When will someone do something about CrossCountry

[bramling]

Should it make a difference? It’s a reflection of how we use the railway. I work in Manchester, but I often need to travel to Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool & London for 9am (usually get there at 10). I refer to my journey to those cities as a commute. At approximately 7:30am, I will be starting my commute to Birmingham for the day and will be heading back to Manchester at about 5pm following a day in the Brum office.

There’s a good argument to say that Intercity services aren’t ideal for carrying commuters, simply because it’s an inefficient way of doing so as such trains tend to be low density.

This isn’t to say there aren’t places where it works, for example I can imagine an 11-car Pendolino is very welcome for a journey like Stoke to Manchester, however these tend to be the exception to the rule, and only work because there’s spare capacity on the long-distance route.

Plenty has been written about Reading commuters and how they are hated on GWR!

 

[xc170]

You make it sound so easy to introduce additional rolling stock. It clearly isn't because the rolling stock needs to be serviced and, even if you don't need extra staff to run a HST or perhaps even a double Voyager, you still need people and depot capacity to service them.

So, not overnight and possibly not even immediately that 221s or 222s become available if the figures don't stack up.

Yeah, okay, clearly not overnight...

But my point still stands, XC already operate HST's so have staff trained, routes cleared etc, so yes, not overnight but it could be done pretty quickly if the DFT and XC were serious...

 

[Purple Orange]

There’s a good argument to say that Intercity services aren’t ideal for carrying commuters, simply because it’s an inefficient way of doing so as such trains tend to be low density.

This isn’t to say there aren’t places where it works, for example I can imagine an 11-car Pendolino is very welcome for a journey like Stoke to Manchester, however these tend to be the exception to the rule, and only work because there’s spare capacity on the long-distance route.

Plenty has been written about Reading commuters and how they are hated on GWR!

Yeah I agree that it would be better to have commuter trains providing the service on some routes. I’d argue that Stoke to Manchester, as with Crewe to Manchester is not a good use of a pendolono, when those passengers should be equally served on an all stop service, and therefore many more passengers along the route, get a better service level.

Interesting your point about GWR and Reading passengers. I take that to mean GWR staff and/or management? Which begs the question as to why? Those passengers are paying significant fares and the situation that GWR finds itself in is entirely the fault of them or the wider rail industry. Sorry, but I tend to side with the passengers, especially when it comes to poor customer service and poor attitudes from the TOC.

 

[The Ham]

Yeah, okay, clearly not overnight...

But my point still stands, XC already operate HST's so have staff trained, routes cleared etc, so yes, not overnight but it could be done pretty quickly if the DFT and XC were serious...

Especially if they could share facilities with GWR for maintenance.

You also wouldn't need that many to start to make a difference to the rest of the XC services.

As for each one you got you could:
- replace a 5 coach service with a 5 coach HST GTI
- that 5 coach 221 could replace a 4 coach unit
- you could swap a 4 coach with another 221
- the 2 released 4 coach trains could run the above service which had previously been a 221.

That's 4 diagrams improved, with the potential for the doubling up to be limited to the core to improve capacity there even more.

By my maths you'd need just 15 (probably 17 to allow for spares) to improve every service on XC. However as it could only be a few years before extra stock is available you could get 5 and improve things for 1/3 of services.

 

[TheWalrus]

I really think adding an electric carriage to each 220/221/222 would have been a really good solution. I know this was dismissed for being too expensive but how expensive was this project? Would it be cheaper than buying a fleet of new Hitachi Bi-Modes? It would also make use of spare units coming up in the next few years.

 

[Mark J]

Not this year, not next year, probably not in the year after that.

Maybe after that though, some improvement in capacity might be delivered to passengers.

I understand XC have policy not to declassify First Class, and to enforceme reservations when not displayed. Certainly that's what they've told me. You can't stop them from doing that, and changing their minds would cost them money so I would imagine it's highly unlikely.

The government would rather these things didn't change too; not unless lots of extra ticket or other revenue is going to start coming up at XC. The franchise is
already deeply unattractive on commercial terms, so bad that they couldn't attract a single extra bidder to contest the incumbent's at the competition.

How will that happen when many (including myself) do everything possible to avoid using XC services, due to the continual overcrowding issues. Revenue will not grow if people are actively put off from using the services.

In the BR years I can certainly recall getting on a eight carriage Intercity125 from Reading down to Bournemouth. Today that same route is served by largely four carriage Voyagers.

I've also said on a few occasions that GWR should extend their Class 800 services to Banbury. That would allow people to change at Banbury on to less crowded Chiltern Services towards Birmingham.

