Local stations in the West to be axed?

[whole diary]

[Zoe]

as for the Torbay arguement for stopping at NTA^» (Newton Abbott - next trains), easy, change at EXD^» (Exeter St Davids - next trains) instead as all trains from Torbay go through to EXD anyway (at the moment).

Which is going to leave anyone from the Newton Abbot/Torbay area with extended journey times and a 30 - 40 minute ride on a DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) which can be quite overcrowded and so encourage people to go by road.  Also not everyone from the area arrives at Newton Abbot station by using the Torbay branch but journey times to London will be extended for everyone if they have to change at Exeter.   There's also the issue of people heading west from Torbay/Newton Abbot.  I don't think it would be a great idea to have to travel via Exeter to get from Torquay to Truro.  Yes some Newton Abbot calls on Penzance services can be removed, for example the down Cornish Riviera or Royal Duchy trains need to stop there (the up Cornish Riviera already does not) but I think there should still be a direct intercity service to London.

[stebbo]

Let's get controversial......

How about going back to the old BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) days and running a few fasts at peak hours - non-stop PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) to Exeter/Bristol Pkwy and Temple Meads/Oxford/Swindon and vice versa?

And now I'll wait for the customary abuse (though I know there are those out there that agree with me).
 

[TerminalJunkie]

Maybe so but they have other rail based options i.e. use the Barny line

If you ask someone if they want their journey extended by 30-45 minutes just so a bunch of pasty-munching pixie-shaggers can save three minutes, what do you suppose their response would be?

[JayMac]

Devon can lay claim to Pixie folklore and the pasty as well.

Ottery St Mary has an annual Pixie Day, and Dartmoor legend has many stories of Pixies.

A recipe for a pasty dating back to 1510 was found in 2006, in an Audit book for the Borough of Plymouth.

 

[TerminalJunkie]

"Pasty-munching pixie-shaggers" applies to anyone South West of Tiverton.

To suggest that I was referring only to residents of Cornwall is just a teeny bit racist, and you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.

 

[paul7575]

The annual entrances and exits stats give some indication of numbers but does nothing to tell you where these numbers are travelling to and from. Source and destination surveys are required but these are very expensive in staff resources to do.

Surely that data is available to train operators though?  We might not get to see it, but each sale has 'from' and 'to' information (with the exception of rovers) and a reasonably accurate assumption of what trains are most popular can also be gleaned from this by using either the train the ticket was issued for (advance tickets) or time the ticket was sold at (on the day purchases) backed up with operators own passenger counts.

The ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) annual 'exit and entry' figures for the rail leg of a journey are definitely calculated (primarily) from ticket sales data.  Interchange figures are calculated by piggy backing on the Orcats system, in so much as it defines the likeliest routes (and therefore interchanges) taken from A-B.  For ticket sales to group stations (eg London Terminals) they then have to estimate the most likely destination.  Rovers and zonal tickets such as travelcards are another problem,  but I'd expect they'll apply some sort of statistical rules, for instance if they assume that nearly all outboundary travelcards sold at Winchester start with a trip to Waterloo I suspect they'll be quite safe.

If you go to the report section of the annual station usage figures on ORR's website, Appendices 1 and 2 explain how they get from ticket sales to station usage:

http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/stn_usage_report_1011.pdf

Paul

 

[grahame]

There are always going to be differences of opinion on long distance services ... whether to stop them at intermediate stations at a cost of slowing down the service as a whole, or to reduce the service at those intermediate stations of add in further more local services, which would involve a change on the way.  There's also the question of whether the timetable should be clockfaced, or whether a varied stopping pattern with some exceptionally fast trail-blazer services should be run.

What a pity that elements in this thread have degenerated towards the trading of insults, as this dilutes the discussion and reduces the seriousness with which reader - almost certainly including members of the franchise bid teams - give to considering what's written. I am informed that the insults were intended to be traded in jest, but on a public facing forum jest can quickly (an unintentionally) turn to offense.  And I deeply regret that the poster who wrote the jest that was found to be offensive has declined to reword his post or apologise, but has instead replied to me with a 'clever' message that just results in my having to waste more time writing this.  In this instance, I'm not going to take this any further - I'm going to leave it for the reader to form his own view on the merits (or otherwise) of the "jest" and the follow up.


