Hi, first time poster here, so be gentle.
I'm a regular user of the line and commute to Edinburgh (or more accurately did before Covid) and cant help thinking that the fare structure Scotrail have is a bit nonsensical and prevents the line from delivering more benefits, and to be specific i mean attracting more passengers and taking cars off the M8. In normal circumstances I would travel into the office 3 days per week which from memory (I find it amazing myself that I can't remember exacly how much the fare were, but that's lockdown for you) was about £23 a day from Coatbridge on the AB line, and the "peak" train I'd tend to get at around 6.55 was almost deserted between coatbridge and at least Bathgate. Meanwhile the M8 is nose to tail with cars, and im quite certain at least some of those drivers would prefer to be on the train but find the cost prohibitive. The peak/off peak system doesn't make much sense to me if empty early morning trains are classed as peak, nor does the pricing structure that sees Airdrie have much higher fares towards Edinburgh than somewhere like Shotts or Falkirk have, taking the relative distances into account (not to mention the much slower journey time than from Falkirk). I know someone that drives from Coatbridge to Bathgate and boards there as the fare is about half of what it would cost from Airdrie. I myself sometimes drive up the M9 to Ingliston when the weather's nice and use the park and ride/tram. Even with diesel costs its a fair bit less than the train. This isn't just a moan about ticket prices (ok, it partly is) but with a system of fares that was more logical and directly linked to journey distance and travel time, and that incentivised travel at times when trains were actually running at less than capacity surely it would be possible for Scotrail to get more people out of cars and onto trains, increase revenue and smooth demand?
It's about 35 miles from Coatbridge Sunnyside direct to Edinburgh Waverley (SDR = £22.70) which is about 32.5p per mile, there and back, compared with a distance of 25 and a half miles from Falkirk High to Edinburgh Waverley (SDR = £14.00), i.e. 27.5p per mile, so the cost per mile from Coatbridge Sunnyside is indeed slightly higher, despite the longer distance and travel time.
Reckon that
@Sunnyside might have a point and I wonder whether this is something to do with Coatbridge (and for that matter Airdrie) being just within the Strathclyde PTE area. Tickets for the shorter journey within the PTE area from Coatbridge Sunnyside to Glasgow Queen Street are priced at SDR = £6.70, so by contrast the fares from Coatbridge Sunnyside to Edinburgh Waverley are maybe set quite high to prevent split ticketing opportunities for anyone travelling all the way from Glasgow Queen Street to Edinburgh Waverley via Coatbridge Sunnyside. (Through SDR fare = £26.60).
That suggests to me that the Coatbridge Sunnyside to Edinburgh Waverley SDR fare probably won't be set at any less than a minimum of £20.00.
Welcome to the Forum
@Sunnyside - that's an interesting point that you make.
@Mcr Warrior and
@alangla have made some good points about the way that the messy fares have been fudged.
Previously, Monklands - Edinburgh had to be via Glasgow (and I say this as someone who used to travel to matches at Cliftonhill from the east coast, so had to deal with the doubling back - a journey that'd be a lot simple nowadays, albeit only slightly cheaper than it used to be) - so when the new bit of line opened, the fares were always going to have to come down a bit (same with Bathgate - Glasgow fares no longer being priced via Edinburgh so would have come down too)
But, given the subsidised fares within (what used to be) Strathclyde, Monklands - Glasgow has always been reasonably cheap per passenger mile (one reason why there's no direct bus service left - unless you go to Maxim Park).
So, to stop people split ticketing on the major Edinburgh - Glasgow flow, the "Glasgow - Coatbridge" and "Coatbridge - Edinburgh" fares can't be much cheaper than the "Glasgow - Edinburgh" fare. Which means that people in the Monklands travelling east are paying a higher fare per mile than they might ordinarily have been because the passengers travelling west from the Monklands are getting a subsidised fare (which will come as no consolation).
