interwork with) the other services from Piccadilly to New Mills (and Rose Hill Marple) - the are the same as the other local trains in that neck of the woods, so you'd end up requiring more trains to deal with the fact that the Hope Valley services are now a different colour (and could no longer interwork), which would make things more complicated than now.
(yes, Larkhall was a joke)
