Northern - a catch 22?

[47802]

Oh, the railway needed a bit of shrinkage at the time, but it also needed someone to take a pragmatic approach to what routes brought to the network, what potential there was to reduce costs etc. As I say to every Beeching apologist, just look at the worked examples in "The Reshaping" and compare Thetford to Swaffam with York to Beverley and ask yourself whether closure of both was necessary or even desireable. The difference between the two cases is glaring. One, in any sane or rational world should have been rationalised rather than closed.

Yes the railways should have been rationalised better than it was, but is that a reason to say that we shouldn't consider closure of any of the lines that are left and indeed the possible reopening of others?, what we have today is a bit random network and I dont doubt that some lines that are closed would perform better today than some lines that are currently open

So we have Barton with own branch line population about 9k while the nearest town to where I live population about 14K with no train service.

 

[yorksrob]

Which is all very well with 60 years of hindsight.....

Railways have been very fortunate in the last 12 years or so in that they have been recieving significant investment funds from the taxpayer. But I dont see that continuing much after CP5 as these funds become scarcer.

But fortunately, what the sixty years of hindsight does mean is that we don‘t have to make the same stupid mistake with th Carnforth - Slipton line now.

If funds do become more scarce perhaps the route will be seen as a shining example of how a service can still be operated with minimal costs.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Yes the railways should have been rationalised better than it was, but is that a reason to say that we shouldn't consider closure of any of the lines that are left and indeed the possible reopening of others?, what we have today is a bit random network and I dont doubt that some lines that are closed would perform better today than some lines that are currently open

I don't doubt some closed lines would perform better than some lines that are open today, but I say the culling has gone far enough. Find a better way to control costs.

 

[Moonshot]

But fortunately, what the sixty years of hindsight does mean is that we don‘t have to make the same stupid mistake with th Carnforth - Slipton line now.

If funds do become more scarce perhaps the route will be seen as a shining example of how a service can still be operated with minimal costs.

Which will only come about once we get greater clarity on what subsidy is for.....a point stressed by no less than the Transport Select Commitee not so long back.

 

[yorksrob]

Which will only come about once we get greater clarity on what subsidy is for.....a point stressed by no less than the Transport Select Commitee not so long back.

I would say "for running trains" rather than propping up companies. That might be a starting point.

 

[tbtc]

I say the culling has gone far enough. Find a better way to control costs.

Which will only come about once we get greater clarity on what subsidy is for.....a point stressed by no less than the Transport Select Commitee not so long back.

I would say "for running trains" rather than propping up companies. That might be a starting point.

You sound like you see "running trains" as an end in itself (and not a means to the end of "providing passengers with journeys that wouldn't necessarily be possible if left to the open market").

One reason why Northern may be having problems (other than those previously mentioned) is that a lot of lines "saved" in the 1960s are pretty inadequate nowadays when you consider the motorway competition (something which has affected lines in the old Southern Region less, I suppose).

For example, today's Manchester to Bradford service (two an hour, one fast) seems good when compared to the service fifty years ago. But the M62 and M606 are a huge improvement over the old A-roads.

Sheffield to Leeds train times (on Northern services) compare badly to driving up the M1 - even the National Express coaches are as fast as the fastest Northern service.

Grimsby to Hull was once done by getting the train to Barton and taking the boat over the Humber, but there's been a bridge for many years.

Leeds to Morcambe made sense when the seaside town was "Bradford On Sea", but there's not the through market nowadays.

Some town centres have lost their "reason for being", as business moves to Retail Parks not served by rail (look at the decline of central Rochdale or central Rotherham).

The railway is left serving places that people don't necessarily want to go (but there are no stations at the White Rose Centre/ York Designer Outlet/ Trafford Centre/ Birstall Retail Park/ Parkgate etc).

Some other areas have seen population shrinking, which makes it harder for mass transportation to work.

 

[transmanche]

The railway is left serving places that people don't necessarily want to go (but there are no stations at the White Rose Centre/ York Designer Outlet/ Trafford Centre/ Birstall Retail Park/ Parkgate etc).

That, unfortunately, is more of a planning failure than a railway failure.

