Hornby price increases

In the early 70's SELNEC (South East Lancs/North East Cheshire) buses round Manchester and Stockport had a flat 2p per ride fare for under

16's. We used to get around an awful lot on weekends - even Buxton!

Richard

Beacuse off-peak means, by definition, the times when poeple don't want/need to travel.

Pop into town and buy, say, a microwave, school uniforms for kids, some food, maybe a model or two and some shoes for the misses and the other usual stuff, and then go on the bus. It's not going to happen.

If you decide to have a cycling holiday in the UK you can't even be sure you can take your bikes, there's no PLA (Pssengers Luggage In Advance) or any other form of support - no Porters, no trollies (generally), no nothing - the railways are now soley geared up for the commuter or individuals travelling singly (and light!) between (some) major conurbations. Until that changes railways are going to remain the preserve of the few who they happen to be convenient for, or the poor sods who have no choice. For a very large proportion the railways are an utter irrelevancy, and that won't change until we/they cannot physically get petrol/diesel at any price.

Cheers Richard

But it doesn't. Ergo people are not as interested as they could be in travel cards and the benefits they give. How low would fares need to go to get them interested?

We took 9 people (5 adults + 4 kids) and paid =A310 so there is some flexibility.

MBQ

te:

Exactly! So you double the fleet to cope with peak demand created by lower fares and it sits idle for the rest of the day or trundles up and down virtually empty.

MBQ

So we double, treble, ??? the PT fleet to cope with peak demand caused by lower fares and they run around empty or sit idle for the rest of the day. What does that do for the environement?

MBQ

Funny that, the BR managed to do just that in the 1950s and '60s... They also managed to run bank holiday services, put on extra trains at short notice - oh and they also delivered the newspapers to (almost) every station each morning, delivered the coal to the coal merchant, they even ran an (express) parcels service...

Are you being deliberately thick or are you normally just thick?

There is a loss of interested due to the (real or apparent) complexities and cost of the current railway ticketing system (and - as someone else pointed out - the petty, for ease of operations, restrictions TOCs place on what people can take onto trains now), not in travelling by train.

But you were over the magic number of five, the question was, could

*the national average family* of 4 (or 3 if one parent was having to work) use the same offer and if so was that flexibility obvious in the publicity?

The total was irrelevant. We had a group of 5 and a group of 4. The group of 4 was allowed to pay as though there were 5. I don't recall the advertising TBH.

MBQ

Times have changed. most trains were loco hauled and they could afford to have a few spare locos around to take up the extra work. Having lots of spare Pendos, etc., to service peak times is a completely different scenario.

About as often as you're an annoying little twerp.

MBQ

Loosing the argument I see, the fact that a train can accommodate up to a thousand people, meaning that a at least half that number of cars (making the assumption that most people are travelling in pairs) are not being used seems to have escaped your notice...

Are there many cases of building more roads in the sort of urban areas where railways would need to be extended? There are bypasses and new developments on green or brown fields, but I can't think of many cases of demolishing houses to build or widen a road through a residential area.

There was the M11 for one, but it is pretty unusual. A handful of houses were demolished to build Croydon Tramlink.

I think you will find the world of profit and greed is why people are travelling in the first place. People aren't using commuter trains for fun, they are doing it because it gives them more profit than subsistence farming would.

There is also a question about whether people "need" to live in somewhere like Grantham or darkest Hampshire and work in London, and the extent to which well-paid people should be subsidised so they can live in the countryside and work in a city.

Blocks of flats around stations or stops are ideal for public transport use, but people still seem to want semi-detached houses, gardens and grass.

Commuting, inter-city and regular and/or heavy freight is what rail does well.

Rail has a very large market share in Birmingham, and dominates the London - Leeds market.

If you think Britain lacks cross-country services, try a trip in France when the start or end points are not Paris.

Of course even here, the operators only do what the government tells them to.

And the government commissioned a report into what could be done control the costs off all this, which led to the closure of a chunk of the network.

On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:41:17 +0100, Arthur Figgis said in :

It is said (though I can't remember by what authority right now) that the good Dr. Beeching was a shareholder in Tarmac.

Guy

But not as easily as in loco hauled days.

Not at all.

Wrong again - just look at the commuter traffic.

MBQ

No, but the new roads in rural areas are what allow more people to reach the towns quicker.

Conversely, it would also be very difficult to extend the railways in urban areas now that a lot of the old track beds have been built over.

MBQ

I hadn't heard that, but transport minister Ernest Marples' family firm was Marples Ridgeway. Who built the roads.

After he retired to Spain there was a Panorama (or similar) program about him that concluded the only reason he wsn't a guest of Her Majesty, was that there was no extradition treaty with spain.

There were allegations of corruption because Ernest Marples had a stake in a road company. However that is a terrible slur, as to avoid a conflict he disposed of his interests.

To his wife.