Gloucester Area: Frequency, New Stations and Calling Patterns

[Llanigraham]

The post #129 says Network Rail have officially ruled it out. I have not made any judgement on the person who conveyed this message, only Network Rail if that is what they actually said and why.

I suggest you read #144 again, as that was the one your reply was to, and which I quoted as not being from Network Rail.

 

[Western Lord]

The justification for HS2 may have changed but the financial case is still 10s of £bn underwater and requires 10s of £bn in the value of time saved to stand up as a business case.

The service from London to Cheltenham is not a local one although it will also carry people making local journeys.

There aren't may routes from London where 11min can be saved so easily.

Beyond Swindon the service is a local one. Like many people you are falling in to the trap of believing that, because it is a London to Cheltenham service, that those two places are the focus of the service. There is not a train load of passengers at Paddington going to Cheltenham. Your ten minute saving affects only the last leg of the journey, when the train is probably carrying its fewest number of passengers, and quite a few of them are probably people using the train to travel from Gloucester to Cheltenham.
If a viable parkway station ever were built in the Gloucester area, i.e. one with good road connections and a decent sized car park, you can bet that Cross Country would drop Cheltenham and it's poorly located station in favour of the richer pickings to be had at the new station. Then we would see someone starting a thread about how to improve Cheltenham's connections to Bristol and Birmingham!

 

[jayah]

I suggest you read #144 again, as that was the one your reply was to, and which I quoted as not being from Network Rail.

144 quotes 134 which in turn quotes an official sounding but not quoted Network Rail decision in 129.

The phrase 'supposed Network Rail decision' makes it clear what I am taking issue with.

 

[jayah]

Beyond Swindon the service is a local one. Like many people you are falling in to the trap of believing that, because it is a London to Cheltenham service, that those two places are the focus of the service. There is not a train load of passengers at Paddington going to Cheltenham. Your ten minute saving affects only the last leg of the journey, when the train is probably carrying its fewest number of passengers, and quite a few of them are probably people using the train to travel from Gloucester to Cheltenham.
If a viable parkway station ever were built in the Gloucester area, i.e. one with good road connections and a decent sized car park, you can bet that Cross Country would drop Cheltenham and it's poorly located station in favour of the richer pickings to be had at the new station. Then we would see someone starting a thread about how to improve Cheltenham's connections to Bristol and Birmingham!

London is certainly where the money is. I am not clear how the local journeys are being disadvantaged by this idea? Many of them will also be 11min quicker.

A third station is rarely the solution to having two not very useful ones.

 

[Noddy]

London is certainly where the money is. I am not clear how the local journeys are being disadvantaged by this idea? Many of them will also be 11min quicker.

A third station is rarely the solution to having two not very useful ones.

As someone who lives and works in the area I would rather have a more frequent slower service, than a faster less frequent service. It gives me far more flexibility when commuting.

 

[TractiveEffort]

??

Temple Meads to Parkway is 6 miles. Gloucester to Cheltenham is 6.5 miles.

And anything up to an hour if you want to drive between the two!!

 

[jayah]

Because timetabling and route availability simply doesn't work like that!
Sorry, but you seem to have a very simplistic view of how railway route planning, availability and timetabling works.
A train arriving on the Western mainline 10 minutes early than now is going to affect all the other trains using that line, and they could be from anywhere some distance away from that point.
The rail world does not revolve around Cheltenham and Gloucester as you seem to think.

You are not arriving on the western mainline 11 minutes early if you leave Cheltenham 11mins later. By your logic retimings of anything would go in the too difficult tray and we would be stuck with the present position for good. This is a pretty thin reason for not saving 11mins and reducing lots of conflicts.

 

[jayah]

As someone who lives and works in the area I would rather have a more frequent slower service, than a faster less frequent service. It gives me far more flexibility when commuting.

The best way to get a more frequent service is for more people to use it. That won't happen when the current journey from London to Cheltenham is barely quicker than going via Birmingham and Swindon to Cheltenham is 15min quicker by road.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

As someone who lives and works in the area I would rather have a more frequent slower service, than a faster less frequent service. It gives me far more flexibility when commuting.

The best way to get a more frequent service is for more people to use it. That won't happen when the current journey from London to Cheltenham is barely quicker than going via Birmingham and Swindon to Cheltenham is 15min quicker by road.