Thankfully, the developers of the Metrocentre built it right next to a railway line.

 

[yorksrob]

It‘s a strange thing, but however much better the M1 is in terms of speed, people still seem to use them (I should know, I live along one of these routes and use it everyday).

The fact remains that not everyone uses the M1 or has the capacity to use it. There are people on these trains - not just me. Many of them in some cases. Plus, how exactly would closing the Little North Western facilitate the opening of a station at the white rose centre ? What has Leeds to Lancaster (yes, the route also serves Lancaster, an important town and University) to do 2ith capital costs of building a station and disruption to the various train paths that use the Leeds - Doncaster route today ? This is a meaningless comparison with little relevance.

 

[47802]

The Barnsley service is slow, having used it for a number of years I would question the need for 3 trains per hour between Wakefield and Barnsley outside the peaks, while I would consider the service between Wakefield and Huddersfield, and Bradford-Halifax-Huddersfield as a complete waste of Taxpayers money. I commuted between Bradford and Huddersfield for years before the line was reopened and this route can be more effectively served by bus, while Wakefield passengers can go via Leeds from Huddersfield, which what you had to do when I was a student in the late eighties because the Wakefield service was the first to be cancelled when BR had a unit shortage.

 

[tbtc]

It‘s a strange thing, but however much better the M1 is in terms of speed, people still seem to use them (I should know, I live along one of these routes and use it everyday).

The fact remains that not everyone uses the M1 or has the capacity to use it. There are people on these trains - not just me. Many of them in some cases. Plus, how exactly would closing the Little North Western facilitate the opening of a station at the white rose centre ? What has Leeds to Lancaster (yes, the route also serves Lancaster, an important town and University) to do 2ith capital costs of building a station and disruption to the various train paths that use the Leeds - Doncaster route today ? This is a meaningless comparison with little relevance.

The point that I think you know I am making is that Northern are running services to meet a demand that was there a generation ago, rather than where people necessarily want to go to in 2014 - which is why there aren't enough people on their trains to stem the losses.

We are wasting a lot of resources on irrelevant markets (like people in Grimsby who want to take a train to Barton to change for a bus over the Humber Bridge now there's no ferry, rather than taking a direct bus from Grimsby) and not focussing enough on new markets.

But people don't want us to cut these dead-end routes.

 

[47802]

The point that I think you know I am making is that Northern are running services to meet a demand that was there a generation ago, rather than where people necessarily want to go to in 2014 - which is why there aren't enough people on their trains to stem the losses.

We are wasting a lot of resources on irrelevant markets (like people in Grimsby who want to take a train to Barton to change for a bus over the Humber Bridge now there's no ferry, rather than taking a direct bus from Grimsby) and not focussing enough on new markets.

But people don't want us to cut these dead-end routes.

bang on

 

[David Barrett]

Grimsby to Hull was once done by getting the train to Barton and taking the boat over the Humber, but there's been a bridge for many years.

Just a small pedantic point: New Holland was the place in Question; up to the bridge opening in 1981 Barton was a seperate entity but interworked with the Cleethorpes to New Holland Service.

 

[Greybeard33]

AFAIK there is no breakdown of subsidy by individual line or service in the public domain. However, I think it is a mistake to focus solely on lines like Carnforth to Skipton or the Barton branch. A large part of Northern's subsidy is channelled through the PTEs (e.g. £66m p.a. from TfGM alone) and so is presumably for the suburban services in their metropolitan areas.

That is not to argue that little-used services should always be preserved regardless. IMO the biggest mistake of the Beeching era was not the withdrawal of loss-making services, but the failure to protect disused alignments. More of the closed lines might have reopened by now if the land had not been sold off and the bridges demolished. We cannot predict future requirements any more than Beeching could.

 

[northwichcat]

I would consider the service between Wakefield and Huddersfield, and Bradford-Halifax-Huddersfield as a complete waste of Taxpayers money.

Wakefield-Huddersfield suffers the same problem as Sheffield-Huddersfield in that there is a fast and frequent service to Leeds from Huddersfield so it's easier to go via Leeds.