On rare occasions some XC TM's do declassify First Class. I've been on an XC service from Coventry going southwards before, whereby the Train Manager told us to sit in First Class, due to the overcrowding in the vestibule area,

 

[Master29]

How will that happen when many (including myself) do everything possible to avoid using XC services, due to the continual overcrowding issues. Revenue will not grow if people are actively put off from using the services.

In the BR years I can certainly recall getting on a eight carriage Intercity125 from Reading down to Bournemouth. Today that same route is served by largely four carriage Voyagers.

I've also said on a few occasions that GWR should extend their Class 800 services to Banbury. That would allow people to change at Banbury on to less crowded Chiltern Services towards Birmingham.

On rare occasions some XC TM's do declassify First Class. I've been on an XC service from Coventry going southwards before, whereby the Train Manager told us to sit in First Class, due to the overcrowding in the vestibule area,

But people won't stop using XC and this is the problem. It's not as if overcrowding is anything new with them is it? Maybe they should yes but they won't. They'll just take to social media giving single star ratings and rants. We're British. We put up and moan.

 

[tbtc]

I've gone from thinking that the new stock for Avanti/EMR was A Good Thing for XC (because it means a fleet of similar DMUs becoming available in a couple of years, about the only stock capable of matching Voyager timings) to thinking that new stock for Avanti/EMR was A Bad Thing for XC (because it means that the Government feel they can defer any difficult decisions on XC's capacity because there's some "jam tomorrow").

As usual on XC threads, the problem is that the Government have kicked the can down the road too many times - the franchise should have finished four years ago but has had lots of short term extensions - too short for any major decisions to be made.

I think that Arriva's plan in 2006/2007 was about right. The franchise had a modern fleet - they brought in some HSTs - but I don't think that there was much of a business case for replacing Voyagers that were less than ten years old at the time (some people on here get angry about Guards getting new shirts every seven years, so I presume that nobody would have wanted specialist 125mph trains scrapped after such a short period?).

But there were no plans made in 2014/2015 for the franchise post-2016 (which is the date that it should have finished). Arriva were handed extensions on a "business as usual" approach, with nobody daring to take any long term vision. The blame is predominantly with the Government IMHO.

So, we are in a position where the options seem to me to be:

1. Struggle on with things as they are, insufficient capacity, so keep fares high to squeeze demand a bit, hope that marginal improvements elsewhere (e.g. Northern running a two coach 195 from Sheffield to Leeds) will soak up a handful of XC passengers?
2. Try to get some short HSTs (four coaches, five maximum - i.e. hopefully capable of matching Voyagers) - but that has two problems - it means taking the weaker HSTs (since the best will have been snapped up by ScotRail/ GWR) and also replacing accessible trains with inaccessible ones - it's one thing to keep running Pacers post 31/12/19 as happens on some local routes in Sheffield but to replace modern accessible trains with 1970s ones could see the kind of backlash that TPE faced with their Pretendolino plans - I'm not sure that the Government will want to face that kind of argument - bearing in mind that for every person crammed into a crowded Voyager, there will be many many more in the general public who'd be upset about the emotive spin that will be put on such a decision - I don't know if a Tory government will have the heart to fight that kind of battle (even if I think it might be a necessary compromise). Clearly expecting WABTEC to quickly convert Mk3 is a non starter!
   
3. Replace some of the Birmingham - Manchester services with EMUs (maybe running them through to Birmingham International to cope with platform constraints at New Street). Seems positive, it'd mean you could run eight coach EMUs (e.g. 365s) that'd benefit most passengers north of Birmingham - but it'd upset the small number doing journeys from Manchester all the way to Oxford/ Reading/ Southampton/ Bournemouth/ Bristol/ Exeter etc. Do the needs of the few outweigh the many? It wouldn't have to be *all* Manchester services, but you could find a balance whereby roughly half the services are EMUs to free up Voyagers to use elsewhere (maybe run some diagrams as Bournemouth - Birmingham - Exeter - Birmingham - Bournemouth rather than laying over for long periods at New Street) << and I appreciate that the current diagrams are more like Bournemouth - Birmingham - Manchester - Birmingham - Exeter, so that services at Piccadilly don't return to the place that they came from
   
