Do direct London services actually matter?

[Transilien]

It seems that most towns and cities across the UK seem to desire a direct London service. Wouldn’t better connecting services to London trains be better for places like Cleethopes and Sunderland which aren’t very big in themselves and could do with better local services anyway?

 

[yorkie]

It seems that most towns and cities across the UK seem to desire a direct London service. Wouldn’t better connecting services to London trains be better for places like Cleethopes and Sunderland which aren’t very big in themselves and could do with better local services anyway?

If we were in a sensible country like Switzerland, it wouldn't matter.

However, here in the UK we don't believe in maintaining connections, or even making them easy in many cases, which leads to some passengers being very keen for a direct service.

There is a so much bad practice in the UK, from poor timetabling, poor regulation, poor platforming and much more, that I don't think we would ever reach a situation where everyone will feel confident about indirect services.

Most booking sites don't even allow nervous passengers to specify additional interchange time either (ours does, of course!) and the announcements which are often made, which typically make no mention of missed connections, instil fear into people who worry their ticket may not even be valid, and that's before you consider the impact of the inconvenience.

We just aren't prepared to do things properly in this country, and you really see how acute the problem is when visiting certain other countries abroad!

 

[Peregrine 4903]

If we were in a sensible country like Switzerland, it wouldn't matter.

However, here in the UK we don't believe in maintaining connections, or even making them easy in many cases, which leads to some passengers being very keen for a direct service.

There is a so much bad practice in the UK, from poor timetabling, poor regulation, poor platforming and much more, that I don't think we would ever reach a situation where everyone will feel confident about indirect services.

Most booking sites don't even allow nervous passengers to specify additional interchange time either (ours does, of course!) and the announcements which are often made, which typically make no mention of missed connections, instil fear into people who worry their ticket may not even be valid, and that's before you consider the impact of the inconvenience.

We just aren't prepared to do things properly in this country, and you really see how acute the problem is when visiting certain other countries abroad!

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

Countries where connections are taken seriously timetable them into opposite sides of the same island with a reasonably short gap from arrival to departure, and make them wait if the inbound train is late.

This rarely happens in the UK.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Direct services seem to be more important for people who don't travel very often, which is understandable- you hear plenty of scare stories about people being given penalty fares for mistakes that only seem obvious to those of us who frequent this site and are familiar with how things work (or don't work). On the one hand maybe the railway shouldn't be prioritising the wishes of occasional users, ahead of the convenience of those who travel five times a week... But on the other hand, every occasional user might be a future regular.
Many of the bigger places that don't have direct London services are only in that situation due to an accident of history (Huddersfield falling between the two principal North-South routes and beyond the end of the third one; Blackburn and Bolton being unfortunately just the wrong side of Manchester). At the same time there are plenty of smaller and relatively insignificant towns that have a disproportionately good service to London, again largely through an accident of history that places them on the route between London and other significant places.
Politicians of various hues and seniority like to make a big fuss about having (or not having) a London service, but whether there's actually much in it in reality is another matter. Huddersfield as a town is struggling, but not quite as much as some other places that do have direct trains to London (Bradford for example), and I'm far from convinced that a token service out in the early morning and back after tea would be the "magic bullet" to solve all the problems.

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

Certainly many of our regional and local services knock those in say France and Spain into a cocked hat. Even the Settle & Carlisle has not far from a 1tp2h service through a very sparsely populated (albeit very pretty) part of the country. In France it would be lucky to get more than 3 or 4 trains per day, regardless of tourism potential.

 

[SynthD]

Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

I think it was, and may still be, a good measure of connectivity. But if a resource starved organisation just focuses on the headline, then the original overall aim is lost. Connections to what matters to the area is critical, in tph, choice, affordability and other details that don’t go on the front page.

 

[stevieinselby]

It seems that most towns and cities across the UK seem to desire a direct London service. Wouldn’t better connecting services to London trains be better for places like Cleethopes and Sunderland which aren’t very big in themselves and could do with better local services anyway?

If connections were timetabled well and were held in the event of late-running* (or were so frequent that it didn't matter), and if the railways didn't have this obsession with bullying everyone into buying fixed tickets wherever they could, people might be more willing to change trains.

To take an example – Selby and Goole are similar sized towns in rural Yorkshire, about 10 miles apart.
Selby station is better connected than Goole, and has a roughly 2-hourly service direct to London on Hull Trains; Goole does not have a direct train to London, but passengers would need to change at Doncaster.

