Virgin VHF is go! (plus more)

[Metroland]

Rail passengers across Britain will benefit from almost 700 extra services a day on weekdays when a new timetable begins, train operators have said.

The Association of Train Operating Companies said weekday services would increase by 3.4% from next week, including faster and longer trains.

Customer watchdog Passenger Focus said it particularly welcomed the completion of the West Coast main line upgrade.

Other improvements will include the opening of four new stations during the timetable period - Aylesbury Vale Parkway, Buckinghamshire; Corby, Northamptonshire; East Midlands Parkway, Nottinghamshire; and Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire.

Eight additional towns and cities are also to be linked by direct services to London: Alsager, Cheshire; Atherstone, Warwickshire; Corby; Ivybridge, Devon; Lincoln; and Rugeley, Stone and Kidsgrove, all in Staffordshire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7770077.stm

 

[Mojo]

What's the point of the VHF services if the only way people can afford to use them is by buying time-restricted Advance purchase tickets?

 

[mrcheek]

What's the point of the VHF services if the only way people can afford to use them is by buying time-restricted Advance purchase tickets?

its so people with ALRs can get a decent seat once in a while when doing runs to and from Euston

 

[yorkie]

What's the point of the VHF services if the only way people can afford to use them is by buying time-restricted Advance purchase tickets?

They're hoping people pay silly money like £327, and go away thinking "Wow! that's good! I got a train within 20 minutes!" unfortunately it backfires as we've seen...

 

[me123]

Well, with more services there should be more Advance tickets available. Well, that's the theory anyway

 

[matt]

It appears that advance fares have come down in price. For example a Tuesday evening in January approx 19:30 you can get a single Euston to Coventry for £5 or £3.30 with a railcard.

 

[Metroland]

They're hoping people pay silly money like £327, and go away thinking "Wow! that's good! I got a train within 20 minutes!" unfortunately it backfires as we've seen...

Some people will pay silly money. Some people prefer first class, others travel in the peak.

Cheap, is not important to everyone. Its all about what the market can stand and individual customers needs.

Remember cheap can also 'cheapen' your brand. M&S doesn't aim for cheap, nor does say BA.

But Ryan air, Primark and Aldi do, who rely on volume selling to a certain market.

Of course cheap fares can be had it you buy in advance, and that's what some people do.

I take the point about turn-up and go should be cheap to walk on, but I suspect its about total volume and managing demand.

Anyway, that's my take on it, VT set the fares, but there are my thoughts.

Here is what they say:

Virgin Trains said the move was justified given that the upgraded West Coast Main Line will mean journey times will be shorter.

"The trains have not been full in the past, but they will now because it will be a much more attractive service," said a Virgin spokesman.

"These will now be business services because the trains will offer much faster journey times.

"We have to set our fare levels at a point which they are attractive but also cover our costs.

"We are competing against the airlines. We now have 75 per cent of the market on the London to Manchester route compared to 25 per cent which is still retained by the airlines.

"Four years ago we only carried a third of passengers. We are not going to apologise for these fares.

"The test will be whether we continue to grow at the expense of the airlines."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...estrictions-means-some-fares-will-treble.html

 

[metrocammel]

It appears that advance fares have come down in price. For example a Tuesday evening in January approx 19:30 you can get a single Euston to Coventry for £5 or £3.30 with a railcard.

There also seems to be less of them. I checked APs for Sunday 14th ages ago, and the only trains available for any 'reasonably cheap' fares were morning or late evening services. Aything between around 1200 - 1800 were considerably more.

 

[Metroland]

Network Rail has completed £8.8 billion of engineering works on schedule - and is set to unveil boosted capacity.

The transport body which was tasked with upgrading the West Coast Main Line is set to introduce a new timetable on Sunday which will see train operators running more services.

It is expected up to 1,000 extra trains will run each week and journey times will be slashed by up to 30 per cent.

