New Great Britain Railways. Will this bring massive improvement?

[LNW-GW Joint]

The detailed notes essentially repeat the proposals in the Labour policy document from April this year.
The Shadow GBR will be key to what happens next.
But until GBR gets its full powers, DfT is in total charge of the railway.

The geographical extent is interesting - that presumes that Wales and Scotland will play ball and allow their rail operations to integrate with GBR.
Today they have a degree of independence from DfT.

 

[Class 466]

The detailed notes essentially repeat the proposals in the Labour policy document from April this year.
The Shadow GBR will be key to what happens next.
But until GBR gets its full powers, DfT is in total charge of the railway.

The geographical extent is interesting - that presumes that Wales and Scotland will play ball and allow their rail operations to integrate with GBR.
Today they have a degree of independence from DfT.

One wonders if this means the current DOHL Train Operating Companies will join this 'Shadow GBR' sooner rather than later.

 

[Topological]

The detailed notes essentially repeat the proposals in the Labour policy document from April this year.
The Shadow GBR will be key to what happens next.
But until GBR gets its full powers, DfT is in total charge of the railway.

The geographical extent is interesting - that presumes that Wales and Scotland will play ball and allow their rail operations to integrate with GBR.
Today they have a degree of independence from DfT.

I am taking the geogrpahical extent as meaning that LNER go to Inverness/Aberdeen, Avanti go to Glasgow and Holyhead, and GWR run into South Wales. I would be surprised if TfW or Scotrail came under GBR. As you say, the chances of the devolved governments playing ball are low.

 

[contrex]

what, and extend their network all the way to Dover and Kings Lynn? Can't see them having much appetite for that

They could take on Overground, Southern, GWR to Reading & Oxford and Thames Trains and Thameslink. I could think of a really good name for such a system, and a decent livery too.

 

[30907]

I couldn't think of anything worse than turning up at the station for a long distance train trip only to find my seat is not available and no alternative place to sit! When I travel on regional trains I am almost always on it for more than 4 hours.

In a UK context, as in much of Europe, "long distance" and "regional" are not the same. 4 hours is longer than most long distance services in this country, and the only significantly longer route (as opposed to odd trains) is the cross-country Edinburgh-Birmingham-Plymouth which doesn't carry huge numbers end to end.

 

[AFancier]

Will Derby remain as the home of the GBR HQ?

 

[350401]

If the LNER proposal is followed, de-facto it will on long distance trains.

Regional trains are unlikely to ever go reservation-only and nor should they. Only very poor quality railways like SNCF and RENFE do that. Countries that understand rail do not - not even Italy, which does operate compulsory reservations on long distance services.

One thing that could release quite a bit of capacity and bring in revenue is ending the massive cliff edge between peak and off peak tickets on the WCML - trains between 15.30 and 19.00 are all peak and often half empty. A three and a half hour peak period is itself excessive. Either reduce the length of the peak to say 4-6pm or keep the restrictions on off peak but allow plenty of advance fares that are reasonably priced. At the moment, a huge amount of demand is held back for the relatively few off peak trains that run after 1900. There are only 6 off peak trains to Manchester after 1900!

 

[Bletchleyite]

One thing that could release quite a bit of capacity and bring in revenue is ending the massive cliff edge between peak and off peak tickets on the WCML - trains between 15.30 and 19.00 are all peak and often half empty. A three and a half hour peak period is itself excessive. Either reduce the length of the peak to say 4-6pm or keep the restrictions on off peak but allow plenty of advance fares that are reasonably priced. At the moment, a huge amount of demand is held back for the relatively few off peak trains that run after 1900. There are only 6 off peak trains to Manchester after 1900!

The worst of that has been sorted by making Friday off peak all day. Otherwise you could smooth it by way of Advances.

 

[JonathanH]

One thing that could release quite a bit of capacity and bring in revenue is ending the massive cliff edge between peak and off peak tickets on the WCML - trains between 15.30 and 19.00 are all peak and often half empty. A three and a half hour peak period is itself excessive. Either reduce the length of the peak to say 4-6pm or keep the restrictions on off peak but allow plenty of advance fares that are reasonably priced. At the moment, a huge amount of demand is held back for the relatively few off peak trains that run after 1900. There are only 6 off peak trains to Manchester after 1900!

