Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
When we were in the Premier League my son and his mate got the Valley Express from Romsey, which for those who've never heard of it is just north of Southampton, for the Sheff Weds game as I couldn't go. They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock. I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
When we were in the Premier League my son and his mate got the Valley Express from Romsey, which for those who've never heard of it is just north of Southampton, for the Sheff Weds game as I couldn't go. They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock. I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
We ran all sorts of routes in the PL, including Hampshire. It was convenient to pick up in Romsey, but the main boarding points were Andover and Basingstoke, where it was a collection point for those travelling from further west.
We couldn’t sustain the Hants and Essex routes in the Championship, although West Sussex continued for many years. What’s left is a rump that doesn’t work well because there are too many pick-ups, but the idea was sound and has proven resilient.
We subsidised some of the routes from profits on away travel (in all divisions) and substantial group ticket sales to schools and football clubs. The latter market just isn’t there in L1.
On the database marketing it’s very simple to limit emails to relevant postcodes. We could do that a dozen years ago. They are pretty obvious. I think if you send irrelevant messages to people you do incur an opportunity cost, but I’m not sure the staff understand the geography.
Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
When we were in the Premier League my son and his mate got the Valley Express from Romsey, which for those who've never heard of it is just north of Southampton, for the Sheff Weds game as I couldn't go. They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock. I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
We ran all sorts of routes in the PL, including Hampshire. It was convenient to pick up in Romsey, but the main boarding points were Andover and Basingstoke, where it was a collection point for those travelling from further west.
We couldn’t sustain the Hants and Essex routes in the Championship, although West Sussex continued for many years. What’s left is a rump that doesn’t work well because there are too many pick-ups, but the idea was sound and has proven resilient.
We subsidised some of the routes from profits on away travel (in all divisions) and substantial group ticket sales to schools and football clubs. The latter market just isn’t there in L1.
On the database marketing it’s very simple to limit emails to relevant postcodes. We could do that a dozen years ago. They are pretty obvious. I think if you send irrelevant messages to people you do incur an opportunity cost, but I’m not sure the staff understand the geography.
How far into Essex did the valley express go in the glory days?
Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
When we were in the Premier League my son and his mate got the Valley Express from Romsey, which for those who've never heard of it is just north of Southampton, for the Sheff Weds game as I couldn't go. They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock. I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
We ran all sorts of routes in the PL, including Hampshire. It was convenient to pick up in Romsey, but the main boarding points were Andover and Basingstoke, where it was a collection point for those travelling from further west.
We couldn’t sustain the Hants and Essex routes in the Championship, although West Sussex continued for many years. What’s left is a rump that doesn’t work well because there are too many pick-ups, but the idea was sound and has proven resilient.
We subsidised some of the routes from profits on away travel (in all divisions) and substantial group ticket sales to schools and football clubs. The latter market just isn’t there in L1.
On the database marketing it’s very simple to limit emails to relevant postcodes. We could do that a dozen years ago. They are pretty obvious. I think if you send irrelevant messages to people you do incur an opportunity cost, but I’m not sure the staff understand the geography.
Still clunky when compared to GIS based solutions, which were old hat a dozen years ago !
Not that I use it (I live in London) but that does look a reasonably priced alternative to get to games. I’ve always thought the club should have tried a bit more to expand the service to attract more users. There must be areas in those two counties plus Surrey and Hampshire judging by the numbers that cross the bridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo mainline after a game where there are enough fans and other potential users of the service to make it worth the club trialling coaches and a few pick up points. Between strikes and constant engineering works SW Trains has been a real pain in the arse in recent years on matchdays and for others who can’t just switch to using the tube having the coach service would probably look more reliable.
When we were in the Premier League my son and his mate got the Valley Express from Romsey, which for those who've never heard of it is just north of Southampton, for the Sheff Weds game as I couldn't go. They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock. I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
We ran all sorts of routes in the PL, including Hampshire. It was convenient to pick up in Romsey, but the main boarding points were Andover and Basingstoke, where it was a collection point for those travelling from further west.
We couldn’t sustain the Hants and Essex routes in the Championship, although West Sussex continued for many years. What’s left is a rump that doesn’t work well because there are too many pick-ups, but the idea was sound and has proven resilient.
