It could be that the cheery chappie above is the one has chosen to link Derbyshire's Hope Valley ...
With every milligram of goodwill, fbb finds it hard to justify the comparison, even with the added "mini".
Scanning through the report, it becomes clear that the mini label does not refer to geography, but does refer to public transport. Even then, as we saw in last Friday's blog, there is no comparison!
What Mr Abelman is suggesting is that the Hope Valley should have public transport which could be a microcosm of that in Switzerland.
We all know how excellent public transport is in the land if cheese, cuckoo clocks and lederhosen! Everything runs on time and everything connects!
Both are generally true, but there is a price to pay. Switzerland is an expensive country in which to dwell, an expensive country to visit and a hugely expensive country in which to eat and drink. It's the taxes, innit!
Whilst transport does connect well with itself, that is often at the expense of speed as trains linger longer at interchange stations than, for example, in the UK.
But let us review train services on the Hope Valley line.
Transpennine runs hourly between Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Cleethorpes.
Apart from some peak hour stops for commuters between Dore and Sheffield, trains ignore the Hope Valley local stops, as does ...
... East Midlands Railway also running every hour.
It's a long straggly table which fbb has curtailed at Nottingham. Again there are some local calls at peak times.
If this were Switzerland, you would expect the fast services to make at least one call in the Valley itself for the tourist trade.
But all the study area gets is ...
... with an hourly stopping service between Manchester and Sheffield.
It's presentation is a right mess, as is the "printable" timetable.
The layout is made even more complicated because timings are slightly different Mondays to Fridays versus Saturdays,
Such a nonsense would NOT be tolerated in Switzerland.
Wisely, the report is not proposing changes in any rail timetable. The aim is to improve bus services and offer full integration with the Northern stopping service.
In passing, it is worth noting that within living memory (well, fbb's memory) the ONLY stopping passenger train service via the Hope Valley was an irregular timetable between Sheffield and New Mills with connections (often inadequate) on to Manchester.
Mr Ableman is more interested in the bus services.
Currently these are on offer, in order of "significance".
One bus was branded by First! The 272 was historically joint with North Western Road Car, but more recently with the doomed Hulleys of Baslow.
It runs approx hourly and offers double deck vehicles. 
The replacement for Hulleys is High Peak Buses ...
... which used to be Trent. Former Trent "Skyline" branded single deckers have often appeared. The route is main road all the way to Castleton ...
... with buses diverting via Bradwell either on the outward journey or the return.
Next is the 257. This runs due west from the City as far as the reservoirs, then drops south to Bamford, Hathersage and Bakewell.
Once a very infrequent 44 (later 244) by Sheffield Transport, it was often worked by this vehicle ...
... with conductor, of course. As a nostalgia snippet, the lunchtime departure from Sheffield was STD's first ever one man bus! It carried more staff (inspectors, observers and trainees) than genuine passengers.
The route was developed massively by Hulleys and is now hourly ...
... but with much diversion on Schooldays!
The operator is now Andrews if Tideswell ...
... having taken over from Hulleys.
In a sense, the 257 merely crosses the Hope Valley at Bamford and Hathersage ...
... but, as we shall see, does feature in the Switzerland report.
The 173 ...
... Andrews, formerly Hulleys ...
... is a delightful country route.
Then there is High Peak 62 ...
... not renowned for its frequency.
These two are best examined in conjunction with the Ableman report as, if the plan were implemented, they would see the most change.
So how would Mini Switzerland seek to improve these services?
Tomorrow's blog will reveal all.
Next Mini-Switzerland blog : Tues 24th Feb
Whilst Swiss public transport is both efficient and expensive it’s not necessarily due to the tax system. Income Tax varies according to each Canton, some of which are lower than the British rates, whilst VAT is just 8%.
ReplyDeleteSwiss trains most certainly do not "linger longer at interchange stations". In fact, anyone of reduced mobility would find difficulty in making connections within the time allowed.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the Tideswell bus operator is owned by the Andrew family, so as it says on the side of the buses, the operator's name is Andrew's.
To provide some background:-
ReplyDeleteas fbb will know, the Hope Valley has long been a place where Sheffield residents go for days out. Over the years this has increasingly been by car, with all the ills of traffic congestion, particularly in and around Castleton. The aims of Hope Valley Climate Action's transport group are to make it easier for residents to get about by public transport and for visitors to leave their cars at home.
I live at the other end of Derbyshire, but share HVCA's aims, so was invited to join a Zoom call last week to introduce the "Mini-Switzerland" report. Thomas Ableman said that he was a regular visitor to Switzerland and had been looking for somewhere similar in England to carry out a project to show whether a system of Swiss-style connections could work here.
Regarding rail, we didn't go back to 1978, but it was stated that now that the stopping train was scheduled to be hourly, with none of the previous gaps, and Pacers had been replaced by new 195's, patronage of local stations was at least twice what it was ten years ago.
Note that all the bus services, apart from 272, are Derbyshire contracts, so "developed by Hulleys" is not really true.
I wont pre-empt future blogs, but I may have more to say later.
Switzerland is 'expensive' because of the hardening exchange rate. In 1975 there were around 5SFR to the Pound. In 1999 the figure was 2.38; the £ and the SFR are now virtually at parity. The dollar and the euro haven't fallen quite as fast, but have still dropped significantly. So the country is expensive to foreigners, but not really for the locals. The Swiss have partly recognised this in throwing in all sorts of extras with SwissPasses that aren't available to locals, while public transport is free for hotel guests in Ticino. The Swiss do subsidise public transport more than the UK, but that goes for much of the civilised world. Also, the whole sytem, bus, rail , boat- is marketed as a single entitiy with copious through bookings and good connections- surely an example worth emulating.
ReplyDelete