50% Train discount scheme

[gryffron]

Is there any reason why the train company couldn't attach a few more carriages?

So GWR etc clearly don't actually GAF. They've got your money by this stage I guess. No need to think and stick another couple of carriages on. Just leave the passengers to suck it up.

Almost all modern trains aren't dumb "carriages", they are smart, permanently coupled multiple units. But they can be stuck together and operated in tandem by a single driver. So in theory they could add an extra "train" on the back of the existing one. Provided it would fit in all the platforms along the route. Which someone would have to confirm for safety reasons. It can't just be done ad-hoc.

But the biggest problem is reliability. Old trains used to be very unreliable, so they had loads of spares. Modern trains are so reliable they don't need spares. So they don't have any! Even if they had planners for special events (they don't) they wouldn't have spare trains to use anyway. Especially on a Saturday which is peak travel day for most local & suburban routes.

If you want the railcos to hold this "spare" capacity, then someone is going to have to pay for it. And there is far more pressure to put any available surplus capacity onto the regularly overcrowded commuter routes, of which there are plenty.

Gryff

[bungeejumper]

Is there any reason why the train company couldn't attach a few more carriages?

So GWR etc clearly don't actually GAF. They've got your money by this stage I guess. No need to think and stick another couple of carriages on. Just leave the passengers to suck it up.

I hate GWR too, and all the more so for the eye watering fares they charge. (And their infuriating habit of blaming high prices and too few trains on "too many passengers using the service".)

But it wasn't that much better in the good old days of British Rail, when (pace Gryffron) they did have extra rolling stock available for use. I remember travelling back one evening from Paddington to Bath, at the back of a train which had been extended by four or five carriages because they needed to move some carriages around the network ahead of the bank holiday . And sitting opposite me was Roy Hattersley, who was due to address a meeting in Bath. Plus one of his aides.

So we pulled in at Bath Spa station and we all prepared to get off the over-length train. Only to be told via the tannoy that the rear coaches would remain locked until the train had unloaded its front half and then moved forward a bit. Which would have been a workable plan if only someone had told the driver. But instead, he pulled away and set off cheerily for Bristol, leaving the occupants at the back of the train cursing his parentage.

Hattersley and his aide looked at one another, plainly wondering who they should blame for the fiasco that had ruined their evening engagement Then they exchanged a few words to the effect of "oh well, I expect a privatised railway would have made an even bigger mess of it?", and wearily ordered a taxi back from Bristol to Bath so that they could be at their meeting before everyone had given up and gone home.

BJ

[Lootman]

I hate GWR too, and all the more so for the eye watering fares they charge. (And their infuriating habit of blaming high prices and too few trains on "too many passengers using the service".)

In the last 2 weeks I have travelled from Paddington to both Bristol and Cardiff. All four trains were either busy or very busy. On one of them there were passengers and baggage in the corridors so it was difficult for anyone to move through the carriage.

So almost by definition the fares can't be too high because, if they were, the trains would be more empty. I would assume that, like airlines, train companies use yield management software that charges lower prices when nobody wants to travel (say, Wednesday lunchtime) and then jacks up the fares on Mondays, Fridays and weekends.

So if GWR are blaming demand for higher prices then that is only because GWR chooses to use price to manage demand. Otherwise I would have thought that it costs the same to operate a train regardless of the number of paying passengers. Except perhaps that they might need more station staff at busy times?

[bungeejumper]

So if GWR are blaming demand for higher prices then that is only because GWR chooses to use price to manage demand.

Yep, absolutely. And that's a valid business model for a core element of the nation's essential infrastructure? The one that underpins London's viability for commuters? No wonder the French and the Germans are laughing at us.

Otherwise I would have thought that it costs the same to operate a train regardless of the number of paying passengers. Except perhaps that they might need more station staff at busy times?

Totally agree. The reason GWR doesn't run more carriages is that it's fixated on achieving 100% capacity usage from every single seat, and it won't buy or lease more rolling stock until people in standing-room-only class are found to be dead on arrival but still wedged upright by the crush.

Yessir, that's how you run a business. Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, pick their wallets nice and clean.

BJ

[AF62]

So if GWR are blaming demand for higher prices then that is only because GWR chooses to use price to manage demand.

GWR or the government? The GWR franchise is a shared risk and reward franchise between FirstGroup who run it and the Government so both have a say in the fares. Add in the issue that about 40% of fares are ‘regulated’ and set by the government, and it would seem GWR has a minority interest in the fares charged.

However at least with GWR they have some interest in the fares.

For the vast number of people using trains into London on the Govia franchise that covers Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink, and Great Northen, then that ‘franchise’ is actually a management contract.

Under that management contract the government decrees what trains it wants run (number, length, frequency, design of the trains, number of seats, etc.) and the fares to be charged.

It then agreed a management contract with Govia to do that and agreed a fee for them to do so. All the fares collected at the ticket offices are handed over by Govia to the government as the fares belong to the government. Govia has no risk if people decide not to travel and not buy tickets as they get paid the management fee to run the trains irrespective of whether there is anyone onboard or not.

Effectively it is a nationalised train service with the running of the trains subcontracted. And is it any good - nope.

Since Govia have no interest in the people who have bought a ticket because they are not their customer and the government is, then all they focus on is running the trains and the targets set by the government.

And those targets are perverse, so on more than one occasion I (and hundreds of others') have been left stood on the platform as a train zoomed by empty as they were running it non-stop from terminus to terminus with no passengers onboard, because stopping to pick up passengers with a ticket would delay them and cause them to fail their target.