We subsidised some of the routes from profits on away travel (in all divisions) and substantial group ticket sales to schools and football clubs. The latter market just isn’t there in L1.
On the database marketing it’s very simple to limit emails to relevant postcodes. We could do that a dozen years ago. They are pretty obvious. I think if you send irrelevant messages to people you do incur an opportunity cost, but I’m not sure the staff understand the geography.
How far into Essex did the valley express go in the glory days?
Colchester on the A12, if I remember correctly. Certainly Chelmsford. It was hard work and mostly a minibus. We could never make it work on the A13, although we had loads of junior football clubs come from that area.
The point of Valley Express in Kent and Sussex was to develop support, so we advertised externally and also used the passengers to promote it in their community. The existing fans on board were the ballast, if you like, which made the service possible, building on existing CASC run coaches from Canterbury/Ashford, Maidstone and Hastings/Bexhill.
These routes had developed because people locally had decided to run them. The thinking was not to rely on there being a keen fan to do it but to go to places where there wasn’t one and make it happen there too.
Also if you were selling an empty seat at The Valley for £20, it was worth subsidising the journey by £2-£3 to secure the ticket revenue.
The schools and junior football clubs introduced potential new fans, who paid for their tickets btw, and they then had a way to get to The Valley on the regular coaches. The fringe routes were more about enabling existing fans to get to The Valley if there were enough of them.
We had three seasons of doing this in the PL and up to 5,000 travelling on some matchdays to games like Wigan and Blackburn where there were enough spare tickets. I still meet people now who became fans after coming in those trips, but it was the Premier League.
It’s very hard to attract new people in L1, especially from further afield, but focusing the marketing on existing fans who are already coming is kind of missing the point for me.
It’s very hard to attract new people in L1, especially from further afield, but focusing the marketing on existing fans who are already coming is kind of missing the point for me.
Also existing fans from further afield have less incentive to attend games with the new TV deal. TV access is definitely part of the reason my last season ticket purchase was 3 seasons ago.
It’s very hard to attract new people in L1, especially from further afield, but focusing the marketing on existing fans who are already coming is kind of missing the point for me.
Also existing fans from further afield have less incentive to attend games with the new TV deal. TV access is definitely part of the reason my last season ticket purchase was 3 seasons ago.
It’s likely true that the support dies off more quickly at the periphery of the catchment area when the appeal of the football fades, which is why there is a business case for subsiding travel (at least mitigating the cost financially if not in terms of time). Successive regimes have instead focused on trying to get Valley Express to break even, which has further shrunk the service and reduced its ability to attract new fans (too many pick-ups on more popular routes; fares set too high).
It’s really not important if the coaches lose £200 a time if they bring in an extra £200 of net ticket revenue at the stadium when you have 10,000 empty seats, but for some reason that has always been a challenging argument to make. Obviously there is a tipping point at which you don’t run a coach, hence some routes were withdrawn over time. I think the problem lies in the assumption that passengers will come anyway.
I can only speak of the Hastings coach but I’d say we normally have between 2 and 6 spare seats on a 51 seater coach but even those spaces could be someone with a VE season ticket who missed that game.
Cheers.
So how many other coaches are normally parked up when you get off/get back on?
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SAVE £69 WITH A VALLEY EXPRESS SEASON TICKET
https://www.charltonafc.com/news/save-ps69-valley-express-season-ticketI live in Beckenham, they have my address, couldn't they filter out the fans not in the catchment area for these pickups?
They did say that the journey was long as there were a number of pick-up points on the way and if I remember they weren't back until after 9 o'clock.
I personally don't think it's viable to pick up from such a distance.
Look out for numbers 161, 177, 180 and 472
We couldn’t sustain the Hants and Essex routes in the Championship, although West Sussex continued for many years. What’s left is a rump that doesn’t work well because there are too many pick-ups, but the idea was sound and has proven resilient.
Also if you were selling an empty seat at The Valley for £20, it was worth subsidising the journey by £2-£3 to secure the ticket revenue.
We had three seasons of doing this in the PL and up to 5,000 travelling on some matchdays to games like Wigan and Blackburn where there were enough spare tickets. I still meet people now who became fans after coming in those trips, but it was the Premier League.
It’s very hard to attract new people in L1, especially from further afield, but focusing the marketing on existing fans who are already coming is kind of missing the point for me.