Oxford Tube

[tigerroar]

Whenever I drive down the M40 between Oxford and the M25 there is a surprisingly large number of double decker coaches running direct from Victoria to Oxford.

Is there really the need for such an intense service? They must run every fifteen minutes.

 

[Dstock7080]

As frequent as every 10mins at times: http://www.oxfordtube.com/tubetimes.php
There are 26, 87-seater coaches available on this route.

 

[dzug2]

And there's a nearly as frequent competing service

http://www.oxfordbus.co.uk/main.php?page_id=27

I think they've created a need

 

[starrymarkb]

They seem to fill them aswell so I'm guessing there is demand. Also have the Oxford Espress too.

 

[tigerroar]

I can think there might be a tourism angle but to have such a constant stream of movement certainly through off peak times in the middle of the day seems unnecessary.

 

[heenan73]

I can think there might be a tourism angle but to have such a constant stream of movement certainly through off peak times in the middle of the day seems unnecessary.

Both routes make a profit, both routes have pretty good average loadings, and the frequency (no timetable necessary) helps maintain their popularity - combined, of course, with coach-style fares. It's too far to cycle, and the canal paths are not walkable for the whole route, so I'm not sure quite how you define 'unnecessary'.

The success of coaches on the Oxford-London route reflects the relatively inconvenient rail alternative - slow, expensive, and leaves you at Paddington - but the rail offering will improve with the Marylebone alternative (slightly - still inconvenient for many, but almost certainly cheaper).

The revolution may come with electrification of the Paddington route, but if Oxford is included in the Crossrail offering, it's highly likely that the coach service will evaporate overnight.

 

[tigerroar]

That Chiltern rail option is really expensive to build isn't it? And I'll bet it takes longer by rail whatever way one goes.

I still can't believe there is such a high demand to travel between the two Cities through the day. Is Cambridge to London the same and do other towns or cities around London enjoy such services?

 

[HSTEd]

That Chiltern rail option is really expensive to build isn't it? And I'll bet it takes longer by rail whatever way one goes.

I still can't believe there is such a high demand to travel between the two Cities through the day. Is Cambridge to London the same and do other towns or cities around London enjoy such services?

The cambridge coach service is about 10% of the Oxford one, but then Cambridge does have two different commuter rail routes to choose from.
Electrification of the Great Western railway will probably hurt it but if Crossrail goes to Oxford it will be game over, not to mention what happens if the Oxford to Bicester line really does get connected to the Chiltern Main Line and they manage through trains.

 

[tigerroar]

Isn't Crossrail generally a stopping service though and they seem quite firm that it's only going as far as Maidenhead, which seems daft to me.

 

[Statto]

It's a 24hr service as well, although if i lived in Oxford. i would not like to do this as a regular commute, as journey time is around 1hr:40min.

It's quite bizarre that a smallish City has a regular high frequency 24hr coach service, provided by 2 operators, that makes a profit, otherwise it'd be well cut back by now.

I've noticed the fare to Heathrow is more expensive than to the centre of London on the Oxford Bus Company service.

 

[Daimler]

The main problem with travelling from Oxford to London by rail for most people is the inconvenient siting of the railway station - not only is it on the wrong side of town for many, but as it's more-or-less in the centre of town, it's a nightmare to drive to. Consequently, many people currently use the Oxford Espress/Oxford Tube by driving to the park and ride at Thornhill (free parking on the outskirts of town) and jumping on the coach there.

Once Chiltern have started operating into Oxford, they will offer a new, fast service from a new station at Water Eaton Parkway (also a park and ride with free parking on the outskirts of town), which should prove very popular for those using the coach at the moment.

The coach does take a good deal longer than the train (100 minutes at best rather than 60), but I suspect that for many this is negated by the inconvenient drive into central Oxford to use the train.

 

[Statto]

The main problem with travelling from Oxford to London by rail for most people is the inconvenient siting of the railway station - not only is it on the wrong side of town for many, but as it's more-or-less in the centre of town, it's a nightmare to drive to. Consequently, many people currently use the Oxford Espress/Oxford Tube by driving to the park and ride at Thornhill (free parking on the outskirts of town) and jumping on the coach there.

