6 thoughts on “So they’ve got the problem concentrated down to just the one service then”
Ottokring
Like the elf n safety posters I used to see on building sites about “one man falls of scaffolding every two hours.”
Careless bastard.
Western Bloke
“Tony Miles, a rail journalist at Modern Railways magazine, said: “Much of [the poor performance] is to do with a failure of successive governments to really resolve the staffing issues on rail, and that includes getting a proper seven-day railway in the terms and conditions [of train crew] – and recruiting enough staff – so they don’t have to rely on overtime and rest-day working.
“This is putting people off trains and back on to the roads, which is completely contrary to what government ambition should be.””
It would be a better idea to just stop running trains on weekends. Lots of people are going to take a car because they are travelling with friends and family. Congestion isn’t a thing. And no-one on a weekend is that bothered about speed, so coach travel is fast enough.
It’s utterly stupid to put weekday services at risk for the sake of the weekend ones.
Privatise it, and do it properly this time. One large rail company (and maybe a few third party operators) that decides routes and fares based on trying to make as much money as possible. Which will also mean it will prioritise the services people care about, not the Camelot to Midsummer train that 2 people and a dog ride on a Sunday.
bloke in spain
@WB
Funny thing is, the third world probably do better than we do. A lot people I know come from places where the public transport is a small bus with 8 to 10 seats. They don’t have a timetable although people know roughly when it runs. It leaves when it has sufficient passengers & may do the same at stops on its route. And gets there eventually. The important thing is it provides a service people need to the standard they need.
I doubt you could do that in the UK. There would be regulatory insistence on a timetable to be kept to. Therefore people don’t get the service they need to the standard they need because you can’t do that economically that way.
Paul, Somerset
Plenty of trains are standing-room-only in England and Wales at weekends. They have been for all the decades I’ve been using them.
It’s during the week that you can be confident of a couple of seats to yourself.
Western Bloke
BIS,
I remember going to Egypt and being told about “shared taxis” that did that. From what I recall there, it was just go where the taxi pickup service was and wait. That there were loads of them running from say, Luxor to Aswan, you’d have one along quite often.
“The important thing is it provides a service people need to the standard they need.”
The problem with politicians is they’ve got it into their heads that there’s like a constant value to improving a train line or adding more buses.
Like how many people care if Eurostar is 2:30 instead of 3:00? Pretty much no-one. You’ve got to see a client in Paris, either is fine. Taking the girlfriend up the Eiffel Tower? Either is fine. So blowing billions on HS1 didn’t add many passengers.
It’s like all this talk about more rural buses. The ones after 9am are barely used, get a load of subsidy and it’s nearly all retired people. And retired people have plenty of flexibility. They have to get to Tesco or Boots at some point that day, but they can easily rearrange their baking, gardening and watching Countdown to fit the bus. A bus every 2 hours is fine.
Western Bloke
Paul,
“Plenty of trains are standing-room-only in England and Wales at weekends. They have been for all the decades I’ve been using them.”
That’s because
1) they can’t get the right trains to the right places, so a 9 carriage train is replaced by a 5 carriage train. Something that really shouldn’t be beyond some people whose job has been moving trains for over 150 years.
2) they still have first class carriages on weekends when no-one wants them (although Seatfrog does correct this a little as it auctions first class seats off)
3) they have failed to price individual services and still use blunt “peak” and “off-peak” so the trains that are just before the rugby kicks off at Bath are rammed, and the one 5 minutes after kick off is not even half full. If they priced like Megabus or Easyjet do, the people who want to just buy some fancy cheese or take tea in the Pump Room would take advantage of cheap prices and use quieter services and spread the demand.
If people are packed into an off-peak train, you’re shit at your job.
Like the elf n safety posters I used to see on building sites about “one man falls of scaffolding every two hours.”
Careless bastard.
“Tony Miles, a rail journalist at Modern Railways magazine, said: “Much of [the poor performance] is to do with a failure of successive governments to really resolve the staffing issues on rail, and that includes getting a proper seven-day railway in the terms and conditions [of train crew] – and recruiting enough staff – so they don’t have to rely on overtime and rest-day working.
“This is putting people off trains and back on to the roads, which is completely contrary to what government ambition should be.””
It would be a better idea to just stop running trains on weekends. Lots of people are going to take a car because they are travelling with friends and family. Congestion isn’t a thing. And no-one on a weekend is that bothered about speed, so coach travel is fast enough.
It’s utterly stupid to put weekday services at risk for the sake of the weekend ones.
Privatise it, and do it properly this time. One large rail company (and maybe a few third party operators) that decides routes and fares based on trying to make as much money as possible. Which will also mean it will prioritise the services people care about, not the Camelot to Midsummer train that 2 people and a dog ride on a Sunday.
@WB
Funny thing is, the third world probably do better than we do. A lot people I know come from places where the public transport is a small bus with 8 to 10 seats. They don’t have a timetable although people know roughly when it runs. It leaves when it has sufficient passengers & may do the same at stops on its route. And gets there eventually. The important thing is it provides a service people need to the standard they need.
I doubt you could do that in the UK. There would be regulatory insistence on a timetable to be kept to. Therefore people don’t get the service they need to the standard they need because you can’t do that economically that way.
Plenty of trains are standing-room-only in England and Wales at weekends. They have been for all the decades I’ve been using them.
It’s during the week that you can be confident of a couple of seats to yourself.
BIS,
I remember going to Egypt and being told about “shared taxis” that did that. From what I recall there, it was just go where the taxi pickup service was and wait. That there were loads of them running from say, Luxor to Aswan, you’d have one along quite often.
“The important thing is it provides a service people need to the standard they need.”
The problem with politicians is they’ve got it into their heads that there’s like a constant value to improving a train line or adding more buses.
Like how many people care if Eurostar is 2:30 instead of 3:00? Pretty much no-one. You’ve got to see a client in Paris, either is fine. Taking the girlfriend up the Eiffel Tower? Either is fine. So blowing billions on HS1 didn’t add many passengers.
It’s like all this talk about more rural buses. The ones after 9am are barely used, get a load of subsidy and it’s nearly all retired people. And retired people have plenty of flexibility. They have to get to Tesco or Boots at some point that day, but they can easily rearrange their baking, gardening and watching Countdown to fit the bus. A bus every 2 hours is fine.
Paul,
“Plenty of trains are standing-room-only in England and Wales at weekends. They have been for all the decades I’ve been using them.”
That’s because
1) they can’t get the right trains to the right places, so a 9 carriage train is replaced by a 5 carriage train. Something that really shouldn’t be beyond some people whose job has been moving trains for over 150 years.
2) they still have first class carriages on weekends when no-one wants them (although Seatfrog does correct this a little as it auctions first class seats off)
3) they have failed to price individual services and still use blunt “peak” and “off-peak” so the trains that are just before the rugby kicks off at Bath are rammed, and the one 5 minutes after kick off is not even half full. If they priced like Megabus or Easyjet do, the people who want to just buy some fancy cheese or take tea in the Pump Room would take advantage of cheap prices and use quieter services and spread the demand.
If people are packed into an off-peak train, you’re shit at your job.