Is it time to stop blaming Beeching?

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, GoingUnderground said:

does anyone go everywhere by taxi?

 

I can imagine that some people in certain rural areas might have to, and not have much choice. This is one of the flaws in the idea mentioned earlier of closing branch lines and then expecting everyone to drive to their nearest intercity/main line station (and in a lot of cases not providing, or later removing, a reasonable bus service). It sort of ignores the fact that lots of people will be too young to drive, some may not be able to drive for health reasons, others can’t afford a car (there’s probably other and more detailed reasons).

[Nearholmer]

Using bus, tube and Uber is standard transport for a large number of people in London - owning a car is an expensive, non-parkable, slow way of getting about for many, decidedly “yesterday”.

 

Clearly, that ‘large number’ isn’t everyone in London, but it’s enough people that it isn’t a transport option to be written-off or ignored.

 

(I do realise it wouldn’t work in The Yorkshire Dales, BTW, and there in lies a n important point: conventional public transport really only starts to become viable at a certain population density. Below that, things of a “dial a ride” nature are more applicable than fixed routes)

Edited September 5, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

52 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

(I do realise it wouldn’t work in The Yorkshire Dales, BTW, and there in lies a n important point: conventional public transport really only starts to become viable at a certain population density. Below that, things of a “dial a ride” nature are more applicable than fixed routes)

 

On the other hand, I met a fair number of Asda / Tesco / Sainsburys delivery vans when negotiating the Dales' single track roads last month - which I don't think I ever have done before.

[GoingUnderground]

I did say "everywhere". I've known for 30 years that some folks take taxis to the supermarkets, and the poorer the area the more likely that shoppers would use taxis. And has been pointed out older folks may no longer drive, or be able to afford a car. But many of them will use the free bus passes for certain journeys where that is at least as convenient as a taxi as it will certainly be cheaper.

 

For relatively short distances in towns they are very practical, I used them from time to time when I worked in Central London but my journey into London was on the Tube, or in very rare instances by car, but that was over 40 years ago. But for folks living outside of towns and cities or for longer journeys taxis quickly get very pricey as you have to pay for the dead leg of the journey when the taxi has to come to you, or get back from your destination to its base as there's no certainty that its last fare was to somewhere very close to you, or that its next fare will be from somewhere close to your destination.

 

I also know about the apps, but taxis still aren't as convenient as your own car sitting outside the front door, at least for those of us who have that luxury, as you need to book taxis in advance or wait for them to turn up even with an app.

[Nearholmer]

Good point - if we can have the mountain come to Mohammed that sort-of helps, although I do sometimes wonder whether there is a net reduction, or a net increase, in vehicle movements as a result of internet shopping. Certainly during lockdown, the number of ‘parcel’ vans calling in our street seemed almost enough to create a traffic jam!

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

although I do sometimes wonder whether there is a net reduction, or a net increase, in vehicle movements as a result of internet shopping. Certainly during lockdown, the number of ‘parcel’ vans calling in our street seemed almost enough to create a traffic jam!

 

It's not efficient. If it was all in the hands of a state monopoly (GPO?) deliveries could be planned to minimise mileage. But I bet there were similar complaints in the big cities back in the days when the LNWR, Midland, Lancashire & Yorkshire, Great Northern, Great Central, Great Western were all out delivering.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Compound2632
Forgot the L&Y! (Now added) How could I?

[kevinlms]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I gather that is, or perhaps at one time was, the situation in Liverpool, owing to an over-supply of taxis. Which just goes to show that you're not outlining immutable laws of transportation - the balance could be changed if there was the political will-power. For example, air travel could be very much reduced by taxing aviation fuel. 

The problem with taxing aviation fuel is, at what rate would you tax it? The originating country, the destination or somewhere on the journey?

[Nearholmer]

No problem at all: all three added together, multiplied by ten. 

[kevinlms]

3 hours ago, GoingUnderground said:

 

Cars, for those that have them are just too convenient, just get in and go, even if it's only down to the shops at the end of the road. That's why sharing or leasing won't catch on as that takes away all the spontaneity as you have to arrange for the vehicle to be available at a time and place etc. OK you may be able to do that on line, but taxis are virtually the same thing, and does anyone goes everywhere by taxi?

 

 

There are plenty of people that would find sharing a vehicle or Uber, anything like that as useless.

 

For example, plenty of trades people and the like, would find transferring tools and materials into various vehicles as just impossible. Same applies to families, who have to take prams, pushers all types of equipment with them, as well as kids and don't forget any messes that would need to be cleaned up, at the destination.

 

The idea of just paying for a journey as required in a pool vehicle, only works if one or more people are easily going to take their possessions with them on arrival, anything else is just dreaming.

[kevinlms]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

No problem at all: all three added together, multiplied by ten. 

Planes have been flying commercially since, I guess the end of WW1. If it was easy & equitable the world's governments would have solved that decades ago.

Don't forget that until the 1980s or thereabouts, the wealthy travelled the most and good luck getting them to pay an increased share of the costs!