Once Chiltern have started operating into Oxford, they will offer a new, fast service from a new station at Water Eaton Parkway (also a park and ride with free parking on the outskirts of town), which should prove very popular for those using the coach at the moment.

The coach does take a good deal longer than the train (100 minutes at best rather than 60), but I suspect that for many this is negated by the inconvenient drive into central Oxford to use the train.

Good point, even if you end up catching the bus from Paddington, it can take 15 min or longer going from Paddington to your final destination.

 

[heenan73]

As it's a pair of competing commercial services, with brand new vehicles every 2 or 3 years, their very existence implies a need.

Oxford is in a fairly unique situation;

It has good road connections to London, and relatively poor rail connection - Look at Brighton, Cambridge, where the reverse is true: central London termini, frequent, fast, direct trains, choice of stopping patterns.

Crossrail is not currently intended to go near Oxford, preferring to terminate at low population centres either side of the capital, to ensure it makes huge losses. One day they may send it to where the people are, and there's no (real) reason why it can't include fast or semi-fast trains, so long as they stop at all stations between Padd and LStreet - At the very least, the Heathrow Express should be routed direct to the city (duh!). Similarly, the very situation you describe would guarantee a huge ridership from Oxford. But they don't call the ministry DaFT for nothing!

The Chiltern Line 'evergreen' extensions have historically been good value for money to build, and (almost unique) have mostly been built within budget, with most delays due to extraordinary circumstances, rather than the usual c***ups. The services normally offer fares some way below their "intercity" rivals (WC & GW).

The fact that you (and others!) choose to drive, and many thousands use the excellent, 24hr, economical, largely punctual and comfortable coaches only demonstrates that no senior civil servants in DaFT are Oxford residents.

Join us in Living In Hope that once built, Crossrail is taken over by someone with a brain cell or two But don't hold your breath! :roll:
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Is Cambridge to London the same and do other towns or cities around London enjoy such services?

The only other coach commuting service of any size I'm aware of is Kent & Medway, where there's a variety of coaches, led by 'King's Ferry', a Natex subsidiary now). There, too, the rail service is abysmal, with semi-fasts almost a thing of the past, and A-B speeds slower than the final steam trains of the 1950s - but they have pretty abysmal roads, too, so the coach service is not so successful - and not so comfortable!

Natex did a trial commuter coach Milton Keynes - Islington - Docklands a couple of years ago; even one scheduled vehicle was not viable, and was discontinued after a few months.

 

[jopsuk]

Cambridge-London by coach is slow. Much slower than even the slow trains on the Liverpool Street line. There's only Nat Ex, and they're not much/any cheaper than taking a train, especially if you've got a Network Railcard. The road from Oxford remains a relatively quick dual carriageway all the way to the centre of London. By comparison, the M11 ends quite far out; the coach then has to negotiate the North Circular, A12 and local roads to Stratford railway station, before becoming utterly bogged down trying to get across to Victoria.

Oxford is about 50% bigger (population) than Cambridge mind. But really, the lack of coaches is down to the rail service being exemplary- off peak there are six trains (five usefully, as one of them gets overtaken, but it's good if you want Finsbury Park or connections to outer north London) to London, most of which will be 8 carriages, and two take 48 minutes (ish) to Kings Cross. At peak times, there's a an extra two an hour to Liverpool Street, and 12 car trains currently to Kings Cross with Liverpool Street going 12 car from December. Vastly more capacity than Oxford, and using stock better suited to the job (the Networker Turbos might be comparable if they were four carriage and 100mph).

 

[Daimler]

Oxford is about 50% bigger (population) than Cambridge mind. But really, the lack of coaches is down to the rail service being exemplary- off peak there are six trains (five usefully, as one of them gets overtaken, but it's good if you want Finsbury Park or connections to outer north London) to London, most of which will be 8 carriages, and two take 48 minutes (ish) to Kings Cross. At peak times, there's a an extra two an hour to Liverpool Street, and 12 car trains currently to Kings Cross with Liverpool Street going 12 car from December. Vastly more capacity than Oxford, and using stock better suited to the job (the Networker Turbos might be comparable if they were four carriage and 100mph).