OK .. personal view / thoughts here, as someone who rarely travels west of Taunton (so these thoughts should be taken with a pinch of salt as they lack local knowledge)

There's a conundrum that tries to trade off speed v flexibility of journeys, and another conundrum that looks at clockface v local changes at specific times of day which break the pattern.  I think I would rather have a train every hour on the main long distance route from my City to London than a less frequent service (and not clockface) that's sometimes quicker. And I would rather have a train that's well loaded and makes commercial sense - since that helps its long term viability - than a "flagship" service that might well get morphed into something else far less palletable once the marketing wheeze has died down if it turns out to be racing through stations where it could fill up.   I would prefer direct services for my journeys, but if there's a good regular option with a planned / timetabled connection every hour or two, that's likely to be better than a sporadic through service.

What could that mean at some date in the future, given rising volumes and potentially different trains with different acceleration patterns and capacities?   Hourly PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains)-RDG^‡(resolve)-TAU^» (Taunton - next trains)-TIV-EXD^» (Exeter St Davids - next trains)-NTA^» (Newton Abbott - next trains)-TOT-IVY-PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains) and perhaps beyond (see next paragraph). Hourly PAD-RDG-NBY^» (Newbury - next trains)-KIT-HGD-PEW-BDW-PEW-WSB^» (Westbury - next trains)-CLC^▸ (Castle Cary)-TAU-TIV-EXD (wait while the PLY train stops / exchanges passengers / prceeds) - EXT-SCS-DWW-DWL-TGM-NTA-TRR-TQY-PGN.  Beyond PLY?  Either run it hourly, major stations only if it's express stock / long train / more speed than accelleration, or run it every 2 hours and fill in with a local train that's every single station but takes the same time because of different characteristics.   Whichever of those options you choose, you've got the possibility of making the Cornish service every half hour with an hourly intermediate service ...

Enough said.  The residents of the area, business travellers to the area, DfT^» (Department for Transport - about), local councils, Network Rail, and (one hopes) the four bidders are all better informed than I am on this area, so they're probably streets ahead in looking for the best way to provide.  I just worry about "best for what / whom" sometimes.

[vacman]

Maybe so but they have other rail based options i.e. use the Barny line

If you ask someone if they want their journey extended by 30-45 minutes just so a bunch of pasty-munching pixie-shaggers can save three minutes, what do you suppose their response would be?

North Devon-ites are hardly in a position to mock any other region of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) in terms of their mating habits or for that fact anything. Pot, Kettle..................... I suppose it is difficult to get on a train at Barny without them dropping their knuckles in the cess. But we digress, Cornwall's principal stations combined have a far higher footfall than Tiverton Parkway so the majority should rule, and this isn't every train i'm on about just most of the ones from Cornwall.

[ellendune]

A large traffic from a group of stations is different to a the same traffic at one large station as a single stop incurs less delay than multiple stops. 

I guess some questions that need to be considered are:

1.  If you were to reduce the number of stops, how much would time would be samed for through travellers?

2. If you substituted additional local services to replace the stops, how frequent would they need to be to ensure that passengers form the smaller stations were not unduly delayed?

[Kernow Otter]

At least someone is starting to take this seriously. 

West Cornwall MP^▸ (Member of Parliament), Andrew George, has launched a petition in support of the campaign to persuade the Government to protect a base line of at least 9 through services from Penzance to London when the next 15 year rail franchise is let later this autumn.

Invitations to tender for the Great Western franchise were published recently and included an option to cut through services from Penzance to just 6 per day.

Mr George^s petition will be presented to Rail Minister, Rt. Hon Theresa Villiers MP, in October at the same time as companies tendering for the franchise submit their bids.

Mr George said, we have already sent a strong message to the Minister. Any cut in through services would be bad for business, bad for the tourist industry and for the thousands of commuters who depend on this vital lifeline service.