A full application of the all advance LNER pricing model would enable exactly what you suggest as it would be possible to price each train for the level of expected demand, rather than having to have a cliff edge. Whether this would be done in practice is a different matter, and clearly there are undesirable features of removing the off-peak fares.

 

[350401]

A full application of the all advance LNER pricing model would enable exactly what you suggest as it would be possible to price each train for the level of expected demand, rather than having to have a cliff edge. Whether this would be done in practice is a different matter, and clearly there are undesirable features of removing the off-peak fares.

I’d be in favour of either reducing the peak hours, adding Thursday to the off peak all day policy or keeping as is but also having a lot more advances on the peak trains. Once you move away from having to maximise revenue, to a policy of public benefit and moving people by rail to reduce carbon, then surely it doesn’t make sense to have these peak trains running around carrying fresh air.

 

[HSTEd]

I'm still skeptical of what Great British Railways will involve, I will wait to see what the legislation actually says before developing my final position.

I worry that this will just end up stuck in a half way house, where any of the benefits of the current system are lost, but so much fragmentation remains that none of the downsides of the current system are eliminated.
The open access operators and freight operators remaining separate from the railway may not allow the elimination of many of the issues that plague the railway as a whole.
I fear the endless arguments over who pays for necessary investment or technical changes will continue, since noone will have overall control of the entire railway.

But perhaps we will move in that direction later.
Creation of this body is essential, but in my view far from sufficient.

 

[The Planner]

They could take on Overground, Southern, GWR to Reading & Oxford and Thames Trains and Thameslink. I could think of a really good name for such a system, and a decent livery too.

Like Tfl would want to pay to run that.

 

[JonathanH]

I fear the endless arguments over who pays for necessary investment or technical changes will continue, since noone will have overall control of the entire railway

Didn't British Rail in its latter years have issues with 'prime users' for parts of the network and who had responsibility for which bits? Even if you have a single business, decisions need to be made about where investment goes and what costs are acceptable.

 

[HSTEd]

Didn't British Rail in its latter years have issues with 'prime users' for parts of the network and who had responsibility for which bits? Even if you have a single business, decisions need to be made about where investment goes and what costs are acceptable.

Yes, but there was ultimately a board that could compel compliance of its business sub-units if it was deemed in the interests of the railway as a whole.

The head of intercity or whoever might object to a plan, but ultimately he would cleave to the will of the BRB or they would find someone who would.
If we have Open access or freight operators outside the structure the only way to force compliance would be primary legislation or through the courts, neither of which is really amenable to decision making.

 

[bramling]

I have recently read about the formation of a new single system wide train operator in the UK. Known as Great Britain Railways. I am wondering will this improve the current system?

Will the new operator be 100% government owned and operated?
Will it finally allow a true intergrated regional train and coach operator similar to NSW Trainlink in NSW Australia? So one ticket for entire journey including coach connections?

Will it finally ban the practice of unreserved tickets on regional trains? Finally bringing in fully reserved trains similar to Queensland Rail and NSW Trainlink where it's no reservation no travel as they only sell the trains to the available seats.

Will it allow for far cheaper tickets or even a single fare zone system similar to Vline in Australia where they have a $10.60 flat fare to any destination at any time even if it's a 10 hour long intercity journey?

Most importantly when will the new GBR services begin operating?

My personal view is I don’t think it will bring much improvement, as it has tended to be the politicians which have wrecked the railway over many years, and all this change does is entrench what has been going on for some time anyway, just removing the middle man.

Until we start seeing some politicians of a decent calibre in this country then things will just get worse. I think we’ll be waiting a long time.

What this might do is give us a touch of stability, that’s about all.

 

[GoneSouth]

There are other threads bemoaning the loss of a walk on railway at an affordable price. I don't think a proposal to have a reservation only railway in Britain would find a lot of favour on this forum.

And rightly so, we can’t have a system that only allows those with cars to be spontaneous or respond to a need to travel at very short notice. Oh, and imagine the chaos when thousands of people don’t turn up to work because they couldn’t get a seat on the train.

Non starter I’m afraid

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 17 Jul 2024 ==

Until we start seeing some politicians of a decent calibre in this country then things will just get worse. I think we’ll be waiting a long time.

