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It also has the problem that numerous regional lines are served only by intercity trains.

I'm sure very few people do the circuit, and Craven Arms as discussed is a bit of a one-horse town. But if the Welsh Government's strategy for improving the popularity of the Heart of Wales line is growing the tourism market, as per the new Active Travel 153s, then it does rather presume that...

There is a footpath alongside the road to Stokesay Castle, and also a path through the park round the back of the Secret Hills Discovery Centre. Arguably the path should be upgraded to be a shared-use cycleway as the A49 is horrible.

Given that Oakham has an hourly service (with some 2-hour gaps), and Harringworth Viaduct has one train per day in each direction, I think there are better candidates for electrification!

That isn't remotely true. Banbury to Oxford is a massive commuter flow and, thanks to the decimation of the XC service, many passengers use the GWR stoppers. The 1653 and 1754 departures from Oxford are both very busy trains.

In the scenario at the start of the thread: TVMs currently offer significantly greater friction, because you have to select the railcard discount at every purchase, whereas apps "helpfully" remember it for you. The issue here is not that TVMs are offering too little friction, it's that apps are.

The PDF says "There is no change proposed to today's 45-minute timetable. Introducing two trains per hour is deferred."

National Cycle Route 5.

The campaign to convert the Amlwch line into a cycle/pedestrian route appears to have stepped up recently, which is good news. Generally I'm pro-reopening but a rail service to Amlwch really isn't viable in any foreseeable horizon.

Sure, but at that point you're adding non-negligible friction for marginal gains, and the retailers will complain. (You can't actually copy and paste the number from the Railcard app at the moment, at least on iOS, though of course that could be fixed.) A dialogue which you can ignore, but...

And those are all real, valid issues, but retailers could address the 90% problem - which is people leaving the railcard checkbox ticked after it's expired - without breaking any of those 0.1% use cases. Let's take the absolute simplest UI, which is when you first buy a railcard-discounted...

1. Extend the “forgot your Railcard once” courtesy to include out-of-date Railcards. 2. Implement the simple UI fixes that have been discussed on this forum eight gazillion times in ticket selling apps.

There speaks someone who has never tried the M42 at rush-hour. (I used to commute to Burton by car from south of Birmingham sometimes. Never again.)

Schrodinger's CAF?

Bang on. It isn't, but compared to rolling stock failures, staff shortages, and the like, the difference is that this situation is entirely foreseeable.* TfW simply need to (a) put a note in the PDF and station timetables, (b) put notices at stations, (c) withdraw the train from the online...

The story appears to have made the Shropshire Star, though it’s behind a paywall so I can’t quote from it: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/transport/2024/04/06/train-company-confirms-that-small-number-of-services-are-cancelled-to-allow-private-charter-services-to-run/

I was replying specifically to a poster who said "In a way, how different is it to the situation where a train is cancelled due to lack of train crew?", which struck me as a weird argument. A train being cancelled due to lack of train crew is not good! FWIW, the 1029 from Shrewsbury to...

Wait, we're suddenly ok with trains being cancelled?

It's an enjoyable ride from Okehampton to Bude - NCN 27 and NCN 3, mostly along very quiet lanes. About 35 miles though you could cut it down to 30 if you don't mind cycling along A roads. Certainly hilly though!

Companies like Waymo (Google's self-driving car company) are pushing the model of "mobility as a service" - which Wikipedia describes as "a shift away from personally-owned modes of transportation". In this future, there's no need to spend £££ moving a self-driving car from one part of Britain...