Selby has about twice as many passengers as Goole overall, which reflects the better connectivity and possibly the demographics of the town.
But it has about ten times as many passengers travelling to/from London as Goole does.
Goole – Doncaster – Kings Cross is not a difficult journey. There are trains about every half hour from Goole to Doncaster, and generally 4 trains per hour from Doncaster to Kings Cross. But the mere fact that people have to change trains means that far fewer passengers are making that journey than where it is direct.

* which is not always as straight-forward as it sounds, even if you put the delay attribution and accountability to one side. Where you have an obvious branch line, such as Liskeard to Looe, it's pretty obvious that a significant proportion of passengers are going to be making connections to/from mainline trains, and there are only two to choose from, up and down. So if one of those is running a few minutes late, you hold the branch line train to wait for it. But if you look at, for example, Goole to Doncaster ... there are lots of connections that people could be making: London, Leeds, York/Edinburgh, Sheffield/Manchester, Birmingham/South West, as well as local trains running in various directions. So if one of those incoming trains is running late, you don't want to hold all outbound services that people might be changing to because that will inconvenient far more people and cause far more knock-on delays than if the few people making connections on each outbound train have to either wait for the next one or be put in taxis. "Holding connections" only really works where you have a traditional style branch line, not where multiple lines meet at a main hub.

 

[Brent Goose]

I’ve spent enough time examining the architecture of various stations on account of missing a connection to take direct services whenever possible (or factor in changes when deciding how to travel)

 

[Bletchleyite]

"Holding connections" only really works where you have a traditional style branch line, not where multiple lines meet at a main hub.

The Swiss respectfully disagree.

 

[The Ham]

Generally direct trains are what people demand.

However what would probably be better would be to run 0.5tph direct service to London, with an hourly local service (which allows a change to a direct service to London of at least 2tph).

As demand increases increase to to 2tph direct (as capacity allows) and local services.

After that, or where capacity doesn't allow a second train, increase to 3tph (where a change is needed) more services before then increasing the frequency of the direct services.

By doing so stations should get a higher frequency of service than they currently do, even though that might be less frequently a direct to London service. However overall rail use would likely be higher.

For my local station being able to have 3tph to nearby places but only one of those being a direct service to London would probably be more useful than 2tph where they both go to London

 

[stevieinselby]

The Swiss respectfully disagree.

My (admittedly limited) experience of Swiss railways is that mostly junction stations are where a secondary line meets the mainline.

So go on then, how would SBB deal with a late-running train at Doncaster, which of the 16 departures per hour (many of which only run every hour) would they hold for the connection? And what happens when those trains are then late at their next interchange, do they hold all outbound trains at Leeds, Sheffield and everywhere else as well?

 

[Bald Rick]

Countries where connections are taken seriously timetable them into opposite sides of the same island with a reasonably short gap from arrival to departure, and make them wait if the inbound train is late.

Where that’s possible. But try doing that at Leeds or York for example.

 

[Bletchleyite]

My (admittedly limited) experience of Swiss railways is that mostly junction stations are where a secondary line meets the mainline.

Very much not always. The principle is still applied at places like Zuerich Hbf.

So go on then, how would SBB deal with a late-running train at Doncaster, which of the 16 departures per hour (many of which only run every hour) would they hold for the connection? And what happens when those trains are then late at their next interchange, do they hold all outbound trains at Leeds, Sheffield and everywhere else as well?

All of them.

The side effect is that the whole system ends up a bit late by the end of the day if things aren't going well. But that doesn't matter, as it means everyone gets where they are going.

Of course there are also IT based ways to optimise this, as you potentially have ticket scans and Advance itineraries to tell you who needs what connection, at least in theory. AI, anyone?

But in terms of the original point, that is local to/from IC, no?

 

[The Ham]

All of them.

The side effect is that the whole system ends up a bit late by the end of the day if things aren't going well. But that doesn't matter, as it means everyone gets where they are going.

Of course there are also IT based ways to optimise this, as you potentially have ticket scans and Advance itineraries to tell you who needs what connection, at least in theory. AI, anyone?

But in terms of the original point, that is local to/from IC, no?

If you're running a line with 16tph delaying them would mean that you've got a lot of other trains which have to be delayed at other junction stations.

Genuine question, are there any similar stations in Switzerland?

I would have thought that whilst there'll be metro services with those of frequencies (and so why bother holding one as there'll be another asking shortly) longer distance trains are less frequent, so holding a train on a line with 3tph (or less) isn't going to be a major issue.

