Lots of rather strange assumptions are appearing here - like that almost all Manchester trains are 11-car. That of course is nonsense. Just like Liverpool, the diagram ratio of each type will be fairly similar to the split of the 56-strong fleet. 35 are 11-car, 21 are 9-car. (Liverpool had 10 long and seven short sets last time that I dug out the diagrams).
Manchester Piccadilly's annual London market passenger numbers alone were 3.25 million in 2014-15, and before that Stockport's numbers were quoted as 800,000. Add in Wilmslow and the total just from those three stations must be well over 4.5 million in 2017 allowing for even modest growth figures. Smaller numbers from the MCR no doubt also use trains from Wigan, Warrington and Macclesfield.
Manchester trains are also responsible for about 35-40% of available seats from Crewe on Virgin trains and 100% of those from Stoke.
I think we can safely discount the 'evidence' supplied by those on here with a bias. If there really were that many empty seats on the Manchester services how come a fiercely commercial organisation like Virgin decided to promote the Scottish and Liverpool routes by slashing the price of advance booking tickets? Yet those kind of very cheap fares are not currently being offered on the Manchester trains....
It doesnt really matter if they are all 11 or all 9 car sets used, even if you HALF the number of seats most of them are still empty when the train leaves or arrives at Manchester.
And it is that what we are talking about. I dont really care how many join the train further down the line we are talking about Manchester and Manchester alone.
Even at half the amount of seats at about 10,000,000 3,250,000 passengers means that more than half the seats are empty.
Most of the comments after are just justifying a service. Crewe and Stoke could for instance be serviced by trains starting at Preston or Liverpool. The problem is they have to be serviced by trains from Manchester otherwise almost all the trains that leave and arrive would be empty from end to end.
The evidence was supplied by you and the FT Vulcan, I just used it to illustrate a point, if there is any bias it is by you ignoring the facts you are presented.
Trying to say its wrong because Virgin offer a discount on one service and not the other is just a load of crap to try and divert attention away from the fact that most of the seats are empty when the trains leave and arrive in Manchester.
The actual number of seats is probably near 15,000,000 not 20,000,000, but from my example that only give 10,000,000 you can clearly see they are mostly empty. The real numbers just make it worse.
A doubling of base service frequency from 1TPH to 2TPH will of it's own accord lead to a natural increase in ridership - I've seen suggestions it can often add 20% extra numbers by the end of the initial 5-year period. HS2 will deliver this of course.
The current availability of fast trains from Wigan, Warrington and Chester will obviously subtract from the Lime St / Runcorn figures. However they are all currently just an hourly frequency too, so in that regard they have no benefit over Liverpool. I suspect the recent £17 cheap fare initiative has actually attracted some off-peak passengers who previously used Wigan, Warrington and Chester out of choice.
The service that originally was to have called at Stafford will now stop at Crewe instead, providing around 25% of the seats from Crewe rather than 100% of the seats from Stafford.
Commendable although the recent rise in passengers from Liverpool is, Virgin have stated that much of it was achieved by slashing the advance standard off-peak fare by almost 23% compared to Manchester's cheapest equivalent fare. The old adage of pile 'em' high and sell 'em' cheap is appropriate. The oversupply of 'goods' being unsold off-peak seats - the number of trains is exactly the same as in 2013 (17 from Liverpool, 18 to).
That tactic will have attracted new passengers, but also passengers from other railheads in the North West that were more expensive, such as Warrington. It shows that some markets are just very price sensitive.
The $64,000 question is whether those numbers would fall down if the fares went back up to £22 minimum, also how many more new passengers would choose to use Manchester's trains if the off-peak price on those dropped to £17? The much higher business usage of Manchester's trains probably explains why those trains are on average more expensive to ride on.
If you look at the actual ticket costs from for instance Warrington BQ or Central which is about £5 at its cheapest or £10 at any useful time and the additional time of just about 1 hour would negate anybody doing what you suggest is the case, as the £5 you save on the express train is spent on the train getting into Lime street but it takes an hour to do it.
The on the day ticket prices from Warrington BQ and Lime street are the same.
Another point of your which is offered up in order to misdirect that just doesnt stand any klnd of scrutiny.
That would be a very, very dumb thing for Virgin Rail Group to do. Which of course fits with you being the one to make the suggestion - and it's always you, isn't it!
hno:
Reality check: Virgin trains would lose a shedload of money by ignoring / annoying it's largest earning market - which it isn't ever going to do, not in a million years. And remember that Manchester provides almost four times as many business travellers (1,836 to 491 a day). These are the people that actually make the train service pay. A single business traveller at 7am can provide as much ticket revenue as ten people travelling on off-peak £17 advance fares.
There's a good argument to bolster Liverpool's current meagre offering but there is no sensible argument to reduce Manchester's frequency back down to 2TPH. By any standards MCR provides at least twice as many bums on Inter-City seats than LCR does.
Havent you been banned in the past for making such personal attacks in the past? You really need to stop letting your emotion control your language, its just a discussion Vulcan!
Virgin wouldnt lose a shedload of money at all.
Manchester does indeed provide twice the number of passengers however it gets triple the amount of services. There is a disparity there that even you cant fail to see when layed down like that, surely?
Going on that basis, remembering Liverpool trains are only 20% full then its possible to service Manchester with 2tph and still have a similar or even higher amount of bums on seats, which means you are getting more income for less. Virgin would be better off cutting it down to 2tph, because the same amount of people would travel an hour only the business overhead would be less.
With the exception of Wimslow and Stockport, because those passengers would wait at those stations for the train rather than get a slower train that would be over taken on its way to Crewe for instance, then all the passengers that use the Manchester trains could and would still be serviced even if that train was to start at Liverpool rather than Manchester. You have to remember the facts, facts that show it is the intermediate stops that are important, Macclesfield passengers go to Crewe on a very good local service and are serviced there, Stoke couldnt see a Liverpool service and still get the service it requires.
The full fare paying business users would still pay fill fares as most of the come from intermediate stations anyway so that argument is mute.
Virgin/Stagecoach's methodology is well known and formed part of their 2012 franchise bid with an explicit promise to grow the business and fill the recently lengthened Pendolino trains. We all know the history of the First win etc. Part of the remit of the current management contract VRG have with the DFT is to maximise growth and revenue where they think it can be achieved - and due to the lack of peak hours paths and no new trains, on the West Coast franchise any real growth has to come from increasing passenger numbers off-peak when there are lots of empty seats.
They said they have taken the (commercial) decision to lower prices and attract more punters - I assume this has resulted overall in higher farebox revenue for VRG. All well and good. In fact they have taken a leaf out of First's book. This from the Guardian in 2012 before the franchise re-let was cancelled, quoting First's Tim O'Toole..
You mentioned price elasticity and price sensitivity... so why do you think the fares were dropped on the Liverpool route, but not on the Manchester route? It's clearly a deliberate strategy isn't it? So why?
I just went onto nationalrail website, a plugged in a random date of 23/11/17 and a time of between 8 and 9 in the morning. (chosen just because it is in about a months time)
A train from Liverpool - Euston leaving at 08:40 costs £43
A train from Manchester- Euston leaving at 08:40 costs £38.50
Shall we try another random date to see if the ticket prices are different or shall we cherry pick a date that we know there is a sale offer on on the Liverpool service and compare it with a none sale offer date on the Manchester service and compare those prices?
Off peak advance tickets are about equal Vulcan... Unless you want to be picky and say that Liverpool tickets are slightly more expensive than those in Manchester, which clearly shows some markets are more sensitive to pricing.