Adding in late night trains - Watford to St. Albans

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Congratulations to the Abbey line (Watford to St Albans Abbey) on the forthcoming additional late evening service.

http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/14166552.New_Abbey_Line_train_service_to_run_later_than_10pm/?

After 20 years of campaigning the Abbey Line services will be extended past the current closing time of 10pm.

London Midland's new contract will add an extra daily return train on the Abbey Line seven days a week.

Although final services often tend to be quieter than the earlier ones (dangerous generalisation there!), they also bolster traffic earlier in the day, as people will travel out on the other services and back on the apparent quieter ones.

I would love to see an additional TransWilts round trip, daily, around 21:30 from Westbury and around 22:30 from Swindon. I contend it would provide both an extra late train home for commuters and people on long distance business trips, and open up a new market of people out for the evening - indeed I would not be surprised if it wan't busier that the current last train, which seems (to my mind) to run too late for most commutes home, but too early to allow for a night out.

Does anyone have any support data / thoughts?  And experiences in 'our area' with late night train additions?

[SandTEngineer]

...err.  we need to add that article to the 'Annoying use of Pictures' thread as it shows a photograph of St.Albans City station not St.Albans Abbey station......

[paul7575]

When the LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise) direct award was announced, this single extra daily return service was spun as '3,400 extra seats per week'.

I can't help thinking this particular wording of the announcement was chosen to imply extra capacity when most needed, whereas it will have no effect whatsoever on peak time travel.

It could have been worse, by a simple multiplication it could have been easily announced as 180,000 seats for St Albans commuters...

Paul

[Richard Fairhurst]

We have a new late-night service on the Cotswold Line: a Fridays-only 23.18 from Paddington to Moreton-in-Marsh. Previously it was an Oxford terminator. I've not yet tried it out - exasperatingly Friday is the one day I can't easily use it (I'm the parish organist and we have our choir practice on Friday nights...) - but shall make enquiries as to what loadings are like...

[grahame]

shall make enquiries as to what loadings are like...

Thanks, Richard ... yet we should (I think) give it a while to 'work in' rather than judging it after a few weeks.  There's a kind of understanding amongst professionals that at least two years should be allowed before full evaluation as some services take of slowly; that view's not universal followed though - 10 months was considered enough time for one local bus service ...