TransWilts / Press and Publicity report for AGM▸ / 30th January 20152014 saw the development of traffic on the Swindon to Westbury service from around 20,000 passengers annually in the previous year to around 160,000 passengers, aided by significant train service enhancements from 8th December 2013. In order to inform people of the availability of the additional services, and of the benefits it can bring to them, all partners (Wiltshire Council, First Great Western and the Community) have worked well together. We believe that's been a major contributary factor to the rapid growth, alongside the provision of the much more appropriate service for the passenger flows along the corridor than was previously provided.
Press and publicity activities in 2014Publicity from the announcement that the service would start in December 2013 through to the current time (January 2015) has been widely varied. First Great Western and the rail industry have provided excellent support by including the line within their main line timetables, printing and distribution of leaflets via their normal outlets and generous supplies to the community for our distribution. Wiltshire Council have promoted the service through Connecting Wiltshire, through personal travel planners, through their marketing and also in support of the community through supply of literature. These two "votes of thanks" are not supposed to be complete lists of everything done by the rail industry and local authority - both have done a very great deal to help.
What have we done in the community? As an overview, we've looked to get the message out there by many routes, to have as many of our friends and users become our ambassadors to help promote the service (and our informants where there's logging and constructive criticism to be made), and to target the "low hanging fruit" to being as many people to whom the railway can make a positive difference on board as quickly as possible.
Some specific community activities that have helped towards publicity
* Spring line guide production
* Summer line guide production
* Winter line guide production
* Poster production
* Updating of station notice boards
* Door to door distribution (last winter) - timetables and cover letter (12.2013 / 10000)
* Door to door distribution (spring) - timetables (5.2014 / 10000)
* Door to door distribution (Summer) - bus maps, line guides, etc (7.2014 / 8000)
* Distribution as inserts in local newspapers - spring guide (4.2014 / 20000)
* Distribution as inserts in local newspapers - winter line guide (1.2015 / 23000)
* Market place bus stop - clean and reposter with rail information
* Press adverts in 3 local newspaper
* Editorial in local newspapers and county newspapers (all stations covered) / around 50 different items
* Facebook page creation / Around 100 posts / 515 likes / strong engagement / up to 3000 views on some posts
* Visit by Baroness Kramer / resulting publicity
* Visit by Steven Hammond / resulting publicity
* Visit by Claire Perry / resulting publicity
* First Great Western Coffee Shop Forum
* Posts to forums such as Swindon Town, Westbury
* On trains surveys 11th to 13th October 2014 - 600 responses
* Survey of our marketing, May / June - 299 responses.
* Radio Interviews (approx 12)
* TransWilts Link (2)
* TravelWatch SouthWest (2)
* Santa Trains (200 people to Swindon) with
MRDG» * Folk Music Train
* Past and Future booklet
*
WWRUG» user group meetings
* A "float" or rather walking group in the Melksham Carnival with help from
FOSBR▸ *
ACoRP▸ annual awards Networking
*
FGW▸ Stakeholder Conference Networking
* FGW Community Rail Conference presentation and networking
* Santa's TransWilts Colouring Book
* History of Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth at Melksham History Day
* Informing / Feeding
TICs▸ in Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge and Westbury
* Speaker at WI, 21st Jan
* Speaker as FOSBR AGM, 23rd January
* Interaction with passengers.
There's been an astonishingly large team behind many of these activities, with up to 20 people involved in any one activity and (estimate) around 70 to 80 people involved over the last year in some way. In addition to the above in my press and publicity role, I have been assisting with research and operational elements, assisted especially by Lee Fletcher (in effect the two of us taking the community rail officer role), and strongly by Phil McMullen, Paul Johnson and Peter Blackburn.
Looking forward to 2015The community's original target for the three year trial of an enhanced service was to rise to 108,000 passenger journeys per annum during that period; with well over that rate achieved during the first year. That was a tactic to achieve the specific strategy of getting best use where it works for people travelling of an appropriate train service on the line, and we should now be reviewing the tactic to reach that strategy having achieved the initial goal.
Research suggests continued strong growth, with the passenger traffic on offer continuing to rise significantly above the general rate of rise across the railway network for a number of years. It's difficult to put numbers onto this, but I would personally not be surprised to see around 750,000 journeys on the line per annum by the start of the next decade. This view is based on multiple aligning indicators. Significant risk factors are the lack of sufficient capacity being provided, the lack of trains for extended periods during engineering works, and a lack of reliability and information. We already see trains (on 6 different days of the week!) with passenger numbers in excesss of the number of seats, and at times in excess of the "overcrowded" rate of 140% loading. There's nothing unusual in that, except that this is on a fast-growing service and it can only get worse or loose significant potential business. We already know of plans to change the service for engineering works in the summer of 2015. There's nothing unusual in that, except that we're looking at a period of 6 or 7 weeks where engineering works usually take place ocer just a weekend. And we're looking at a very high proportion of cancellations of services (or missing out at least one station on a part-running service), mainly due to infrastructure problems but also some due to train failures and lack of staff. Cancellations of a train on service which only runs every 2 hours is much more significant than cancellation of one on a line where there's another 30 minutes behind. Indications are that the problem is being monitored and there are some good signs, but the risk must be noted and avoided.
Looking forward, Wiltshire Council's
LSTF▸ Grant spending concludes at the end of March with the "exception of the ongoing funding of the trial service". This has been a huge help in promotion - both in assistance with the items listed above and with umbrella of wider publicity, sales and marketing under the Connecting Wiltshire banner, and a big "thank you" is due to the team who have done this. To a great extent it's 'job done' (and well) in that they've provide the extra umph! at the time of the peak requirement, and the ongoing success of the line even without the LSTF income will be very much (as intended) due to that income having been spent as it has been.
