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The Ticket Collector

“Crowded trains are safer in crashes” - ORR

January 24, 2007 on 6:59 pm | In DfT, Engineering Works, FCC, Franchise, Route |

Was reading somthing of interest to regular visitors of this blog in the Evening Standard yesterday. The Standard/Daily Mail are continuing on there “Campaign” for a seat for every commuter. Well we all know that this will never be possible.
What defines a commuter? Someone who travels every day including weekends? Someone who travels 3 days a week? Prehaps someone who travels on the overnight trains once a week in both directions, are they classed as a commuter?

Now this is what really pisses me off about the Evening Standard, yeah we will moan and complain but what we wont tell you is we couldnt even run a train service, we barley run a newspaper.

But anyway onto the main reason for this blog posting.

The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) yesterday stated that “Packed trains are safer”, “Research in the late 1990’s found that where there was a crowded or overcrowded train carriage there was no detrimental effect to people involved in crashes”. “In a lot of cases people were better off in train carriages where there was overcrowding”

The Evening Standard continued to moan about how commuters are getting a raw deal, but did they mention that fact that most companies offer you a 5% refund on your ticket if you dont get a seat? No because that would go against their unwinnable campaign “a seat for every commuter”.

There is actually no legal limit to how many people can travel in any given carriage at any given time, there is also no safety law regarding the maximum number of people in a train carriage.

FCC are planning to increase their services between Cambridge and London to 12 carriages, this is dependant on Network Rail and the DfT upgrading the power supply between Cambridge and Letchworth. Some platforms are going to have to be lengthened.
Also there are rumors and these are only rumors at the moment that FCC will be getting some new trains to replace the extra carriages which will be taken from other routes to lengthen the Cambridge - London services. These could be HST’s, 180’s or the trains which silverlink use.

1 Comment

  1. Elaine Holt told me in person, and subsequently on the Meet the Directors forum this week, that there is no way FCC GN will ever get the 180s - and that’s purely down to poor reliability (besides that they’re excellent trains from a passenger comfort/experience - although little consolation when the train isn’t moving). I can quote her as saying “Over my dead body” when I asked! HSTs are her preferred choice, but we must wait and see what happens following the consultation.

    The other plan is to increase the off-peak frequency of services from Moorgate, such that there will be a train every 15 minutes. Good news for WGC and Herford North passengers, but all this is subject to agreements with TfL (both sides want it, so I guess it comes down to funding). I am not sure if more 313s would be required, but such an increase in service would presumably impact on long-term reliability/servicing issues.

    Comment by Jonathan Morris — January 27, 2007 #

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