We just welcomed 350 new MPs into the House of Commons last week, surely some of those must be up to the job. Let’s at least give them a chance before writing them off as more Boris/Liz quality. After those we can only get better.

 

[stevieinselby]

I couldn't think of anything worse than turning up at the station for a long distance train trip only to find my seat is not available and no alternative place to sit! When I travel on regional trains I am almost always on it for more than 4 hours. No way would I stand for that long. I would rather take a road coach or fly at least they allways have a seat for every passenger no matter the delays.

Reservations are available on all long-distance trains in the UK, albeit not compulsory. You can make a reservation when you book your ticket, at no extra charge (and of course many of the cheaper tickets require you to make a reservation for a specific train). If you get on the train and someone is sitting in your reserved seat then 99 times out of 10 they will be happy to move if you ask politely, I've never had any problem on that score. With many key routes running every half hour or better, the prospect of losing all that flexibility by being required to make a reservation in advance would be a huge disincentive to travel by train – if the train only runs a few times a day (or in the case of some Australian trains, once or twice a week!) then making a reservation is much less restrictive because you know for sure which train you'll be travelling on, but UK railways operate in a very different context!

Also, a note on terminology - in the UK, we would generally use "regional train" to describe one a step down from "intercity train". Regional trains are for making middle-distance journeys, typically 1 to 2 hours between towns and cities on lines that are away from the main intercity axes – and while some trains might make longer journeys (the Liverpool to Norwich service clocks in at nearly 5½ hours) there will be very few passengers who are riding the full length of the route.

 

[signed]

Only very poor quality railways like SNCF

Apart from a very specific set of trains and only to/from Paris, there are absolutely no reservation requirements on TER

The reason is that there is nowhere as much raw sets as it would be needed to run TGV services for everyone, so people flock to the TER to get out of Paris leading to dangerous overcrowding. Once you leave Paris, you have no reservation anywhere

 

[yorksrob]

Is it such a bad thing for the intercity railway? Make more advance tickets available and suddenly more fares are available at cheaper prices (walk-up fares presumed to be more expensive). Suddenly less people are complaining about rail fares being several grand (as per the usual thing of people seeing an effectively sold out train has only walk-up fares available and going straight to twitter).

I guess what we have at the moment in most places is the best of all worlds, with mostly reservations but also a non-res coach, but surely there are ways to fine-tune this

Yes it is. I like the choice of "turn up and go" even though I don't use it very often long distance.

I also like to be able to move if the seat is unsuitable.

 

[D9006]

I expect a reservation only service would bring in more revenue if ticketless travel were to be stopped.I see many
people travelling between unstaffed stations without tickets.

How do you see them , I take it your are a train conductor

 

[bramling]

We just welcomed 350 new MPs into the House of Commons last week, surely some of those must be up to the job. Let’s at least give them a chance before writing them off as more Boris/Liz quality. After those we can only get better.

This is a fair point for the longer term, however as things stand at the moment the current government and opposition are largely formed of people from the last parliament or beyond. Likewise thusfar Labour have done nothing that shows they have any understanding of what the salient issues are in this country, let alone how to fix them.

Indeed never forget that some of the current issues on the railway go back to the Covid response, where Labour seemingly wanted restrictions to be harsher and continue for longer. It’s very unfortunate that the scandals about parties and such like allowed all this to be somewhat overshadowed.

So I’m just not holding my breath that things are going to get better, certainly not any time soon. At the moment it feels like we’ve had the right leg amputated, now we’re in the process of having the left one done.

 

[3141]

There are other threads bemoaning the loss of a walk on railway at an affordable price. I don't think a proposal to have a reservation only railway in Britain would find a lot of favour on this forum.

Nor among the public, which is more important.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Nor among the public, which is more important.

With most people travelling on Advances these days the long distance railway near enough is compulsory reservation for most anyway. I suspect thus this would be favoured - the thing people seem to hate most is someone else in their reserved seat.

For regional trains however this would be downright silly.

I think this is just the OP using Australian terminology for regional trains, which we would call intercity trains. Regional trains here are more local ones which tend to be used on a more ad-hoc, less planned basis. Compulsory reservation on say LNR services into Euston would be nonsensical, but nobody is really proposing that.