Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Business fears over loss of Wrexham & Shropshire trains
Friday 28th January 2011, 8:32AM GMT.
Business leaders today raised fears over the impact the loss of Shropshire’s direct rail link to London could have on the county.
Operator Wrexham & Shropshire is due to wind up the service today.
The link was launched less than three years ago but bosses have blamed falling passenger numbers for the decision, saying that last year alone the service made a loss of nearly £3 million.
Today business officials said the route was important to the county.
Richard Sheehan, managing director of Shropshire Chamber of Commerce and Excellence, said: “Everybody is deeply saddened that they have been unable to make it pay.
“It is a sad blow for the area. By promoting the route in London it was providing a boost to tourism and leisure.
“As we go forward with the potential public sector job losses and the private sector having to pick up those new roles, inward investment into the area is going to be important.
“A direct route between Shropshire and London will enable businesses to make those choices.”
Peter Bettis, chairman of Shrewsbury Business Chamber, said: “We are very disappointed it didn’t become economical for them to continue with that service.
“But we’re very encouraged by our MP’s endeavour to find some way of assisting that service to continue and look forward to a successful outcome.
“We’re trying to encourage people into the area and I think it’s vitally important to provide a good service into the area.”
County politicians have joined forces to try to save the route and have called for it to be included in the next West Coast Mainline negotiations to ensure the service is not lost for too long.
Shrewsbury MP Daniel Kawczynski has written to the Rail Minister and will be appealing to the Department of Transport to secure a future for the line.
The only way of saving it is by getting another operator to take on the franchise.
Mr Kawczynski said county MPs, along with council chiefs, were battling to get the direct route included in the West Coast Mainline franchise, due to be re-tendered soon.
And David Wright, MP for Telford, yesterday raised the issue in Parliament.
By John Kirk
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This was one of the best customer services that I have ever experienced. Good value, cleanliness, punctual and a feeling of good old fashioned quality.
A real shame that it has gone. (Yes a user from Wrexham).
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Without wishing to be critical, our politicians and business leaders should have been in constant contact with Wrexham & Shropshire during the recession.
They all seem to be reacting rather than being proactive – if this was a vital link for tourism and business they should have been actively protecting it.
Thanks again W&S an excellent service undermined by politicians and accountants.
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It seems that Wrexham & Shropshire has to close today while Virgin gets £250m of our cash as subsidy. The Wrexham and Shropshire (Britain’s most acclaimed railway company) gets no subsidy and BTW, they got 3 days notice of closure.
Also do you remember Virgin moaning years ago that BA were stopping them getting slots at Heathrow? They won a court case against BA and now have those slots. Isn’t this the same firm that stopped the W & S being able to pick anyone up in Wolves and Birmingham so they ensured non profitability for the W&S, while protecting their monopoly (which is why my ticket to London next week is costing the ludicrous sum of £135!!) – that is almost the cost of a taxi to London! BTW the same ticket on the W & S was £45, was direct and a pleasure while Virgin is a nightmare.
Anyone with any green sympathies must concede that it is FAR cheaper in the UK (despite record fuel prices) to use gas-guzzling cars, pay conjestion charges and parking in London than to travel on so-called green transport like trains?
How can this possibly be right?
Is this not pure insanity?
Utter Madness…..
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too right rod 3 times the price with a quarter of the service.
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I fully agree with both of you. It is about time Branson’s over priced, over crowded shambles of a railway service was ended; along with his milking of the public purse. The Virgin “service” from Birmingam New Street to London Euston is appalling. And I am certain that following the demise of Wrexham and Shropshire, Virgin will increase its fares.
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Our mp is hoping to save this service the tory council is about to end evening buses in shrewsbury oh the caring face of conservatism,this reminds me of a chicken voting for christmas maybe the cattle trains we have from here to birmingham could now be made bigger as its too expensive to stand when there are two carridges and 300 people a vile service.
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incorrect. the night buses are not finishing. theyre simply being put back to hourly on all services. at the moment Sutton Farm has a 1/2 hourly service at night. What a joke that is!!!! TBH its hardly suprising seeing the amount of people who use them. Im a driver for Arriva and we’re mostly running round empty all night. Why should the council pay for services which arent being used????? and also
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A sad day for the rail passengers,a sad day for the staff who have lost their jobs,bad news for Shropshire as a whole.The old thing “Money” wins the day again,becuase it can’t make enough cash to line shareholders pockets.
Tory party you have a lot to answer for when you sold off Britain’s railways,we don’t all have a personal car & driver to take us where we want-all becuase you hated the concept of state ownership.
Please leave our NHS alone you have wrecked enough things in the past!
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Sorry i cant belive uproar about a train service. If was such good value for money and excellent service, then why is it closing. Simple because not enough people use it. Like any business if its not making money it has to close.