 

[yorksrob]

The point that I think you know I am making is that Northern are running services to meet a demand that was there a generation ago, rather than where people necessarily want to go to in 2014 - which is why there aren't enough people on their trains to stem the losses.

We are wasting a lot of resources on irrelevant markets (like people in Grimsby who want to take a train to Barton to change for a bus over the Humber Bridge now there's no ferry, rather than taking a direct bus from Grimsby) and not focussing enough on new markets.

But people don't want us to cut these dead-end routes.

But you make the traditional error of assuming that just because these lines aren‘t making a profit means that they aren‘t carrying passengers. You will find that most of these routes have experienced increases in usage over the past decade.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The point that I think you know I am making is that Northern are running services to meet a demand that was there a generation ago, rather than where people necessarily want to go to in 2014 - which is why there aren't enough people on their trains to stem the losses.

We are wasting a lot of resources on irrelevant markets (like people in Grimsby who want to take a train to Barton to change for a bus over the Humber Bridge now there's no ferry, rather than taking a direct bus from Grimsby) and not focussing enough on new markets.

But people don't want us to cut these dead-end routes.

Especially Carnforth - Skipton.

 

[tbtc]

Just a small pedantic point: New Holland was the place in Question; up to the bridge opening in 1981 Barton was a seperate entity but interworked with the Cleethorpes to New Holland Service.

Cheers

But you make the traditional error of assuming that just because these lines aren‘t making a profit means that they aren‘t carrying passengers. You will find that most of these routes have experienced increases in usage over the past decade

I'm not assuming that they aren't carrying any passengers, I've only ever been on one service where I was the only passenger - I'm saying that some services/ routes aren't carrying anything like enough passengers to justify a heavy rail service.

Passenger numbers haven't gone up by anything like enough to rectify this either. The problem is that nobody wants to acknowledge that there are weak links that need pruning, so that we can focus on stronger areas.

 

[northwichcat]

The railway is left serving places that people don't necessarily want to go (but there are no stations at the White Rose Centre/ York Designer Outlet/ Trafford Centre/ Birstall Retail Park/ Parkgate etc).

To add to that list Cheshire Oaks & The Blue Planet Aquarium and you can't even get a connecting bus from either Chester or Helsby to those places.

My experience of public transport today which included:
* Northern's Manchester-Chester via Altrincham service
* Metrolink services on the Altrincham line
* The 245 Arriva bus - Altrincham to Exchange Quay via The Trafford Centre & Media City

Until I caught the train from Altrincham to Knutsford a little earlier it seemed like a bad day all round. The train I caught from Knutsford-Altrincham had around 60 passengers on (so only about 50% of seats occupied), the Metrolink services had 0 passengers on (despite some Piccadilly services being double M5000s - so some with 70% of seats unoccupied) and the 245 bus I was on and the others I saw didn't have more than around 8 passengers on at any time (run by Wright Pulsar buses with 44 seats.) The return train from Altrincham to Knutsford had around 100 passengers on a 142.

When you think about that it's the rail service that's existed since the 1800s that had a healthy loading and much more recent additions of Metrolink and the 247 bus that were carting around a lot of fresh air. This was despite 2 things being on at Event City, an event at the Manchester velodrome and a very healthy number of shoppers at the Trafford centre today. It seems the public don't like using buses or catching the tram if they need to take a connecting bus or another connecting tram.

 

[Oscar]

It seems the public don't like using buses or catching the tram if they need to take a connecting bus or another connecting tram.

No, they don't, because connections are so badly (or not at all) managed. There is usually no information about where to go if the connection involves a walk and no effort is made to co-ordinate timetables.

 

[Moonshot]

To add to that list Cheshire Oaks & The Blue Planet Aquarium and you can't even get a connecting bus from either Chester or Helsby to those places.

My experience of public transport today which included:
* Northern's Manchester-Chester via Altrincham service
* Metrolink services on the Altrincham line
* The 245 Arriva bus - Altrincham to Exchange Quay via The Trafford Centre & Media City

Until I caught the train from Altrincham to Knutsford a little earlier it seemed like a bad day all round. The train I caught from Knutsford-Altrincham had around 60 passengers on (so only about 50% of seats occupied), the Metrolink services had 0 passengers on (despite some Piccadilly services being double M5000s - so some with 70% of seats unoccupied) and the 245 bus I was on and the others I saw didn't have more than around 8 passengers on at any time (run by Wright Pulsar buses with 44 seats.) The return train from Altrincham to Knutsford had around 100 passengers on a 142.

