Great Western Coffee Shop

From BBC Scotland (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50368894), early last November - posting / starting a fresh thread as it fuels discussion about rail v fly


The air v rail topic - and in particular relation to Flybe - came up at a TravelWatch SouthWest meeting the other day (sleepers in the discussion mix too).

And it strikes me ... 29% London to Glasgow taking the train, 270 minutes v 75 minutes.  What figures (and what prices) Bristol to Glasgow - actually a shorter distance.   And I have randomly chosen 4th February ... London to Glasgow fares of £48.50 on several trains.

Lets try Bristol to Glasgow.  Best price £95.50 - for trains taking 470 minutes. Or for £105.50 taking 350 minutes.  And I expect the fight time (and prices) are very similar.

I just have to wonder ... if Bristol to Glasgow was just under £50 with a couple of sub-300 minute services each day (extra 5 cars on Plymouth - North East service, detach at New Street then Wolverhampton - Preston - Carlisle - Glasgow) ... how many people might switch to rail.
 

Indeed, and how many might now use a return of the Bristol- Glasgow sleeper?

The economics of sleepers - with just a single journey of the train in a day - remain difficult.  At a sensible price and as a hotel on wheels with decent checking times and friends and joined up inward and onward connections it would be really busy.  But not sure if it could be done at a sensible price unless  :D ;D carriages were convertible in some way to provide extra run(s) of the stock.   Who knows - we could end up with the 803 / sleeper convertible IET.

I think that Grahame has hit the nail on the head with his observation that utilisation of sleeping stock is frustrated in the main by diurnal appearance of daylight that contributes to enormous inefficiencies. I might suggest as we enter a new accommodation with the global community that we forge a new allegiance with our old Commonwealth partners to share sleeping stock amongst our various railways. I am inspired by our current leadership that, released from the shackles of conventional control, we can forge new partnerships and seize new opportunities. In a new trade outlook, we should be sharing our sleeping-car stock with New Zealand, one of our oldest, and most loyal antipodean partners. The synergies are so obvious with a 24 hour usage of joint equipment to the benefit of both nations.
 :)

On current infrastructure, looking further 300 minutes may be optimistic - look at 315 minutes.   That step up from 270 minutes (London to Glasgow) to 315 minutes may reduce the number of single journeys each train can make a day at "nice" times from 3 to 2, but then diagrams tend to be complex and interwork with other services?  You then need to be looking at robustness too ...

I think it's important not to regard it as a zero sum game on either side.

On Bristol to Glasgow rail can probably compete with air (and road for that matter) for leisure travellers who aren't so worried about the time it takes and are content to sit back and enjoy the scenery, but for business travellers where it's time that counts I very much doubt many would opt for an 8 hour rail journey if a 1 hr 20 minute flight is available...…...16 hour round trip = 2 working days for many, just sitting on a train, and it would almost inevitably involve the additional expense of an overnight hotel too.

So rail could be a winner for some who aren't in a rush, flying for others for whom time is a factor?

I am truly sorry but I am strugglingto make any sense of this.

The "sharing of sleeping stock" is unlikely to be of any benefit when most Commonwealth countries that actually still have railways tend not to use our standard gauge.

Secondly, even if you did have bogies that would run without conversion on other country's railways, how the devil is this going to reduce the amount of time sleeping cars sit is sidings waiting for it to get dark? I agree that New Zealand is about 12 hours adrift of UK time so when it is dark here it is light there and vice-versa, but until someone invents a teleporting device that will take sleeping cars I can't see that time difference being much of an advatage.

And besides, if a teleporting machine could move sleeping cars to down under at the speed of light, it could move people like that too so we wouldn't need sleeping cars...

I also have a problem with this in this context:

What, pray tell, is "shackling" plucky little Blighty from trading railway equipment with the rest of the world? Is it the evil EU? If so, someone had better tell them that Hitachi, who seem to be building most of our trains at the moment, is not exactly a lovable little family firm that started in Wigan in 1853 but originate - horror of horrors - abroad. Not just across the Channel abroad, but go though the Suex canal and keep going for a long time abroad. Real abroad. Outside the EU abroad. The "here be dragons" abroad, where people wear kimonos and not just as dressing gowns. The abroad of UKIP's worst nightmares...

I apologise if I've come over rather more strongly than usual, but I've just read another thread where someone seems to think reopening Kemble to Tetbuy might be a runner. Perhaps there's someting in the air in the UK at the moment that I'm not getting down here in Cape Town. In abroad. In 3'6" gauge abroad...

;)

Overhead shot? 😉

Robin, I am not sure that you are fully engaged with our upcoming opportunity and that attention to mere details detracts significantly from the benefits that will surely disperse upon the body public once we open our minds and dispel previous mantra that have kept us so straightjacketed this past several decades.  Your focus on track gauge for instance speaks volumes on an attention to detail that detracts from the ultimate goal of new global optimism. England, I am sure will be the first to embrace teleportation – after all we thought of it first – and the carbon benefits I’m sure are already being woven into national policy on rail transportation.