It is important that companies tendering for the service and Government Ministers are made fully aware just how strongly we feel about the future of our intercity services. I therefore call upon local people and visitors to sign up to this petition.^



http://andrewgeorge.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=86ea22b9ac3d905f4e00b84f5&id=0e79a07bb8&e=eee8643a38

[bambam]

How about run some extras, like 3/4 non-stop from PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains)-PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains), stop running normal Plymouth Paddington trains west of Plymouth and retain them hourly.

The main advantages of this I see are:

Current stops between Paddington and Plymouth are retained and therefore the market is kept
Large speeding up for Cornwell passenges.
Uses about the same number of HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) are present
Better lode factor on all trains

But having the disadvantages of:

Reduction in service to Cornwell from London
Using precious Reading-Paddington capacity
Reduction in service from Cornwell to places such as Exeter

[The Grecian]

The Great Western route to Cornwall is one of the few GW^▸ (Great Western) main lines without a clockface service and this thread demonstrates why, due the argument about which places should have a better or worse service. If you look at Reading each station where many trains stop between Taunton and Plymouth:

Reading - I believe two reasons virtually everything stops at Reading are a) it's a rather popular station and b) having a fast train head through for Paddington will simply mean it gets stuck behind the previous service as there are so many trains using the fast lines every hour, so any time saving is negligible.

Taunton - a big railhead for much of Somerset plus the town itself of around 40,000.

Tiverton Parkway - an odd station in that it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's well-used by people from North Devon, mid-Devon and Cornwall. If you severely slashed trains I suspect most of these people would simply drive rather than use alternate services.

Exeter St Davids - if the previous poster was suggesting that stops be cut there, I'd point out that it gets more use than any other station in Devon or Cornwall. Plus it has a 30mph speed limit so any time saving is negligible. Although rather bizarrely for a few years Virgin used to run a train that called at Totnes, NAbbot and Taunton, but not Exeter. I have no idea why but I digress.

Newton Abbot - serves a town of 20,000 plus Torquay. Again I suspect cutting stops would cause some people to drive rather than use the train.

Totnes - only serves a town of 8000 but gets a far better intercity service than Dawlish or Teignmouth, both of which are larger. But then it does serves Paignton and the South Hams, the latter of which is the wealthiest part of Devon. People with money and influence don't like having their trains removed - see the Deerstalker express saga in the early 90s.



Removing stops at any of these to speed up journeys further west is not going to go down well, just as removing stops at Didcot to speed up Brizzle and Wales services doesn't seem popular.

Apart from Broadgage's suggestion the only thing I can suggest is this:

Hourly Pad-Rdg-Exr-Plym-standard intercity stations to Penzance.
Hourly Pad-Rdg-Berks and Hants stations-Taun-TivP-Exr-NA-Tot-Ivy-Plym

Maybe every 2nd hour a Plym Newquay service allowing fewer stops on the Pad-Penzance service.

However this requires a) a business case b) sufficient trains and c) sufficient capacity including for overtaking. For c) you'd have the opportunity at Taunton, Tivvy Junction, Exeter, Dawlish Warren, NA, Totnes and Hemerdon (I think one side's still there anyway) but it'd all take a lot of effort.

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)'s Great Western Franchise Stakeholder Briefing Document:

Many respondents also made more general comments about service improvements in their areas. The most common of these was to improve journey times, particularly connections with services operated by other train operators. There were also numerous calls for later return services from London and other large cities (to enable passengers to use rail travel to attend evening entertainment), and for earlier journeys into London (to enable daily commuting from further afield).

There were sharply conflicting views regarding intermediate station stops on local mainline services and on branch lines. Ninety-one respondents wanted to see faster services with fewer intermediate stops. However, 68 were keen that current stopping patterns are maintained and 53 wanted additions stops added to services. Views on this issue were closely aligned with respondents^ location: those near large stations wanting more fast and semi-fast services; and those in small towns or rural areas wanting additional stops.

This, based on the 1,144 responses to the consultation, suggests that the answer(s) will be far from easy to reconcile ... 

[JayMac]

You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time.

The problem comes when attempts are made at pleasing all of the people all of the time.

[TerminalJunkie]

North Devon-ites are hardly in a position to mock any other region of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) in terms of their mating habits or for that fact anything.

Sadly, I cannot fault your logic here