Bad week for CrossCountry trains,
1/ The Trainline start promoting split ticketing in their app, which will significantly cost revenue per ticket.
2/ UK government look set to bail out (in some way) Flybe, an airline that competes on many routes.
1/ The Trainline start promoting split ticketing in their app, which will significantly cost revenue per ticket.
2/ UK government look set to bail out (in some way) Flybe, an airline that competes on many routes.
£106 return to fly from Manchester to Southampton a week today. £250 on the train. 
Manchester to Southampton is 180 miles, the same distance as The Netherlands' longest rail journey (Groningen to Maastricht is 168 miles). The journeys take the same time in both countries (4h15m). But due to the simplifications in Dutch train pricing,... it's just €54 return.
€27 is the maximum fare on Dutch railways. It is required to allow the national smartcard to work, and so few people make really long journeys they just say "meh, fine". There's no distinction for peak or off-peak. There's no discount for booking (or the possibility to do so).
(of course every statement I've just made is open to a very British "actually, it's bit more nuanced than that,...". But it's so nearly precisely correct that the nuance would be a bad idea.)
You can see the train, its punctuality record, and its expected level of crowding. If you set off from Groningen for Maastricht now you'll be on a quiet six carriage double deck train with 607 seats for the first half (92% on time). Then a 100% on time train for the second half.
"Assen" *chuckles*
It really is €27 maximum fare for all railway journeys in the Netherlands. It's a nice example of a simplification that Britons would probably be too uncomfortable with to implement. I'm not quite sure why, but I suspect it goes against our sense of fairness.
I've lived in all three of CrossCountry's biggest cities (Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham) during the past decade. In which time I've not owned a car, and run businesses in Leeds while not living there. Those outside my bubble may not realise how much CrossCountry might be f*&ked.
Last week a peak day return from Manchester to Birmingham cost £93. This week it costs £41. A business with fixed costs can't easily survive that.
Look at the Leeds to Birmingham prices. £140 peak return last week. This week it's £102, or £64. Some passengers were already paying the lower fare, but the Trainline pushing split ticketing mainstream means that many more will be from now on. And the differences are huge!
You might be thinking that CrossCountry will get lots of new passengers and that will help it make up the losses. Nope. It has no space for new passengers! Its trains are currently short diesel trains that are expensive to buy and expensive to run. And almost always packed!
If its routes were electrified it could buy new big electric trains; cheaper to buy, cheaper to run, lots more space for passengers - half fares and double passengers is the same revenue at not much more cost,... but they can't because UK government cancelled the electrification.
So CrossCountry trains are always horrible packed things like this. This is the five-carriage peak train from Sheffield to Leeds. Sucks to be the people who couldn't get on it. There'll be another one in half an hour (usually an hour).
A sarcastic shout out at this time to those economists and civil servants who believe that we've tried to close the North-South divide by investing in infrastructure, but it didn't work. This is basic European infrastructure investment. We didn't do it. They did. They did better.
