What should Cross Country realistically do?

[tbtc]

Cross Country seem to be one of the most disliked TOCs, given the feedback on the other thread. But what could realistically be done to improve things?

The franchise seems to be impossible to resolve:

1. The fares are very high (compared to comparable routes, meaning its often cheaper to split your ticket)

2. The trains are very busy (given their short length)

3. Yet the franchise is rumoured to be underperforming financially and...

4. Arriva don't find it economically viable to use their HSTs at full capacity.

How do you resolve this? Are there any sensible ways of resolving the impasse?

 

[Greenback]

I think the problem goes back at least as far as the introduction of the Voyagers, which were far too short compared tot he trains they replaced. Teh principle behind the plan was sound enough for Regional Railways in the 1980's, where longer less frequent trains were replaced by shorter, more frequent ones, but flows such as Bristol-Birmingham or Sheffield to Leeds are always going to attract more custom than Trowbridge to Salisbury or Ludlow - Manchester.

1. and 3. could well be linked. XC thought it was a great idea to price their flows relatively higher than other TOC's. They thought that the punters wouldn' notice and would just pay up. Unfortunately, people have become wise to splitting tickets - we have seen articles in newspapers, magazines, and TV reports on this, as well as word of mouth and this site! This means less revenue goes to XC! I don;t even look at XC now, I just know that even their long distance Advance fares are more expensive than others. For example Llanelli - Leeds via XC is often £44, via Manchester with ATW and TPE it's usually around £21.

With less revenue coming in, XC look at the costs of running a HST and decide it can't be justified, and it' better to run a jam packed Voyager. This in turn, makes XC less pleasant to travel on, and helps passengers transfer to alternative routes and operators. Revenue continues to fall, and XC is caught in a vicious circle of decline...

The only sensible way to resolve all of these problems involves replacing the ridiculous franchising and ticketing system with a system that is not quite so absurd. Quite how we do that, I don't know, and ther eseems little chance of anything happening anyway!

 

[cuccir]

Greenback's final point is correct.

Within the current system, however, a few improvements could be made. As has been noted before, XC's long distance services are essentially local services which connect up. Intuitively that might be more efficient because they can run fewer trains at any one time, but it does make it difficult to schedule services according to local needs. It also results in long distance travellers having to frequently share trains with local commuters, resulting the busyness and dirtiness and discomfort that we have mentioned.

So, they should run fewer long distance trains up their entire routes, and more frequent shorter distance trains, which can be scheduled to meet the needs of commuters and local flows. Long distance trains, which shouldn't be entirely scrapped, should stop at fewer stations.

As an example: those travelling (say) Edinburgh > Bristol would benefit from cleaner, more comfortable trains stopping only at Cheltenham, Birmingham, Derby, Leeds/Doncaster, York, Darlington and Newcastle in between. If these connected with XC stopping services which ran shorter routes (Edinburgh > Leeds, Newcastle > Birmingham via Doncaster, Birmingham > Bristol) then they could continue to offer cheap advance or XC only tickets for those travelling to smaller stations. Commuters would benefit from trains which are not filled with luggage, and which can be scheduled to more convenient times. The long distance trains also leave them more open to being affected by delays.

Now I don't know the economics of this in detail (obviously!) so maybe it wouldn't be feasible but it strikes me that by doing this they could better serve travel needs and flows. But it would seem that these would suit their South Coast > Manchester, South Coast > Scotland, South West > Manchester and South West > Scotland services; the two East Midlands routes I know less about

 

[Dreadnought]

I think the problem goes back at least as far as the introduction of the Voyagers, which were far too short compared tot he trains they replaced. Teh principle behind the plan was sound enough for Regional Railways in the 1980's, where longer less frequent trains were replaced by shorter, more frequent ones, but flows such as Bristol-Birmingham or Sheffield to Leeds are always going to attract more custom than Trowbridge to Salisbury or Ludlow - Manchester.

Didn't Virgins original idea behind this include plans to lengthen the Voyagers upto 6 vehicles once they had seen how the new timetables worked and increased passenger flows, hence the coaches being lettered upto F.

Not certain but I believe it was the DfT (or equivalent) that knocked this on the head.

