SVR General Discussion

More than one though. To provide a meaningful service, even just peak hours Monday - Friday, each box will require two staff per day due to the length of day. In which case are they employed part-time just as signallers or full-time, and do they do other duties when not in the box? Then you've got to cover annual leave and sickness. Who will do that? Someone else employed as another signaller? Or another employee? And if they're covering, that will probably mean they can't do their main job while standing in as signaller.

It works for Network Rail because they're a massive company and will have flexibility in their staffing levels to cover sickness, leave and vacancies, or on-call managers to step up. SVR don't have that luxury. Even part-time, a minimum of 3 staff would be required, two per day plus a spare.

The economics don't stack up. For a start, how many passengers will want to travel from Bewdley? There's isn't a significant amount of parking at the station so it'll have to be people who live in the town, and they'll already be driving to Kidderminster to get the train anyway.

West Mids units that reverse at Kidderminster are booked to do the manoeuvre in 20 minutes. You'd need to allow at least 30 minutes to run to Bewdley and back so that'll need the timetable rewriting, and possibly other units to fill in the gaps.

There's a reason no preserved railway has daily through National Rail services - it doesn't add up. The lines were originally closed for a reason! The staffing costs alone will kill it, let alone all the other complications. Just because the track is there doesn't mean it has to be used.

 

Add in the security risk... are you going to leave stations unstaffed and risk vandalism/theft etc?
You'd need to allow for security, even if you didn't have a booking clerk.

Also, how much revenue do you get? Yes, you might get an eccentric millionaire buying a first class ticket to Edinburgh, but most of that will go on to Avanti etc.

As people noted, the likelihood is that anyone going to Kidderminster will drive, so your likely sales will be for Brum/other work and shopping destinations in the west mids, at which you'll get a revenue share.
Nat min wage is £12.71/hr assume cost to employ is about the same, means 1 staff hour costs £25.42. If you run 8-8 and have one signaller at each end and one security guard at each end, IF you can get those hours with no overlap (and assuming you can get a signaller for min wage, which I doubt) your fixed staff costs are £101.68/hr, or £1220.16/day.

Kiddy-Brum is circa £9 one-way. So lets assume you can charge £12 Bewdley to Brum. Of that £3, you keep approx £1.50. (a guess, but assuming the train company provide trains/fuel/train staff, they will have thier costs to pay). Which means 813 journeys in the day just to pay base staff costs.

Population of Bewdley is about 9000. So that means about 1 in 10 people in Bewdley catching the train every day just to pay absolute base staff costs.

 

There is a lot of negativity on the SLUG issues about why it cannot/should not happen. Come on, see some positivity and be less half glass empty.

 

The announcement suggests "a trial of through services". That does not imply commuter services seven days a week. It could be as little as one return trip on some days when the signal boxes are open for heritage services.

 

What is the positivity? How the potential benefits outweigh the negatives

 

Not negativity, just people being realistic why it can't and won't work. What would be the point in running through to Bewdley? To take people to Bewdley? They can get the SVR services that run there, or take the bus. To take people from Bewdley to Birmingham, etc? You'll need more than a couple of services in the middle of the day to make it worthwhile.

Keep the SVR separate. Swanage has shown trying to run a heritage railway and fitting National Rail services into the mix doesn't work. There have to be compromises in the timetabling for a start. A return ticket from Kiddy to Bewdley is £8.50. Parking at Kiddy is a fiver. Which would you choose if you're going to be heading north from Birmingham? Or do WMT undercut the SVR's prices?

 

Another thought that occurs to me is what it does to SVR pricing.

You could lose revenue by people either not travelling at all on SVR services, or doing one-way on the [national rail].

Then you'll get the "I can travel the line for £x, why should I pay this much extra"
And people trying to use railcards for cheap travel

And how do you keep the different fare-payers apart? Do you have a seperate station for them?
If someone finds a wheeze these days, it will get round the internet and what is smile and "don't do it again" becomes a major headache.