[D9020 Nimbus]

I notice a number of posters are criticising "BR management" for line closures. But who was in charge of the BR management at the time? A certain Dr Beeching, I believe…

[Oldddudders]

10 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I notice a number of posters are criticising "BR management" for line closures. But who was in charge of the BR management at the time? A certain Dr Beeching, I believe…

Indeed, but his infamous report was based upon figures provided from within the industry, in an era when an army of clerks was needed to provide these, and true understanding of the costs and income of a route were simply not easy to calculate - as others have posted in this thread. So, if the income from a station's ticket sales were modest, who knew how many tickets p.a. were issued TO that station, and at what value? Bucolic branch termini might well have suffered.

 

Of course there had been instances of management deliberately depressing patronage to make the case for closure, to please HM Treasury - the Bluebell Railway was probably such a route, happily, and we are the beneficiaries of that. But that was years before Beeching. 

 

Arguably it was only in the last decade of BR, when the Sectors got their teeth into cost and income allocation by Business, that the true cost of running any part of the railway might have been properly understood. 

[Pete the Elaner]

40 minutes ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

I notice a number of posters are criticising "BR management" for line closures. But who was in charge of the BR management at the time? A certain Dr Beeching, I believe…

 

Lines & stations were already closing before Beeching ever had anything to do with the railways. His report (however biased it is considered) was used as justification to accelerate the closure programme. This continued after the labour government won the 1964 election.

 

BR management did not have the power to close anything without government approval. They could only recommend.

 

The problem was that people loved to drive their cars, so more cars were made & roads were improved. Buses could also use the roads.

 

Many (but not all) of the lines closed in the 60s would not work in today's economy, so to blame 1 person alone is not viewing the full picture.

[mdvle]

On 04/09/2021 at 04:12, Nearholmer said:

Newer solutions such as robot-driven minibus taxis are ‘on the brink’ too.

 

Robot-driven taxis are still a long way off.

 

Waymo (the self driving car division of Google/Alphabet) has for a couple of years now gone very quiet as they discovered it was a lot harder than they thought - that the sort of success they had in the lightly traveled always sunny suburb of Phoenix didn't translate well to the traffic and road conditions elsewhere...

 

 

[mdvle]

On 04/09/2021 at 11:02, 009 micro modeller said:

I think in the USA there's also the slightly different and more extreme demise of passenger rail, often attributed to the way in which government regulations and subsidy favoured air and road transport over rail but probably also because their railways have historically been run with less government involvement than in the UK.

 

Actually, historically there was a lot of government involvement in the US (and Canada) and it was that removal that caused problems.

 

A lot of the passenger service pre-Amtrak continued to exist because a) the post office moved mail by train (in many/several cases towards the end the number of mail cars exceeded the passenger cars) and when the post office contracts ended the governments then b) refused to allow the services to be cancelled.

 

Hence the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago, to take over the money losing services (and VIA in Canada 47? years ago).

 

But there were also regulations on what the railroads could charge for freight and other things, which results in bankruptcies in the US north-east and the eventual creation of Conrail just a short time after the creation of Amtrak to take over and save the bankrupt freight railroads in that part of the US (and, as per the UK and Europe, those north-eastern railroads had too much track for the amount of traffic and difficulties in cutting back their networks).

 

The removal of those regulations has created the current US freight system which generally is very profitable.

 

On 04/09/2021 at 11:02, 009 micro modeller said:

The other aspect in the US is that the larger distances make flying a more viable alternative to rail than it is over here. Possibly the longer distances work in rail's favour (as opposed to road) for freight

 

Container traffic obviously benefits from the greater distances (and much greater loading gauge - hence double-stacks), but the big difference is the abundance of bulk items to move - coal, grain, corn (syrup), potash, oil, etc.

 

As for Amtrak today, they (and VIA) suffer from being tenants on the freight railroads and the timetable issues that causes - Amtrak does best in the north-east where it owns it's own track and the distances are short enough that even the Amtrak excuse for high-speed is enough to compete with air.

 

Interestingly, Amtrak also offers their version of Motorail - a service they took over from a failed private operator called the Auto Train - a 17.5 hour overnight service running 855 miles between Lorton VA (near Washington DC) and Sanford FL (near Orlando)

[F-UnitMad]

13 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

The problem was that people loved to drive their cars, so more cars were made & roads were improved. Buses could also use the roads.

The "other" problem was that Ernest Marples was Minister for Transport, with massive interests in road building, and he appointed Beeching. 

[corneliuslundie]

Let's not go there please. I think we have been round that loop in detail at least twice on other threads.

Another issue with American railroads is that even more than the UK there were competing routes between major cities, sometimes running for hundreds of miles within sight of each other, such as either side of a river. Add to that some disastrous management of a few major companies in the years after the Second World War and the system started to implode. It is the much longer distances there which make the current freight system viable. On the passenger side, whereas many of our routes are too short for air to compete, in America many routes are too long for rail to compete. Mind you, one shouldn't generalise, as just in the UK different parts of the country are completely different - New York and Texas, for example.