When you think about that it's the rail service that's existed since the 1800s that had a healthy loading and much more recent additions of Metrolink and the 247 bus that were carting around a lot of fresh air. This was despite 2 things being on at Event City, an event at the Manchester velodrome and a very healthy number of shoppers at the Trafford centre today. It seems the public don't like using buses or catching the tram if they need to take a connecting bus or another connecting tram.

I can assure you that the trams at Velopark have been extremely busy today.....I was actually there at around 11am this morning....not realising there was a beer festival on at the Velodrome.

 

[yorksrob]

Cheers



I'm not assuming that they aren't carrying any passengers, I've only ever been on one service where I was the only passenger - I'm saying that some services/ routes aren't carrying anything like enough passengers to justify a heavy rail service.

Passenger numbers haven't gone up by anything like enough to rectify this either. The problem is that nobody wants to acknowledge that there are weak links that need pruning, so that we can focus on stronger areas.

Nonsense, the problem is the mentality that every service has to be full and standing to justify it‘s existance. When those adhering to this mentality discover that some of these services are actually busy and crowded, they fall back on the long discredited "this line can‘t be profitable" routine to justify their outmoded view of the world.

 

[HSTEd]

My proposed ultra high capital cost solution (but most awesome ) to the Barrow Upon Humber problem is to simply build a single track railway bridge that connects the line to the railway on the Northbank somewhere east of Hessle.

A triangle could be put in to allow trains to either proceed directly to hull or travel to Barton and then reverse.

I am sure I can come up with some kind of freight related justification as well.....

(And before anyone complains that I think there is an 'unlimited' pot of money, I would argue that the line already haemhorrages money and the capital cost of a bridge in todays low borrowing cost environment might concievably be a net benefit since people will actually start using the train).

EDIT:

If that is considered to be rather expensive, how about a Gondola between Hessle and Barton-upon-Humber railway stations?
Free transfers between the station (put the entrance behind the 'gateline' at both ends).
I imagine it would be faster than a bus since it is inherently turn up and ride.

 

[Moonshot]

Just whilst we are on the topic , my own neck of the woods has seen a brand new extension of the manchester metrolink which has now been open 3 months. It is excellent, and is getting well used by me.

One of the stops ( New Islington ) is looking very busy, which is not suprising considering the newish developments and the ones that are rising. Manchester has been very good at this over the years, and has become a very cosmopolitan place to live.

 

[David Barrett]

My proposed ultra high capital cost solution (but most awesome ) to the Barrow Upon Humber problem is to simply build a single track railway bridge that connects the line to the railway on the Northbank somewhere east of Hessle.

Just for fun, any ideas on potential costs? As a starting point the figures for a combined road and rail bridge were stated as being £ 4 000 000 in 1930, however the L.N.E.R. didn't consider that their share of the capital costs would ever be recouped so a proposal went before Parliament for a road only multiple span crossing at a mere £1 725 000. This gained approval but was scuppered by the Government, in a time of financial difficulty, by withdrawing its agreed contribution. Tunnels were also costed at £4 600 000 for twin bore railway tunnels of 18 feet diameter and £ 7 200 000 twin bore road tunnels each of 27 feet diameter.

1937 saw a revival of the idea, this time for a single span bridge, but the European Situation more or less ensured that this went no further.

Of course, even had the bridge been built, the ferry service may well have been with us post war after a revival brought about by the activities of one A. Hitler during his 1939 - '45 European Tour.

 

[tbtc]

Nonsense, the problem is the mentality that every service has to be full and standing to justify it‘s existance. When those adhering to this mentality discover that some of these services are actually busy and crowded, they fall back on the long discredited "this line can‘t be profitable" routine to justify their outmoded view of the world.

Which "busy and crowded" services are we arguing about?

