Is modern train design already out of date?

Peak demand is the problem, on both rail and road. It is time we started to seriously look at staggering working hours. The simple way to make better use of existing rail and road capacity. Oh, and we could also relocate workplaces away from the heavily congested areas to reduce the commuting distance necessary.
We need to think about more innovative ideas than simply adding more roads, more and bigger trains and infrastructure, used for a limited part of the day only. it’s an expensive and inefficient use of resources and staff, isn’t it?

The money might be better spent on cutting down our dependence on travel, both public and private transport, especially for travel to work. Is it that difficult to vary working hours to spread the load? Employees might well be amenable to the opportunity to change their hours and avoid travel problems.

I question whether making commuting easier should be the target. I believe that we need more people living near where they work, so they can walk or cycle, and do so in safety.

In his introduction, Ian suggests the possibility of ‘comfortable standing alternatives’. I don’t mind if Ian wants to stand, but packing people in will encourage the spread of viral diseases. Even if we don’t consider the wellbeing of travellers, time off work through illness has financial implications for employers.

The Hitachi trains do have longer carriages, do you mean longer trains overall?

I’m not sure it’s the trains that are the problem, as your featured comment says, it’s peak demand. It’s also people. Social idiosyncrasies and a traditional service pattern means there’s not too much more that can be done to tackle this however.

Improving trains is an ongoing process, they can be specced any way you choose. Take thameslink. New trains coming soon but they will be focused more on standing passengers. This is fine from say St Albans to Croydon, but for anyone further out, the trains are terribly uncomfortable. Considering these trains are designed specifically for the route, it’s a shame they haven’t provided a variety of standard class configurations to give some table backs and arm rests to people travelling from Bedford or Brighton.

I drive to work now and it’s just as bad, despite having a job I can easily do from home. Office working is fine but management culture is set in stone for people in all but the creative industries where you have to be seen.

We travelled from North Wales to Switzerland by train, recently, and it was a revelation. The best trains were Eurostar and Swiss; DBahn was a let down, although Thales was pretty good. The Swiss mainline trains are double decker, with first class boarding on the level, meaning easy roll-on for cases. But I’m afraid I disagree strongly with Neil when he says “in Europe and the US trains are roomy, air conditioned and have proper comfortable seats that allow you to work”. We didn’t travel on any train with larger or more comfortable seats than Virgin’s West coast service or Eurostar, and some were decidedly less pleasant. We don’t commute, of course, so we know nothing about that side of things.

I’m not sure what the term “design classic” means with reference to the dire bus which Boris Johnson has inflicted on London. Its seats may be larger than on proper buses but they don’t offer more space for passengers – they simply mean that your knees are squashed in (and the stupidly low ceiling means that you bang your head every time you stand up even when you’re average height).
When you look at the lower deck, the impression you get is that someone has been to some kind of second hand furniture shop and picked up a bunch of not quite matching chairs and chucked them in in the forlorn hope that they might just fit.
The tiny windows make journeys even on a sunny day a gloomy experience and the fact that they don’t open makes the bus unbearably hot and stuffy at pretty much any time of the year.
I’m sure that the LED lights are energy efficient but they also make the bus gloomy and unwelcoming on darker days. The energy saving created by not adding a few more LEDs is completely wiped out by the fact that the supposed hybrid nature of the bus never works – I travel regularly on the Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 hybrids and the Thomas Heatherwick London bus and the very obvious difference is that the Enviro 400 is silent at bus stops; the diesel cuts out and the electric motor is used as the bus pulls away from the stop. By contrast the broken Heatherwick Bus makes an intolerable level of noise whenever it stops.
I don’t know what the Hitachi trains are like on GWR but they would have to be really bad to be worse than the bad joke Boris has played (at massive cost) on the people of London.

New iconic ‘New Routemaster@ jaw drop! It is as far away from the original Routemaster as you might manage if you actually set out to make make the antitheses of the original’s well conceived design, which has – over 60 years, seen the bus length extended – twice, the prime mover upgraded – at least twice, and the transmission also changed. All this on a vehicle which drastically reduced the tare weight through being the first truly monocoque mass produced bus used in London. The original Routemaster (4 bays) weight in at under 8 tons, and the New Routemaster…. the Stretch XRM (5 bay) vehicles I suspect can be plated to carry more passengers too for a lower GVW.

The Routemaster also included a key ‘London’ requirement in its design – just as the London Taxi spec goes for a vehicle which is highly manouevrable, so the RM can dance through congested streets and tight spaces. The design of London bus stations currently is dictated by the wide swept space that a New Routemaster requires to swing in and out, even compared to other buses in use.

TfL London Rail actually demonstrated a commonsense approach with the fleet of trains ordered for LOROL services, by having lockable, opening windows included in the spec, despite the trains being air conditioned. One of the key things that makes or breaks a heat transfer system is the ability of the condenser (the place that heat removed from the place which needs cooling is sent to be dumped) has to be operating where the surrounding air is cool enough to take away the heat coming in.

