Great Western Coffee Shop

When Wiltshire Council asked for support through a local sustainable transport fund grant for a three year trial of an appropriate train service on the northern section of the TransWilts line (the Swindon to Westbury section of the Swindon to Salisbury line), they rightly set targets of passenger journey numbers that they wanted to surpass, with those numbers set such that they would offer a viable way forward into the future at the end of the three year trial should they be achieved.   Those targets are 45,000 passenger journeys on the section of the line which isn't shared with other services in the first year, rising to 108,000 journeys on the same section in the third year.

Separately from the targets, there are predictions of the passenger journey numbers we might expect.   Independently, Wiltshire Council, First, the community and the community's consultants have come up with ideas / predictions of the sort of numbers that we might achieve, and those are a range of predictions - lower figures based on some things not working quite as well as we might expect, and higher figures reflecting the results we would expect if everything goes well together.  The predictions are all subjective, and many of them are based on commercially confidential data, so it wouldn't be right for me to share them all here.

What I can tell you is where we're headed in the first year, now that we're two thirds of the way through.  It's no longer a case of predictions based largely on commercial data and theoretical work; rather it's now based on the extrapolation of actual data for the remaining part of the year, and I don't expect we'll be very far from 165,000 journeys - that's 3.6 times our target for the first year, and already 1.53 times our target for the third year.

In the past few days, I have been asked to justify how we got our forecasts so wrong, with some resulting doubt placed on our predictions.   But we didn't get any forecasts wrong - the targets were / are the figures we need to reach for there to be no realistic question but that we've got enough traffic, and they are figures we need to reach to help ensure a viable basis for the continuation of the service.  They were based on that model ... yes, we checked to ensure that the targets were going to be easy to achieve, and indeed we would have been foolish to set ourselves targets about which there was any real doubt.  So we can celebrate being may times over target, with heads held high.

I will admit that our results are coming in very much at the upper end of predictions.   And that's because of everything and everyone coming together to make it all work.  Wiltshire Council with their support.   First Great Western, who have made a number of decisions that have been really helpful, and their fabulous operations team, and some of our community members who have been there on the ground and getting into the hearts and making sure that people know about the services and the options, know where to ask questions, and feel an ownership.



Edit note: Some minor typos corrected, purely to improve ease of reading grahame's post. CfN. ;)

Amazing.

If that is getting it wrong, getting it right would be something else.

Those involved in driving this forward should be let loose elsewhere !!

Out of interest what were previous passenger numbers and how many services were they previously compared to now?

With two round trips per day previously (designed to be a peak service) there were around 18,000 passenger journeys per annum on the measured section.  With six extra round trips per day this year, we are heading for around 165,000 passenger journeys per annum on the same section.  Put another way, that takes an average load or around 15 passengers per train (on the "peak only" service) up to 29 passengers per train (on the all day service)

Congratulations on your success. However, being the cynic I am I wonder if your underestimates are making a rod for other peoples' back.

It seems to me that many new rail services Ebbw Vale and Falmouth come to mind have also exceeded their forecasts. I wonder, therefore, if it will mean that to get the go ahead for any new service that DfT will require larger growth estimates? Which means that they will be harder to justify and give the excuse to turn the scheme down as not being achievable, or if they are not met easier to turn down the next scheme.

However, I am sure the DfT (although the Treasury might) indulge in any such machinations 

But I haven't told you what our estimates were !!!  All I said about that was ...

"I will admit that our results are coming in very much at the upper end of predictions.", with an explanation of just how well everyone has worked together to make it come in this way; I didn't even suggest that the actual numbers are above our highest predictions.

Targets needed for a service to be viable may be substantially below what the service actually achieves - surely that's good news for the service being maintainable into the future.

Were the predictions and targets close to each other?

No. 

Predictions varied, but were all much much closer to the achieved figure than the target was.  I'm not surprised at the sort of level we look like we'll have by December, bearing in mind how well we've all worked together, just how much effort everyone has put in, and how key the line is to the communities served. Don't underestimate any of those elements!