I would argue that on the fast services, the HSTs are better suited to the job than the Networker Turbos - even if these were longer and a little faster (for they can do 90 even now). A one hour (or more if the train is heading down the Cotswold Line) journey of nigh-on 70 miles where most of the route is good for 125mph - and where refreshments are usually available - deserves something better than a 165/317/365.

Of course, HSTs aren't ideal either...what one really needs for fast Oxfords and the Cotswold services is a shorter intercity-style train - say, 5 coaches, but based on the Mk3 bodyshell. I wonder if they've ever considered such a thing...

 

[heenan73]

The Oxford trip on a fast train should be about an hour; certainly no need for IC type train at all; so long as the track is well maintained, a half decent EMU/DEMU is absolutely fine; all the TOCs need is a little lesson in quality seating.

Here in darkest Kent, where all our non-HS1 trips to London take 1.5-2 hours, for all the myriad of complaints you hear, I've never heard the suggestion 'we should have HST'; in fact, in the glory days of XC, when the occasional HST did get lost down our way, everyone thought it was a special train, and no one got on.

A genuine IC route with genuine IC distances may warrant something special; Oxford is outer suburban in all but name (Sorry chaps, but look around London), and well within standard commuter distances NW, N, NE, E, SE, S, and SW of London. It's only passengers from the west who think that Brunel is still running the GWR

What it wants is fast trains. Granted, 1st class passengers might want to pay extra for Mk3 style, but the average punter would much prefer a better journey time than paying extra for brief comforts

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Once Chiltern have started operating into Oxford, they will offer a new, fast service from a new station at Water Eaton Parkway (also a park and ride with free parking on the outskirts of town), which should prove very popular for those using the coach at the moment.

The coach does take a good deal longer than the train (100 minutes at best rather than 60), but I suspect that for many this is negated by the inconvenient drive into central Oxford to use the train.

Chiltern are banking on Water Eaton Parkway being as big a hit with commuters as Warwick Parkway was as far as I can tell. Parallels with Cambridge have been made in this thread already, and they are valid as Oxford and Cambridge are remarkably similar places in terms of their distance from and relationship with the capital (commuters, tourists, university traffic) and the fact that Cambridge sees several million more passengers a year through its station than Oxford does despite Oxford being a major stop on the XC route has not gone unnoticed. The abundance of coach travel between Oxford and London and the success of both lines between Cambridge and London suggests there is room for a second route from Oxford to London.
Will Water Eaton Parkway be the station that more Marylebone passengers use though? Possibly, Oxford station is on the wrong side of town (and the river) for most of the residential areas in Oxford and the drive in to the city centre is no joke, especially in the rush hour. I understand that the Water Eaton - Marylebone journey times are almost to the minute identical as Paddington - Oxford. If you can cut out a painful drive into town before people get on the train then the door to door time on the Chilterns could be the fastest route of them all between Oxford and London for a hell of a lot of people. I think there could be a decent flow of people between Oxford and High Wycombe too, a rail connection between those two places is long overdue.

 

[radamfi]

The Oxford to London coach market grew strongly in the late 80s and early 90s principally because of the sustained quality competition invoked by Transit Holdings when it was run by Harry Blundred. Before Blundred started the Oxford Tube, Oxford Citylink (as the Oxford Bus Company X90 was then called) ran something like every 30 minutes and didn't carry the huge loads we know today. When Stagecoach took over the Oxford and Devon operations of Transit Holdings, Stagecoach knew the importance of the strong Oxford Tube brand and have continued it to the present day.

 

[route:oxford]

There are benefits to both the rail and the coach services.

For those living between Headington & Magdalen Bridge - you are talking a minimum of 20-30 minutes on the service bus to the rail station. At present, the "fast" rail services from Oxford to London take around 1h06m. So little is to be gained by taking the bus into central Oxford to find you've got 30 minutes to wait until the next fast service.

Looking at return services, particularily those later in the evening - The 22.49 service from Paddington to Oxford takes 1h23m. I'm far better off grabbing an Espress at Marble Arch (or Tube at Victoria) and will be confident that I'll be back in Oxford long before the train.

