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What is the point of Old Oak Common?
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kentrailman
Member
Re stopping Bristol trains, it isn't just the actual "speed" it is the "within the carriage" issues of the stop itself. Leaving paddington, having nicely settled into a quiet part of the train to find five minutes later a crowd of people getting on turning what had been your carefully chosen bit of "personal space" into a new not so personal space. A controversial thing to say perhaps, but it's an opinion of mine !
Hard to quite put into words but I find it is nice to settle onto a train at Paddington, usually in the furthest quieter coaches from barrier, and know that you will have the same passengers in your carriage for the rest of the journey.
The issue happens currently at Reading, when you can be nicely settled in the ex paddington train and a crowd of Reading passengers ( who, I will say controversially, tend to be a different type of passenger to those from Paddington.. More rowdy and noisy perhaps) gets in to the front carriages from the nearby Reading escalators and sits in what had been the quietest part of the train. Happens also at Ebbsfleet ( my regular journey is Folkestone to Bristol approximately weekly) and London bridge, to give other less marked examples.
It isn't just the five extra minutes, it is the associated disruption to "personal space and settledness" just after leaving paddington. Let alone if some of the crowds waiting to board at Paddington turn out only to be going to OOC
Hard to quite put into words but I find it is nice to settle onto a train at Paddington, usually in the furthest quieter coaches from barrier, and know that you will have the same passengers in your carriage for the rest of the journey.
The issue happens currently at Reading, when you can be nicely settled in the ex paddington train and a crowd of Reading passengers ( who, I will say controversially, tend to be a different type of passenger to those from Paddington.. More rowdy and noisy perhaps) gets in to the front carriages from the nearby Reading escalators and sits in what had been the quietest part of the train. Happens also at Ebbsfleet ( my regular journey is Folkestone to Bristol approximately weekly) and London bridge, to give other less marked examples.
It isn't just the five extra minutes, it is the associated disruption to "personal space and settledness" just after leaving paddington. Let alone if some of the crowds waiting to board at Paddington turn out only to be going to OOC
This is a harder issue to sort (Although I'm sure the OOC call will be pick up only, so obscured from boards at Paddington, and journey planners. At OOC they need to just make the Eastbound platforms exit only, and deny access to people trying to board GWR towards Paddington, whether through a gateline or otherwise.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I would have imagined something like this (with the black section being tunneled). This doesn't require any additional Western branch, just re-routing the line (with the Central Line OOC platforms coinciding roughly with the main entrance to OOC station - that might not be exactly where I've drawn it).
Back on 18 March (almost a month ago now) , at Post#415 on a parallel thread: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/hs2-old-oak-common.240858/page-14#post-6688214...
I made a similar observation on timings of Plymouth-Paddington trains, in response to 'observations' from a Plymouth MP regarding time 'loss' from calling at OOC. I agree with you- time can be 'saved' if preferred by omitting stops in 'the west' (and making 3h more consistently?). If I lived at Westbury, or Castle Cary, I might feel differently. A lot can change between now and OOC opening!
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Realistically places like Westbury and Castle Cary would be better served by an hourly semi-fast London to Exeter calling at OOC, Reading, Newbury, all stops between Bedwyn and Taunton, then Wellington and Cullompton when they open. Then your idea would work well and the existing West Country trains could mostly run non-stop Reading-Taunton.
irish_rail
Established Member
Which stops in the West Country do you propose dropping? Don't you think if that was doable it would already have happened?
This attitude makes my blood boil. Because the minute anyone suggests slowing down a train to Edinburgh or Manchester by even a few minutes and there would be uproar. If we are looking to encourage use of public transport we should be striving for journeys from say Plymouth to London of under 3 hours. Headline 2hr xx minutes Plymouth to London could be a game changer. It would not be tolerated from northern cities to London, and slowing shouldn't be tolerated from Western cities either. What a sad state off affairs that some think the south west should be slowed down, whilst the north benefits from faster Hs2 journeys.
Not many people actually travel from the south west to Heathrow. It is one of those airports most people use very occasionally if at all. I've used it once in 10 years. Bristol, Exeter Cardiff and Newquay are far more relevant to people living in the West.
The interchange at Paddington onto the Liz is absolutely fine, infact I'd say more than fine. It pretty much blew my mind the first time I used it. Excellent interchange in my opinion. OOC won't be anymore attractive.
And the last point, as I keep saying, people in Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth are not going to travel to the north using HS2. They will continue to use XC trains. That is unless XC trains are purposely made more expensive and downgraded in order to FORCE people to travel 100s of miles east in order to travel back north and west.
