Great Western Coffee Shop

National Express head of public affairs at UK Coach National Express Group quoted some stats at Travel Watch South West

18.5 million passengers per year
30% of journeys to or from an airport
3 years average and 7 year top age of fleet
600 vehicles
11000 journeys per week
1000 employees plus 2500 contract jobs supported

What are the comparative figures for a TOC like FGW, and for the rail industry as a whole?

Clearly the figures for rolling stock will be quite different:


If only any train operating company had the luxury of replacing their entire fleet every seven years ...  :o

Just how old are the HSTs (shells, obviously the engines get re-conditioned/etc. 1971ish arnt they?)

As it happens, member broadgage and I were discussing exactly that point, over a pint, earlier today in Taunton: the answer is 1976.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_125  ;) :D ;D

I haven't been able to find answers to all the questions yet, but I'll make a start!

This journey data is paraphrased from the ORR's publication passenger-rail-usage-quality-report-2013-02-20-q3.pdf available from the ORR's Data Portal:

In the 3rd quarter of 2013-14 franchised passenger journeys reached 402.8 million, a 4.5% increase on the same quarter in 2012-13. This is the highest number of franchised passenger journeys since the time series began. Most of the increase is accounted for by growth in the number of season ticket journeys being made, which saw an increase of 7.8% this quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

The breakdown into sectors for the 3rd quarter is:
- London and South East sector had 277.4 million journeys, a 5.7% increase.
- The long distance sector had 33.1 million journeys in 2013-14, a 1.4% increase on the same quarter last year. This quarter has seen the lowest increase in passenger journeys for the long distance sector since 2007-08 Q3. Long distance sector has historically been the sector with the weakest growth and this may be understood in terms of competition from coach travel at the low end and air travel at the high end of the travel industry.(What price HS2?)
- The Regional sector had 92.2 million journeys, a 1.9% increase.
- Non-franchised passenger journeys (i.e. Open Access) was about 400,000, some 4% higher.


So making the simple assumption that the annual figures are four times the quarterly ones we can say that there were some 1.6 billion journeys made on the railways last year. That would be a lot of road coaches...

I've not been able to find quickly passenger loadings per TOC, but financial statistics published by the DfT concerning subsidy/premium per passenger-kilometre for all the TOCs show that fGW 'produced' 5,840 million passenger-kilometres in 2012-13 and paid a premium of 2.9 pence per passenger-kilometre.

The comparison of vehicle ages is not applicable. As railway rolling stock structures, and aircraft, are designed to last longer than road vehicles (which generally have a useful life of around 15 years) a more appropriate comparison would be the number of years since the last refurbishment or re-build. For long haul aircraft this is typically at six year intervals when the structure is checked and any internal updates made - after the third such overhaul it no longer becomes cost-effective so planes are retired when they are about 25 years old. As railway coaches are not pressurised and tend to be made of steel with different fatigue characteristics to aluminium alloys they can easily run for 40 or 50 years.

Having said that, the HSTs were built from 1975 (and introduced on the Western in 1976) until 1982 and some hauled Mk 3s were built after that date. The Sprinters were built in the mid-1980s and the Class 165/166 in the early 1990s. So, apart from the Adelantes, most stock is between 20 and 40 years old. Age shouldn't matter, some of the most reliable, and best presented, trains in the country, the 159s run by SWT, are older than the Class 165s... It's a question of attitude and drive, not age.

If course it is the long distance journeys where the prices per mile are some of the highest so that may have an influence.

Hardly fair to compare at the moment though as FGW do not have their Advance Purchase products at anything like normal availability due to ongoing infrastructure problems.

The National Express fare is fixed to one service and if you want a little more refund flexibility the fare goes up to ^24.80 (plus a ^1 booking fee).

I'd suggest that if there was usual availability of FGW Advance Purchase you might be able to get to Heathrow via Railair Reading for around ^30. The cheapest possible AP from Exeter to Heathrow via Paddington and HEX is ^21.50.

And that's before I've even looked at Railair Woking options with SWT via Salisbury.

Yes, but many of us have to travel at times when we cannot use the cheapest available ticket most do not know about split ticketing.  That is why I my journey from Swindon to Paddington on Tuesday would cost ^121 for 154 miles (both ways) that's 79p per mile.  That's what puts people off long distance train travel.