I just hope that all these so called business men and other train users moan as much when other services(health/hospital/wefare services) are facing cuts hit home. But i doubt it as it proberbly will not concern them.
LONG LIVE THE CAR!!!
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4&5
Very good! blame the Conservatives after Labour had ten years in Government!
The economy was managed by Gordon Brown for 10 years, it will take another 10 years to recover.
Never ever forget that Labour led us into this recession and dumped us with the cost.
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WSM has been a great service which I’ve used many times and it’s outrageous that it has to go when Shropshire’s rail alternatives to reach London are so dire (eg. from Shrewsbury it’s faster to go over 30 miles north to Crewe first, while at Birmingham the train often arrives just as the London train is leaving).
Yet again Shropshire will be the only English county without a through service to London. Population wise, Shrewsbury is bigger than a good number of other destinations which have an unthreatened through service, eg. Kings Lynn, Hereford, or anywhere on the North Wales coast. Not only that, but Shrewsbury also feeds a good number of onward routes, which these other places don’t. Telford is of course bigger still, and one of the fastest growing towns in the country, but treated with equal contempt by the larger rail companies.
Trouble is, all the present news is likely to be just a flash in the pan since most people are so car-orientated, bungling on in the mistaken belief that train fares compare directly with fuel costs.
I would love to see more support for our railways, but I fear that our media and our MPs will very soon lose interest – they usually do.
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“most people are so car-orientated, bungling on in the mistaken belief that train fares compare directly with fuel costs.”
An open return to Manchester Piccadilly tomorrow for two adults and one child costs £78.25. Avis will rent you a Peugeot 207 for the day to pick up from Telford Central at 08:00 (8 minutes before the train departs, so a fair comparison) for £46.84. The fuel will cost £24. That’s a total of £70.84. It takes half an hour less to get to Piccadilly by car. Add a few quid for parking and it probably evens up, unless you want to add a third adult, in which case the train fair goes up by £31.30, whereas the car rental, fuel and parking… doesn’t.
If you wanted to go a little further, Oxford, for example, the rail ticket would cost £114.75 (2 adults, 1 child). The car would still cost £46.84 and the fuel would cost £27, making a total of £73.84. Again, it takes half an hour less each way by car than it does on the train.
So how about Plymouth? £261.25 by train (2 adults, 1 child), or £46.84 to rent the 207, plus £57 for fuel… £103.84. 1 hour 15 minutes quicker each way by car.
Sorry, who’s mistaken?
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So the car supporters have arrived, and typically found some bias to shout about! The debate is Shrewsbury and Telford to London, not to Manchester or Plymouth.
But just for balance, most cars going into Manchester are single person occupancy. I can get a walk-up weekday return into Manchester from Shrewsbury for £22.70, and the journey time is under an hour and a half into the city centre.
If you want to bias things, I regularly travel from Shrewsbury to Fareham on the Hampshire coast. Last month I did this trip of over 200 miles for £13.75 (one way), including a very useful business stop in London. As part of this I did the 158 miles from Crewe to London in just 90 minutes – completely impossible by car.
Of course the car is best for many journeys where public transport is less of an option or for group journeys, but we don’t need car-biased people to tell us this.
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Some bias? That’s a laugh. You said “most people are so car-orientated, bungling on in the mistaken belief that train fares compare directly with fuel costs” so I gave some random examples that I picked this morning. They weren’t carefully chosen in any way, just three destinations that came into my head for no apparent reason, other than they could be places that people might need to go to from time to time. There was nothing in your statement about comparing the cost of one very specific journey for a single passenger at what appears to be the lowest possible, never-to-be-repeated and possibly-made-up fare.
The fact is, most journeys do not begin at a railway station, neither do they end at one, nor do they always involve just one passenger. The only way to persuade the nation to take the train instead of the car is to make it an attractive proposition. At the moment it is not an attractive proposition. If it was, I might be persuaded to change my mind (because I’m flexible, open minded and willing to accept different ideas, you see).
I just checked Trainline and looked at the Shrewsbury/Fareham details. The cheapest one way ticket I could find costs £40.00, but arrives during the evening, which isn’t particularly useful unless that’s when you happen to want to arrive. Which, if you’re on business, is unlikely. An open return on a weekday costs £165, so your £13.75 one way ticket is either an amazing deal, or you accidentally moved the decimal point or you travelled at some bizarre hour, or perhaps on a day of the week that hasn’t been invented yet. Oh, and it takes four and a half hours. You can drive there from Shrewsbury at a relaxed pace in just over three and a half. You could even use those extra two hours (one spare hour there, one spare hour back) to stop somewhere pleasant for a decent cup of coffee, or even a nice two course meal. Or you could just depart later and return home earlier. Or take a more scenic route. In fact, the car starts to give you something interesting here… choice.
