I am actually going to head into the weeds with this, because I know a bit about it and I think it’s important people are as informed about this as they are about healthcare policy, education policy and the other stuff people argue about on here to do with politics. These are actually the sorts of things I was analysing for a firm working for a TOC.
You said Corby (population 50,000), Blyth (36,000) are the biggest towns without a railway service. Your source is out of date, because Corby has and Blyth will have a railway service. But these are ‘easy’ wins because they were situated on existing goods lines or mothballed lines (so the basic infrustructure such as bridges, trackbeds and so on was already there as a minimum).
Rushden (the third biggest, population around 30,000) does not, and would need a line built to it. It’s actually very similar to the line to Skelmersdale (distance off a main line and town population) which was supposed to built but keeps getting kicked down the road because the cost is estimated at 40 million quid. Similar stations (spurs off a main line, 30,000-ish population) typically have a flow of about 1000 passengers a day, which sounds impressive, but assuming you want to run 10 trains a day (let’s say hourly from 07:00 to 18:00, with a couple of off-peak gaps, quite a sparse service), an average of 100 passengers per train will just about cover the costs of daily running. So maybe that initial investment gets slowly clawed back, but then as soon as you’re in the black you have to pay for a new set of trains for that line because your current ones have just reached the end of their 25-year lifespan. Of course, the taxpayer can subsidise this, but they already do subsidise a load of unprofitable lines like that.
I mean, you can vote for what you want, but in terms of revenue and return on investment it simply isn’t going to compare with 2500 people travelling on long-distance tickets from Manchester to London twice an hour, every day.