 

[Greenback]

Cuccir, I take it you mean that the number of overall services would stay the same? Ther eis much to be said for breaking the routes up into smaller pieces to assist reliability and punctuality, especially as passengers from Plymouth to Scotland are more likely to fly (ash clouds permitting!) than take the trainon such a long journey. But Plymouth - Bristol and to a lesser extent Birmingham cna be very busy, even outside holiday times, and the trains do provide useful links and connections.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Didn't Virgins original idea behind this include plans to lengthen the Voyagers upto 6 vehicles once they had seen how the new timetables worked and increased passenger flows, hence the coaches being lettered upto F.

Not certain but I believe it was the DfT (or equivalent) that knocked this on the head.

That seems to be the majority opinion!

 

[cuccir]

Cuccir, I take it you mean that the number of overall services would stay the same? Ther eis much to be said for breaking the routes up into smaller pieces to assist reliability and punctuality, especially as passengers from Plymouth to Scotland are more likely to fly (ash clouds permitting!) than take the trainon such a long journey. But Plymouth - Bristol and to a lesser extent Birmingham cna be very busy, even outside holiday times, and the trains do provide useful links and connections.

I don't know the exact workings, but yes you wouldn't want to loose services overall. To follow on with my example, there are eleven daily Edinburgh to Bristol services (one way; I presume the return is similar), nine of which go on to Plymouth and a few others extended at either end. If you halved those to five with reduced stops, then ideally you might:

* be able to add extra local services by freeing up trains: one train could do a Birmingham>Plymouth return in the time it would have taken to do go from Edinburgh to Bristol. By cancelling five long distance journeys in one direction you could easily add five returns on the broken up shorter routes: that might be an extra two trains a day between Birmingham and Plymouth, one Birmingham and Newcastle and two Edinburgh to Leeds (I am, of course, presuming that capacity and staffing exists to do this),

* reduce delays by reducing exposure to accidents/weather events across the country

* make the trains better suited to customer needs - so that long distance travellers with luggage are further separated from commuter travellers

* reduce travel time on long distance services by reducing the need to cover some of the intermediate stops on the long distance trains

 

[Greenback]

Your idea seems to have promise. I would imagine quite a bit of work would need to be done to get the timetable right so that as few of the current longer distance passengers as possible are affected. Par tof the difficulty is that there are so many different passenger flows on the XC network!

 

[CarterUSM]

I read earlier in todays Glasgow evening times about cross country capping the infamous 4 figure fare from cornwall to scotland at 640 pounds. Is this old news? I thought i'd seen this on here somewhere before?

 

[brompton rail]

I don't quite see what would be achieved.

Currently between Bristol and Birmingham there is a half hourly service, which includes an hourly service from Plymouth (and from Penzance only at the start of the day); whilst there is a half hourly service on the Birmingham to Reading (and hourly beyond to Bournemouth) leg; half hourly Brum to Manchester, half hourly Brum to Newcastle (extended hourly to Edinburgh with the last services only running on to Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow). The 2011 timetable will mean a 2 hourly all day extension from Edinburgh to Glasgow however (DfT).

It is this half hourly frequency that has resulted in the massive growth of passengers since the Voyagers were introduced. The shortage of seats is in part due to this huge growth.

Personally I don't think the service pattern needs substantial changes (though I would still prefer Newcastle services to go to Bristol rather than Reading!!) what XC needs is larger trains. Punctuality is now good and much better than when Virgin ran it. A better management team and higher quality on board services would be welcomed mind!

 

[Greenback]

From what I've heard, the current management team is pretty poor. As to the on board service, I think the problem is that XC doesn't know if it is a long distance operator or not! OK, it runs long distance trains, but most of the passengers aren't on the train for very long.

As for the current service patterns, the main difficulty is that delays, say in Edinburgh can cause problems down in Bristol, and if I understand it right, that is what cuccir's idea is designed primarily to help avoid. Some of the worst overcrowding can be seen when a trian is heavily delayed and everyone then tries to get on the next service, causing heavy overcrowding.

 

[the sniper]

Cross Country really should have to use their HST's. At New Street today around 12pm, it was tragic watching a group of really elderly women being crammed onto a packed Voyager after (I believe) attending a land girls reunion. The NR dispatchers did their best though, loading all there luggage onto the packed train.

(There was an amusing moment though as one of the dispatchers got stuck in the middle of one of the carriages and had to quickly make their way out before the train left, the dispatchers on the platform were waving her and telling her to get out on the walkie-talkie, they cheered when she made it to the door, it was like a scene out of The Crystal Maze gameshow! )

 

[eddygrim]

They should double up there voyagers permently and buy more hst sets and then there wouldnt be overcrowding
hst on fast services
voyagers on stopping services

 

[starrymarkb]

Where would you source more HSTs, I thought they were all in use

 

[the sniper]

Where would you source more HSTs, I thought they were all in use

They only use two out of the five HST's they have most of the time. They don't need more HST's, they just need to use the ones they've got, for a start...