What is the appeal of the train? Why are dedicated train users so zealous and protective about such an overpriced, inconvenient “service”? I don’t get it – I really don’t.
Incidentally, the cheapest ticket I could find to get to Edinburgh and back (from Telford Central) for me, my wife and my little boy costs £256. I could drive there and back three times and get my car serviced for that. Crazy. Bear in mind that’s the cheapest. If I wanted the flexibility of an open return (which is more comparable to driving, as you’re not restricted by peak and off-peak times) it would cost £550. The three of us could fly to Athens and back on Easyjet for that… twice!
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Years ago the new way to live was to buy a car and the world was yours. New roads built motorways tearing through the landscape, this was provided by governments and made good revenue on road tax. The state owned raiways which were well used were now costing the coffers. From this the axe fell, railways shut, stations gone.
Now we are told how bad it is for the enviroment to drive by the powers that be and how eco friendly going by train is.
The way forward to me would be to re nationlise the rail system, drop prices get people off the roads onto trains, get goods back on rail. Put all these profits into services such as direct trains to the capital from most places in the country and not worry about costs to run because the system will be run as one.
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Oh dear! Poor old Jake he lives in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that the only cost of his journey is fuel. Of course it may be possible that his car is not insured and he runs on bald tyres and does not have an MOT ??? Then of course his running cost would be less
The current rate for running a car as advised by the A A is 42p per mile.
For those of us who use Motorways will only know to well what a hazard it is to travel on them. You can spend hours at a standstill once there has been an accident As for the M25 or Birmingham M6 the volume of traffic is so great you can only move at a crawl.
So let the train take the strain and bring back Shropshire and Wrexham trains
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You forget that a very large number of frequent business travellers, me included, receive a car allowance, so the running costs really are pared down to just fuel, which is reimbursed. It’s this (very) large body of frequent business travellers that rail companies cannot lure into their carriages.
You also forgot to mention that the AA figures include standing charges that are incurred whether the car leaves the drive or not. The more miles covered, the lower the cost per mile to use the car. Being a large, economical Diesel, mine works out at around 33p, but 20p of it is covered by the car allowance anyway.
Let’s look at it another way. If I didn’t rely on my car for work, then I would buy a smaller, cheaper car – probably petrol, since I wouldn’t normally be covering long distances. At 15,000 total miles per year (quite normal for a car that does a daily commute, weekend social driving and a small amount of business miles), the AA says the running cost is 35.42 pence per mile. Since most companies reimburse at 40 pence per mile for drivers using their own cars, then it’s covered. (Ours has just raised it to 45p, but of course the last 5p is taxable). In fact, if I stood to pocket £13.60 (tax free) plus £14.85 (before tax) each time for an occasional trip to London and back, I’d be pretty tempted. Who wouldn’t be?
Modern satnav systems receive real-time traffic data, which means advance warning of problems on the roads can be taken into account and a different route chosen, avoiding trouble spots. It’s navigated me around a few problems in the last couple of years and it’s worth every penny. I don’t buy your traffic jam argument because 99.99% of the time it doesn’t stack up. Incidentally, I’ve actually chosen to crawl through the M6 rush hour many a time, because when you analyse it, you find it only adds about 5 to 10 minutes on to a journey. Hardly worth moaning about.
Do you honestly think I haven’t done the maths?
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I was thinking about this again last night and realised there’s quite a large flaw in your maths, using the AA figures. The actual numbers will vary per individual, but I’ll illustrate what I’m talking about with an example.
You own a medium Diesel family car that cost between £12k and £17k new. That’s one of the AA’s standard brackets on which their calculations are based (if you bought it second hand then your cost per mile will already be lower, as the depreciation won’t be as steep). You clock up a certain number of “background miles”, e.g. the daily commute plus regular weekend running around. Let’s say the annual background mileage is 10,000. The cost per mile, according to the AA, is 53.42 pence, so the annual cost of your background driving is £5,352.
As well as the miles that you have to do, you can do optional miles. These are non-essential journeys, such as longer day trips, perhaps using the car for some work journeys, etc. – journeys that you might do by train. Let’s say that adds up to another 5,000 miles per year. The car now does 15,000 miles in a year as a result. According to the AA, the overall cost per mile is 42.73p, so the total running cost for the year is now £6,409.50.
The 5,000 optional miles have added £1,057 to the running costs, so the cost per mile for each optional mile is 21.14 pence. That’s the number you need to work with when deciding whether it costs less to drive or to take the train, not the higher, headline, single “cost per mile” figure.
In a smaller Diesel car that does 5,000 background miles and 2,500 optional miles, the cost per optional mile plummets to around 15p. For a smaller petrol car, it remains around the 22p mark.
So it’s clear then that if you already own a car (and use it – even a little) then the likelihood is that it will be cheaper to drive than take the train.
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