4. Trim the edges and hope that local TOCs will pick up the slack. For example, Leeds now has two TPE services per hour to Newcastle and will get a full hourly TPE service to Newcastle before long. Do XC need to keep running so many Voyagers north of York (when they are the shortest trains on the line and could be used more further south)? Same with GWR taking more of the strain beyond Bristol. Again, I'm not talking scrapping every through service, but there might be a balance whereby daytime trains see only a bi-hourly service north of York and only a bi-hourly service south west of Bristol? Are there enough people going from Glasgow to Newcastle/ York to justify typing up a Voyager west of Edinburgh? This won't go down well with a number of people - I appreciate that people like the idea that they have a direct service to somewhere far away (even if they might not use it more than once a year), but if we are serious about improving capacity in the "core" then we have to at least consider whether it's worth spending so many resources to the fringes)

For example, the current diagrams see an XC unit leaving Craigentinny at 05:14 to get to Aberdeen for 07:56, and head south, leaving Waverley southbound at 11:06. In the evening, a unit arrives in Waverley at 18:06 but doesn't get to Craigentinny until 00:26 - that's over twelve hours of day (and a lot of diesel) just to keep Aberdeen on the map and provide two useful journeys a day (the arrival into Edinburgh just before 11:00 and the departure just after 18:00 - both of which could be ScotRail's responsibility to fill a gap). This is an example of how XC has too big a remit, trying to fill gaps in other people's schedules (when passengers in the core are crying out for capacity!).

The difference between a four-car Voyager and a 7-car HST would be massive when going through Birmingham in both rush-hours

True - a massive difference!

The Voyager would be able to accelerate nice and promptly, thus fitting into the path designed for it.

The sluggish HST would struggle, with its seven carriages, and therefore delay the services behind it (which is quite a problem in New Street at rush hour)

 

[Bletchleyite]

Should it make a difference? It’s a reflection of how we use the railway. I work in Manchester, but I often need to travel to Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool & London for 9am (usually get there at 10). I refer to my journey to those cities as a commute. At approximately 7:30am, I will be starting my commute to Birmingham for the day and will be heading back to Manchester at about 5pm following a day in the Brum office.

I'm not sure I'd call that commuting. To me commuting is typically a short to medium distance journey to a single point of employment which occurs daily or near to daily. That's medium to long-distance domestic business travel, for which XC is very much intended. (The original definition of the term refers to "commuting" the fare, which means a season ticket in modern parlance).

I'm talking the likes of commuters on the Cov-Brum-Wolves axis, who could really do with not using long-distance trains for it, and in many countries would be discouraged either e.g. by TfWM passes not being valid or the IC having compulsory reservation and no season tickets.

Talking of compulsory reservations on IC, that was the originally planned Virgin model though for some reason they stepped back from it, possibly due to the fact that it'd stop them ORCATS raiding. Maybe that needs to be revisited until more rolling stock can be obtained, at least on busier services?

 

[The_Train]

The simple fact is that XC are just one of many operators on the Government's radar to easily take back into their control. Don't allow extra capacity and then when enough complaints roll in about how unsafe trains have become because of overcrowding, simply kick them out and take it back into government control. WMT seem to have fended them off for now but I suspect that will be revisited once they have the Northern area fully under their control and TPE will also be looking over their shoulder.

As I've said elsewhere, it's just an easy way for the railways to be re-nationalised on the quiet

 

[swt_passenger]

The simple fact is that XC are just one of many operators on the Government's radar to easily take back into their control. Don't allow extra capacity and then when enough complaints roll in about how unsafe trains have become because of overcrowding, simply kick them out and take it back into government control. WMT seem to have fended them off for now but I suspect that will be revisited once they have the Northern area fully under their control and TPE will also be looking over their shoulder.

As I've said elsewhere, it's just an easy way for the railways to be privatised on the quiet

Did you mean nationalised?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Did you mean nationalised?

Why would a right-of-centre Government do that if it wasn't felt necessary to avoid collapse?

 

[The_Train]

Did you mean nationalised?

Yes sorry, I'll change it. I think ranting shuts down parts of my brain

 

[swt_passenger]

Why would a right-of-centre Government do that if it wasn't felt necessary to avoid collapse?

I was pointing out the wrong word being used by the previous poster, that’s all...

 

[swt_passenger]

Yes sorry, I'll change it. I think ranting shuts down parts of my brain

It’s definitely strange how people sometimes write the exact opposite to what they must have been thinking...

 

[The_Train]

It’s definitely strange how people sometimes write the exact opposite to what they must have been thinking...

Maybe deep down in my sub-conscious, I actually disagree with myself

 

[ohgoditsjames]

A 5 car HST would be an enormous upgrade on a 5 car 220/221. The XC HST's are actually quite nice trains so much so that when I go back to Sheffield for the weekends I always choose to wait for the Friday 11:11 am Leeds to Plymouth service which uses the 7 car HST's.

