New (fast) tilting trains, effect on air travel?
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Coventry
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Surely not,
My comment was about the wastage, not the investment per se. I fully agree with you about supporting trains for short hop routes, and am massively looking forward to improved journeys to London from next week.
IIRC, the costs of the WCML started at £1.5bn, and ended up at £12.5bn - a price for which a completely new line could have been built. Much of this has been squandered on "safety" measures, which the government's own transport adviser has said will cause more loss of life than they will prevent.
JA
My comment was about the wastage, not the investment per se. I fully agree with you about supporting trains for short hop routes, and am massively looking forward to improved journeys to London from next week.
IIRC, the costs of the WCML started at £1.5bn, and ended up at £12.5bn - a price for which a completely new line could have been built. Much of this has been squandered on "safety" measures, which the government's own transport adviser has said will cause more loss of life than they will prevent.
JA
Join Date: Jun 2003
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From the current edition of Regeneration and Renewal
".....the amazing thing about Virgin Trains, apart from their prices – first class to Blackpool would take you economy on British Airways to Texas – is their monumental inability to sell you a ticket
Start the old-fashioned way: at the station. With Virgin at Euston, you’ll queue for about 20 minutes. Even if you show up at nine in the evening, they’ll still contrive to retain the queue by shutting down every ticket counter save one – and this on one of London’s busiest stations.
It’s no better the 21st-century way, via the web. The site is a masterpiece of incomprehensibility, with choices that prove not to be choices. (British Airways, which competes to Manchester, in contrast offers a model of user-friendly clarity.) But, assuming you make it before night’s end, that’s just the start.
Because, of course, you have to pick up the ticket. With British Airways at Heathrow, you insert your credit card and bingo! your e-ticket zooms from the slot. With Virgin, it’s pure Kafka: after typing in the seven-digit code you’ve been given, you’re told to press a button saying “confirm”. But, of course, there’s no such button."
full article
http://www.regenerationmagazine.com/...ry.cfm?ID=3926
".....the amazing thing about Virgin Trains, apart from their prices – first class to Blackpool would take you economy on British Airways to Texas – is their monumental inability to sell you a ticket
Start the old-fashioned way: at the station. With Virgin at Euston, you’ll queue for about 20 minutes. Even if you show up at nine in the evening, they’ll still contrive to retain the queue by shutting down every ticket counter save one – and this on one of London’s busiest stations.
It’s no better the 21st-century way, via the web. The site is a masterpiece of incomprehensibility, with choices that prove not to be choices. (British Airways, which competes to Manchester, in contrast offers a model of user-friendly clarity.) But, assuming you make it before night’s end, that’s just the start.
Because, of course, you have to pick up the ticket. With British Airways at Heathrow, you insert your credit card and bingo! your e-ticket zooms from the slot. With Virgin, it’s pure Kafka: after typing in the seven-digit code you’ve been given, you’re told to press a button saying “confirm”. But, of course, there’s no such button."
full article
http://www.regenerationmagazine.com/...ry.cfm?ID=3926
The rail industry has the air service in its sights. Whether it has the capacity to handle significant growth is another matter. The fast line out of Euston can handle 13 departures every hour, split between service groups covering West Midlands, Manchester, Liverpool and Preston/Carlisle/Glasgow. Services to Holyhead and fast commuter services to Milton Keynes/Northampton shoehorn in around the margins. It’s already full. The Pendolino tilting train has, even after the late addition of an ninth carriage, fewer standard class seats than the old stock. Five BR mark three coaches accommodate 380. The Pendolino also has five standard coaches but the shop and oversize disabled lavs eat into the space for seats. Absurd Health and Safety regs mean that the first third of the leading coach is a crumple zone. Standard class seating therefore around 290. Thus three services an hour to Piccadilly represent a standard class capacity growth of only 15% on the current two.
I’d put the number of Manch/London pax not interlining at well over 50%. This is pure guesswork, nothing concrete. Would expect the interlines to be proportionally less than from say Leeds or Newcastle as Man has services to many more destinations business and leisure. While the rail fare has been pushed up year on year so that full standard fare is nearly the same as that to Edinburgh, excess capacity on the back of cut throat competition has depressed the air fares. I’m a Central London based Civil Servant and guess that if we have Manchester attendees at meetings its 50/50 whether they’d fly or rail. The culture of flying from Manch has grown in the last few years on the basis of it’s being as cheap as the train. It’s perceived as faster and more prestigious. For some reason 40 minutes in the Bovingdon hold upsets folks far less than the same delay just north of Watford on the train.