Network Rail’s chief executive Iain Coucher said: “Network Rail has delivered West Coast on the day we said we would. The infrastructure is now ready for the introduction of new, faster, more frequent services across the route.”

Network Rail was fined a record £14 million when engineering works overran at Rugby in January.

Since then it has been under mounting pressure to make sure the engineering works are completed on time.

It recently came under fire from the CEO of Virgin Trains Tony Collins who said he was concerned about the reliability of the completed rail network.

He also predicted that even if engineering works were completed on time, Network Rail would still need to guarantee reliability, which could be challenging.

But he pledged to keep working with the company to develop a reliable service.

He said: “More seats and reduced journey times are huge wins for passengers but we will all be judged on how well this railway will perform.”


http://www.birminghampost.net/news/...ast-main-line-repairs-on-time-65233-22432587/

 

[xtradj]

the fact that Man - Eus, and Wol/Bham - Eus now run every 20mins is obviously great for passengers with the money/time etc to travel whenever

but i cant see virgin filling 3 trains an hour from manchester to london? especially when there is only 1/2 pick up stops and of course flights etc

same with wolves and birmingham.. 3 trains an hour, not to mention the london midland service and the chilton services, so upto 6 trains per hour to london.

However if there are more frequent and faster cheaper services, virgin may hope to get people travelling to london on weekend and day visits shopping rather than visiting there local town, as £10 return, or £6.60 advance from birmingham, may actually be cheaper to go to london on the train than park in birmingham for example!!

 

[87015]

but i cant see virgin filling 3 trains an hour from manchester to london? especially when there is only 1/2 pick up stops and of course flights etc

The existing 2tph aren't exactly bursting at the seems at the moment anyway. Thats why there are loads of cheap advance tickets available in the new timetable - lots and lots of seats need filling...

 

[MKB]

The existing 2tph aren't exactly bursting at the seems at the moment anyway.

And that's even with Virgin trying to flog mobile phone tickets on that route for £1 each.

No doubt the newly introduced £5 Advance tickets are designed to put bums on seats so that VHF can be hailed a success simply by looking at passenger numbers rather than revenue or the effects on over-crowding at peak times.

Judging by the press releases flying out -- and being regurgitated without any critical analysis by lazy journalists -- the TOCs, the DfT and Network Rail are on overdrive to convince us VHF is a success without a single VHF service having yet departed.

The one cause to celebrate is the introduction of something approaching a decent service at weekends. Quite why weekdays have to suffer with airline-style point-to-point journeys that benefit only travellers to/from London is something the Labour Government will have to be answerable for.

 

[devon_metro]

Whilst I think that its always good to have additional services between towns at increased frequencies, what is the point when they hardly stop anywhere?

 

[87015]

The one cause to celebrate is the introduction of something approaching a decent service at weekends.

Yes, they are proclaiming "WCRM finished" and a "7 day railway", but then there are extended blockades at every bank holiday weekday in 2009. Don't sound very finished to me :?

 

[djw1981]

The existing 2tph aren't exactly bursting at the seems at the moment anyway. Thats why there are loads of cheap advance tickets available in the new timetable - lots and lots of seats need filling...

Have they reduced the proportion of Advance tickets per train (i.e. same total number of seats per day) in a way to force people to pay higher prices as the quota per service is smaller? Or have they just increased the total number (but maintained the proportion) of seats at Advance prices?

 

[87015]

Have they reduced the proportion of Advance tickets per train (i.e. same total number of seats per day) in a way to force people to pay higher prices as the quota per service is smaller? Or have they just increased the total number (but maintained the proportion) of seats at Advance prices?

I'm not sure, I won't travel on Pendos so haven't looked particularly hard, but a quick search shows January 15th has £5 Euston-Brum singles on most offpeak trains. Like I said, lots and lots of empty seats to fill.....