The fact that you described the "over thirty people" on the Whitby service (presumably a 156 with around 75% of seats empty?) suggests there's a lot of wasted capacity (especially as if the 10:36 only carries thirtysomething then the previous train at 07:04 isn't going to cause the Guard many problems).

If a service is "busy and crowded" then it deserves to be kept. But we need to be honest about which services are actually busy. For example, I've seen people referring to "overcrowding" at Barrow. Since Barrow gets an average of around 64 passengers an hour (the combined total of departing passengers towards Lancaster and Whitehaven) and regular three-coach 185s then any "overcrowding" suggests a lot of other services would struggle to fill a minibus.

The railway exists to serve passengers - passenger demands have changed over the years but in some areas the railway hasn't - how can we best locate finite resources to meet that demand?

 

[455driver]

The railway exists to serve passengers - passenger demands have changed over the years but in some areas the railway hasn't - how can we best locate finite resources to meet that demand?

That was then and this is now, the railways exist to make a profit for the share holders by charging the maximum fare the market will allow.

Do i agree with it?
No I dont but this is "great" Britain!

 

[tbtc]

That was then and this is now, the railways exist to make a profit for the share holders by charging the maximum fare the market will allow.

Do i agree with it?
No I dont but this is "great" Britain!

They still get a lot of subsidy to provide some services - I have no problem with this, but some causes are more deserving than others.

 

[Moonshot]

That was then and this is now, the railways exist to make a profit for the share holders by charging the maximum fare the market will allow.

Do i agree with it?
No I dont but this is "great" Britain!

Market forces do not act on 50% of the fare basket......regulated fares are a suppression on these.

 

[yorksrob]

Which "busy and crowded" services are we arguing about?

The fact that you described the "over thirty people" on the Whitby service (presumably a 156 with around 75% of seats empty?) suggests there's a lot of wasted capacity (especially as if the 10:36 only carries thirtysomething then the previous train at 07:04 isn't going to cause the Guard many problems).

That was only what I could count. There seemed to be a lot more, including those getting on , on the way.

If a service is "busy and crowded" then it deserves to be kept. But we need to be honest about which services are actually busy. For example, I've seen people referring to "overcrowding" at Barrow. Since Barrow gets an average of around 64 passengers an hour (the combined total of departing passengers towards Lancaster and Whitehaven) and regular three-coach 185s then any "overcrowding" suggests a lot of other services would struggle to fill a minibus.

Do you honestly think that those 64 people an hour would be better moved on to another form of transport ?

Do you think that Barrow would do better out of it ?

The railway exists to serve passengers - passenger demands have changed over the years but in some areas the railway hasn't - how can we best locate finite resources to meet that demand?

Well it does, but towns don't generally change their location. Where the town is, the railway should follow. Beeching failed this spectacularly.

 

[HSTEd]

Just for fun, any ideas on potential costs? As a starting point the figures for a combined road and rail bridge were stated as being £ 4 000 000 in 1930, however the L.N.E.R. didn't consider that their share of the capital costs would ever be recouped so a proposal went before Parliament for a road only multiple span crossing at a mere £1 725 000. This gained approval but was scuppered by the Government, in a time of financial difficulty, by withdrawing its agreed contribution. Tunnels were also costed at £4 600 000 for twin bore railway tunnels of 18 feet diameter and £ 7 200 000 twin bore road tunnels each of 27 feet diameter.

Is there currently a requirement for a 'high level' bridge?
I am not sure I am aware of any large scale navigation of the Humber by large vessels at the present time.
Since the bridge would likely only be relatively lightly used a low level span with a swing/lift section should probably be considered, and if there is no need for 'high level' passage hten a solid low level bridge would probably be cheaper.

A tunnel would probably be roughly 3km long with a curve to join the railway north of the River East of Hessle where there is nothing between the line and the shore but a dual carriageway.
Using a combination cut and cover, and immersed tube tunnel would likely be the cheapest option, or by following a similar alignment with a flyover and bridge if the bridge option is selected.

As to cost, the Immersed Tunnel option for the Forth Bridge replacement was priced at ~£450m but that was for a considerably larger cross section road crossing with all the attendant additions in terms of guaranteeing air quality.
Given the generally comparable span you would probably be looking at ~£200m for such a scheme.
Which is very expensive.