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Topological
Member
I appreciate that we have conflicting opinions.
If the money were there I would like to see an integrated stop on the WCML too, it is close but perhaps not quite close enough.
Were there to be a similar HS2 situation for the ECML to slow down for then again I would be front of the people calling for the ECML trains to stop.
This playing destinations off against each other is really not necessary.
As to Heathrow, I do not know what the numbers are, but I do make a lot of flights from Heathrow because Bristol and Cardiff do not offer the connectivity (or price) that Heathrow offer. For flights out of Europe, the price comparisons always favour Heathrow. That is before we get into how inadequate the train services to either Bristol or Cardiff are. Anyone looking to go further than Europe must use Heathrow?
The situation is that there is no HS hub for the destinations you mention to slow down by a couple of minutes to call at. If there were then absolutely they should.
I don't propose dropping any stops; what I said is: time can be 'saved' if preferred
I agree with <Topological> that: The question is whether 3 hours 10, 3 hours 15, 3 hours 20 or even 3 hours 25 make a huge difference to the psychology of choosing between train and alternatives. If folk are keen to reach Paddington from Plymouth in three hours, they can, departing 6.55 (with four stops); or in 3h4, departing 5.55 (with 5 stops).
According to my 1964 ABC Railway Guide (when 'mile-a-minute' trains were something) the 05.30 Plymouth departure arrived Paddington at 11.35 (6h5); the next, at 08.30 at 13.15 (4h45) and the next, 10.30 at 14.35 (4h5). I don't imagine many made that trip daily. I don't know which stations were served intermediately.
I imagine that with the use of WIFi and WFH, the premium on 'saving' a few mins is not what it was. If I were regularly commuting, eg from Reading, Oxford, Swindon, Bath or Bristol, those minutes longer to be spent in the office to be seen by the boss may 'tip the balance' against the ability to glide serenely through Dawlish or Starcross ...
irish_rail
Established Member
Trouble with 0655 and 0555 is they are peak trains. So they cost a premium. Why should people need to pay a premium for a decent service?. The Plymouth to London service could be sub 3 hours with a bit of effort , yet some, think instead the journey should be slowed down. When I make the journey as a regular passenger , it is very noticeable just how much quicker it "feels" when I travel on the 1004 ex Paddington, which reaches Plymouth in about 3 hours compared with when I travel on a 3hr 15 service. Trust me, you notice the difference if you are actually travelling this route. An extra 6 or 7 minutes on a 3hr 15 journey will feel noticeable, trust me.
Hypothetically, if it allowed a headline Plymouth to London service of (say) 2:58, should we skip Exeter and Totnes?
I suspect that the answer is we shouldn't, because of the interchange that those stations allow. Now, just because OOC is a new station and we don't necessarily can see how it may work, it doesn't mean that it can't be as helpful as the existing station stops.
I suspect that the flows to Heathrow are a bit higher than you imply. For example, my sister was on a train which was delayed by quite a while and several people that she was aware of were grading to Heathrow. Now it could well be that was exceptional, however I'm minded to think that it isn't.
Other family who live in the West Country often fly from London airports, not least because the local airports don't have the range of places to fly from or the frequency of flights to the places they want to go to (it's all well and good having a weekly flight somewhere, however if that significant limits what accommodation you can use - then that's not aways helpful for you).
43096
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"I don't use it, so therefore no-one does" is not a statistically valid argument. Can you provide anything more than circumstantial evidence?
This may be true. It will be interesting to see if it happens in reverse. One of the issues with trains increasingly being designed with a minimum of "spare" seats for the overall demand can be seen at the (reasonably) new West Ham station on C2C, Inbound morning passengers change there for the several Underground lines onwards across London. But in the evening they more commonly return through Fenchurch Street. Because although it may be somewhat quicker to go back through West Ham, they have found out the chances of them getting a seat there are severely reduced. This sort of thing will happen even more so for long distance journeys.
irish_rail
Established Member
Surely the answer is improve connectivity for south west airports, imagine if we had a new build line to Exeter or Bristol Airport, or perhaps, more realistically, a proper interchange at Quintrell downs for Newquay Airport. That would be money well spent. Newquay for example offers flights to the US (albeit via Dublin or Belfast) and would obviate the need for some journeys to already struggling Heathrow.