I think there are two separate things here. My experience is that if I'm travelling 20 miles, then frequency is more important than speed, so I'd agree with Noddy. But if I'm travelling, say, 100+ miles, then it's probably an unusual journey that I've planned in advance and it's going to be quite long, so then, speed becomes more important than frequency. (That is arguably part of the reason why local trains have historically tended to be shorter than long-distance trains: Because increasing the frequency for a given capacity by using shorter, but more frequent, trains, has a greater impact on passenger numbers for shorter journeys).

The lesson for the London-Cheltenham route is probably that we should be looking to speed up the London-Cheltenham trains as much as possible, while providing a more frequent local service to serve the less important stations. So I'd suggest a better service pattern in a few years would be an hourly London-Cheltenham that runs semi-fast between Swindon and Cheltenham (Perhaps: Swindon-Stroud-Gloucester Parkway-Cheltenham; I'd be tempted to extend it to Worcester Shrub Hill too, but that's not really relevant here), and an hourly Swindon-Cheltenham all-stops (including Gloucester). That way you'd get more people using the London services to travel longer distances, while at the same time increasing the frequency for the more important stations and maintaining it for the less important stations.

The main disbenefit of this would be people specifically wanting Gloucester Central having to change to get to stations beyond Swindon (which they already have to do every other hour anyway) - but in the end the railway has to be run for the benefit of the greatest number of people, and that cost would easily be outweighed by the benefits to the majority of passengers. That was pretty much the thinking behind the diagram I put up earlier in the thread which showed basically that pattern, with extra local services along the Cheltenham-Gloucester-Bristol corridor.

 

[Llanigraham]

You are not arriving on the western mainline 11 minutes early if you leave Cheltenham 11mins later. By your logic retimings of anything would go in the too difficult tray and we would be stuck with the present position for good. This is a pretty thin reason for not saving 11mins and reducing lots of conflicts.

But you didn't say you were leaving Cheltenham 11 minutes later. You said it would be 11 minutes quicker.

Even as an (ex)lowly signalman i know that your ideas about timetabling are far too simplistic, and that you are not looking at the bigger picture.

 

[Noddy]

The lesson for the London-Cheltenham route is probably that we should be looking to speed up the London-Cheltenham trains as much as possible, while providing a more frequent local service to serve the less important stations. So I'd suggest a better service pattern in a few years would be an hourly London-Cheltenham that runs semi-fast between Swindon and Cheltenham (Perhaps: Swindon-Stroud-Gloucester Parkway-Cheltenham; I'd be tempted to extend it to Worcester Shrub Hill too, but that's not really relevant here), and an hourly Swindon-Cheltenham all-stops (including Gloucester). That way you'd get more people using the London services to travel longer distances, while at the same time increasing the frequency for the more important stations and maintaining it for the less important stations.

The main disbenefit of this would be people specifically wanting Gloucester Central having to change to get to stations beyond Swindon (which they already have to do every other hour anyway) - but in the end the railway has to be run for the benefit of the greatest number of people, and that cost would easily be outweighed by the benefits to the majority of passengers. That was pretty much the thinking behind the diagram I put up earlier in the thread which showed basically that pattern, with extra local services along the Cheltenham-Gloucester-Bristol corridor.

The main disbenefit here would would be for commuters on the Swindon/Kemble/Stroud/Stonehouse-Gloucester-Cheltenham axis. One less train per hour between Glos and Chelt (so down to 3tph I think) but more importantly leaving only an hourly service from Swindon et al stations to Glos meaning no improvement over the current hourly service. Ok you might be able to change at some hypothetical Quedgeley/Hunts Grove/Glos Parkway station but that could easily double the c.20 minute journey between Gloucester ‘Central’ and Stonehouse or Stroud. If you travel on the current service most folk are not commuting between London-Cheltenham but London-any of the Glos Stations, or commuting between stations along the route.

The other thing I would point out is that Stonehouse-Glos is timetabled to take anywhere between 15 and 23 min during the day suggesting a significant loss just in the timetabling of trains at Gloucester. Fixing this discrepancy could save up to 8 min without the need to remove stops.

 

[jayah]

But you didn't say you were leaving Cheltenham 11 minutes later. You said it would be 11 minutes quicker.

Even as an (ex)lowly signalman i know that your ideas about timetabling are far too simplistic, and that you are not looking at the bigger picture.

I didn't say anything about when I was leaving only that the journey would take less time.
Given the speed benefit and capacity improvement, I think you are trying very hard to find reasons to oppose the idea and aren't thinking of the big picture.

 

[Charlie M.]

Just thought I’d post this as it has some interesting proposals: https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/19463/study-report-may-2015-_-final-version.pdf