 

[devon_metro]

I'm not sure, I won't travel on Pendos so haven't looked particularly hard, but a quick search shows January 15th has £5 Euston-Brum singles on most offpeak trains. Like I said, lots and lots of empty seats to fill.....

What a completely ludicrous price for a rail ticket!

 

[sven945]

And that's even with Virgin trying to flog mobile phone tickets on that route for £1 each.

The mobile tickets are, for the moment at least, on a very limited trial which is unlikely to be extended very far. The very cheap tickets on that will probably be more in an attempt to test the system rather than to necessarily get huge numbers of more bums on seats.

No doubt the newly introduced £5 Advance tickets are designed to put bums on seats so that VHF can be hailed a success simply by looking at passenger numbers rather than revenue or the effects on over-crowding at peak times.

Certainly they exist in order to get some revenue out of what would otherwise be an empty seat. It does seem odd that they're adding more off peak services when the existing ones would be half empty (would the possibility of getting to Manchester ten minutes earlier really bring that many people into the trains?), but they're adding a greater number of advance tickets so they're hoping to get the revenue in.

Judging by the press releases flying out -- and being regurgitated without any critical analysis by lazy journalists -- the TOCs, the DfT and Network Rail are on overdrive to convince us VHF is a success without a single VHF service having yet departed.

I had a look at the departure boards today in and out of Euston and there were quite a few delays by up to 50 minutes! I'm not sure how different that is to a normal Sunday. But they seemed to clear up and I don't think there were any delays when I went down this evening. Virgin are deliberately avoiding making too much of a public fuss over it in case there are problems. Their big PR drive is due to start in January I believe.

Yes, they are proclaiming "WCRM finished" and a "7 day railway", but then there are extended blockades at every bank holiday weekday in 2009. Don't sound very finished to me :?

I was really shocked to see the BBC news story covering this today. Perhaps the VHF timetable is worthy of a report, but it's certainly not the end of the works. On the first two days after the Christmas closedown they are only running an hourly shuttle to Birmingham up the Chiltern line. I'm hoping that'll be a fairly easy couple of days for me at Euston so I can let my turkey settle!

What a completely ludicrous price for a rail ticket!

They're nice if you can get them!

 

[rail-britain]

I've been searching for advance tickets between Glasgow - Preston and Glasgow - Euston over various dates in December and January
All the fares seem a lot higher than they were between May and September
I was able to get a Glasgow - Preston First Class return for £42 without any problem during the summer, but they are currently at least £75, and that's enough to make me take my car instead, never mind comparing the Euston fare!

 

[me123]

Does anyone know how this got on today? At GLC, the 1335 (?) departed on time and the train forming the 1435 (?) arrived on time. But I did notice that the 1404 to BHM was cancelled.

 

[87015]

Does anyone know how this got on today? At GLC, the 1335 (?) departed on time and the train forming the 1435 (?) arrived on time. But I did notice that the 1404 to BHM was cancelled.

Farce all day at the London end. Engineering overruns this morning at various points, very little able to run Rugby-M.Keynes until around 1200, knock on delays and cancellations all day.

Add to that a hefty bunch of London midland cancellations due to crew shortages and a far from stellar start!!

Anyone actually surprised??

 

[sven945]

I can't say that I am really!

 

[91101]

The problems with the VHF timetable is that most of it was forced on Virgin as part of the renegotiation that they undertook with the DFT to secure their £1.3bn of subsidy to to the end of 2012. The DFT demanded the outputs from the billions of pounds of subsidy ploughed into Virgin, and into the upgrade itself.

What the DFT have failed to consider is the ammount of radical change required to deliver their specified outputs, not just Virgin, but the entire industry, every TOC operating in proximity to the WCML has been affected by the changes, loosing in many cases long established operational efficiencies in order to force the London services onto the graph.

Virgin, meanwhile, have forced far too much out of their train crew resources with intense "doubles" to Manchester/Birmingham/London for the train crew, with very limited turnarounds at Euston for the guards, and "triangular" London-Wolves-Manchester-London digrams for certain depots.