Even in our unique seasonal optimism, not seen since a stable incident some time ago, a Tetbury connection, as you observed, would probably require miraculous convergence.

But 3’6” is a wonderful gauge, same as New Zealand, and they both run trains far larger than ours – bit like France and Germany …

Enjoy Kaapstad - a truly wonderful place  :D

Totally agreed.  29% London-> Glasgow choose train over plane means that 71% choose plane over train.  And as you adjust the parameters, you effect decisions.

Parameters ...
* What does it cost?
* How long does it take?
* Is it easy to book?
* Do I have to change along the way?
* How convenient is it for my start and end points within London / Glasgow?
* How early do I need to check in?
* How much luggage (and what?) can I take with me?
* When does it depart or arrive - is it running at a good time for me?


Yes, but then Bristol to Glasgow in 5.5 hours might sway some more.  And with 85 minutes Bristol to Birmingham (2 intermediate stops) then 240 minutes Birmingham to Glasgow (9 intermediates stops) at present, the time argument may cease to be quite such a dominant decider.  Provided the fare is right, and it's a through train ... and if it's a new through train, dropping 9 intermediate stops to 3 on a service that's right behind a London - Preston - Carlisle - Glasgow superfast would bring it closer to the 5 hours. Cover Birmingham to Glasgow traffic better too.

Figures were for the year to July to 2019 - I'd love to see updated figures to see whether the recent increase in environmental awareness associated with XR, Greta, the Flygskam movement etc have had a noticeable impact. Anecdotally from colleagues who travel frequently between our Glasgow and London offices the trains are significantly busier with corresponding impact on prices. They also suggest it's time to build a second sleeper as the existing one is often fully booked even weeks in advance.

I've also heard planes between London and Glasgow seem to have excess capacity and cheaper, despite several flights being cancelled.

Official government statistics certainly show a massive decrease in domestic air travel since April 2019 - https://twitter.com/HelenJackson0/status/1217746925992271872?s=19

Reduction in domestic air travel for environmental reasons, likely substituted with rail and/or road, would certainly explain Flybe's financial issues, plus Easyjet/BA/Ryanair trying to polish their environmental credentials. 

Can’t remember whether it’s EasyJet or Ryanair, but a recent ad campaign extolling their green credentials was finger down the throat stuff!

Ryanair >:(

I'm glad to see you didn't take umbrage with my post! ;D

However, the devil is in the detail. For many years one of my major jobs was to take other people's strategy and vision, and turn it into a sensible, workable and realistic way forard. That is why, whenever I am faced with a new strategy, and especially a rhetorical one, my first question is:

"OK then, how are we going to make this thing actually happen? How is it going to work? What are the dangers and where are the pitfalls that will stop it working?"

Without the answers to these questions you are never going to get anyone's pet scheme up and running.

We all know what the elephant in the room is here but neither of us is saying it, so let's get it out in the open. It's Brexit. Ever since June 2016 we have had politicians waxing on in full rhetorical thrust about the wondrous opportinities that lie just around the corner. Well personally I don't want to hear their rhetoric - I have no time for rhetoric - rhetoric is tuppence a ton -- I want to know what they are actully going to DO that this country can't do already. Because let's be clear = we have been able to trade with any country anywhere in the world ever since we joined the EU, and the only caaeat is that we have had to abide by the same tariff and customs terms as all the other countries in the EU. Nobody else has a problem with that, but apparently we do.

If we want to buy trains from Japan or bananas from Jamaica nobody is stopping us.We import steam locomotive tyres from South Africa because it is the only country in the western world that still produces them; nothing is stopping us. The list goes on and on and on. And of course thise same freedoms exist in oiher countries too.

So when, with respect, I see a post on here which is to all intents and purposes a regurgitation of that political rhetoric I so much detest because of its emptiness in terms of detail, I react by pointing out some obvious details that may stand in the way of doing what you the poster suggests we will be able to do, I get:

"I am not sure that you are fully engaged with our upcoming opportunity and that attention to mere details detracts significantly from the benefits that will surely disperse upon the body public once we open our minds and dispel previous mantra that have kept us so straightjacketed this past several decades."

I'm sorry, you're damned right I can't engage with that - because ultimately it ain't true. We could do it all already; you are being lied to by politicians who tell you we can't and like, when any justifiable concerns by the remain side in the referendum campaign were put forward, the point gets sidestepped with a rhetorical "have faith" or "Project Fear" again.

You will of course have your faith and I will have mine, And if and when your faith gets tested by having to get a Shengen visa to take a day trip to Calais I am sure that the politicians will tell you that it's all because of the spiteful EU having a go at Plucky Little Britain because they hate the idea that we can live without them. You believe it if you like.

