Dear Mr Chancellor - here is how to reduce your spend yet keeping trains running

[whole diary]

[grahame]

"Treasury looking to save money by cutting 20% of trains from May".  Sad suggestion; the immediate saving by cutting out trains will not be great - the line still needs to be paid for, and the train leasing costs and the crews, unless you start declaring people redundant and scrapping trains.  The suggestion is also perverse in that trains are likely to be very quiet through the winter, but - come May - people should be out and about for the summer and catching up on leisure trips and delayed family visits.  And at the very time services will be being cut, people will be wanting to pile back onto the trains.

BUT travel patterns will differ - daily commuting of the 5 days a week variety will be down from 2019 levels for a number of years - perhaps for even. It is probable that long distance business meetings will be reduced.  Regional and leisure trips, and travel away from what were traditionally peak hours, will recover much more quickly and are ripe to handsomely exceed previous levels if reliable services are offered for journeys people want to make, at times they want to travel, and at an attractive price.  The "zero carbon", "sustainable" and "green" agendas will in themselves only influence a minority of people, but overall a policy to drive and encourage those agendas will help people make decisions to travel "better".

So what might I suggest - an agenda that moves services around to reduce overcapacity on frequent commuter routes and re-allocates it to other services. And changes to fares which help us grow back out of dependency on the treasury - saving them money not by reducing costs but by increasing train use and income.  We are told that it takes three years for the full effect of changes to come through - maybe, but in these times where we are starting from the abnormal, dramatic changes can happen much quicker. We have seen that in 2020, and can bounce back in summer 2021 if we are ready.


This forum is a magic place.  I can get out my crayons and make suggestions - ask "what if" and sew seeds and ideas - as a testing ground, without them being quoted as the policy of some organisation or other that I'm a member of.


Would services as follows from May 2021 help the railways rebuild custom and income?

A ten minute service, Paddington to Reading
from which ... a 20 minute service to Swindon.
- one onward to Chippenham, Bath Spa, Bristol TM^‡(resolve), main stations to Weston-s-m and Taunton
- one onwards to Bristol Parkway, Newport, Cardiff and main stations to Swansea
- one onwards via Stroud and Gloucester to Newport and Cardiff
the other trains onward from Reading ...
- one on to Newbury, stations to Exeter, then stopper to Paignton
- one to Oxford and stations to Hereford
- one fast to Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbott and stations to and past Plymouth
(overtakes semi-fast at EXD^» (Exeter St Davids - next trains) connections cross platform both ways)

Other IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train) services
- Bristol to Oxford (later, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Cambridge)
(gives 30 minute Bristol - Swindon service)
- Plymouth to Glasgow or Edinburgh  (via Birmingham, Crewe, Preston, Carlisle)
(couples to Plymouth to London express to Taunton)
(gives 30 minute Taunton to Bristol service with TAU^» (Taunton - next trains)-PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) train)
- Bristol to the North East
(gives 30 minute service Bristol to Birmingham with PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains) to EDH)
- Bournemouth to Manchester via Reading and Stoke-on-Trent

Outline framework for other services
Stock cascades off some of those to lengthen / strengthen local services
All local services hourly (issue / capacity on Newquay and Gunnislake)
All stations served at least hourly
And to replace suburban d.m.u.s on regional services with castle class trains

Season tickets replaced by Platinum Railcards
Platinum railcards offer a substantial discount of all tickets (available all line as well as for zones) so that the whole question of part-time seasons goes away and everyone who travels more than occasionally has a loyalty card option that will really encourage them to choose the train (or bus - should cover them too) over driving.

Peak fare / Anytime updates
Where peak fares are not much above off-peak, no great change needed.  Where peak fares are two or more times off peak fares, they have become an anachronism and are now pushing loadings onto "shoulder" trains.  Anytime fares which are more than a third higher than off peak fares should be reduced to that capped surcharge.

Tartan Traveller Tickets
To ANY station south of Arrochar / Dunblane / North Queensferry
(and north of Barrow / Oxenholme / Settle / Thirsk)

from any station in ...  Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, BCP, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall
60 pounds single, 50 pounds on railcard or group-save, 40 pounds child

from any station in ... London, Surrey, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Bristol area
from any station in ... Essex, Herts, Bucks, Oxon, Gloucestershire, S Wales
50 pounds single, 40 pounds on railcard or group-save, 30 pounds child

from any other station in Wales, Midlands, East Anglia
45 pounds single, 35 pounds on railcard or group-save, 25 pounds child

Add 10 pounds per ticket for stations Arrochar / Dunblane / North Queensferry and north thereof.