AlbertBeale
Established Member
If that were viable, given the lie of the land, and if it was only a few minutes station-station, that would be a good solution to avoid the need to divert the routes of the Richmond and Clapham Junction Overgrounds (and avoid needing to build extra stations on their lines). Though it would still leave the Duddon Hill (future Overground?) route unlinked... (And it would need a bit of "tidying up" at Willesden Junction.)
Hmmm - I suspect more of that might need to be tunnelled. And of course closing East Acton station wouldn't be popular - it has a significant catchment area.
Wormwood Scrubs has a number of protections upon it which make it very, very difficult to build anything on it. I think the chances of being allowed to build anything remotely linked to HS2 on it are perhaps negative.
You also have the issue of North Pole Depot, which has only just been built at a cost of £76 million, and is integral to the operation of the GWML. Before even starting work you have to find a site for, design, gain approval for and build another depot, I'd be surprised if you even finished that depot before OOC opened. Then you probably end up laying off most of the staff at North Pole, because you aren't going to find another sire inside the M25 for a depot.
Maybe you could tunnel all of it, but if the cost would be justified is another question. Closure of East acton wouldn't be easy or popular at all.
I've always been intrigued by the efforts and ideas that have been put forward to connect the Central Line and the Overground to OOC. Presumably someone somewhere in a more official position had a look at these and dismissed them. Were they deliberately descoped or dismissed? Was there some sort of cost/planning/infrastructure issue?
I have a little knowledge of the area and had a go myself and independently came up with all the suggestions put forward by anyone.
I tried something a little left-field involving the Bakerloo Line from Queens Park, of all things, but there would be major repercussions. I'm sure I saw something similar years ago, but the outcome was the same: the Bakerloo goes to Paddington anyway and there would be serious knock-on effects on the Overground Watford Line.
But the main question is this: Does the average passenger arriving at Old Oak Common need to access the Central Line at all? Getting on the Elizabeth Line alone knocks out most of the Central Line to the east, so apart from a handful of stations to the west, you really don't need an interchange at all because the traffic would be minimal. The reverse is also true.
So my conclusion is this: the absence of an interchange with the Central Line is deliberate because it is not required, and to provide one would be needlessly and pointlessly expensive.
And I believe this is what swayed the decision-makers on high.
The Overground, is of course, different.
I have a little knowledge of the area and had a go myself and independently came up with all the suggestions put forward by anyone.
I tried something a little left-field involving the Bakerloo Line from Queens Park, of all things, but there would be major repercussions. I'm sure I saw something similar years ago, but the outcome was the same: the Bakerloo goes to Paddington anyway and there would be serious knock-on effects on the Overground Watford Line.
But the main question is this: Does the average passenger arriving at Old Oak Common need to access the Central Line at all? Getting on the Elizabeth Line alone knocks out most of the Central Line to the east, so apart from a handful of stations to the west, you really don't need an interchange at all because the traffic would be minimal. The reverse is also true.
So my conclusion is this: the absence of an interchange with the Central Line is deliberate because it is not required, and to provide one would be needlessly and pointlessly expensive.
And I believe this is what swayed the decision-makers on high.
The Overground, is of course, different.
Yeah you’re hitting on the overall question that defines every project, cost benefit. Of all the lines the Central line doesn’t offer much added benefit overall.
I think it is a shame though they haven’t managed to get a pedestrian bridge over the lines at Poplars, which would make it walkable to North Acton.
Connectivity (domestic) would only get you so far. Bottom line, the population of the South West is much to spread out and low.
It has about half the population density of the South East and about 1/10th that of London.
You've just highlighted 3 airports in the South West, two of which are each about as well used as Southampton or Bournemouth (using 2019 numbers) very few would suggest that they would have a better range of destinations if they were better connected domestically. There just isn't enough people to justify the range of places, even Manchester (30 million vs Bristol's 8 million) is still rather limited in the range of places that it year flights to compared to Gatwick (47 million), let alone Heathrow (81 million)
Bottom line, most countries have a limited number of airports which have a lot of places you can get to outside of the country. The reason being is that there's a limited market for each, so it makes sense to cluster them in one location rather than spreading them across lots of places.
However you didn't answer my question, should we skip Totnes so that the London Plymouth journey time be reduced? If not why not?
If there's justification for somewhere like Totnes (which presumably is about connectivity to the wider area rather than just the population of that town, all circa 10,000 of them) then why not OOC? Especially given that it gives better connectivity to Heathrow, which (regardless of what people may prefer to be the case) provided the most different destinations by aircraft that is possible in the UK (beating quite a few airports in Europe and gives rest a good run for their money).