 

[BanburyBlue]

How will that happen when many (including myself) do everything possible to avoid using XC services, due to the continual overcrowding issues. Revenue will not grow if people are actively put off from using the services.

In the BR years I can certainly recall getting on a eight carriage Intercity125 from Reading down to Bournemouth. Today that same route is served by largely four carriage Voyagers.

I've also said on a few occasions that GWR should extend their Class 800 services to Banbury. That would allow people to change at Banbury on to less crowded Chiltern Services towards Birmingham.

On rare occasions some XC TM's do declassify First Class. I've been on an XC service from Coventry going southwards before, whereby the Train Manager told us to sit in First Class, due to the overcrowding in the vestibule area,

Interesting how popular the GWR 07.45 Banbury to Paddington service is getting. I assume to avoid the 07.54 southbound XC service.
No idea what the evening GWR northbound service is like though?

 

[Mogz]

Interesting how popular the GWR 07.45 Banbury to Paddington service is getting. I assume to avoid the 07.54 southbound XC service.
No idea what the evening GWR northbound service is like though?

And it’s nine coaches, no less!

I would be utterly delighted if XC operated 9 coach 80x trains. It would also mean no running on diesel under the wires. The seats are a bit harder, but, oh, the leg-room! And 8 tables per Standard Class coach! Bliss!

 

[Mogz]

The sentiments expressed here by some seem to be that:

CrossCountry isn’t for “commuters”, (who should instead use local TOC trains, presumably?)

CrossCountry isn’t for passengers who want to travel very long distances without changing (eg old routes such as Liverpool-South Coast) who should use alternatives such as a daily road coach service.

CrossCountry passengers cannot expect to have such luxuries that come as standard for Intercity services to and from London (long trains, buffet, hot food in First Class etc).

CrossCountry can’t expect new rolling stock (like lots of TOCs seem to be getting these days).

Therefore, can anyone enlighten me on what CrossCountry IS for (and who says so) and what CrossCountry users SHOULD be able to expect?

 

[The Planner]

1. Replace some of the Birmingham - Manchester services with EMUs (maybe running them through to Birmingham International to cope with platform constraints at New Street).

Err, no. Unless they magically tag on to an existing local.

 

[JonathanH]

Same with GWR taking more of the strain beyond Bristol. Again, I'm not talking scrapping every through service, but there might be a balance whereby daytime trains see only a bi-hourly service north of York and only a bi-hourly service south west of Bristol?

This is all very well but XC increased their service south of Bristol to Exeter to cope with the overcrowding on some Plymouth trains. One solution to XC not getting more HSTs could be for GWR to get more short HSTs and run fast trains in the path of the Bristol to Exeter extensions of Manchester to Bristol trains. However, XC has bid for and won those paths (and it is likely that sufficient people appreciate the through trains to the north rather than something which terminates at Bristol that this is better from a network perspective).

 

[Mark J]

Interesting how popular the GWR 07.45 Banbury to Paddington service is getting. I assume to avoid the 07.54 southbound XC service.
No idea what the evening GWR northbound service is like though?

It does seem daft that GWR run to Banbury, however only every two hours.

Surely they could do 1 TPH to Banbury.

One fast, the next hour, a stopper at Tackley, Heyworth and King's Sutton - to match their existing service.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The sentiments expressed here by some seem to be that:

CrossCountry isn’t for “commuters”, (who should instead use local TOC trains, presumably?)

CrossCountry isn’t for passengers who want to travel very long distances without changing (eg old routes such as Liverpool-South Coast) who should use alternatives such as a daily road coach service.

CrossCountry passengers cannot expect to have such luxuries that come as standard for Intercity services to and from London (long trains, buffet, hot food in First Class etc).

CrossCountry can’t expect new rolling stock (like lots of TOCs seem to be getting these days).

Therefore, can anyone enlighten me on what CrossCountry IS for (and who says so) and what CrossCountry users SHOULD be able to expect?

CrossCountry (proper, not XC Lite) is a long distance "secondary InterCity" service which largely does the same thing as the road coaches on those axes. It is not intended for commuters who should indeed use local trains. It is intended for people to make long-distance journeys though not necessarily without changes, though does offer the advantage of avoiding London.

It can't have the "luxuries" mentioned because its fares are typically a lot lower as it can't sustain the very highly priced Anytimes the London IC operators do.

 

[JonathanH]

It can't have the "luxuries" mentioned because its fares are typically a lot lower as it can't sustain the very highly priced Anytimes the London IC operators do.

