Looking at some of the changes, Citylink and Stagecoach could sweep in grab more coach passengers for themselves , if the train travel times are now roughly the same as the coach and your trying to save money it would make since to make the swap.
Feels like a good time to invest in Stagecoach shares!
(pre-Covid) They ran four coaches per hour from Kirkcaldy to Edinburgh whilst ScotRail ran two fast and two slow trains - now that ScotRail are only going to be running two slow trains per hour on that corridor that looks like good news for Stagecoach
The proposed timetable also appears to have removed semi-fast services from Edinburgh to most Fife destinations (including Kirkcaldy) apart from a few calls at Leuchars, leaving just stopping services.
Kirkcaldy will at least keep its LNER and XC services, so Monday-Saturday there'll be a fast Edinburgh-Dundee/Aberdeen service most hours. (I'm clutching at straws here.) Some proper integration with those TOCs, and ScotRail can plug the gaps a little. The solution might be to route a couple of Edinburgh-Invernesses via Kirkcaldy after all.
There are only 4 LNER trains/day to Aberdeen and 2/3 XC, so at most 7 hours in the day will have anything other than a Fife Circle stopper at Kirkcaldy and Inverkeithing. It either needs hourly stops on the Scotrail Edinburgh-Aberdeen or the Edinburgh-Inverness continuing to go via Fife.
I hope that something can get sorted out - Kirkcaldy has had twice as many Edinburgh services as Stirling has for many years, but now Kirkcaldy will have fewer Edinburgh services than Stirling will get (given that Stirling gets to keep all of it's existing services plus gains calls on the Edinburgh - Inverness trains)... is this "political" or just bad luck?
I'd have expected the ScotRail Aberdeen services to at least go back to stopping at Kirkcaldy each hour (as they were for many years, rather than being non-stop to Leuchars), but Aberdeen seems to keep all of it's "good" things (including the additional "local" services) whilst Kirkcaldy loses half of it's services (and the remaining ones will presumably be even busier when half of them gain Levenmouth passengers too!)
In a sensible world, all the long distance trains would be HST and spare 158s or 170s would cascade to other TOCs to help with the DMU shortage.
Agreed - we've spent years waiting for sufficient HSTs to operate all of the Inter7City services - now that we are seeing a reduction in ScotRail's PVR and the completion of the HST programme ... and 170s are going to be running a significant chunk of Inverness services... I don't understand!
I believe some time ago now a poster on here described a ride on a 170 as the equivalent of a hamster pushing a filing cabinet. Now imagine trying to push that filing cabinet up Slocht, loaded with details of all the bonus is paid and money wasted in the Scottish transport industry across all modes for the last 15 or 20-years. That's quite a heavyweight filing cabinet
You'd think that the HSTs would have slashed journey times significantly if the 170s were as slow as you suggest - I appreciate that the 170s aren't perfect trains (like most trains, they are a compromise) - they've struggled with the stop/start nature of some of the services that Northern have tried to run them on - but if they were as slow as you suggest then HSTs would be knocking half an hour off the Inverness - Perth journey times!
At every station half the carriage side disappears and the Scottish winter gets in
If you're confident of your argument then you don't need to exaggerate as much
Anyone who says there adequate is just wrong and it's not down to personal opinion only
170s
are adequate
Posted in the other thread, but might be useful here. Perhaps the reason the West of Scotland timetables have been designed is so they can reintroduce the withdrawn services with minimal fuss given that they’ll easily slot back in. Maybe being very optimistic there but worth considering - if these were intended as long term changes you’d have thought more effort would have went into them.
The changes in Central Scotland seem more a bit more reasonable though, and give the impression they’ll be permanent. I’d be more concerned about their plans for Fife though. That’s a mess that needs sorted out. They’d as well not bothering with that Edinburgh to Perth service and as others have stated, the offering at Kirkcaldy needs to be far better.
Agreed on both points.
Bus companies can change timetables pretty easily - removing some journeys one month and slotting additional journeys in another month (e.g. your local route can go from every ten minutes to every twelve to every fifteen to every twelve to every ten by just removing/adding one vehicle into the PVR). but train times are much messier (you can't just change the frequency of a train service given conflicts at junctions etc), so a lot more thought has to go into how you plan for future growth (e.g. as far as I am aware, the "Channel Tunnel" services had paths reserved for them through New Street etc for many years, so that there was scope to eventually operate them) - I hope I can share your optimism that services can be re-added at a later date (e.g. the services that terminate at Airdrie/ Drumgelloch can be extended back to/from Edinburgh at some stage in the future)
Agreed about Fife too - for Kirkcaldy to go down from two fast and two slow services per hour to just two slow services most hours (and lose long distance links) is a significantly bigger cut than most other lines have (especially as Kirkcaldy is bigger than Perth/ Inverness - despite the focus that enthusiasts have about the Highland Main Line!)
The service Carlisle - Dumfries - Glasgow does look reasonable - hourly Carlisle <> Dumfries at peak times and 2 hourly to Glasgow. The 2 hourly to Glasgow would appear to be an improvement as it provides a regular interval with more trains overall
Agreed - I've argued in the past that Dumfries to Carlisle ought to have a much better service, since that corridor via Annan/ Gretna is where the local demand is - look at the competing Stagecoach bus services - I'm glad that an hourly Carlisle service is being prioritised, even though it's over the border - a well balanced service to Glasgow is better than a "more frequent but irregular" service to Glasgow IMHO