Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/huge-growth-in-rail-passengers-1-4630952

This could be put on several boards, but I guess the TransWilts line is as good a place as any.

Thanks, John.

As you've put it on the TransWilts board and it's about a station with a minimal service in recent times, let's make the obvious comparison:


Congratulations to Peter and his team - we're occasionally in touch and admire what they've done.

Population of Dronfield: 21,300 (Wikipedia, no date stated)
Population of Melksham: 21,000 (Wikipedia, 2001 Census, since which it has rocketed by a number of thousands)

Passenger journeys 3 years ago, Dronfield: 17,710 - *
Passenger journeys most recent year for which we have data, Dronfield: 144,248 - *
* I am using ORR figures; they are probably using calendar year, 9 months more recent
Forecast for this year: 250,000

Passenger journeys most recent year for which we have data, Melksham: 11,046
Forecast for 4 years in the future, given service growth to appropriate requested level: also 250,000

Not seeing much "special case" stuff to say I can't scale it based on population; Dronfield is not a major summer holiday destination / university town etc, is it?  Nor is it miles from anywhere and so with only limited travel needs ...

Dronfield's trains are not just trains to Dronfield.
Melksham's trains won't just be trains to Melksham. Estimates are 2 extra passengers for every one getting on / off at Melksham, so the service on the line will carry 750,000 journeys per annum very soon. That's 125 on average per train at the 10 train a day level.

Last year, I can recall standing at Melksham station yelling to people to move along the platform to let more on.  Dronfield's figures provide yet more evidence that the correct service for a town of our size would be used, just as occasional services are as, if, and whenever we're given the opportunity of having them  ;)

There isnt a university, its not a holiday destination, although the trains are significantly quicker into Sheffield and Chesterfield than bus/driving and also link to the nearest shopping mall, Meadowhall, and large regional cities of Leeds and Nottingham.

Probably quite a reasonable comparison then - with bus / driving being significantly slower, "just a normal town" without the special case stuff of places like Aberystwyth. Aberystwyth too has a similar population, BUT a university, a tourist flow to add traffic, and a remoteness from other large towns and cities which make comparisons based purely on population to other 20k / 25k towns inappropriate.

Back to Dronfield ... over the last few days I've been teaching Ruby programming (http://www.wellho.net/course/ruby.html) and I used the ORR passenger figures in one of my examples.   Looking at growth / shrinkage in recent years, I drew up a league table, eliminating stations where the statistics could be misleading because of tiny numbers.  Dronfield comes in 3rd and Melksham 2254th out of 2255! See here (http://www.wellho.net/mouth/3761_Melksham-placed-2254-out-of-2255-What-can-be-done-about-it-.html) for full analysis and here (http://www.wellho.net/resources/ex.php4?item=r108/stobsort) for full result set and the underlying code that generated it.

There are only two reasons that I can see that Melksham doesn't get a more regular train service is lack of track capacity ( only one train on link at at a time) next train has to wait on mainline. Secondly lack of siutable stacok due to lack of DMUS,

The Dronfiled case the trains were passing through the station in any case plus it's on a double trqck line.

Whilst I agree that a regular service trains of well timed to Melksham would be well used but would also carry through passengers from Salisbury to Swindon and intemrediate towns other than Melksham. It seems to me tha until something is done about loine capacity and stack it is going to be difficut to get an improved service.

I tseems to me the one thing perhaps Transwilts should be pressing for is re-instatemnt of the North Curve at Bradford on Avon and the Penrynisation of Melksham Station asap.

For two main reasons it will give diversionary route whilst Box Tunnel is electrified and provide for Bristol Swindon stoppung service avaioding the main line. It could even be a Rgeular Bristol London slow RE.

The Dronfield comparison is a surprisingly close one when you look at it from the customer's viewpoint - where people want to travel, why, at what time of day, in what numbers from a population of how many.   Not exactly the same, but same ballpark.   And increases / decreases in use are going to be effected by the numbers, timing, and reliability of the services, and how good information about them is, and whether people feel safe using the stations and on the trains, whether they can get a seat.

But usage figure aren't going to be effected by the operational issues such as how hard it was to find the line capacity, where the train came from (did it always pass through but just not stop, for example), did an extra driver have to be employed, etc.  These things make no difference to the customer, and the situations on the TransWilts and at Dronfield are very different.

On the TransWilts, we have a harder task as there are not the trains passing through at the moment.  The line does have the capacity for a two-hourly service, but some of the other things you mention shouldn't be ruled out for the future.  The business of trains having to wait their turn on the mainline is indeed something that's exercised attention, and is an issue that's particularly relevant at times of delay on Cardiff->Portsmouth or on London->Bristol services. In a perfect world, of course, those services would both run like clockwork, so would the TransWilts and we wouldn't have to worry.

BUT Dronfield's improvement in service came not from an exsisting service that passed through but from an entirely new service linking 3 core cities, this is where Dronfield has an advantage - its service is primarily for linking Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds, not for serving Dronfield. All three cities have larger populations by a significant margin than Chippenham or Westbury AND significantly larger than Swindon. All three cities are Bristol sized.

Yes, those are indeed large places ;D

My initial comparison was between Dronfield and Melksham, looking at the contrast in fortunes over the last few years, and seeing what a service does, or doesn't do for them.   As far as the customer (traveller) is concerned, I don't believe it makes much difference as to how the service comes about / what the operational requirement and hurdles were - in other words, nooone's going to say "that was hard to provide so I'll go out of my way to use it", or vice versa.

There's a much denser population around the Sheffield (let's take the midpoint) area that there around Swindon ... but then there's a much denser network of railed public transport at the regional and local level.  True, Swindon has many long distance services which pass through, but most of them would still pass through irrespective of the traffic levels offered by Swindon.  So - the point I'm looking to make - is that it's proportionate.  I wouldn't expect Swindon to have network like Sheffield or Nottingham, where I've stood on the platform in the early evening and seen local / regional trains buzzing out to all sorts of places!

Thanks for filling me in on where the Dronfield trains came from [new service, which happens to pass through, rather than specifically a "Dronfield train"].  There are other Nottingham - Sheffield, and Sheffield - Leeds services, right?  An element of comparabily exists there too - I'm fairly sure that our figure of a third of the traffic on the Chippenham / Trowbridge leg being to / from Melksham journeys, and the other two thirds getting on the train at Chippenham or to the North East thereof, and not leaving until Trowbridge or south thereof [or vice versa).

There are other Sheffield-Barnsley-Leeds fast trains as there are other Sheffield-Nottingham trains although buth of these are one an hour and very full. (The Sheffield-Nottingham train is the much maligned Liverpool-Norwich service)