Great Western Coffee Shop

From The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/how-coronavirus-could-usher-in-a-new-golden-age-of-rail-travel-138648)

Cloud Cuckoo land time again.....

I do recall that system being used on a railway I once travelled on in the past - with modifications.  "Trains will leave every 30 minutes if there are 25 passengers or more.  I personally found a 30 minute wait a little frustrating, and of course it would have all sorts of issues if there were significant pickups along the way or trips starting at the other end rather that just out and back returns.   Oh - the departure "only if well loaded" was from Llanbeirs, and it came across a being more for operational - or is that financial - convenience rather than for the customer.

I will be surprised is we go back to the old franchise model, companies like SWR we're struggling long before Covid. I think the future will be similar to the current GWR franchise, management contracts, something that was in the process a while before the pandemic anyway. 

I don't believe we are about to see the return of British Rail in some form or another as the government are apposed to it. I would certainly like to see train companies become railway companies again, with more integrated control of track & trains and decisions made by the railway companies themselves rather than the DFT.

Do any of you remember the Dial - a - Bus scheme of the 1970's when, in theory, you telephoned an operator and they said a bus will be with you in X time just as you do with a taxi.  I know there are still some dial a bus schemes operating but they are more a pre booked scheme than an on demand scheme.

Railways do not have the operational fallibility of road to run a dial ride scheme, the railways do their best when they operate a regular timetable

A similar service was trialled in Sutton (London) last May.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/may/trial-of-on-demand-bus-service-gosutton-launches-today

The one year trial was interrupted by Covid-19 and it is not know if it will continue. I can't find any info on a resumption apart from party political bickering.

A second scheme launched in November 2019 in Ealing called Slide.
https://londonist.com/london/transport/tfl-bus-on-demand-ealing

But the Slide website says this

Sorry to be negative, but Covid 19 is difficult to see as anything other than a setback. Changing working patterns, with more white collar, professional and clerical work being done at home and a proportion of the population  now put off public transport by thr perception of the health risk looks like reducing passenger numbers. 

The final collapse of the franchise system will not make much difference.  One of the lessons I have learnt from my membership of this forum is that DfT micromanages a lot of the details of service and it is difficult to see this changing.  Add in to this the reduced fare income, a smaller proportion of the electorate travelling by train and (in due course) the need to get public finances back into shape and we may end up looking back at the last decade as a golden age of railways

I think you're correct in that the railways will take a huge hit as a result of changing working patterns and habits - there's been a huge realisation over the last few months that people don't have to be in the office anything like as much as previously and are indeed in many cases more productive, happier and healthier WFH with the additional benefits it brings to work/life balance. This has been the experience of almost everyone I know and is perhaps one of the few positive outcomes of the pandemic.

Businesses will also realise the benefits of huge savings in accommodation.

This effect will be felt mostly (but by no means exclusively) in London and the South East but the railway has an opportunity to partially re-invent itself and develop as the preferred option for local and long distance travel not necessarily for business - I'm thinking of lines such as the Trans Wilts on a local level and London to the Westcountry long distance.............make it more frequent, more reliable, more competitive, generally improve the offer and it could usher in whole new opportunities.

A "golden age" however is perhaps a little optimistic.

Steady on, TG - you're making your case for HS2 there.  ;)

We have had a "dial a public transport service" of sorts here in Wiltshire for some time. When the local council withdrew funding for the former 95 service between Chippeham and Lyneham/Bradenstoke via the villages, it was replaced by what was, in essence, a taxi on a Q path.

There is a published timetable, and if anyone wants to use it they ring the taxi operator. If no-one  does, the taxi stays in their yard. 

Blimey, is HS2 heading for Plymouth now? Better add another £20 billion............actually make it 30!  ;D

A small temporary hit, I don't believe it will last more than 2 years.

I fear that covid related disruption may be around for a lot longer than two years.
Apart from direct effects as may be observed right now, I fear panic measures being brought in for each new disease, even if such only kill a few dozen people none of them in the UK.

" New illness discovered in china ! Several dead ! Close down the schools ! Ban sunbathing, close the pubs, bail out the airlines."

I'm sure some people took that light hearted attitude when COVID-19 was first talked about, and now there are almost 50,000 dead in the UK alone.

Had "panic measures" (those who know about such things would probably describe them as "precautions") such as some of those you mention above been taken with an earlier lockdown, it's likely that many lives would have been saved, so I'd be happy for them to be reintroduced to prevent another pandemic or at least minimise its effect.

As for your obsession with and objection to the Government "bailing out" the airlines, 70,000 UK jobs in aviation are at risk. What's your alternative solution to the Government stepping in to mitigate this risk?

The present pandemic has indeed resulted in substantial loss of life, and a rigorous response was therefore entirely justified, and arguably should have been introduced sooner to limit the loss of life.
I do however fear a future over reaction to each new outbreak of illness.

As regards airlines, the government simply don't have enough money to bail out every organisation affected by the pandemic.
Airlines and related air transport industries should in my view be at the bottom of the list. Air travel is virtually 100% fossil fuel powered, and therefore detrimental to the climate.
If we are serious about climate change, we need to fly less and not more. Bail outs, grants and subsidies that make air travel cheaper or more widely available will encourage more people to fly, more often.

Banning air travel is going a bit far, but subsidising it, no way.
Let the market decide. If this means that a flight from London to Glasgow costs £250 instead of £50, then so be it.
If at £250, fewer people fly and providing the service becomes uneconomic, then so be it.

Likewise, I would not yet ban the manufacture of, or the use of, fossil fuel burning cars, but I would not subsidise the manufacture of such vehicles. Let the market decide, if this means fewer car makers and a reduced range of more expensive models from which to chose, then so be it.

I would subsidise trains and buses, preferably electric. Both the building of the vehicles and the operating thereof.

I was rather amused the other day by WECA Mayor Tim Bowles' reaction when someone suggested that our leaders should set an example by using public transport once it is safe to do so. Mayor Bowles' facial expression made it very clear what he though of that for a game of soldiers! But he did go on to say, to the nodded approval of others in his top team, that he had found teleconferencing very useful and expected to carry on using it in the future. 

I don't think Covid (or more generally one of the Sars type coronaviruses) is going to vanish anytime soon. Any more than flu vanished after 1918. Keeps coming back, in the case of flu in slightly different forms.

Have a read of the article in I news https://inews.co.uk/news/health/world-face-another-pandemic-tom-koch-predicted-coronavirus-460702 (https://inews.co.uk/news/health/world-face-another-pandemic-tom-koch-predicted-coronavirus-460702). Tom Koch is a well known medical geographer, and doesn't tend to needless doom-mongering.

Covid-19 is clearly not going to vanish unless we a) produce a successful vaccine, and then b) commit to a worldwide coordinated eradication programme. Part a) is merely technically difficult, part b) requires sustained global cooperation. We did it for smallpox (intensified eradication programme started 1967, world declared free of smallpox in 1980), we started doing it with polio and achieved a lot – only endemic now in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria – but seem to be going backwards due to local wars and global disagreements. I can't see us getting anywhere near that with any new programme due to the shapes of global politics and culture, sadly.

But what really counts for rail (and bus and air etc) travel is not so much the existence of the disease as the epidemic outbreaks and our reactions.

You never know, SARS(Sister virus to COVID19) died out in 2005, anything is possible.