Bridges are harder to price but a single track bridge is likely to be considerably cheaper.

It is worth noting that even at £200m the interest+capital repayments on such a crossing would likely only be £5.5m if it is linked to inflation. (Using the Current IL Treasury bond rate of 0.09%)

£5.5m a year sounds like a lot.

Currently six days a week there are nine trains a day arriving at Barton-upon-Humber, with four trains a day on Summer Sundays.
Assuming 'Summer' is just half the year, that implies something approaching 26 Sundays with trains, or a total of 104 trains on Sunday.
The remaining days of the week add a further ~2815 trains, giving us 2919 trains per year.

That translates as £1800 per passenger train which would presumably be extended to Hull.
Which is an awful lot if the trains are all 1 and 2 car multiple units.
But I do wonder if there is some chance for rail to grab some more market share here as the journey time from the areas along the line to Barton to Hull is probably going to competitive with alternate means of transport if the crossing were to be constructed.

Additionally, a chord constructed onto the branch from the Immingham access could potentially allow freight trains to operate over the bridge and then loop through Hull on the circle of track apparently provided in the centre and head back along the line towards York.

But I am not sure if there is any demand for such traffic.

In short, at a price of ~£200m the line would not be competitive but if a bridge (or indeed a tunnel) could be constructed for less than that then perhaps you would be in with a shot of making it competitive.

It is nowhere near as uncompetitive as I thought it was going to be when I started calculations though.
Could probably work out some reasoning behind supporting the project if you could set up a P&R scheme for hull on the south bank with a unit doing shuttles through New Barton even when trains from the south were not passing over it.

EDIT:

Apparently the ~4km immersed tube tunnels used on the Oresund Link were something like $600m, but included motorway tubes and rail tubes as well as an escape gallery which tends to imply something like $240m if an escape gallery is added to a single track railway tube.
That translates to something like ~£150m.

So maybe its no so hopeless after all.

 

[Bantamzen]

I'm not assuming that they aren't carrying any passengers, I've only ever been on one service where I was the only passenger - I'm saying that some services/ routes aren't carrying anything like enough passengers to justify a heavy rail service.

Passenger numbers haven't gone up by anything like enough to rectify this either. The problem is that nobody wants to acknowledge that there are weak links that need pruning, so that we can focus on stronger areas.

You don't happen to work for FirstBus do you? Because that's exactly the justification that they've been using for a number of years in my region. So they've been busy cutting many services that they don't consider “profitable enough” & instead consolidating their profit making ones. Except the reality is that this doesn't happen for the most part. FirstBus have culled many services in this area, yet have really only managed to genuinely consolidate one particular route, and even that has been done by switching from a 4ph double decker service to around 7-8ph using FTR vehicles which although technically have a higher capacity, the actual seating capacity is far less. And even this so called consolidation was achieved using FTR vehicles cascaded from other routes, so in reality there was no overall improvement to the network, in fact there has been a net loss of capacity (and that's not including the seemingly high fail rate of these vehicles judging by the number of services that simply don't turn up, even at off-peak times where traffic is less of a factor).

Some of this slack left by FirstBus has been picked up by other smaller operators, but often using smaller vehicles and with less frequency. The result is that many ex-passengers on these routes have had to find alternative means of commuting. Some have switched to driving to their nearest railway station, but with limited parking at many stations in our region this has left many more simply choosing to drive again. This has lead to even more chronic traffic problems in the area. Commuting by road from the Aire & Wharfe valleys towards either Leeds or Bradford is becoming increasingly difficult, but with a transport network that isn't always particularly joined up it's actually quite difficult to coax people out of their cars and onto the remaining capacity on the trains (although the peaks in & out of Leeds are often pretty close to capacity, if not beyond at times). And this problem is replicated across the North of England. And all this additional traffic on the roads means that the existing bus services are becoming more inefficient, and some are starting to suffer with falling passengers numbers & as a result being cut back. It's a vicious cricle.