There are some outstanding issues over the next couple of months - including the opportunity of a final large print run (on the positive side) and the need to get something in place for the future of the Melksham Rail Link Bus - intended as a stopgap until service buses stopped at the top of station approach (stop not yet installed; services not yet syncronised), people can access the station from Foundry close and via there and Scotland Road to the forest (fence panel between two pieces of council land not yet removed), and there's more parking (new parking area still inaccesible wasteland). The ticket vending machine, promised "by the end of the year" last year hasn't materialised yet either at Melksham and conductors can't always get through the train to sell tickets by the next station (Bedwyn machine installed long ago, we note, and car park there opened under LSTF)
The
CRP▸ , rolling into a
CIC▸ , has remaining funding for a modest marketing spend this year and next, and grants from the train operator and other sources should cover the ongoing activity during this period. First Great Western have been extremely helpful via Ian Mundy (initially) and then Andy McRae and indeed the whole FGW team has been very much on side and provided assistance. It's been a joy - I hope it remains so, and I see no reason why it should change bearing in mind that the extra income generated by high passenger numbers goes to First Great Western (in other words - it's in their interest ;-) ).
Current tactics over the winter months remain to keep in the press, to keep Facebook promotion running, and so forth. We have no shortage of stories (e.g. stats from the October survey). I would like to avoid an unsightly squabble over the Melksham Rail Link bus / replacement issues, but at least if that were to happen we would be (again) getting press coverage.
For spring and summer, I recommend to whoever takes the Press and Publicity Role after the AGM that concentration this year be on the leisure market - peak trains are getting full and the cost effecive way of raising more income for FGW / passengers is to fill none-peak trains. They're doing far better than we had targetted anyway, but there are plenty of seats on many services (expected off peak passengers was low, in fact trains are 1/3 to 1/2 full, still leaves a half to fill).
The opportunity of a "sprint" to run a special service from the TransWilts to (well, Liverpool was suggested) and regarded as just too much of a sprint, but plans are in place to work with FGW on special / charter business with TransWilts use and promotion at the core. A small funding stream perhaps, but also a large publicity flow.
Other planned publicity "stunts" (not really stunts) include welcoming the
TVM▸ at Melksham / helping people there with the really very serious issues of getting the right ticket and not buying one that^s too expensive, and the commissioning of 5 x departure screens for trains and buses in Melksham, using Raspberry Pi computers at Town Hall, TIC, etc, and joint funded by the area board and MRDG.
During the summer of 2015, there are major engineering works and it's likely that the local train service will be lost for 6 or 7 weeks. For about a half of that period,
HSTs▸ will be passing through and it's unlikley that they'll be able to stop at Melksham; in any case, they will be reversing OUTSIDE Trowbridge so won't provide a viable link from north to south, and with Box tunnel shut all West Wilts to Swindon traffic will need to be taken by bus. Better news for the second half of the period, as the Portsmouth to Cardiff service will run to Swindon with some trains at least being able to call at Melksham. For this second period, we have a major marketing opportunity ... it is anticipated that Heart of Wessex Bucket and Spade services will run via Swindon, Chippenham and Melksham and give us an opportunity, as we'll have with direct trains to Salisbury, Southampton and Portsmouth during the school holidays.
Should our summer brochure be an "incoming" as well as an "outgoing" one? How should we distribute it? Lots of ongoing questions! Should we be arranging more special events in the summer? Even if the events bring in few people, they justify themselves in a heavy marketing hit and bring i other traffic. Carnivals, fetes, talks, ... RailFuture (Severnside) AGM - we're hosting, probably on 18th April ... Melksham Probus - 1st September (probably a rail topic!)
2015 is also going to be the year that we look forward beyond 2016. It's a vital topic, but outside the "Press and Publicity" arena of this report. Things remain unclear - there are opportunities, but not guaranteed opportunities and a possible change of government and government direction in May adds yet more for to the picture. We gathered statistics in October, and I would propose a further gathering during the summer (Wilts council gather for themselves in Febraury and will alert us to significant issues).
A fast-growing service such as the TransWilts doesn't remain static - and the CIC structure, with continued objectives from the CRP element that it will wrap, will be looking forward to services beyond 2016, beyond electrification, beyond recast of services via Westbury, beyond the need for extra capacity, and also at changing flows. Looking at projects such as Doorway Chippenham, at Royal Wootton Bassett, at the huge success of Stonehenge, the coming of the Royal Artillary Museum (and the nearest railhead, logically, being Wilton) I see massive opportunities - and indeed a need to embrace and plan for those opportunities; supporting the existing service is vital, but there's also a need to prepare and plan for the future or we'll find that we have a current service that's been fast changing, but doesn't "fast change" any more and suffers overcrowding and inadequacy paints and could move on from stability towards stagnation and decay.
I therefore recommend to the incoming TransWilts board (with many old friends thereon) that they take forward the opportunities they have for additional help in the Community Rail Officer role and in ongoing press and publicity, beyond what it's been possible to achieve in the short term (but can't be sustained by the volunteers in question in the long term) . This help comes in both the form of several volunteers who may now be more available having recently retired from full time employment (and who know their stuff) and perhaps from several people who are also knowledgable about the TransWilts and who may be ready, willing and able to do more, were they able to replace income lost by a reduction in their day job to take on CRP / CIC responsibilities.
Can I finish with a huge THANK YOU to all the volunteers who have helped nurture and promote the TransWilts in the first year of the more appropriate service,and to all the passengers who have used it too. Without you, we simply wouldn^t be reviewing a successful year and looking forward to growing opportunities. I^ve very much enjoyed volunteering with you, and hope that I may continue to work on the TransWilts project where appropriate in the future, should the new board wish it.
The AGM Agenda and details for which this report is written and pre-circulated maybe found at
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=15014.0
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