Jonathan

[pete_mcfarlane]

8 hours ago, mdvle said:

 

Robot-driven taxis are still a long way off.

 

Waymo (the self driving car division of Google/Alphabet) has for a couple of years now gone very quiet as they discovered it was a lot harder than they thought - that the sort of success they had in the lightly traveled always sunny suburb of Phoenix didn't translate well to the traffic and road conditions elsewhere...

There were some in Vegas when I visited a couple of years back - they had 2 crew members, one to take over the driving if the computer went wrong, and the other to monitor the computer. So 3 passenger seats, rather than 4 like a normal taxi.....

 

These things will happen eventually, just not to the timescales that the marketing people claim. 

[kevinlms]

1 hour ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

There were some in Vegas when I visited a couple of years back - they had 2 crew members, one to take over the driving if the computer went wrong, and the other to monitor the computer. So 3 passenger seats, rather than 4 like a normal taxi.....

 

These things will happen eventually, just not to the timescales that the marketing people claim. 

The timing depends on how long it takes for the technology to catch up to the necessary standard. While incidents happen, it puts people off.

 

It isn't like driverless trains, where basically they have a limited area that the computer has to monitor and so the driverless train has been operating quite safely for many years, under certain conditions.

 

Indeed with the growing trend for hoaxes and conspiracy theories, autonomous vehicles have to get a whole lot better.

Edited September 6, 2021 by kevinlms
More info

[Reorte]

A couple of points - is this about blaming Beeching personally, or the report in general? Well, someone's name has to get associated with anything, and if they're happy to take credit for the results they need to take the criticism too. If you're not prepared to do that don't take the job at the top.

 

On the subject of the closures themselves as has been pointed out several times the railways really were in an unsustainable state, so widespread closures were inevitable whatever was going to happen. The question is therefore whether the goal of the report was a neutral assessment of the situation and solutions, or whether it was driven by a closure agenda - wanting to find reasons to close railways rather than to try to make them work.

[AndrueC]

On 04/09/2021 at 08:38, D826 said:

I've been wondering if the appalling congestion on the M5 to the South west might resuscitate the dearth of railfreight west of Exeter, well west of Bristol...

I was living in Exeter while that was built. I remember when they opened the section over the Exe to pedestrians for the weekend as a celebration. I was only a young lad at the time but I remember how much it improved things for us coming back home from holiday.

 

I moved away in the late 80s so hadn't heard that it had become a congestion hot spot. Sad to hear because we all loved it back when it opened.

 

As for the railways I don't know. I used the Banbury/Birmingham Chiltern link for a couple of years a while back and it was very good but not much cheaper than driving. The main attraction was being able to read for 40 minutes and not worry about parking and especially rush-hour getting out of B'ham in the evenings.

 

But for my current life trains just wouldn't work. Back before Covid I doubt they'd have been a practical choice. There was once a rail link between Brackley and Banbury (I live very near the remains of the line) but the station was at the opposite end of the town. By the time I'd walked to the station I could be nearly arriving at Banbury by car. The bus service to the station wouldn't be all that much better if it even exists.

 

There is a bus service to Banbury but it takes twice as long as a car and would require a ten to fifteen minute walk to/from our office. Not that I mind a walk (I voluntarily walk for an hour every lunch break) but I think I'm pretty rare in that. And anyway the result is adding an hour to my working day over and above the 40 minutes commuting by car requires.

 

But I'm working from home now and always will be. I get my groceries delivered so the only thing I need is transport to/from local golf courses. Neither train nor bus is ever going to be able to provide that for me.

 

On the plus side the car I bought new in March 2018 is only now approaching 18k miles so the environmental cost of my transport has dropped dramatically. And I think that's my real point. Don't ask 'how can we move people around the country with minimal environmental cost?'. Ask instead - 'why do we need to move people around the country at all?'

 

The only drawback to WFH is if large numbers of people choose to leave their heating on during the day because they are there. It's environmentally better to heat an office containing dozens of people than heating dozens of houses each with one occupant. But I avoid that trap. My heating remains off during the day. Instead I have an oil filled radiator and keep the bedroom door shut

Edited September 6, 2021 by AndrueC

[AndrueC]

On 04/09/2021 at 17:34, Compound2632 said:

 

Make room for others on the pyre such as Mr Marples and Herr Benz. 

I was confused when I first read that because I thought I read 'Miss Marple' and was wondering what you had against spinster detectives

Edited September 6, 2021 by AndrueC

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, AndrueC said:

I was confused when I first read that because I thought I red 'Miss Marple' and was wondering what you had against spinster detectives

 

No, she goes on a separate pyre with Lord Peter Whimsey and M. Poirot.

[jonny777]

On 04/09/2021 at 17:34, Compound2632 said:

 

Make room for others on the pyre such as Mr Marples and Herr Benz. 

 

Plus Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-Un. 

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

Plus Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-Un. 

 

Can you outline these gentlemen's contributions to the decline of British railways in the first three-quarters of the 20th century?

 

Or have they been publishing detective thrillers set in mid-century middle England?