I understand that pathing is very tight through South Manchester, with the Northern Stoke service running 3 minutes late, causing delays to the Virgin behind, and then a London Midland!

It's a shame that Network Rail have failed to get this off to a proper start, the operation of the timetable is one issue, but that it was affected by overrunning engineering work is a very, very sorry omen for a railway upgrade that has been totally descoped from what it was meant to be, has ran over budget and over the original project timescales.

I was making what was to me, a very special journey on Wednesday, and it was totally ruined by an axel counter failure at Wheedon (south of Rugby) with the average delay to trains being 20 mins due to being diverted via Northampton, but at least two were stuck in the affected section being talked past.

This kind if delay is so common on the WCML and I cannot see an end to it, until it there is an end to it, the VHF will be totally undermined, and thats besides the problematic operational issues!

 

[Mojo]

It can't have been easy. I was on the 2034 from Euston to Northampton and we ran on the fast lines all the way from Watford Junction to just where the lines split north of Wolverton. This was despite the fact that we stopped at most stations.

 

[Techniquest]

Farce all day at the London end. Engineering overruns this morning at various points, very little able to run Rugby-M.Keynes until around 1200, knock on delays and cancellations all day.

Add to that a hefty bunch of London midland cancellations due to crew shortages and a far from stellar start!!

Anyone actually surprised??

Nope, not surprised whatsoever!

Got mega annoyed with the guy interviewed on BBC News 24 "It was really fast, we only stopped twice" - Yeah, but where'd you get on? Milton Keynes? Big deal, it's always been the way with Virgin.

Some lady was interviewed and said "Yeah, been no problems at all". Obviously not noticed the overrunning blockades then...

Waiting now for the first weekend to go by of Diet VHF before full-fat VHF begins in January (and if VWC don't get their 221s back before then, I can only imagine there will be farces then too). Most certainly expecting it to go belly-up tomorrow morning.

 

[me123]

I've been searching for advance tickets between Glasgow - Preston and Glasgow - Euston over various dates in December and January
All the fares seem a lot higher than they were between May and September
I was able to get a Glasgow - Preston First Class return for £42 without any problem during the summer, but they are currently at least £75, and that's enough to make me take my car instead, never mind comparing the Euston fare!

I'm actually finding a lot of First Class fares cheaper than Standard Class Fares on Saturdays :?

 

[Mojo]

What exactly is the difference between this timetable and the one due next year? Virgin seem to currently be running 3tph from Birmingham/Manchester to Euston. Is it just the Chester services or something?

 

[87015]

What exactly is the difference between this timetable and the one due next year? Virgin seem to currently be running 3tph from Birmingham/Manchester to Euston. Is it just the Chester services or something?

Well London Midland are running a timetable today which doesn't tally up with the printed timetables, LDB or journey planners!!! A quality operation!!

IIRC on the Virgin side its just the Chesters and some peak additionals which are affected.

Euston-M.Keynes terminators are only running to Bletchley due to MK Bay being out of action (and remember the WCRM is 'finished'!!!!!!) which leaves nice 40 minutes gaps for christmas shoppers from local stations into MK at the moment as the Southern isn't running either.

 

[djw1981]

I've been searching for advance tickets between Glasgow - Preston and Glasgow - Euston over various dates in December and January
All the fares seem a lot higher than they were between May and September
I was able to get a Glasgow - Preston First Class return for £42 without any problem during the summer, but they are currently at least £75, and that's enough to make me take my car instead, never mind comparing the Euston fare!

Glasgow to Euston for Jan at £7.80 were all gone about 3 weeks ago - I got two of the last for 29th Jan southbound. I think you may just be too late for the size of allocation!

 

[First ScotRail]

I have found that ALL fares with VT are alot more expensive, especially First Class. They need to get this sorted out! The saturday first class fares now include all of your catering (monday-friday standard)