The prices aren't that much lower than the very highly priced Anytimes that London IC operators charge. Indeed in some cases they are more.

London to Durham £330 Anytime Return
Bristol to Durham £352.60 Anytime Return

In what sense does XC not 'sustain' that fare? The fact that XC stops more and is slower simply means there is more opportunity to split that fare into local journey tickets and off-peak fares.

It is not intended for commuters who should indeed use local trains.

If it has been allowed to operate longer trains in the first place, use of Cross Country for commuting wouldn't have been a problem, just as it wasn't before 2002.

 

[Grecian 1998]

It's interesting that the OP refers to a "commute" - is not part of the issue that they are even carrying commuters?

CrossCountry (proper, not XC Lite) is a long distance "secondary InterCity" service which largely does the same thing as the road coaches on those axes. It is not intended for commuters who should indeed use local trains. It is intended for people to make long-distance journeys though not necessarily without changes, though does offer the advantage of avoiding London.

It can't have the "luxuries" mentioned because its fares are typically a lot lower as it can't sustain the very highly priced Anytimes the London IC operators do.

On several parts of their routes XC is the only feasible option for commuters though. For instance:

Derby - Burton - Tamworth - Birmingham and vice versa
Cheltenham - Birmingham
Cheltenham and Taunton - Bristol (there are other services but they're about 30 minutes longer each way) - although in the case of Taunton also much more comfortable if you get a HST Gti)

Around Birmingham in particular there are a) no other operators on those routes without ridiculous deviations and b) no capacity through New Street. Granted you can divide XC 'lite' from XC 'classic' but both suffer from significant overcrowding anyway.

I don't see a problem with intercity services carrying commuters if they're the most efficient way of doing so. Carrying commuters between Coventry and Birmingham or Stoke and Manchester on West Coast makes sense as the trains are much bigger (and I assume have capacity further from London), and paths for commuter trains may not be available. XC don't have spare capacity, but as the tracks don't either, this appears the least worst solution.

Trying to get commuters off XC is likely to be unworkable anyway. For a few years around 2005 XC had a pick up only restriction at Oxford northbound in the afternoon, presumably to deter commuters (ignoring the fact it means you couldn't officially travel between Bournemouth or Southampton and Oxford without changing). It was removed after a while and I suspect was effectively uneforceable.

Off-peak its fares are just as expensive as 'X to London' fares in any case. Bristol-Birmingham OP return is about the same as Bristol-London - around £60 - despite being 30 miles shorter. Sheffield-London OP return and Sheffield-Bristol OP return are both around £100.

I've gone from thinking that the new stock for Avanti/EMR was A Good Thing for XC (because it means a fleet of similar DMUs becoming available in a couple of years, about the only stock capable of matching Voyager timings) to thinking that new stock for Avanti/EMR was A Bad Thing for XC (because it means that the Government feel they can defer any difficult decisions on XC's capacity because there's some "jam tomorrow").

As usual on XC threads, the problem is that the Government have kicked the can down the road too many times - the franchise should have finished four years ago but has had lots of short term extensions - too short for any major decisions to be made.

I think that Arriva's plan in 2006/2007 was about right. The franchise had a modern fleet - they brought in some HSTs - but I don't think that there was much of a business case for replacing Voyagers that were less than ten years old at the time (some people on here get angry about Guards getting new shirts every seven years, so I presume that nobody would have wanted specialist 125mph trains scrapped after such a short period?).

But there were no plans made in 2014/2015 for the franchise post-2016 (which is the date that it should have finished). Arriva were handed extensions on a "business as usual" approach, with nobody daring to take any long term vision. The blame is predominantly with the Government IMHO.

So, we are in a position where the options seem to me to be:

1. Struggle on with things as they are, insufficient capacity, so keep fares high to squeeze demand a bit, hope that marginal improvements elsewhere (e.g. Northern running a two coach 195 from Sheffield to Leeds) will soak up a handful of XC passengers?
2. Try to get some short HSTs (four coaches, five maximum - i.e. hopefully capable of matching Voyagers) - but that has two problems - it means taking the weaker HSTs (since the best will have been snapped up by ScotRail/ GWR) and also replacing accessible trains with inaccessible ones - it's one thing to keep running Pacers post 31/12/19 as happens on some local routes in Sheffield but to replace modern accessible trains with 1970s ones could see the kind of backlash that TPE faced with their Pretendolino plans - I'm not sure that the Government will want to face that kind of argument - bearing in mind that for every person crammed into a crowded Voyager, there will be many many more in the general public who'd be upset about the emotive spin that will be put on such a decision - I don't know if a Tory government will have the heart to fight that kind of battle (even if I think it might be a necessary compromise). Clearly expecting WABTEC to quickly convert Mk3 is a non starter!
   
