On Fri, 14 May 2004, Solar Penguin wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote...

Of course; my gripe (which i admit is mostly just for the fun of
griping) is that many of these could have been got right when the
lines were built in the first place.

But many of those lines were built by rival companies, competing with
each other, not co-operating.

I realised that about ten minutes after i posted - doh!

Anyway, i don't know what order those lines were built in, but whichever
was built later could have put a station at the crossing, that's the
thing.

They probably considered it, and decided against it because they'd have
trouble getting a good working agreement with their rivals.

(To give an extreme hypothetical example, if you're the second company
and you charge two shillings for a ticket to London, you're not likely
to build an interchange with a company that only charges one shilling!)

I'm not 100% convinced by this. The fare structures would be such that it
wouldn't make sense to come into London with company A and change to
company B - it's unlikely the saving of a Country - Interchange ticket
over a Country - Terminus ticket would be enough to pay for a separate
Interchange - Terminus ticket with compnay B. Your only problem would be
people starting a journey near the station choosing the other company over
you, but then they're probably in a position to do that anyway.

tom

--
The burger place at the bottom of the Cowley road has a menu numbered from 1-80, but you can order up to 120 -- Dave Sheldon