As Dave Allen used to say at the end of his shows: "Goodnight, and may your God go with you"

;)

Robin, You misunderstand me. We are living in times that frankly beggar belief for the straight-thinking man. I enjoy satire - as I hope you can now see, that I like to turn a mirror on those that would abuse us in our comfort of European sanity. I am an international man, working in an international industry, with colleagues - who at the last count - sported 50 different passports.  I am an Englishman, a patriot, a Unionist and frankly - if it wasn't for my humour - I would weep.

Yes I got your PM and I fully understand now :)

 I'm afraid I didn't see the irony (probably because of the red mist...) because it just sounded just far too much like the sort of drivel we hear from the lips of Rees Mogg, Fox, IDS, Redwood et all, and of course the ex-Telegraph journalist who's been massaging the truth about the EU for the last 25 years and has now managed to con himself into no.10.

There was an incident that summed the man up to me quite nicely. This was the one where he was holding a Manx kipper above his head saying that EU rules on packaging meant that the dead kipper had to have a nice little ice pillow for its head. He got a laugh, of course.

The trouble is, rules on that packaging of this nature are down to individual member states, not the EU, and actually the Isle of Man from whence this kipper came has never been in the EU. But never mind all that, why let truth get in the way of a good anti-EU sound bite?

Anyway I think we've now put that one to bed. Later on I might even post something on this thread that is on topic ;D

One

I said I'd post something on topic ;D

There are many factors that come into play when choices like these are being made, not the least of which are what is the actual journey being made, and what is it being made for?

I remeber discussing this matter on another forum some years ago. The transit time for each individual passenger is not "what is says on the tin" ie, plane 80 minutes train 5 hours.

In that discussion I pointed out that if you started your personal journey 5 minutes walk from Euston and ended it 5 minutes walk from Glasgow Central, then it would probably be best to take the train rather than battle out to Heathow from Euston Road and battle in to Glasgow from Paisley. But if, for example, your own personal journey was from Uxbnridge to Paisley, you would probably have landed at Glasgow before you could have battled into Euston, let alone gone anywhere on a train.

There are other factors yto take into account too, especially if you introduce "carbon footprint" into the equation.

The last contract I ever took on before I retired was a value for money review of the Maintenenace department of North Ayrshire District Council based at Irvine. There was to be the inevitable contract initiation meeting, the "get to know you" session between the officers I would be dealing with and me. Some would argue that contract initiation meetings are old hat now we've got the phone and Skype etc, but you do get a better feel for people when you are sitting across a table from them, and besides the client wanted one.

So Yours Truly had to get backside to Irvine, with the rest of himstill attached of course. The meeting was likely to take 3 hours if we went slowly; most of them were over in 2. Had I gone by train from Chippenham, I would then have to change at
Bristol and Birmingham, or do a cross London connection between Paddington and Euston. I would then need to get a local train heading for Ayr and get off the stop before. I didn't calculate the travelling time then but what shall we estimate? CPM-PAD 75 minutes by HST when this happened in 2016, PAD EUS transfer - best to allow an hour, 5 hours with Virgin belting up the WCML, then say an hour getting out to Irvine. Going via Bristol would probably be longer because of more intermediate stops, and if I caught an XC through train via the ECML it would certainly be longer

So going via Euston my total journey time would have been 8.25 hours. Each way. For a meeting that would probably last 2 hours, and certainly not much longer. An overnight stay would also have been required which would add to the carbon footprint,, because hotels would be very unwise to put new guests in dirty sheets. And of course the client (who in this case were ultimaterly the Council Tax payers of North Ayrshire) would be picking up the tab for the hotel as well as the rail fare, and no doubt some sort of subsistence allowance into the bargain.

So what actually happened? Leg it to CPM for the 0630 ex-PAD to BRI (anytime return at the time with Railcard  £7.20). On the airport shuttle bus by 0825 (£11.00) and into Lulsgate at about 0850. 0940 Easyjet flight BRS GLA arriving at 1055 (£80.54 booked only six days beforehand because these things tend to get arranged at quite short notice). Then walk from the airport to Paisey Gilmour Street station (1.6 miles and the first time I'd ever simply walked away from an airport in my life!) and an off peak day return from Paisley to Irvine (£4.85 and as I said to the booking clerk at Chippenham when I bought it "you probably don't sell many of those here!").

The do the whole lot again in reverse in mid-afternoon. The only minor flaw in the plan was managing to get back to Temple Meads just in time to metaphorically see the tail lamps of the 1830 PAD leaving the end of the platfoem so I had to go to CPM on the 1930.

So, just over 12 hours out of the house (could have been 11 if the airport bus had been 5 minutes earlier). Total cost £103.59. No hotels. No not smoking for 5 hours on a Virgin train... Job done in a day.

The rail option would have been much more inconvenint and more costly when you throw in the hotel bill.

So there is a personal everday story about an airline passenger from South West England to the Scottisjh Lowlands. Other stries will be available, and each and every one will have their own different etailed circumstances attached to them.