3. Replace some of the Birmingham - Manchester services with EMUs (maybe running them through to Birmingham International to cope with platform constraints at New Street). Seems positive, it'd mean you could run eight coach EMUs (e.g. 365s) that'd benefit most passengers north of Birmingham - but it'd upset the small number doing journeys from Manchester all the way to Oxford/ Reading/ Southampton/ Bournemouth/ Bristol/ Exeter etc. Do the needs of the few outweigh the many? It wouldn't have to be *all* Manchester services, but you could find a balance whereby roughly half the services are EMUs to free up Voyagers to use elsewhere (maybe run some diagrams as Bournemouth - Birmingham - Exeter - Birmingham - Bournemouth rather than laying over for long periods at New Street) << and I appreciate that the current diagrams are more like Bournemouth - Birmingham - Manchester - Birmingham - Exeter, so that services at Piccadilly don't return to the place that they came from
   
4. Trim the edges and hope that local TOCs will pick up the slack. For example, Leeds now has two TPE services per hour to Newcastle and will get a full hourly TPE service to Newcastle before long. Do XC need to keep running so many Voyagers north of York (when they are the shortest trains on the line and could be used more further south)? Same with GWR taking more of the strain beyond Bristol. Again, I'm not talking scrapping every through service, but there might be a balance whereby daytime trains see only a bi-hourly service north of York and only a bi-hourly service south west of Bristol? Are there enough people going from Glasgow to Newcastle/ York to justify typing up a Voyager west of Edinburgh? This won't go down well with a number of people - I appreciate that people like the idea that they have a direct service to somewhere far away (even if they might not use it more than once a year), but if we are serious about improving capacity in the "core" then we have to at least consider whether it's worth spending so many resources to the fringes)

For example, the current diagrams see an XC unit leaving Craigentinny at 05:14 to get to Aberdeen for 07:56, and head south, leaving Waverley southbound at 11:06. In the evening, a unit arrives in Waverley at 18:06 but doesn't get to Craigentinny until 00:26 - that's over twelve hours of day (and a lot of diesel) just to keep Aberdeen on the map and provide two useful journeys a day (the arrival into Edinburgh just before 11:00 and the departure just after 18:00 - both of which could be ScotRail's responsibility to fill a gap). This is an example of how XC has too big a remit, trying to fill gaps in other people's schedules (when passengers in the core are crying out for capacity!).



True - a massive difference!

The Voyager would be able to accelerate nice and promptly, thus fitting into the path designed for it.

The sluggish HST would struggle, with its seven carriages, and therefore delay the services behind it (which is quite a problem in New Street at rush hour)

1. Likely, sadly.

2. Doesn't seem likely for the reasons you state.

3. I think constraints with finding somewhere to leave them have been identified, but even though Bristol would lose out in a sense I'd be happy with that. I'm always quite happy if travelling from Bristol towards Liverpool or Preston to get onto a train with some spare capacity (I usually travel off-peak). However...

4. ... As seen with with the 2016 consultation, the fringes will complain if you remove or reduce their trains. The proposal was to reduce Paignton trains to 1 per day and have the Aberdeen train stop at Birmingham, but that was canned. Cutting services to and from Exeter, Plymouth, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen simultaneously is not going to go down well. Politicians may not use XC but they like the idea of being connected to lots of different cities. No doubt plenty of pensioners who travel every week to see family from Totnes to Inverkeithing would be rolled out to emphasise how essential the link is.

No.1 it probably is then.


If there was a way of XC passengers managing to co-ordinate (peaceful and safe) protests about the long-term overcrowding it might be persuasive to the people who make the decisions. The protests around Bristol in 2008 led to the DfT quickly finding 5 class 150s to send from Wales to FGW to allow the 158s working Cardiff-Portsmouth services to be re-formed into 3 carriage units. The Great Western franchise has made steady improvements to local services since then. Unfortunately the er.. cross-country nature of XC makes this less likely. It's easier to protest against an organisation which has a clear geographic location.

 

[tbtc]

The sentiments expressed here by some seem to be that:

CrossCountry isn’t for “commuters”, (who should instead use local TOC trains, presumably?)

CrossCountry isn’t for passengers who want to travel very long distances without changing (eg old routes such as Liverpool-South Coast) who should use alternatives such as a daily road coach service.