I don't know how we'd rectify this though - the ScotRail revenues rely on the cash cow of Edinburgh - Glasgow (whether run by public or private operators), so Holyrood won't want to see that revenue going down too much (if people are able to "split" tickets at Coatbridge), but at the same time, it'd be really difficult politically to increase the Coatbridge - Glasgow fare to a more "normal" level (even if you were making a corresponding cut to the Coatbridge - Edinburgh fare) - especially as that'd be seen as penalising the long established Coatbridge - Glasgow passengers when there was no equivalent increase from places like Whifflet or Gartcosh.
Obviously there'll be some who's answer to many problems will be "cheaper fares", but the "profit" from Edinburgh - Glasgow fares has to be seen against the losses made on the Far North/ West Highland etc
Maybe it's because your suspicions are unwarranted and we're just more preoccupied with other things than digging up the statistics.
A reopening doesn't have to meet your personal criteria for it to be considered a success. But it's alright as long as you can do what you always do, which is pigeonhole those of us who don't quite share that view as having no grasp of your level of consummate forensic detail - a vociferous herd of undiscerning enthusiasts. I'll get the crayons...
This isn't about my personal criteria - this is about whether the scheme is an objective success by judging it against whether it has delivered the passenger numbers it was intended to.
Ideally, we'd focus investment on the projects with the best business cases, and assume that the vast majority would produce passenger numbers in line with the assumptions used - there will always be outliers* but there needs to be some kind of methodology to assess how well lines are doing to judge whether they were a success.
There needs to be some kind of common methodology/ measurement - otherwise it comes down to little more than "my favourite" versus "your favourite" - we're potentially talking hundreds of millions of pounds of public money on a project and taxpayers want some bang for their bucks.
What Governments want is a series of successful projects so that you can demonstrate that you have a virtuous circle of investments. So you pick the projects with the best cases because you know that they'll deliver.
Sometimes you have to build something that wasn't as high up the list - e.g. the Borders line was all about keeping the Liberals happy at Holyrood (which is why they inserted a clause into the project that it couldn't open as far as e.g. Gorebridge until it opened all the way to Tweedabank, because they were scared that only the Midlothian section that was expected to be "busier" would be opened without reaching the Borders), but ideally you want to play your "Aces" first.
The Treasury want to back winners. But it you deliver an underwhelming project (especially one that requires ongoing subsidy to prop it up instead of returning the expected profits to Government) then they'll get cold feet about future projects. Won't take much for newspapers or the likes of the Tax Payers Alliance to highlight a huge waste of public money, which will get MPs nervous about being seen to back the next proposal. You may not like that, but this is the reality of getting things done in the twenty first century.
As I've said before I can't see that the A2B figures have been publicised. But if it has failed then it's not a problem for A2B - it's already built. What it is a problem for are the other projects, the ones that weren't picked at the time and now see the Government losing faith in such schemes.
For example, if A2B had done better then that might have helped the case for building other central belt lines like Haddington or Penicuik or Renfrew.
There will be people who'll happily back every proposal and be uncritical of the lines that were flops, fair enough - but if you can't accept when a project has done badly then it's hard to listen to you when you extoll other projects.
Personally, I want to invest in projects that are successes (whether that means electrification, redoubling, grade separation, platform extensions, re-openings or new alignments) - I'm not obsessed with re-openings as a solution in their own right, but if there's one that looks good (Ashington, Portishead) then I'd want it built - but only if the numbers look good enough.
If your only criteria for whether the A2B project was successful were unquantifiable things like being "useful" then you'll be satisfied with any project - which is fine - but the Government will require more than optimism before they sign off hundreds of millions of pounds, especially if the last project that they got the chequebook out for didn't work so well.
(* - especially when you have something like the Ebbw Vale steelworks closing down, which meant that there were a lot more Ebbw Vale people needing to leave the town each morning for work, which boosted the passenger numbers in a way that probably wasn't envisaged when the line was approved - the reverse was true of Sheffield Supertram - the expected numbers were based on the line passing by various high rise flats like Kelvin and Norfolk Park but they were knocked down in the several years between assent and the lines fully opening, meaning thousands of potential passengers no longer living a stone's throw from a tram stop - it happens!)
