When you think of the battle over several years to get the Kemble line redoubled, which was ultimately justified due to its strategic role as a diversionary route for South Wales (you would be surprised at how many politicians and councils in Wales were calling for it), then to think that a route which even after the much anticipated improvements will see less than 10 passenger trains each way could just be added on as an encore is somewhat wishful thinking. Never say never, but I suspect delay minutes due to single track will be fairly low compared with Worle to Weston or the two remaining sections of the North Cotswold Line.
Agreed. A serious bottleneck affecting, preferably, more than one busy line is now needed before the beginning of the process to add to capacity. That could yet change. Until grahame posted that document, I had known that the railways were reduced in size to cut labour costs, but I had not realised just how hugely labour-intensive the operation of the railways was. Of course, Multiple Aspect Signalling was less labour-intensive than semaphore, both in use and maintenance, and the aging steam trains of the Beeching report needed replacement by something more modern. I now realise that not only was railway use dwindling, but the expectation was that passenger numbers and freight tonnage would continue to decline. I do not attribute blame for any of the decisions then made, because when they were made, they were justifiable.
This brings us to the prospect of excitement of a high order, demanding of both hard heart and occasionally soft head.
In our more modern times of congestion and high fuel prices, some of the former assumptions on rail can be turned on their heads. We see, for example, that very modest expenditure on the Severn Beach line has raised that line's use from marginal to a million passengers this year. The frequency has been raised from an unlearnable "about every 73 minutes on average, but don't ask when" to three trains every two hours. Capacity has been increased at peak hours by adding a car to the 2-car unit, but with a single line from Stapleton Road with passing loops at Clifton Down and Avonmouth, it is pretty full.
Re-doubling the line to SVB would be as big an undertaking as the Kemble job, albeit wit less overall impact on passengers in the shorter term. But I reckon that with Four Track, Now! to Filton Bank, plus extending the passing loop to Montpelier, requiring the relocation of one set of points and two signals, the scrubbing up of the unused platforms at Redland and Montpelier, and one extra unit, would allow 4 tph to AVM, including 2 tph to SVB.
I reckon it could be done for around ^10 million, or about 15% of what WEP paid to increase bus usage in Bristol by less than 5%. As SVB was only a farm when the station opened and now has 2500 residents with a ^3 return journey to
BRI» as the only real alternative to driving, it could easily boost house-building in this quasi-rural setting, and relieve pressure on the city. It's a shame that there is no linkage between housing in S Glos, employment in Bristol, and transport in the geographical area formerly known as Avon.
One might almost be forgiven for thinking that policies on transport, housing, employment, and others, were not co-ordinated between the three authorities involved, and that there is wasteful triplication (I don't include BANES in this awful waste of scant resources) of amateurish effort when decent targetted integration of effort might produce massive turnaround in how people see public transport.
The same is true of the TransWilts line, except that the areas of population are less clearly defined, are less densely packed, and don't have the same opportunity of connection to major centres of employment as does the (emerging) SVB line.
Not sure what to think, More soon.