I’d put the number of Manch/London pax not interlining at well over 50%. This is pure guesswork, nothing concrete. Would expect the interlines to be proportionally less than from say Leeds or Newcastle as Man has services to many more destinations business and leisure. While the rail fare has been pushed up year on year so that full standard fare is nearly the same as that to Edinburgh, excess capacity on the back of cut throat competition has depressed the air fares. I’m a Central London based Civil Servant and guess that if we have Manchester attendees at meetings its 50/50 whether they’d fly or rail. The culture of flying from Manch has grown in the last few years on the basis of it’s being as cheap as the train. It’s perceived as faster and more prestigious. For some reason 40 minutes in the Bovingdon hold upsets folks far less than the same delay just north of Watford on the train.
Trains are city centre to city centre, or at least the fast ones are. What proportion of pax want to travel this route? Surely most people want home to city centre, i.e. suburbs to city centre.
If times and airport accessibility are factored into that equation, air benefits enormously (except LHR!).
Take Hampstead to Glasgow.
M1 to Luton (against traffic), EZY to GLA, taxi to City.
Or Walk to tube, Tube to Euston (changes?), Virgin to Glasgow, walk/taxi to destination.
Just a thought..........
If times and airport accessibility are factored into that equation, air benefits enormously (except LHR!).
Take Hampstead to Glasgow.
M1 to Luton (against traffic), EZY to GLA, taxi to City.
Or Walk to tube, Tube to Euston (changes?), Virgin to Glasgow, walk/taxi to destination.
Just a thought..........
In a few countries fast trains have had a significant difference. In both France (TGV) and Japan (Shinkansen) trains took very significant numbers of domestic passengers, both on opening and more in subsequent improvements. Also, if you want a lesson in British airline history the electric railway service started in 1966 from Liverpool to London killed the old British Eagle by attacking their only seriously profitable route.
The new British services will not succeed to the same extent because :
1. The focus of commercial life at both London and Manchester has moved towards the airports and away from the city centres. I visit many major and middle-sized businesses round the UK, virtually none have offices in city centres any more apart from specialist industries such as international banking.
2. Business travellers have moved towards longer days away and less overnight stays, favouring morning/evening journeys directly to the airport. Getting to the city centre for a train is no longer an option. City railway stations do not have new motorways built to them like airports do.
3. City centre parking for those taking the train is not well organised compared to airports and susceptible to crime and theft from vehicles.
4. Rail used to be significantly cheaper than air, nowadays the two are often the same or even reversed. Iinter-city railways used to at least break even 20 years ago if not be significantly profitable, whereas nowadays they all need substantial subsidies from the government, the exact opposite of what rail privatisation was meant to deliver, showing a complete lack of ability to control costs compared to airlines. This trend will continue.
5. The railways squandered their key advantage, cheap walk-up fares (what made the Liverpool trains such a success all those years ago), by making fares either walk-up but as expensive as full service airlines, or cheap but requiring booking further ahead than mose people plan their lives.
6. The track upgrade to the Manchester railway has delivered very little hard benefit and was mostly a like-for-like replacement dressed up as "investment". The new trains are less capable than those built by British Rail 20 years ago, and certainly more cramped with less efficient use of the space available.
The new British services will not succeed to the same extent because :
1. The focus of commercial life at both London and Manchester has moved towards the airports and away from the city centres. I visit many major and middle-sized businesses round the UK, virtually none have offices in city centres any more apart from specialist industries such as international banking.
2. Business travellers have moved towards longer days away and less overnight stays, favouring morning/evening journeys directly to the airport. Getting to the city centre for a train is no longer an option. City railway stations do not have new motorways built to them like airports do.
3. City centre parking for those taking the train is not well organised compared to airports and susceptible to crime and theft from vehicles.
4. Rail used to be significantly cheaper than air, nowadays the two are often the same or even reversed. Iinter-city railways used to at least break even 20 years ago if not be significantly profitable, whereas nowadays they all need substantial subsidies from the government, the exact opposite of what rail privatisation was meant to deliver, showing a complete lack of ability to control costs compared to airlines. This trend will continue.
5. The railways squandered their key advantage, cheap walk-up fares (what made the Liverpool trains such a success all those years ago), by making fares either walk-up but as expensive as full service airlines, or cheap but requiring booking further ahead than mose people plan their lives.
6. The track upgrade to the Manchester railway has delivered very little hard benefit and was mostly a like-for-like replacement dressed up as "investment". The new trains are less capable than those built by British Rail 20 years ago, and certainly more cramped with less efficient use of the space available.