With an overheated condenser the system then begins to work in reverse, taking heat in at the condenser and dumping it out at the place you are trying to cool down. I’ve yet to see any definitive answers to that roastmaster problem but options might include the external air temperature created by the heat island effect of the hard landscaping and paved areas in Central London and the lack of vegetation, or even simply water and a breeze to cool things down thus the fans draw in hot air in a vain attempt to cool down the condenser on the bus. Another option is that the particle laden air builds up a blockage on the air filters on the condenser cooling intake, and dramatically reduces the efficiency of the system. Pulling a bus out of service and than testing in in the shaded and usually cooler location of the bus workshops won’t replicate the on-street conditions. The pragmatic approach is of course, to have opening windows, and also to recognise that most of the passengers will be dressed to walk to & from the bus in the prevailing weather conditions, and all they really need is a light touch of heat or cooling to keep them comfortable in the clothing they are wearing for the conditions outside….

Your correspondent has had a bad journey to work and takes it out on the keyboard.
Longer carriages or trains are impossible here in the north with our single-class suburban trains limited by the track and platforms cut back in the 1980s to save money. Double deck trains are impossible due to Victorian infrastructure restricting height and width enjoyed by our European cousins.
We don’t have restaurant cars either, just a trolley for longer distance services. The interiors of new trains are smaller because of the tilt angle for higher speed running.
Just be grateful you have a modern train to get to work. Ours are over 30 years old

I’m inclined to agree up to a point with dieseltaylor.

The title for this article is “Is modern train design already out of date” and you haven’t given any reason as to why you think that. It does seem to be a rant without any discernible facts to back up your claims.

What I don’t agree with is the idea to turn everything into a cycleway. We all live in Britain, it is hilly and wet, it is not somewhere that will encourage cycling. There is lots of cycling in Cambridge, because it’s flat. There is lots of cycling in Holland, because it’s flat. There is also lots of cycling in Duesseldorf, because it’s flat.

I lived in Holland for a bit and cycling is the best way round. Mostly due to the fact that distances are very small, the land is flat and there is huge provision for the cyclist.

However, you cannot apply that logic to all cities. Perhaps Manchester, but take Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham, Sheffield, no chance.

Consider also that councils put cycle “lanes” in just to satisfy the EU, so you end up with these:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=world%27s+shortest+cycle+lane&espv=2&biw=1112&bih=768&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCoQsARqFQoTCKfOs7n89sgCFQHZFAodpRQKtw

Quite simply we need to invest in infrastructure BEFORE we build new areas.

I used to work in London with a five day week stretching from 8.30 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. – 37.5 hours per week after taking off the one hour lunch break. My travel time was close to one hour each way.

I always felt that a four day week of about 9 hours worktime with flexitime would have been much better. The nine hours would fit in between 8.00 a.m. and 6.00 p.m. and could help with the individual journey times. My idea was to have a rotating day off so that every five weeks I would have had a long weekend when the Friday and Monday would coincide – marvellous for short holiday breaks – and routine medical things like dentist appointments could be fitted in on days off.

But the ‘hidden’ benefit would be that traffic overall would be reduced by about 20% as each worker would only be out and struggling to get to work on four days out of the ‘normal’ five. This in itself would reduce the stress of travelling and speed up journey times, in my case by at least 15 minutes each way!

One glaring error in the item and a major reason why trains are so overcrowded. GWR isn’t about to purchase any trains, train operating companies don’t own their rolling stock they lease it from companies like Angel Trains. This is all part and parcel of the botched privatisation and leads to overcrowding because the operating companies want to keep their costs down so lease as few coaches as they can get away with.

Rather than 1970’s engineering it’s 1990’s politics that are responsible for your overcrowded train.

My biggest complaint is seat design, headrests in particular when will designers realise that some of the populous have a longer torso than average and fitting wrap round headrests are very uncomfortable for us. Also for leisure travellers they like to look out of the window not stare at the wall, its time we introduced standards for seats regarding the size of seat swabs, height off the floor, height and angle of the seat back so designers are not just concentrating on its looks like they are at the moment.

If only we were stuck in 1970’s train design. The Mk3 coaches from then are still the most quiet, comfortable and practical (eg usable luggage racks) even with the extra seats that have been crammed in. If you want modern design suitable for commuters, look at the new London Overground trains. Don’t pine for double deck – it just slows down the train with extended boarding and alighting times.

The Trains need to be wider they could fit more passengers. The old GWR was 7ft gauge. Bristol to Paddington could be be rebuilt with wider trains. Most of the clearance is still there. Not 7ft but the current 4.8 track has always been more generous in the centre between as a result of the old gauge.

I certainly do not regard the current train seating arrangement that is hardly different to that found in aircraft, and sadly even road coaches to be satisfactory. I have to admit that I felt the old stock where there were 6 or 8 seats in a single compartment with its own internal door accessing the corridor was more comfortable, quieter, and, with storage space above the seats discouraged passengers from placing their luggage on an adjacent seat. Tell me I am old fashioned, but I did prefer my older, more comfortable train journeys in these trains .