If journey time is key to everything then not stopping at both Exeter and Totnes would have done years ago.
It wasn't, but isn't likely to happen either, as without those stops it removes key connectivity. Likewise Reading. Even Westbury keeps some services (even with the semi fast running) as it provides useful connections.
Could there be one or two services a day which skip OOC to keep the headline 3 hour service from Plymouth - it's possible. However, chances are enough people using those services would benefit from the better connectivity to not bother and just having a slightly slower service.
Whist an extra 7 minutes may be noticeably longer, it's not going to stop people from using the trains. Especially given it's likely to reduce the overall journey time for those travelling to Heathrow.
For example 3:30 from Plymouth by car basically gets you to Reading (assuming fairly limited delays), so few are likely to be bothered enough by an extra 7 minutes (if it's even that much) to swap to driving.
It's sub four hours, so very few will fly, and it's not even getting much closer to four hours, so again few are going to swap to flying.
The reverse is also true, building the Dawlish Avoiding Line would also limit the number of extra people opting for rail travel, even if it did allow a (say) 2:56 London/Plymouth journey time.
AlbertBeale
Established Member
I don't understand that last sentence...
Not quite the same, but it didn't happen with Stratford and Liverpool Street.
The lengthening is the journey by adding in a key interchange point is unlikely to change how people travel. Likewise shortening the journey time by a few minutes by building the Dawlish Avoiding Line (one of the options put forwards to mitigate against issues at Dawlish, chiefly being a new high(ish) speed line between a pint with if Exeter and North of Totnes - as there were a few options) also wouldn't change the numbers using rail by a noticeable amount, even if it resulted in a sub 3 hour journey time.
One of the big issues with our is that whist (subject to capacity at Exeter) it may allow the Semi fast services to be extended to southwards, there's not really capacity to create many (if any) new London to Plymouth services, even though the new line would likely be under utilised. As such, there's limited scope to increase frequency - which would likely have a bigger impact on rail use than a sub 3 hour journey time.
What protections are there? A viaduct wouldn't change the land that much, would it? Hs2 is building one over colne lakes right now.
I know it probably comes down to cost v benefit again but just interested to understand a bit better. The central line only really has a few stations in common with elizabeth line, maybe enough to reduce swell going to EL (more important IF euston doesnt happen). Much of the City is closer to central line than EL.
irish_rail
Established Member
In all honesty, yes I probably would drop Totnes and Tiverton, with the stopper picking up passengers from these two places. The passengers would then need to board London trains at Newton Abbot or Taunton. Not ideal, but that is the way you get the under 3 hour journey with the present infrastructure constraints. I of course would not knock out Exeter, as it probably has more London bound travel than Plymouth , despite Exeters smaller size.
Wormwood Scrubs is protected by the Wormwood Scrubs Act 1879, which means any structure built in it needs ministerial consent, and forbids any change which would restrict the right of Londoners to enjoy it. Building a station on it, or even a viaduct, would likely be argued to do so.
Regardless the chances of anything being built on one of London’s open spaces is pretty much a non starter, it’s a vastly different thing to building it in open countryside, and significantly impacts local habitats etc.
A viaduct would never happen, it would break the skyline, be out of keeping with the area etc etc.
As mentioned before the Central Line doesn’t even provide many benefits to OOC.
Thanks
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Depends a bit where the High Speed line rejoins the existing line. North of Newton Abbot and it probably wouldn't save more than 5 minutes max. North of Totnes maybe a bit more. But the most useful option, a High Speed line most of the way to Plymouth, could knock half an hour off the journey times, so then you'd easily be looking a sub-3-hours Plymouth to London.
What happened to the paths that were going to be used for the additional London-Bristol services? That could give you 2tph London-Bristol-Taunton-Exeter-Plymouth. But in any case, a High Speed line between Exeter and Plymouth wouldn't be ONLY for London services - it would also speed up XC and probably create a new market for commuter/regional services to Exeter/Bristol/etc.
Used for the Semi Fast Thames Valley service to get to Slough on the fasts, in turn allowing the current Elizabeth Line frequency.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Ah OK. So those trains (the short-lived/proposed Bristol superfasts) are not coming back any time soon - not without some new infrastructure to enhance capacity between London and Slough then
irish_rail
Established Member
You look on social media at what airports people are actually using. It doesn't tend to be Heathrow very often. Yes I am talking anecdotally. I'm not in a position to need to provide you any evidence.