Electrification beyond Newbury - study results

[whole diary]

[onthecushions]

It depends whether one tries to justify spending on cost saving or revenue generating.

19 nearly empty (after Hungerford) electric trains to Bedwyn are clearly cheaper than 19 nearly empty diesels.

19 trains to Pewsey would have at least three times the present passenger/customer loadings West of Hungerford. Going to Westbury would produce seven+ times the present loadings, probably 10x with a Devizes Parkway.

The study, on its present logic, should have ended wiring at Hungerford and cut back drastically the service to Bedwyn. Evidently not politically acceptable.

OTC

[IndustryInsider]

I know that we were very close to extending the Turbo service from Bedwyn to Westbury a few years ago, but the fact that you'd need to resource another unit, and other costs such as driver route learning at Reading depot, meant it didn't quite happen.  A proper study would have looked at that option as well.

[Network SouthEast]

I know that we were very close to extending the Turbo service from Bedwyn to Westbury a few years ago, but the fact that you'd need to resource another unit, and other costs such as driver route learning at Reading depot, meant it didn't quite happen.  A proper study would have looked at that option as well.

Indeed.

I think that there is a real pent up demand for Westbury to go hourly to London. At around an hour and a half to get to London, I think an hourly all day service could really make Westbury a viable commuter corridor. It would also improve links and connections with the Wessex line. In the long term it might help improve Westbury's local economy too.

[ChrisB]

Pent-up demand & making Westbury a viable commuter corridor (in the future) aren't the same thing. One already exists, the other is the egg before the chicken, in order to attract commuters even further out of London. That is not pent-up demand.

[Network SouthEast]

You seem to think you can't have both.

There can be a level of pent up demand NOW.

The enhanced service will lead to Westbury being a commuter corridor.

[ChrisB]

IC125s will still run down to PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains)/PNZ. These will be used to provide Pewsey & Westbury - London services.

Why do they think there will be fewer stops?

[grahame]

Pent-up demand & making Westbury a viable commuter corridor (in the future) aren't the same thing. One already exists, the other is the egg before the chicken, in order to attract commuters even further out of London. That is not pent-up demand.

You seem to think you can't have both.

Wiltshire's core strategy plans call for large housing increases in what was West Wiltshire - Trowbridge, Melksham, Warminster and  Westbury (less in Bradford-on-Avon, the fifth town).   At the same time, the BaNES strategy calls for a 30% increase in employment, but no similar increase in housing - they actually state that a third of the workers will be commuting in from Wiltshire.

Much of this is happening already - housing areas with thousands of new homes in Trowbridge, at Bowerhill and to the east at Melksham, and at Westbury Leigh close to Dilton Marsh station, for example.  And people from there are looking for external jobs not only in BaNES ... large commuter flows by car to Chippenham station, and more than the station car park can handle to Bedwyn station too.

"Pent up demand", yes, in that hourly electric trains to Westbury at the same price per mile as travel from Bedwyn to London would result in many, many users switching straight over.   But then also scope for further growth as Dilton new town and others become viable commutes for more people.  Perhaps the electric service should be extended to Dilton Marsh ...

[ChrisB]

There are very few pax who move house and *then* go looking for a job.

So those moving already tend to have a job, and thus already a way of commuting to wherever that is.

Very few (but prove me wrong) I bet currently commute in the direction of London without already using the train.

Thus I can't see where an hourly service would *immediately* increase patronage. hence little pent-up demand.

What you mean is that an increased service to hourly would mean the service being seen by London commuters as somewhere they could move to & use the train. Fine.

But that is not pent-up demand.

[IndustryInsider]

Rather than 'commuters', who are pretty well served already, I would have thought an hourly electric service from Westbury/Pewsey to London would be much more useful for day-trippers and leisure travellers.  I don't see much need to change the peak hours service from Westbury/Pewsey which is a fairly fast and frequent service, but you only have to look at the large gaps in the off-peak direct service (Westbury has 2-hour gaps, Pewsey 3-hour ones) to wonder whether the extension of the Bedwyn service using an electric unit would be worthwhile in that it would provide a much better service for those two stations off-peak for a relatively short extension of a current service.  A side benefit is that it might also allow some of the longer distance services to omit calls (especially at Pewsey) and be sped up a bit.

A few years ago I did a sample timetable based on exactly that, although it used 125mph Class 180s rather than 110mph electric trains and also gave an hourly fast service to/from Maidenhead (with great connections to/from the Marlow branch) as well as boosting services at Frome.  Not to say that would be feasible now of course, but here is how it looked on paper:

[ChrisB]

The off-peak fare take wouldn't pay for the additional services though?

[IndustryInsider]

The off-peak fare take wouldn't pay for the additional services though?

I don't know.  But it must be pretty marginal as it nearly happened before, and we are talking about providing only one extra unit on top of what is already required for the Bedwyn to London service.  Though of course to do it properly would require electrification to Westbury with the additional costs of that.  My main point is that the BCR^▸ (Benefit Cost Ratio) ratios would have been a lot more favourable if the option of extending electrification to Westbury had been based on that kind of service rather than just the current service.

[ChrisB]

How, if the extra fares wouldn't cover the cost of the extra unit?

[IndustryInsider]

To avoid me guessing wrongly what you're actually asking, can you be more specific as to your question?

[ChrisB]

Surely, a lot of what makes a decent BCR^▸ (Benefit Cost Ratio) is whether the additional income would cover the additional unit?....

[IndustryInsider]

OK, thanks for clarifying.  If the service is to remain the same, then yes it is a large part.  But in this case (as quoted in the original post) the BCR^▸ (Benefit Cost Ratio) figure of 2.58 for Newbury to Bedwyn was based on the current service being operated by electric trains, and the figure of 0.31 for Newbury to Westbury was based on the current service pattern of trains from London to Westbury - meaning that hardly anything would ever make use of the wires from Bedwyn to Westbury as the vast majority of the trains would be provided by HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).

If an hourly electric service was to operate from Westbury and Pewsey to London then the BCR figure is bound to be much better as the assets would actually be used, and the benefits would also be that both stations would have an enhanced service.  Whether it would be up in the region of 2.58 I don't know, but it would be far higher than 0.31!