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February 16, 2008
Milk producers
Why do we drink cow's milk, but not pig's milk?
Cows can produce around 65 pints of milk a day, whereas pigs produce around 17 pints. And pigs milk has to be collected from goodness knows how many teats, whereas cows have just 4 bigguns. Then you have the issue that pigs can't become pregnant while lactating whereas cows can, and that pig milk comes out a lot slower than cow's milk ....
What has this got to do with trains?
The Intercity 125 service from London Paddington to Bristol is a "cash cow" for First Great Western, and services run by 142 / 143 / 150 / 153 / 158 trains are pigs to finance. Not only does a "125" have many more seats, but the train runs faster too. So it takes more money per seat in a certain time, with fewer crew. It keeps taking the money for longer too since journey times tend to be longer, and because of a peverse fare system customers are charged much more per unit of product for the service that's cheaper to provide. Don't shoot the messenger, folks - sorry, that's the gist of the FGW operation and helps to explain why the 125s I was on last week were comfortable, but the "West" trains were overcrowded to the point of discomfort.
But there's rather more to it than that. For sure the "West" service will never produce a revenue stream that makes a significant contribution to the Chancellor directly - but it can sure as heck help the financial and economic case for the area and - at least in the case of the TransWilts history - there's a very high proportion of traffic on the local train that goes on to the main line service.
The majority of our customers now drive to Melksham. From Yeovil, from Warrington, from London, from Cambridge, from South Wales just recently. Customers who - in the past - would have travelled here all the way by train. But the options of "get a taxi from Chippenham", "get a bus from Bath" or "Sleep on the platform at Swindon and get the 06:18" attract only a minority. And the result is that the cutting of that 10 minute link, just a few times a day, has resulted in a huge loss of profitable business!
A return ticket between Melksham and London now costs over 100 pounds. Most customer on the route would travel (our business anyway) on main line 125 trains that have spare capacity anyway (timing details available) so a realistic accountant could put the whole of that 100 pounds down as TransWilts income. Let's see. If that was just 2 round journeys a day, just 5 days a week and 50 weeks a year, we're looking at an income for First of £50,000. And don't I recall that there used to be not 2 but 20 on each train.
Me thinks the cows will yield far more milk if they're given the pigs back to keep them company. And they'll all be much happier too.
Posted by gje at February 16, 2008 09:57 PM