 

[142094]

The blame for most of it has to go to Virgin for doing away with the HSTs and the 47 LHCS. Back around '97 I can remember the 47s being frequent at Newcastle going to Bristol and Birmingham. It seemed when they introduced the Voyagers, even though they had more frequent services, they were basically halving the amount of room on each train. Not exactly a good idea which is shown today.

 

[starrymarkb]

I also remember the 47s under BR - most were 6 coach at most this far west

 

[455driver]

Standard formation was 7 coaches, all mark 2F-
RFB, 5xTSO, BSO

Although short formations were VERY common, I even saw a 5 coach one behind 86212.

 

[87015]

Although short formations were VERY common, I even saw a 5 coach one behind 86212.

Do you remember the riotous week or so when they took a sledgehammer to the Mk2 maintenance budget as they weren't going to be using them for the full financial year? 47+load 3 on the 07xx Manchester-Brighton whilst they ran around in headless chicken mode....

Of course there was also the much more famous HST trailer money saving exercise which also had load twos and threes running around.

Virgin quality....!

 

[455driver]

Also when Virgin removed most of the HST fleet from service after running them through flood water, load 4 was the least I saw on that but it was a Plymouth to Aberdeen if memory serves bet that got a bit full.

 

[tbtc]

It seems a hard one to resolve.

Normally the railway solution is to increase fares to force people off trains. But here, Arriva have stuck fares up well above inflation/ comparable TOCs, the trains remain busy and yet the finances are (allegedly) weak

Tinkering at the margins (like withdrawing the Brighton service) might save a Voyager...

...but whilst a rake of (loco hauled) coaches "saved" might mean extending half a dozen rakes by one coach, you can't easily spread a four/ five coach Voyager amongst other services (you can double up *one* service, but that doesn't improve the other ones)

You can't really speed up existing services, because that leaves gaps on local routes (with no other TOC). Maybe one solution would be to run all of the HSTs and heavily advertise the "long" trains, to encourage leisure passengers away from the congested Voyagers?

A great shame they can't do a production run for a few dozen Voyager centre cars.

Could Arriva not have competed for the 180s Grand Central hired?

 

[Bevan Price]

The most sensible option - one which the DfT would never authorise unfortunately, (especially if /when Cameron's crowd take over the Government), is to build a batch of modified Class 350 emu's (6 or 7 cars, with end doors) to replace 221's on the Virgin Birmingham - Scotland services. That would release about 10 or 12 Class 221 to boost XC capacity. (and end the nonsensical running dmu's on an electrified route.)

Bevan

 

[route:oxford]

The clue to a potential solution lies earlier in the thread...

XC's long distance services are essentially local services which connect up.

Perhaps unlikely in application but, with robust SLAgs, could XC simply be operated by a committee of local operators?

They'd still be "Cross Country" branded, but as the crew changes about the country (as they do at present), the service would be hosted and staffed by the local operator.

So as the train leaves Edinburgh, the train manager would welcome passengers to the "Cross Country Service to Birmingham hosted by Scotrail", again after leaving Newcastle it would be "... hosted by Northern".

Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

 

[the sniper]

The most sensible option - one which the DfT would never authorise unfortunately, (especially if /when Cameron's crowd take over the Government), is to build a batch of modified Class 350 emu's (6 or 7 cars, with end doors) to replace 221's on the Virgin Birmingham - Scotland services. That would release about 10 or 12 Class 221 to boost XC capacity. (and end the nonsensical running dmu's on an electrified route.)

A Class 380 with the internal layout of a Class 350/1 and door layout of a Class 444 would be good idea, but as you say, there's even less chance of it happening now then there was before.

Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

And the RMT would probably have a fit...

 

[tbtc]

The clue to a potential solution lies earlier in the thread...



Perhaps unlikely in application but, with robust SLAgs, could XC simply be operated by a committee of local operators?

They'd still be "Cross Country" branded, but as the crew changes about the country (as they do at present), the service would be hosted and staffed by the local operator.

So as the train leaves Edinburgh, the train manager would welcome passengers to the "Cross Country Service to Birmingham hosted by Scotrail", again after leaving Newcastle it would be "... hosted by Northern".

Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

Radical (and daft) idea:

Give the Aberdeen/ Glasgow to Penzance (which includes Nottingham to Cardiff) service to East Coast and FGW (or possibly EMT and FGW). FGW and East Coast/ EMT can then use their spare HSTs on busy Cross Country slots at the weekend, encourages them to better share paths on the "extreme" sections etc. I know it happens on a handful of summer Saturdays, but it would provide good capacity all year round

 

[Pumbaa]

Could Arriva not have competed for the 180s Grand Central hired?

I remember something about not being allowed through Camp Hill tunnels. As they wouldn't be allowed into Brum from the south, they would have been pretty much useless.

Open to correction and clarification; may have been Adelante froth

 

[tbtc]

I remember something about not being allowed through Camp Hill tunnels. As they wouldn't be allowed into Brum from the south, they would have been pretty much useless.

Open to correction and clarification; may have been Adelante froth

Thanks for explaining; it seems strange that an operator (owned by a massive transport company) desperate for capacity was outbid by a small company needing stock for a 'start up' West Yorkshire service

 

[starrymarkb]

The clue to a potential solution lies earlier in the thread...



Perhaps unlikely in application but, with robust SLAgs, could XC simply be operated by a committee of local operators?

They'd still be "Cross Country" branded, but as the crew changes about the country (as they do at present), the service would be hosted and staffed by the local operator.

So as the train leaves Edinburgh, the train manager would welcome passengers to the "Cross Country Service to Birmingham hosted by Scotrail", again after leaving Newcastle it would be "... hosted by Northern".

Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

Isn't that how Eurocities work? Or rather used to before Multisystem Locomotives became prevalent.

Also I've heard similar announcements on the Glacier Express. "We are now arriving at Disentis Munster, where we will hand over to the Rhaitian Railway, on behalf of the train crew and Furka Oberalp* we wish you a pleasant onward journey"

After the loco swap (in my case a RhB Ge 4/4 II in place of the FO HGe 4/4)

"Welcome to the RhB [spiel about what sights are visible from the train] etc"

*which dates it as the FO is now the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn (following a merger with the neighbouring BVZ)

 

[142094]

So as the train leaves Edinburgh, the train manager would welcome passengers to the "Cross Country Service to Birmingham hosted by Scotrail", again after leaving Newcastle it would be "... hosted by Northern".

Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

Well Scotrail and Northern already do this on Glasgow - Newcastle and Dumfries - Newcastle trains, so I don't see why this couldn't be put in place. As you say it would be complicated, but if it works it is worth the effort.

Either that or renationalise and put some investment in new stock and we wouldn't have this problem.

 

[Flywaver]

Im an XC Driver. Stansted is crying out for an extension on platform 2. As well as a few stations having platforms lengthened. I guess the only progress would be more 3 car 170s once LM get 172 deliveries... 4 Car units would be better, but a 3 car 170 still has more seats than a 4 car Voyager..

 

[rail-britain]

I also remember the 47s under BR - most were 6 coach at most this far west

Don't think of trains in terms of numbers of coaches, but in proportions of seats
You only need to consider train length when you consider the routes you are on

Hence why what used to be a :
Class 47 and four or five Mark 1 coaches on the GSW went down to a single Class 156
Class 47 and four Mark 3 coaches and DBSO on ScotRail Express went down to a pair of Class 158

It's then that you realise how much the same number of passengers are "shoe horned" into a train of shorter length

The policy on XC fares is designed to discourage local travel, so that the long distance passengers have priority and are not disturbed as much
Personally, the franchise should be adjusted so that there is a minimum distance between stations, and this would prevent the services being used as "commuter gap fillers"
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

So as the train leaves Edinburgh, the train manager would welcome passengers to the "Cross Country Service to Birmingham hosted by Scotrail", again after leaving Newcastle it would be "... hosted by Northern"
Ok, it would probably be too complicated...

That idea actually harks back to the old BR days
"Officially" I worked for InterCity East Coast
However, I quite often worked on the Aberdeen - Plymouth and Plymouth - Aberdeen services
Equally, I worked a few Edinburgh - Carlisle duties, while spare at Edinburgh (which then meant travelling back pass to Aberdeen)

A simillar situation existed with the Inverness - Kings Cross, Kings Cross - Inverness, Inverness - Euston, and Euston - Inverness
These had ScotRail staff between Inverness and Edinburgh, as a result we never worked on these, even though it was an INTERCITY train!