Great Western Coffee Shop

"Taxi!" ...  ::)

Suppose it's a bit late to ask Mr Crow to give back his MBE?   :-\

Thursday's experience suggests that this is now a monthly occurrence. The highlight of the week, in between a 36 minute delay on Wednesday and a delay of an hour and 23 minutes on Friday.

Hi, Kim ... and welcome to the forum.   I'm in Hoek van Holland at the moment ... heading home to Melksham, but I'll probably be SO early at Chippenham that I'll get the bus onwards.

It does seem that reliability has slipped ... personally a few minutes delay doesn't worry me, but a cancellation does.  But then 36 minutes isn't a few, is it? ...

Hi Grahame, thanks  :)

It has definitely slipped. After three weeks+ including those incidents mentioned above and delays of 10-20 minutes a night, they were doing better this week. Unfortunately they were back up to their old tricks this morning. Thankfully I got the 6:38, 8 mins late but no problem. 7:20 turned out to be so late that the Bristol connection would have been very tight indeed and there's a half an hour wait for the next (which doesn't reach Temple Meads much before 9:00.)

Full update on passengers should be heading your way this weekend.

That's fantastic, thanks.  It's really useful having a regular / commuter feedback; accuracy of real usage figures - both through passengers and people getting on / off at the intermediate station at Melksham - says so much and that includes bad news as well as good sometimes and helps every party to discussions on the future.  By the way, there's a history of distortion in ticket sale numbers, and no-one would expect "accurate" to mean "100% accurate" - that's very hard indeed to achieve as we found out on the summer 2011 trial service to Weymouth.


Yeah ... I thought it had.  I caught the 07:20 on Monday, left on time, waited at Thingley, late at Chippenham and late into Swindon. Provided that's only a few minutes and connections are not missed, I'm not too unhappy about that.  The trains are slotted in between HSTs at Thingley, and more HSTs at RWB (Royal Wootton Bassett), with others crossing their path on the flat, and if they are delayed there are lots more people involved, and lots more knock-ons - so the  TransWilts delay is understood.  In fact, a public timetabled arrival 5 minutes later than the working timetable into Swindon makes sense, and I think it may already be there on the evening train.

Interestingly, the delays aren't purely on the TransWilts in my current experience ... my ongoing train on Monday was on time from Swindon and around 10 minutes late into Paddington.   And on my return on Thursday morning, my train left Paddington on time at 10:00 and (again meeting current expectations) was about 3 or 4 minutes late at Chippenham.   Had the two-hourly TransWilts service been up an running by now, I would have connected there with no problem ...

Graham, what sort of service did you have at Melksham 80 years ago?  If you have a net source then kindly just point me to it.  I would think that would be a good campaigning document ("see how far we've come in 80 years?").

I'm not sure how helpful that would be, given that lots of places have lost their service in the last 80 years. Also, Melksham is slightly unusual in that the passenger service was withdrawn and then reinstated in the mid eighties. Much better to focus on what has been lost in the last 7 years, and also the potential for the future.

I discovered recently another colleague at work (Swindon) who commutes from Warminster via Bath, who would be delighted if there was a sensible direct return service. I wonder how many others drive but would switch to rail if the service was better.

In 1910, there were 16 trains a day from Melksham to Swindon
In 1922, there were 11
In 1967, there were 0 (*)
In 1983, there were 0
In 1993, there was 1
In 2003, there were 5
Now in 2013, there are 2.

We often use Bradford-on-Avon as a comparison to Melksham, although it's only about half the size ...

In 1910, there were 18 trains a day from Bradford-on-Avon to Bath
In 1922, there were 17
In 1967, there were 11
In 1983, there were 13
In 1993, there were 21
In 2003, there were 26
Now in 2013, there are 43

(Monday to Friday, all week, all year trains counted) 
* - Actually there was one, but the station was closed and so it didn't stop.   >:(  Otherwise, the figures given above do not count trains that pass non-stop.

A little more at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=11481.0 ...

But - John R is right.   Looking back more than (say) ten years isn't the way to judge what's needed for the future.  Chippenham, Trowbridge, Warminster, Melksham and Westbury Leigh (Dilton Marsh railhead) have all grown dramatically; Bradford-on-Avon has grown but not quite as rapidly in proportion.  And there's been a tendency for services and workplaces to concentrate.  On Swindon, and on Chippenham and Trowbridge, with areas like Westbury Leigh and to some extent Melksham becoming more commuter towns, and towns from which people have to travel for hospital, for cinema, and of course for work.  With the recession, people are taking jobs where they can get them but are sometimes unable to move, and with the green agenda on top of that, families are becoming 1 car where it would have been 2, and 0 cars where it would have been one.   So your metrics have changed.

Best look at studies and surveys.   Here, from Chambers of Commerce public survey, February 2011:

Would you use an hourly, reliable train service [on the TransWilts] to commute?

(http://atrebatia.info/comrep/commuter_users.png)

On the negative side, some of those people will say "yes" but probably won;t use it .... and on the positive side the survey was only completed by 1600 people; granted they are the most likely to use it (as they responded) but they only represent a small proportion of the probable (if everything is gotten right!) traffic.

The spread of home stations was as follows:

(http://atrebatia.info/comrep/nearhome.png)

and in answer to "would you use it for leisure too ..."

(http://atrebatia.info/comrep/leisure_users.png)

Again, it's instructive to multiply the number of people answering by the number of trips they might make, remembering that leisure users will be less likely to travel alone, and that all user are likely to make RETURN trips!

In terms of businesses, 160 businesses representing 11,000 employees were also surveyed.  Here are their locations:

(http://atrebatia.info/busrep/nearbusiness2.png)

Would services help those businesses?

(http://atrebatia.info/busrep/accessible2.png)

Much more data - at http://atrebatia.info/report.html

[edit] - found some more old data!

Very interesting data. Agreed it's unlikely that all 664 people will switch from drivng but you only need 20% to give you another 100 regular passengers.

Was the survey anonomous?

If not it would be interesting to know what type of business they were and why they said they disagree or strongly disagree that a regular Trans Wilts service would provide greater accessibilty to their business. Presumably they are the outskirts of town.

Although only a very small number it would help you counter the use of the type of argument, e.g. it doesn't benefit all businesses,  against the whole project.

Thanks Graham, a mine of information on the timetables.  I still think the comparisons are useful when indulging in rhetorical campaigning. ('Look, Grandad had a better service than we have now and what is someone with no car......' ).

The trouble with surveys is that they are not polls.  Still it gave some sort of fillip to the case, I am sure.

All power to your arm.