I will admit that I'd not considered the current AP situation and just plucked a date/time out of the air for my comparison. However, I did do the same journey on 8th May last year when I had to be at LHR by 4pm.  I booked my ticket sometime in February IIRC (or as soon as the tickets became available) and checked all available routes including the Railair links from Reading and Woking. Also, when using the SWT option, it is always significantly cheaper to travel from Pinhoe than from Exeter St Davids (a distance of just three miles, but a saving of at least ^10!!).  The cheapest available fare available at that time using a rail leg was in excess of ^50 (and there were no cheap fares available on HEX at all!), but the coach was just ^20

Is this true? There may be some eye-wateringly high 'walk-on' ticket prices but the general level of fares paid is much lower because of the availability of advance purchase tickets. ^5 advance purchase Birmingham to London by London Midland was one such recent offer.

I would suggest that your comment is too simplistic - there are other factors involved than price. For example the West Coast main line saw traffic increase by about 20% in the first year after the high frequency services to Manchester and Birmingham were introduced, but the increase tailed-off year by year so that after five years the growth was only a few percent. This initial jump, followed by a decreasing annual increase (if you see what I mean!) exactly matches that which was seen following the 1966 electrification. The implication is that for a given journey time and distance there is a maximum travel demand which is dependent on the population of the cities and the personal and business interests linking their populations.

The same thing was seen with the Eurostar services - growth is now marginal at best since the journey times have become stabilised.

There have been no recent significant improvements in journey times so growth on these routes is also minimal.

I beg to differ.  I believe it is the walk on fare prices that the potential new users seen and then don't look any further.  I also believe that many could not benefit from the cheaper fares due to the restrictions.  If I could get into London for the same price per mile as say Chorleywood to Marylebone (^7 for 20 miles = 35p per mile (less than half the fare per mile from Swindon) ) I would be much more attracted to rail travel. 

The latest station usage figures show "entry full", "entry reduced" and "entry season" which gives some idea of the ratio of tickets sold.  I've NOT looked up the definition (on mobile!) but grabbed some random figures:


Exeter St Davids ...
Entries Full 149874
Entries Reduced 966210
Entries Season 84554

Nailsea and Backwell ...
Entries Full 73838
Entries Reduced 76626
Entries Season 60482

Barnstaple ...
Entries Full 9519
Entries Reduced 157880
Entries Season 23694

And adding a station that ONLY has long distance traffic to my selection ...

Mallaig ...
Entries Full 10060
Entries Reduced 31397
Entries Season 0

Hmmm. IIRC National Express doesn't actually own any vehicles.  They are provided as part of the contract by the contract winner.
Coaches are then branded National Express.

National Express group do own some coaches. Well the imprint on the side of some of the 'A' routes, I have seen the following on them.

National Express Group
Birmingham Coach Station
Digbeth

But the majority are indeed franchised out. Badgerline then First Bristol used to run the 040 if I remember rightly. This was then awarded to a local coach company in Bristol, which in turn then got taken over by First Bristol.
I do not believe that any First company runs NatExpress services any more (excluding rail replacement).

I used to live near Heathrow and all the National Express coaches based at the depot at the end of my road had something like "National Express Airport Services, .... West Drayton..." on them. I believe that's been replaced by the Birmingham address now.

When did First stop running NatEx services? I'm sure I used one last summer London to Bristol and I know I've used First NatEx to Bath twice in the last few years.

I believe South Gloucestershire Bus and Coach have been operating NatEx coaches since 2007 gradually taking over various routes from that time.

With all the caveats that apply to Wikipedia, this may be of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Gloucestershire_Bus_%26_Coach

I have a feeling that when First launched Greyhound (UK) for the route of Victoria to Southampton that Nat Express wasn't thrilled and shortly afterwards they started loosing NatExpress routes.

Greyhound in the beginning was operated by First Southern National.

Having also looked at Wikipedia, I see that various Stagecoach companies operate National Express services. Stagecoach also own Megabus which has a more sizeable operation than Greyhound and is probably NatEx's biggest coach competitor.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Express_Coaches

Parks of Hamilton were awarded the National Express contract when First lost it.  Around 5 or 6 years ago, I believe, and this proved a life-saver for Trathens in Plymouth. First at that time seemed not to want the express service, and wanted to concentrate on the 'local' services.
A while later First decided to return to the express sector, and started the Greyhound runs. Falteringly at first (a series of manager changes), but now seems to have steadied.
Megabus is also slowly expanding it's runs - the latest being an experimental day run from Penzance (currently overnight) - or so the gossip is running.
Interesting times ahead as long distance coach travel went out of favour many years ago, but is now steadily reviving.

I think first only got the Bristol nat express routes by taking over a local coach company based in bristol. I cannot think what they were called but they used blue branding back in the days of cityline.