The new rail service from Water Eaton Parkway to London is eagerly awaited by many living in the Witney/Yarnton/Kidlington/Woodstock area north of Oxford (they would normally drive to Bicester or Didcot Parkway to pick up the services).

 

[Mutant Lemming]

It's strange how Oxford has such a frequent coach service and Cambridge doesn't when you consider that a little down the M11 at Stansted they can run a 24 hour service to various London locations. Maybe the blues of Cambridge are more studious and are in bed earlier than their Oxford counterparts hence not necessitating a 24 hour service to and from London.

 

[jopsuk]

There's not even a decent coach service to Stansted from Cambridge- other than late at night, the only people using the coach are those that haven't figured out that a bus to the station and the XC service isn't just a heck of a lot faster than the NX coach, but generally cheaper too. Same frequency, and even leave about the same part of the hour (rather than, say, being half an hour out) as each other.

 

[W-on-Sea]

In the late 80s there was a very intense coach service (route X1) between London and Southend, run by Southend Transport-as frequent as every 5 mins in the peaks (before that it was jointly operated with Reading Buses, and ran through to Reading via Heathrow). The vast improvements that later occured on the LTS/c2c line, which made the days when it was known as the misery line a distant memory, did for the coach services-several operators tried, and failed, to make even a one return journey a day service profitable.

Now, having recently moved from near Southend to outside Oxford, I don't think extending crossrail to Oxford would kill off the coaches in the same way, for all the reasons mentioned above, at least unless there were almost unimaginable changes made to the road network in and near Oxford as well-or unless a railway line was somehow built into central and east Oxford

 

[heenan73]

Good point; for Oxford, it's not just the London terminus that's inconvenient, the Oxford station is way out of town too.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Good point; for Oxford, it's not just the London terminus that's inconvenient, the Oxford station is way out of town too.

I would say Oxford's station is closer to it's centre than Cambridge's.

 

[jopsuk]

Sort of- but both are very "off centre" cities. Oxford station is near the "city centre", but it is also on the western edge of the city, not close to the big residential areas. Meanwhile, Cambridge railway station in the middle of a densely populated part of the city- the Romsey, Petersfield, Coleridge etc areas being very close, Cherry Hinton not too far and Abbey within easy distance. Even Chesterton isn't that far- though a station in north Chesterton would see there, plus Arbury/Kings Hedges/Orchard Park and Milton well served. West Cambridge is little but the university. Few London commuters live in the very centre. Remeber, we're not considering really here travel TO the cities- it's the commuting to London that's the big market.

 

[tbtc]

Crossrail is going to be the "all stops" - it'd take a couple of hours to get from "The City" (of London) to Oxford at those speeds.

Maybe in the medium term Crossrail will become a Thameslink/RER equivalent, with a mixture of fast/slow trains and a variety of destinations (further into Kent, slow paths up the WCML, Basingstoke etc), but they are building it like a London Underground service (only two branches, all trains stopping at all stations).

So I can't see the Oxford Tube being "killed off" any time soon, especially as the market for Westfield (Shephard's Bush) increases - Stagecoach seem to know what they are doing there.

 

[ivanhoe]

Why would any of you wish to see the Tube killed off? Its popular, value for money , and it uses Coaches that are renewed every three years. It displays everything that is good about public transport: Frequent, Clean, good on the eye and good fares. Here's to it's continued existence !

 

[jopsuk]

Because we prefer trains to buses?

 

[radamfi]

Because we prefer trains to buses?

IMO a good bus is better than a crappy train! I would rather have an Oxford Tube coach than a Pacer, for example.

 

[tbtc]

Why would any of you wish to see the Tube killed off? Its popular, value for money , and it uses Coaches that are renewed every three years. It displays everything that is good about public transport: Frequent, Clean, good on the eye and good fares. Here's to it's continued existence !

I agree with you.

Interesting to see how much better Stagecoach are at these kind of coach routes (the Fife expresses, Ayrshire, the "Varsity" X5) whilst Arriva/ First seem to struggle (notable exception of the X1 from Norwich to Peterborough)