Various of the posts on changing passenger journey profiles, fare rises, overcrowding and more ... have lead me to do a bit of thinking about where we are, what has happened in the last 20 years, and where we might be headed 20 years from now.
Some lateral thinking ...According to the
ong Term Passenger Rolling Stock Strategy for the Rail Industry from the Rail Delivery Group dated March 2016, which appears to be the fire behind some of the smoke we're seeing saying how shocking it is that trains are so old, there were 12,968 passenger carrying vehicles at that date (page 12 - it's a long report!)
Compound growth rate in the 20 years from 1995 to 2015 was 3.8% per annum, meaning that passenger numbers in the final year of that period were 210% of what they were in the first year. This growth is shown graphically on page 7 of the report and broadly corresponds to the growth in the number of passenger journeys over the same period which I showed at
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17797.msg206896#msg206896 .
The increase in passenger numbers has not been matched by an increase in national fleet size:
"The 110% increase in passenger-miles in the 20 years between 1995/6 and 2014/15 was achieved with an increase of just 15% in the size of the total national passenger fleet."How has this enormous increase been achieved? The report says
"This major increase in fleet utilisation efficiency since 1995 was principally achieved by much improved marketing and utilisation of spare off-peak capacity. In addition, changes have been made to the type, configuration and functionality of much of the national fleet. These have increased the average capacity per vehicle."but the passenger view might well be that part of the gain has been by loading trains with passenger numbers over and above what they can really hold in comfort, and indeed the report's attitude celebrates the economic gain of getting lots more people onto only a few more trains.
I also note
"The average fare paid per passenger mile has risen by only 5% in real terms over this 20-year period."which is pretty astonishing when you consider that loading per carriage has gone up by 82%. It means that in real terms, income per carriage has gone up by no less than 92% in real terms. Gosh - I would love to be able to raise the income of our hotel by 92% per room in real terms, but then (perhaps) this rise is the industry digging itself out of a hole which was highlighted by the Serpell report answering the question "which part of the network is profitable", but which looked at answers based on cutting rather than promoting growth within existing resources.
Looking ahead ...The genie is out of the bottle! It can't keep on growing as it has done. A further 110% passenger grown won't fit on a further 15% extra fleet - unless you get more and more people into each train by replacing large areas of seating by standing room, or increasing the aggressive price differentials between trains that are now full ("peak") and trains that still have capacity ("off peak"). Modern technology would allow for some of this, with dynamic pricing. New trains will be able to sense their loads and advise people automatically that there's "room up front". And longer operating hours (the 24 x 7 railway) will allow even better stock utilisation; it will also overcome the industry's headache of having to 'taxi' staff out to trains parked overnight some distance from depot. Electric trains will run somewhat faster, and have considerably shorter service times and will be much much more reliable (see page 24) - again that's a gain. Replacement of final slam doors, and redesign will help reduce station dwell times.
The report looks at a rise over the next 20 years from 12,968 vehicles to (median case) 19,476 - that's almost exactly a 50% increase. I conjecture that a significant proportion of than increase is necessary to overcome overcrowding that already exists - demand has been running ahead of supply. And I note that even if growth drops from 3.8% per annum to a half of that(1.9%), 43% extra capacity over the next 20 years would be required to stand still! (Yes, in saying that I have ignored the efficiency issues described above, but then I have also ignored the increased space needed for the disabled loo ...)
With an further increase of 50% in the number of vehicles on the tracks in the next 20 years, and (we hope) with each of those vehicles spending more time running than at present, the questions of track, platform, station, and indeed access to station capacities arise.
In places, there are some simple solutions to be had to increase the capacity. 2 car trains run between stations which can all accommodate 4 or 5 car trains for starters. And you, dear Mr Rail Delivery Group, don't even have any increase driver or conductor costs. For sure, longer trains take a bit longer as they snake their way through speed restrictions - the head can't accellerate while the tail is still on a speed limit, but we're not talking huge long trains here.
In some places, lines are already at or near capacity, or so we're told. But with a standardisation of trains to the same performance envelope and stopping patter, and a lengthening of them all to the line's maximum length, you can get more people along the flow. I'm thinking of Paddington to Reading, where you could routinely run 16 x 10 coach trains every hour. Heathrow served from Crossrail and the relief lines (they're not "slow" lines, are they?) and then in every 15 minutes:
A 10 car train via Bristol Parkway - to Swansea, or to Temple Meads
A 10 car train via Reading West - in each hour
one train express to Plymouth and Penzance
two trains dividing and serving Basingtoke, and different stopping patternd to Westbury / Bedwyn
one train fast to Westbury, then stations to Newton Abbott dividing to Paignton and Plymouth
A 10 car train via Didcot
two trains on to Oxford with 5 coaches forward alternately to Banbury and Hereford via Worcester
two trains dividing at Didoct, 5 coaches forward to Oxford ...
... one portion on to Swindon, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester, Bromsgrove and Birmingham
... one portion on to Swindon, Trowbridge, Westbury, Yeovil, Dorchester and Weymouth
A 10 car train via Bath Spa to Bristol Temple Meads
five cars forward off two of the trains to Weston-super-Mare and Taunton
Each train to make a single intermediate stop between London and Reading - each dropping back one "path" with the first train stopping furthest out. This would give a 15 minute service to Slough, Maidenhaed and Twyford ... and I expect one of our members here would suggest Taplow for the fourth stop ;-).
Progressive, planned electrification of the routes covered by these trains - being bimodes - would in a long term and controlled manner move us towards greater electric haulage and the efficencies brought, and some of the line (you'll note) have London portions of trains replacing local services; an encouragement to passeners to use those services, and by splitting and joining trains, you're no longer routinely running packed services from London to Reading which remain the same length at present and thin out as they get further west.
It's getting late ... so I'll come back (if there's any interest / follow up) on track, station and depot capacities, and on that question of how we get people to the station [[ some station car parks have issues already ... not seen that addressed in the report, but then it's a long report and I may have missed it ... ]] . And if this whole post looks a bit mad, I can turn around in two days time and say it was just last year's ideas ...
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