My GBR reorganisation idea

[vuzzeho]

Because it’s not a timetable with seemingly haphazard and random services, they’re set-in-stone routes that are easy to find and navigate outside of London and the south east

Is this an actual problem though? I haven't really heard any real complaints about times being used to identify trains. I suppose it could be nice to give services numbers, but not as the way they're referred to, maybe more on maps. Otherwise you'd have 'the 20:10 InterCity 23 to Wolverhampton' - not really any simpler than 'the 20:10 InterCity service to Wolverhampton'.

 

[Farnborough]

Aren't all trains identified anyway?

eg the Waterloo-Basingstoke stopper is 2Lxx (odds out, evens back)

 

[tbtc]

I don't think your post is negative.

1. I take your point, it is of course a similar situation in London for lines that stretch out the GLA boundary. I think that some kind of benefit needs to outweigh the negative. I think that having a high-frequency metro-rail corridor in Sheffield say, is probably a betterment to the entire country even if it means having to electrify lines outside of a Mayoral boundary.

2. I see your point, and maybe more standard stopping patterns would be the answer especially if they are much simpler to understand (although enthusiasts would miss the variety of services).

The idea wouldn't be to number everything for the sake of numbering, I gather some posters on here who advocate service numbering want to do it just because. The idea would be, if you had regional brands, with suburban services given over to locally run Overgrounds, you'd be left with Intercity services from London and neither-here-nor-there regional services. The idea would be to instead use another branding like "regional", to psychologically minimise the distinction between London intercity services and regional services, hence a numbering system like "West Coast 1 + West Coast 7" reduce the unfamiliarity between two distinct services.

If there are for instance, a service from Town A to Town B every half an hour, and one service is semi-fast whilst the other is stopping, I suppose you could have a letter designation like "f" for "fast" and "s" for stopping.

Thanks for explaining

1. A "regional overground" works/worked well in cities like London, Liverpool and Cardiff, where it applies/applied to certain relatively short routes.

The big city can have control over investment in trains/ subsidising fares/ service patterns, even if these do go beyond the boundaries (e.g. Chester)

However, you hit problems when you expand the concept into other areas so that one service becomes a "regional overground" in multiple cities

It was fine for Strathclyde PTE to fund routes around Glasgow (and paint everything orange/ carmyne/ whatever). But then that Milngavie - Caldercruix train got extended east and joined to the Bathgate route that was essentially a Regional Overground in Edinburgh/ Lothians

Who's in charge now?

It's one thing for Merseyrail to run into Chester (Liverpool beats any Cheshire council), but another if they took over the CLC into Greater Manchester

And that's my problem.

Rothram, Burnham, Brabin and Coppard can control local bus networks, because very little crosses the border (and what does cross over is only a small proportion of routes on each side). A yellow Bee Network coming in to Huddersfield every hour is fairly trivial.

However, based on current service patterns, all of Darton's trains to Barnsley/ Sheffield are also all of Normanton's trains to Wakefield/ Leeds.

WY give lines out of Leeds names ("Hallam" etc). SY gave lines out of Sheffield numbers.

So which colour are those Leeds - Normanton - Darton - Sheffield, who's Overground is it?

Will a mayor of Greater Manchester invest in trains from Manchester to Rochdale/ New Mills when these will spend long periods on the Calder Valley onto Leeds/ Hope Valley onto Sheffield?

Same with electrification, or will we see more examples like Hazel Grove/ Kirkby where investment dries up at the border?

In contrast, yellow Bee buses and green Weaver buses won't mix so much, so there's less issue

2. A generation ago, First came up with the Overground concept for high frequency buses, with strict conditions (e.g. all number 23s had to run the same route, no 23a, no multiple termini at one end of the route, minimum daytime/ evening/ Sunday levels of frequency, no weekend diversions/ extensions etc).

That's one thing for "all stops" local bus routes. It meant that a handful of old links were lost, or other routes diverted to try to cover (creating box ticking routes that tried to link various diversions away from the main road)

Doing that for train services means a lot of consistency that the railway may find hard

What about those stations with just a couple of trains a day/ week? Do we have to stop everything there, to be consistent?

Will it mean fewer extensions beyond the core, e.g. XC to Aberdeen/ Penzance? Or does the XC at Aberdeen go under the same "number" as the main Scotrail services north of Edinburgh, changing to the XC "number" further south?

As I say, nice in theory, fine for metro networks (trams, Valley Lines, Merseyrail etc), though these are often just known by the terminus.

But harder for proper trains (e.g. do you merge the longer distance Hull/ Cleethorpes trains with the Sheffield-Doncaster stoppers in the late evenings/ Sunday when there's maybe not enough demand for separate services, or will that mess up the numbering?)

But I think the culture on here is sometimes to categorise/ pigeonhole things, which is why there's so much debate about whether a train is "outer-suburban"/ "InterCity" etc