The issue with the UK is our network is effectively full (at least when looking at going into significant cities) and so even a small delay could impact hundreds of trains.

The reason people don't like changing is that if the branch line only has 1tph if that misses the connection it can add an hour to your journey.

If the branch line has 2tph and was connecting to a mainline with 4tph then the amount of delay would be fairly small from a missed connection. It would also mean non London journeys would become much more viable, as it becomes easier (possible) to travel between branch lines.

By fixating on everywhere having to have direct trains, what could be branch lines end up stuck with 1tph, when often that section of the network isn't where the capacity issues are and therefore could easily run a more frequent service if the network were set up differently.

Therein lies the issue in changing, the UK rail network has been modified over a long time to focus on direct trains and so would take a lot of work to change away from that setup.

 

[Failed Unit]

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

I am probably picking one of the worse examples here. Changing at Lincoln between Grimsby and London services isn’t good.

Heading East you normally have a 90 minutes wait. Heading towards London it is about 1h50.

Yes lots of the passengers can go via Doncaster

However since privatisation even when you had a 10 minute connection at Newark Northgate if you we 11 minutes late you were in a taxi so most people prefer to drive to the location of the direct train. Apparently even holding the local train 5 minutes would make it impossible to path at Lincoln and Barnetby.

Would I prefer an hourly services on the Grimsby - Leicester route with a reasonable connection at Lincoln for London over 1 direct train per day? Absolutely.

 

[A S Leib]

To what extent does Switzerland's example work because of timetable padding, and do e.g. the Netherlands and Belgium generally hold connections or try to run frequent enough services that a wait of over half an hour's rare?

 

[Dr Day]

Arguably our timetabling is too good. It is, however, focused on optimistically squeezing in an awful lot of trains, often a tricky mix of express, stopper and freight, rather than optimising passenger connections.

 

[I'm here now]

I wouldn’t mind a change at Plymouth if it delivered a consistent and reliable timetable for the Cornish Main Line. Specific platforms, etc would be useful.

 

[bramling]

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

Timetables here are fairly good when everything runs to time. The bigger problem here is that little consideration is given to handling delays.

Round here I get sick of a small run-of-the-mill delay turning into something substantial simply because signallers nowadays seem to make zero effort (or aren’t empowered enough) to attempt to recover small delays, or even prevent them from growing.

So the practical conclusion of all this is that passengers simply can’t rely on connections. At least with a direct train you know you’re probably going to actually reach the destination without having to endure a lengthy wait on a desolate platform somewhere, quite possible having arrived to see the doors closing on the connecting service.

That said, a token direct journey at a time of day that suits the railway is as much use as a chocolate teapot. I presume we’re referring to Cleethorpes here.

 

[xotGD]

I'm sorry but i massively disagree with a lot of this. Poor timetabling? Just not true, our timetabling is generally very good.

And then we see the "new and improved" timetable between Leeds and King's Cross, which destroys all of the Airedale connections.

Increasing journey times for many.

 

[jfollows]

In the 1980s I was a regular weekend user of trains from Fareham to London Waterloo, which were essentially two separate hourly services with a change at Eastleigh. I don't recall ever not making the connection, because the connecting train was held to allow the connection to be made when the first train was running late.

Today there are through trains, so that's also fine.

I think the only problem today is that connections like in my example aren't held, and if it means an hour's delay that's not acceptable to me as a passenger. If it happened frequently I'd change my plans and use other means of travel, maybe not by rail. As a one-off with compensation, maybe it's OK. Once the connecting trains become more frequent than hourly, then that seems fair enough too. I've never been along the Cumbrian Coast line because the staff at Carlisle sent the train off in sight of me arriving on the adjacent platform, and this is the sort of thing I don't think is right today.

There's obviously a balance to be struck, but there are people today who won't use trains because of what happens when connections are missed. I'm not one of them, clearly, but I'm sure we all know them amongst our acquaintances.

 

[The Planner]

Countries where connections are taken seriously timetable them into opposite sides of the same island with a reasonably short gap from arrival to departure, and make them wait if the inbound train is late.

This rarely happens in the UK.

Too many trains, not enough platforms. That isnt poor timetabling, that is poor specification and rinsing as much revenue as possible.

 

[Falcon1200]

and make them wait if the inbound train is late.

And then not only is the inbound train, its passengers and crew, delayed, so is the outbound train; And any trains it conflicts with throughout its journey, and any it crosses if single lines are involved, and any into which it in turn connects, assuming (as no doubt happens in Switzerland) they are held too. Resulting in far more delayed trains, and therefore passengers, than would otherwise be the case.

