I'm sure that Plymouth would get
some gain from a direct train service to the village of Okehampton. It's just that it would get a lot more gain from faster services to Exeter/Bristol/London, so that's the option that Plymouth council seem to prefer.
You keep falling into the trap of thinking that because your favourite option has
some benefits to someone, it must be the only option. Nobody is suggesting that there'd be *no* benefit to an Okehampton service (for the people of Plymouth), just a lot less than improving the speed/reliability of servics to the city of Exeter.
Still, amusing to see the thread develop from "everyone in the south west wants an Okehampton route" to "people who think another option would be more beneficial must be myopic"
Maybe people in Plymouth see
some benefit to an Okehampton route but
significantly more benefit to their preferred option of a faster route to Exeter etc? How dare they... :roll:
Yes, but presumably any extra trade from a village of five thousand people is less important to Plymouth than faster more reliable service to the cities of Exeter/Bristol/London.
The way people talk about Okehampton on this thread you'd think it were a city!
True - though many on here are outraged that the head of Plymouth council is more concerned about faster more reliable trains to big places like Exeter/Bristol/London etc than a direct link to little Okehampton (Plymouth to Okehampton is a flow so tiny that there's no commercial bus service between the two places).
HOW DARE THIS MAN REPRESENTING PLYMOUTH WANT WHAT'S BEST FOR PLYMOUTH!
They
are seizing a chance for an improved railway between Plymouth and Exeter - they just prioritise a faster route than the backwater that nostalgic enthusiasts seem to prefer. Are they wrong to have that opinion?
These kind of figures just look silly. For £1,200,000,000 of damage between 4 February and 4 April, that'd be £20,000,000 of damage a day.
£20,000,000.
Taking today as a baseline, there's sixty five trains eastbound from Newton Abbott to Exeter (obviously fewer at weekends, but I'm feeling generous so I'll use the day with the most services). Those break down into:
- 22 from Paignton to Exeter/ Exmouth
- 9 from Paignton to Bristol/Birmingham/Cardiff/Manchester/London
- 14 from Plymouth to Exeter/ London/ Manchester etc
- 20 from Penzance to Exeter/ London/ Manchester etc
...so (taking into account that the £20,000,000 of damage a day has to be divided between trains in both directions), that means each train that failed to run was worth around £150,000 to the local economy.
£150,000 per train! Remember, a third of those trains were "Devon Metro" services from Paignton to Exeter/Exmouth (i.e. Pacer/150).
I know the figures have been eagerly swallowed up by the media, eager to scare people with big numbers, but if anyone stopped for a moment to think about how one cancelled train cost an average of £150,000... it's just nonsense!
(obviously I'm not saying that there was *no* cost to the local economy - before I get a response from someone along the lines of "
so you think it was okay that everyone was cut off" - I'm just saying that coming up with a stupidly big number doesn't help things)
Agreed!