CrossCountry passengers cannot expect to have such luxuries that come as standard for Intercity services to and from London (long trains, buffet, hot food in First Class etc).

CrossCountry can’t expect new rolling stock (like lots of TOCs seem to be getting these days).

Therefore, can anyone enlighten me on what CrossCountry IS for (and who says so) and what CrossCountry users SHOULD be able to expect?

XC is there to provide journeys over the routes that it operates (that includes everyday ordinary passengers doing short simple journeys - in fact such passengers significantly outnumber the people travelling hundreds of miles on an average day).

Maybe once upon a time some of those services were introduced (by BR or even before) to meet some long distance needs, some of those services were just a combination of local services tagged on together, some of those services were extended to/from places to use marginal time (e.g. IIRC Chris Green's ScotRail found an ECML HST diagram that didn't leave Edinburgh until lunchtime and one from Kings Cross that finished in Edinburgh at around 18:00, so was able to use the HST to provide a morning service from Inverness to Edinburgh and a six o'clockish service from Edinburgh to Inverness with a train that would otherwise just be sat in Craigentinny). Some of the XC services are a bit like that - some XC services are just a "route to Birmingham" tagged onto a "route from Birmingham", rather than any huge demand to get from Edinburgh to Plymouth or Nottingham to Cardiff.

I'm sure some people would like our railways to be as segregated/binary as the German model - but they aren't - and we aren't starting from scratch - so any attempt to try to turn XC into an operator that only focusses on long distance travel seems doomed to fail. You could speed it up by removing some "local" stops (and therefore local commuters) but which stops? Rightly or wrongly, XC is a major operator on flows into a number of big cities, so where do those passengers go? They tried to make Wakefield a "pick up" stop for a while (southbound) but gave that up - it was too hard to enforce so passengers crammed on regardless.

Some enthusiasts like binary things though - trouble is that "Cross Country" services have always been a bit of a compromise - not a premium InterCity service with the restaurant facilities (etc) that London services had - people seem to forget that there were Cross Country services run by 158s in BR days (and even into Virgin operation?). If there was a lucrative business market then you could have three carriages of First Class and some more interesting food provision but that market isn't there in sufficient numbers. Just because the routes are long distance doesn't mean that the passengers are - there's huge churn at many big cities - just like with TPE (TBQH, in many ways, XC is closer to TPE than it is to LNER). Trouble is, we get into these arguments along the line of whether XC is an appropriate level of service for people going all the way from Aberdeen to Penzance (ignoring the fact that the only people doing such a journey will be a tiny tiny number of enthusiasts who are only doing it for the sake of saying that they sat on it from end to end).

As for the lack of newer rolling stock, XC runs a pretty modern fleet - less than half way through its life - unlike the 1970s HSTs that other TOCs are replacing - it's strange to see people complaining about HSTs being scrapped and trying desperately to find some future use for them (any use!) but then want the twenty first century Voyagers scrapped.

This is all very well but XC increased their service south of Bristol to Exeter to cope with the overcrowding on some Plymouth trains. One solution to XC not getting more HSTs could be for GWR to get more short HSTs and run fast trains in the path of the Bristol to Exeter extensions of Manchester to Bristol trains. However, XC has bid for and won those paths (and it is likely that sufficient people appreciate the through trains to the north rather than something which terminates at Bristol that this is better from a network perspective).

Fair points - but I'd rather that XC's scarce resources were targeted on their "core" - instead, under the Arriva franchise they've increased the frequency from Reading to Southampton, increased the frequency from Bristol to Exeter (I can't remember whether the bi-hourly Edinburgh - Glasgow extension was under Arriva or Virgin though) - all of which means more Voyagers spread thinner away from the "core".

4. ... As seen with with the 2016 consultation, the fringes will complain if you remove or reduce their trains. The proposal was to reduce Paignton trains to 1 per day and have the Aberdeen train stop at Birmingham, but that was canned. Cutting services to and from Exeter, Plymouth, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen simultaneously is not going to go down well. Politicians may not use XC but they like the idea of being connected to lots of different cities. No doubt plenty of pensioners who travel every week to see family from Totnes to Inverkeithing would be rolled out to emphasise how essential the link is.

True - I think the consultation said that the average Paignton loading was fortysomething passengers per train? Pretty poor use of resources, where GWR were getting DMUs cascaded west to increase local capacity and XC were struggling to provide sufficient seats through the core - but the luxury of these kind of "Totnes to Inverkeithing" journeys seems to count for a lot more than everyday passengers struggling to cram onto trains.

