Why is there no really long distance travel avoiding London? Is there a market for it? How can it best be served? Why is it nor served / used at present?
But there is! Here in the Thames Valley, I can get through trains from Reading to Gatwick airport, or from either Reading or Oxford to Southampton, Bournemouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, York and Newcastle. And some of these trains are very well patronised too - as a former North Downs commuter, I can attest to how popular the Gatwick trains are for holidaymakers from beyond Reading notwithstanding the poor rolling stock (Turbos) and lack of publicity for the service. I used Cross-Country reasonably regularly for business travel to Birmingham and less frequently to Manchester, and introduced the service to colleagues in Guildford who used it and found it equally useful.
These services are used less frequently than they should be for a number of reasons.
1 - They are almost invisible to the general travelling public. If you book to travel (for example) from Guildford to Manchester , or from Bristol or Banbury to Gatwick, I bet you'll only be offered a journey via London. There's no visible national advertising of the services - I see
TV▸ advertising for
LNER» (weird red-headed dolls dancing upside-down on carriage ceilings),
SWR» (cartoon seagulls and pigeons) and even
GWR▸ (the dreaded Famous Five), but nothing for Cross-Country, or from National Rail telling people - do you know you can get to the South Coast, South West or the London airports from most of England without having to travel across London using the tube? I think most casual rail passengers assume that if they want to travel to these destinations from the Midlands and the North they must go via London.
2 - We are slipping back to the position on
XC▸ that we were in just before the Voyagers were introduced, when services were run using tired old
Mk2▸ stock, with worn seats and often announcements apologising for lavatories being out of action. A Preston-Portsmouth service then called at Reading at about 8am used a two-car class 158 train in Regional Railways livery, manned by staff in new red Virgin uniforms. I recall that in the first year after Voyagers were introduced by Virgin, reading that the Reading-Birmingham route experienced the largest increase in passenger volume of any route in the
UK▸ . The Voyagers do now need a refresh (which I understand they are due to get).
Yes - XC often take longer than via London, and it's a shame if there are no deals currently equivalent to those offered by the London bound/originating services, but I was able to work on them (and others also seemed to have no problems), and I am not over 6ft tall so could fit in the seats comfortably, so as far as I was concerned it was a no-brainer. My concern is that XC/Reading Gatwick/Portsmouth-Cardiff services and the like will become even more "Cinderella" under
GBR▸ , as they do not have (forgive the expression) the "shroud-waiving" cachet of "Northern Powerhouse".
XC▸ has really suffered - they shouldn't be being used for 'local' journeys of less than 30mins frankly, and connection hubs used (they did try these outside the BHM central hub a few years ago, but customers wanted the BHM facilities), so gave up again.
There's no reason that they should not be used for any journey of less than 30 minutes, the crucial decision someone has to make is balancing the time taken against the volume of passenger traffic generated. I think it's about right on the "eastern arm" services from the South Coast via Reading and Oxford to Manchester or from Reading to Newcastle. Yes, this means it's a semi-fast by overall standards, but it's still (for example) the quickest journey from Reading to Basingstoke - and long may it be so.
There's also nothing wrong with having services that hardly anyone uses from end to end, but which provide a series of overlapping useful middle- and long-distance links along its route. It's actually one of the good points about longer-distance cross country routes - kills the proverbial two birds with one stone! And for most of us, I'd guess we don't mostly travel on services between their ultimate origins and destinations, whether one of those is London or not.
Turning to Grahame's query of the factors-
Speed?
Comfort?
Lack of luggage space and assistance?
Fares?
Facilities on the train (e.g. meals at seat)?
Marketing?
Simply no-one would use it?
Speed - inevitably, threading across the grain of mainline services there will be some compromises, but at least you avoid the unpleasantness of the tube, and for some London terminals, a not particularly convenient route between them. Do also bear in mind that a large proportion of travellers do not live on the platforms of London terminals or the major city-centre stations. I think I have posted before about a former work colleague from what was then the Manchester office of the firm I worked at, who had a meeting in Reading that I was also attending, who assumed he'd have to get to Manchester airport, fly to Heathrow, then get a taxi to Reading. He did not realise that there was an hourly service from his home station (Macclesfield) to Reading. Even at XC speed it was quicker!
Comfort is subjective, but be careful what you wish for - some of these routes might be seen as ideal for cascading 5-car IETS with ironing-board seats!
Luggage space - from my leisure use experience, Voyagers are no worse than most inter-city stock, and XC staff generally helpful but 165 Turbos on Reading-Gatwick, a service that does have a high end-to-end patronage in peak holiday periods with luggage is simply woeful. I expect this would be true on other services using
DMUs▸ on longer distance services to airports and resorts.
Costs - more special offers please, XC /GBR.
Facilities - for XC, it was a shame that Arriva took out Virgin's catering when they took over, but with the mixed pattern of distance of journeys, I doubt anything beyond restoring a Virgin-style hot snack service would pay.
Marketing - see above!
Does anyone use them? See above - YES! we/the relevant
TOCs▸ /GBR should be encouraging more to do so.
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