The point is that culling seemingly unprofitable services might look good for board executives & shareholders examining the bottom line, but it just creates even more problems for the people living in the areas served by them. What is needed is far better integration between public transport networks, better cross modal ticking options, and most importantly better information for the travelling public on the easiest & cheapest travel options. This will will then maximise the potential of low used routes, by encouraging new & sustainable usage levels. Of course this will involve a great deal more investment into the whole network, not only in new rolling stock & improvements to existing stock, but improved information & ticketing systems at stations, rail & signalling upgrading, negotiating with bus operators to sell cross modal tickets etc. All of which will doubtless have have the accounts in a dizzy spin. Which is why I'm becoming more & more convinced that our transport network isn't for the private sector, driven first & foremost by profits and should be brought back into the public domain, run by either regional or central administrations. We've tried to let the market decide, and it decided to stuff many in favour of short term gain. So I think it's time for something else. I would much rather pay a bit more in council tax to fund a regionally controlled, fully integrated network that operated to the needs of the travelling public & worked towards solving some of the horrendous traffic problems we are blighted with these days.

 

[Moonshot]

You don't happen to work for FirstBus do you? Because that's exactly the justification that they've been using for a number of years in my region. So they've been busy cutting many services that they don't consider “profitable enough” & instead consolidating their profit making ones. Except the reality is that this doesn't happen for the most part. FirstBus have culled many services in this area, yet have really only managed to genuinely consolidate one particular route, and even that has been done by switching from a 4ph double decker service to around 7-8ph using FTR vehicles which although technically have a higher capacity, the actual seating capacity is far less. And even this so called consolidation was achieved using FTR vehicles cascaded from other routes, so in reality there was no overall improvement to the network, in fact there has been a net loss of capacity (and that's not including the seemingly high fail rate of these vehicles judging by the number of services that simply don't turn up, even at off-peak times where traffic is less of a factor).

Some of this slack left by FirstBus has been picked up by other smaller operators, but often using smaller vehicles and with less frequency. The result is that many ex-passengers on these routes have had to find alternative means of commuting. Some have switched to driving to their nearest railway station, but with limited parking at many stations in our region this has left many more simply choosing to drive again. This has lead to even more chronic traffic problems in the area. Commuting by road from the Aire & Wharfe valleys towards either Leeds or Bradford is becoming increasingly difficult, but with a transport network that isn't always particularly joined up it's actually quite difficult to coax people out of their cars and onto the remaining capacity on the trains (although the peaks in & out of Leeds are often pretty close to capacity, if not beyond at times). And this problem is replicated across the North of England. And all this additional traffic on the roads means that the existing bus services are becoming more inefficient, and some are starting to suffer with falling passengers numbers & as a result being cut back. It's a vicious cricle.

The point is that culling seemingly unprofitable services might look good for board executives & shareholders examining the bottom line, but it just creates even more problems for the people living in the areas served by them. What is needed is far better integration between public transport networks, better cross modal ticking options, and most importantly better information for the travelling public on the easiest & cheapest travel options. This will will then maximise the potential of low used routes, by encouraging new & sustainable usage levels. Of course this will involve a great deal more investment into the whole network, not only in new rolling stock & improvements to existing stock, but improved information & ticketing systems at stations, rail & signalling upgrading, negotiating with bus operators to sell cross modal tickets etc. All of which will doubtless have have the accounts in a dizzy spin. Which is why I'm becoming more & more convinced that our transport network isn't for the private sector, driven first & foremost by profits and should be brought back into the public domain, run by either regional or central administrations. We've tried to let the market decide, and it decided to stuff many in favour of short term gain. So I think it's time for something else. I would much rather pay a bit more in council tax to fund a regionally controlled, fully integrated network that operated to the needs of the travelling public & worked towards solving some of the horrendous traffic problems we are blighted with these days.

I think you fail to understand todays picture.......the rail industry is no more privatised today than it was 20 years ago. Market forces do not decide anything.......investment decisions are made by central government, which also regulates fares. TOCs are simply a form of PFI.

I rather think that increasing tax to fund transport is not what the voters want.....and indeed the Labour party has just signed its own death warrant for the next election by announcing an increase in income tax to 50% for earners over £150k.