I was a daily passenger when I used to commute between Leeds/ Sheffield and it was horrible - but the people angry about XC will probably be spread thinly across the country, rather than one unified angry mob who can petition one local assembly/parliament etc.

As we've seen with Bradford and Northern Connect, politicians love the idea of their "important" place having lots of long distance links - whilst that comes at an opportunity cost, all you have to do is wheel out "Doris" to complain that she can no longer visit her grandchildren in Inverkeithing on a direct train.

 

[Mogz]

Today I am using CrossCountry to make a long distance journey from Winchester to Stafford.

I have the same complaints. As I type this, people are standing in the aisles and crammed into the vestibules, and some passengers are sitting on each other’s knees. The train has 4 coaches, minimal leg-room and luggage space, and there has already been an apology from the catering manager that the trolly will not be passing through the train due to overcrowding.

Is my complaint more valid now that I am using the service for a long distance journey rather than my (nearly hour-long) daily commute?

I would be most grateful if anyone from the industry (preferably from Arriva or DB) can explain why we should put up with this level of service when other operators now have trains of up to 12 coaches on our railways?

 

[6Gman]

I understand XC have policy not to declassify First Class, and to enforceme reservations when not displayed. Certainly that's what they've told me. You can't stop them from doing that, and changing their minds would cost them money so I would imagine it's highly unlikely.

The government would rather these things didn't change too; not unless lots of extra ticket or other revenue is going to start coming up at XC. The franchise is already deeply unattractive on commercial terms, so bad that they couldn't attract a single extra bidder to contest the incumbent's at the competition.

This goes to the crux of the issue. Who pays?

DB/Arriva are meeting the terms of their franchise commitment - why would they increase their expenditure with no likelihood of recouping it?

The DfT aren't suddenly going to pump extra money into the franchise.

Like TPE and Northern this is the downside of the current TOC model.

 

[Starmill]

CrossCountry (proper, not XC Lite) is a long distance "secondary InterCity" service which largely does the same thing as the road coaches on those axes. It is not intended for commuters who should indeed use local trains. It is intended for people to make long-distance journeys though not necessarily without changes, though does offer the advantage of avoiding London.

It can't have the "luxuries" mentioned because its fares are typically a lot lower as it can't sustain the very highly priced Anytimes the London IC operators do.

This post shows that, while well-intentioned, you're fundamentally still in denial about the range of railway services on offer in this country, or that could ever be offered without massive new alignment building. The reality is in this country that long-distance services must carry commuters, not so much because people prefer them to the stopping services but because the stopping services are frequently only really there for the benefit of the people using minor stations.

While you might not like it, and while there are many exceptions, especially in London, the reality is that CrossCountry and other long-distance services must provide significant commuter capacity on many routes. Stoke-on-Trent, Macclesfield and Stockport for example must have Avanti West Coast and CrossCountry services to take the peak load of commuters from these stations into Manchester city centre - the 3 car hourly stopping services simply couldn't cope if a greater proportion of people from these three used them. Especially at Macclesfield, the commuters need to be pushed towards the services from London Euston, despite these being for the early long-distance passengers too, because if they all boarded the stopper, people at Poynton and Bramhall simply wouldn't be able to board. There's a similar issue when Stockport to Manchester passengers board the 3 car stopper, meaning it's too full at Levenshulme for everyone to make it on, when if they'd waited 3 minutes for the Avanti service, everyone would have been accomodated.

Even on your beloved South WCML, the crowd of people waiting every day on the platform at Milton Keynes Central to commute to London on the early Avanti train from Liverpool Lime Street is huge. If you displaced those people, anyone coming from further north would escape the overcrowding that causes, but then the Milton Keynes passengers would just take the places currently occupied by Leighton Buzzard passengers on the following two express services, and who in turn would be left on the platform.

If you ever wanted the fiction of a German-style ICE-like long-distance network, you'd need to start with a new local transport network, principally of Metro but perhaps also some tram or Bus Rapid Transit services in almost every city in country outside of London. Bear in mind that in many cities, e.g. Leeds, you're starting from a base of approximately zero. You've hardly any form of suitable local or regional transport in West Yorkshire to take the pressure off long-distance services for commuters to Leeds city centre.

You do not advocate for the construction of new alignments (other than in your very general support for HS2), or new tunneled routes (other than your very general support for crossrail), or for the huge increase in capital budgets (we're talking four or five times current annual spend across two decades for a modest programme of metro construction) necessary to facilitate that, and the attendant government borrowing or tax increases.