The side effect is that the whole system ends up a bit late by the end of the day if things aren't going well. But that doesn't matter, as it means everyone gets where they are going.

The side effect is that huge numbers of passengers are delayed, across the entire network, rather than those on one train who miss a connection.

 

[yorkie]

And then we see the "new and improved" timetable between Leeds and King's Cross, which destroys all of the Airedale connections.

Increasing journey times for many.

LNER only care about the part of the journey that is with them.

And then not only is the inbound train, its passengers and crew, delayed, so is the outbound train; And any trains it conflicts with throughout its journey, and any it crosses if single lines are involved, and any into which it in turn connects, assuming (as no doubt happens in Switzerland) they are held too. Resulting in far more delayed trains, and therefore passengers, than would otherwise be the case.

When did you experience this? I've been to Switzerland many times and never experienced anything like this! On the contrary, UK practices lead to many more delayed passengers.

The side effect is that huge numbers of passengers are delayed, across the entire network, rather than those on one train who miss a connection.

Do you have any recent examples of this? I can check with forum members who live in Switzerland if what you are saying is true, as I doubt it.

 

[30907]

Very much not always. The principle is still applied at places like Zuerich Hbf.

Yes, and look at the money they've thrown at it - two additional underground stations and loads of new connecting lines. It is impressive - and expensive!

And even then the timetable is designed so that passengers don't have to change, even when it means running two trains carrying fresh air 5min apart every hour on the Engadine line. There was an almighty fuss when the Jurafuss line through Neuchatel lost its through service to Geneva recently.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do you have any recent examples of this? I can check with forum members who live in Switzerland if what you are saying is true, as I doubt it.

It's rare because there's generally enough slack to avoid knock-on. The phenomenon was perhaps a bit more visible in Germany in the 90s on a Saturday when people were making cheap connectional long distance journeys on the Wochenendticket. These days of course DB is just a mess generally.

 

[Helvellyn]

How much is Delay Repay a factor in not holding trains for connections?

For example, say a Northern Hexham-Newcastle service was planned to connect with an LNER service at Newcastle. The first was late - do you hold the LNER service for five minutes to guarantee the connection, or just deal with sticking everyone on later trains?

If LNER held the train they have caused the delay. As that train heads South, possibly missing its path at various junctions, getting later, and delaying other trains, LNER is liable for that.

Holding a train at one point to wait for a connection could also mean connections further along the route become threatened due to the held train now being late. Do more trains get delayed? This is the ripple effect that can see impacts spread far and wide, not always so obviously.

It's one of the things GBR will have to work out - are guaranteed connections more important than on-time running? If it is connections how to deal with delay repay because by holding a train for say 30 passengers you could ultimately result in 300-3000 (depending on knock-on impacts) becoming eligible for Delay Repay.

Nothing is straightforward and nothing is without consequence or trade-offs.

 

[The Planner]

How much is Delay Repay a factor in not holding trains for connections?

I think there is a conspiracy theory about that, I don't believe it plays a part of it as I suspect Schedule 8 penalties will outweigh the delay repay element.

 

[Bald Rick]

How much is Delay Repay a factor in not holding trains for connections?

None whatsoever. In all my years in and being involved with controls and their decisions, not once have i seen or heard of one that was done to have an effect on finacial compensation.

 

[Senex]

Yes, and look at the money they've thrown at it - two additional underground stations and loads of new connecting lines. It is impressive - and expensive!

There's a clear system in Switzerland (Netherlands too, and, I think, to a greater or lesser extent in a number of other places). Step 1 is decide on the service-pattern you want to run and see what changes to infrastructure might be needed to run it reliably. Step 2 is to build any necessary additional infrastructure (without de-scoping half way through). Step 3 is the introduction of the planned service. Germany is trying to do the same thing to move towards its national Taktfahrplan, but has now become pretty much as sclerotic as this country because of planning and financing delays. What most places don't seem to do is build half a scheme, like the Ordsall Chord etc, and then try and run the whole planned service through the part-scheme.

Isn't the railway system here rather like hospital beds? You can schedule the system to be used almost to capacity and that's fine if everything always works perfectly, with nothing unexpected. The problem is, it doesn't.

And so, with respect to through trains, better a few and possibly somewhat slower through trains, so that when you're on the train you know you're likely to get there more or less on time, that the promise of more and faster journey-opportunities where you spend much of your time on the first train biting your nails wondering if the connection's going to work.