Sunny South Specials
Tickets in the opposite direction to Tartan Traveller Tickets.

[eXPassenger]

Far too sensible to be acted upon.

[Wizard]

Harsh on Bristol which should have 4tph to London by now to instead be dropped to 1.

[grahame]

Harsh on Bristol which should have 4tph to London by now to instead be dropped to 1.

Major flows are at ends of the line ... 1 through train to London and 1 with a quick same-platform connect at Swindon. And also one direct from Parkway station, Bristol to London, through train. Yes - I'm aware of the long distance cut there.

[Lee]

Is that a blanket "All local services hourly", even on, say, branch lines that would in "normal" times have a higher frequency than that?

[grahame]

Is that a blanket "All local services hourly", even on, say, branch lines that would in "normal" times have a higher frequency than that?

I will sharpen my crayon and amend that to "at least hourly".   I decided not to individualise every service to start with as that would make for an incredibly long post ... but by way of example staring at the far west, the St  Ives line with all the leisure traffic would almost certainly be running twice an hour not once.

[Wizard]

Harsh on Bristol which should have 4tph to London by now to instead be dropped to 1.

Major flows are at ends of the line ... 1 through train to London and 1 with a quick same-platform connect at Swindon. And also one direct from Parkway station, Bristol to London, through train. Yes - I'm aware of the long distance cut there.

Off peak throughout even this summer you needed 2tph Bristol - Bath - London. Those Saturday and Sunday trains were busy. Reducing to 1tph isn?t a good way to try and regrow demand for this summer.

Also, Taunton seems to have three direct trains an hour to London and Bath and Bristol TM^‡(resolve) only one. I don?t have passenger numbers but I can?t imagine there are three times as many people making that journey.

People won?t travel on trains that aren?t direct to the same extent.

[a-driver]

Emergency timetable looking to come into effect from the 18 Jan

[grahame]

Harsh on Bristol which should have 4tph to London by now to instead be dropped to 1.

Major flows are at ends of the line ... 1 through train to London and 1 with a quick same-platform connect at Swindon. And also one direct from Parkway station, Bristol to London, through train. Yes - I'm aware of the long distance cut there.

Off peak throughout even this summer you needed 2tph Bristol - Bath - London. Those Saturday and Sunday trains were busy. Reducing to 1tph isn?t a good way to try and regrow demand for this summer.

Also, Taunton seems to have three direct trains an hour to London and Bath and Bristol TM^‡(resolve) only one. I don?t have passenger numbers but I can?t imagine there are three times as many people making that journey.

People won?t travel on trains that aren?t direct to the same extent.

Two factors ...
a) Capacity
b) How long you have to wait for a train
The capacity issue would - for sure - need to be carefully looked at and re-tuned in the light of experience. Maybe (probably!) Saturdays and Sundays, extra capacity for WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) to London.  May be as simple as splitting the Oxford train at Didcot, or may be even more needed.   

I don't think there are large numbers travelling FROM Taunton to London to justify lots of capacity for that specific flow, but these are not "single source" trains - take a look at people traveling THROUGH Taunton to London, and from intermediate stations that some of them pick up at.

1. Truro (20k), St Austell (20k), Plymouth (240k), Torbay (140k), Exeter (130k), Taunton (70k) ... all travelling through Taunton. Then add extra sea side holiday / leisure destinations rail served - Penzance, St Ives, Falmouth, Newquay, Looe, Exmouth.  Not to forget Barnstaple, Totnes, etc.

2. Bridgwater, Highbridge, Weston-super-mare - not through Taunton, but the Taunton to London train

3. Frome, Westbury, Bedwyn, Hungerford, Pewsey, connections from Warminster, Trowbridge and Yeovil, again not through Taunton, but a Taunton to London train.

Comparing Taunton to Bristol is like comparing Crewe to Manchester ... you would not slash trains calling at Crewe because it provides far less off the street passengers than Manchester.

[grahame]

Emergency timetable looking to come into effect from the 18 Jan

And back at my original thought ... it does make regrettable sense to run a thinner timetable for the winter months as we go though current lockdowns / tiers, maintaining passenger flow provision while cutting capacity and numbers of operation staff needed at work; if anything dropped much below once every two hours (especially for shorter journeys) I would start to get very concerned at the removal of opportunities - witness earlier out-of-area comments about Oban.

[eXPassenger]

2. Bridgwater, Highbridge, Weston-super-mare - not through Taunton, but the Taunton to London train

The natural flow from Weston-s-mare is via Bristol.  I doubt if many people from there go to London via Taunton.