Different Levels of Service

The fracturing of the InterCity network into multiple franchises has led to some curious differences between the different lines: some cities seem to get a worse service to London than they deserve.

In terms of population, the top ten Urban Areas in the country are London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield and Bristol, in that order. (These are taken from this list on Wikipedia, which is taken straight from the Office of National Statistics. It's not quite correct to refer to these areas solely by the name of their main city, but it's easier than saying "Leeds/Bradford" or "Birmingham/Wolverhampton")

Let's consider the frequency and journey time of the intercity services between London and each of the other nine cities above:

Route	Service Frequency	Journey Time
London-Birmingham	train every 20 minutes	average 1h25
London-Manchester	train every 20 minutes	average 2h08
London-Leeds	train every half hour	average 2h20
London-Glasgow	13 trains per day, roughly hourly	average 4h30
London-Newcastle	train every half hour	average 2h55
London-Liverpool	train every hour	average 2h08
London-Nottingham	train every half hour	average 1h50
London-Sheffield	train every hour	average 2h09
London-Bristol	train every half hour	average 1h42

With the exception of Glasgow, the other eight cities lie within three hours of London, which is generally acknowledged as the threshold for rail to be competitive with air travel.

Birmingham and Manchester, as by far the biggest two cities outside London, get three trains per hour. It's perhaps questionable whether they deserve more than the half-hourly service they used to receive prior to December 2008, but most reports I've heard have been that the services have been well-filled; even if we don't need them now, we will do within ten years.

Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham and Bristol all benefit from a half-hourly service. But Liverpool and Sheffield remain stuck with an hourly service, in spite of their journey times being shorter than those to Leeds and Newcastle.

Why? Well, in the case of Liverpool, it has to play second fiddle to Birmingham and Manchester; Virgin Trains decided that three trains an hour to both Birmingham and Manchester was more important than giving Liverpool a half-hourly service. (To be fair, there are additional trains to Liverpool in peak hours.) As I said before, the West Coast Main Line doesn't have any capacity to give Liverpool a better service.

In the case of Sheffield, it's harder to see why it's been sidelined for so many years. Its hourly service takes the longer route through Derby, rather than going straight down the Erewash Valley halfway between Derby and Nottingham, meaning that Sheffield probably could have a service that took less than two hours.

The good news is that the other hourly London-Derby service is due to be extended to Sheffield from December 2009. Unfortunately, the way it's being done means that while the services will leave London every half-hour, one will take rather longer than the other, so that they arrive in Sheffield just ten minutes apart. (In fact, the present London-Nottingham service is similar, but the other way around: the trains leave Nottingham every half-hour, but the different stopping patterns means that they in fact leave London just fifteen minutes apart.)

The problem is that the Midland Main Line out of St Pancras has to serve Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield. The ideal situation would be to serve each of those cities with a half-hourly service, requiring six trains an hour - which is probably one more than the four-platform terminus at St Pancras can cope with. The alternative that is employed is that Sheffield is served via Derby - which is adds between ten and fifteen minutes to the journey time, but reduces the number of trains per hour from six to four.

So why do Liverpool and Sheffield get short-changed? I think it's partly down to the lack of anyone who can say "wait, this isn't fair, we should do this instead". But in reality it's mainly down to lack of capacity: the main lines out of London are, simply put, nearly full.

And only high-speed rail can solve that.