Great Western Coffee Shop

http://atrebatia.info/summer2015_8.pdf

It's a bit hard to know how best to do this summer with three different weekday timetables, multiple Saturday ones and every Sunday seemingly different.    Please let me know of any gross errors.

We also need to do some passenger counts - for our own knowledge of how we're growing, where the major on / offs are - and we're sharing our data with Wilts Council and have letter of authority from FGW too.   Also talking to customers / putting out the newsletter.

Passenger counts coming along well - I have at least some data for 14 of the 16 trains gathered already,  and there is still some data from yesterday to reach me - yet more being gathered today and tomorrow.    This morning, I also took a look at the outgoing passenger flows at Melksham:

07:20 train (in time)
4 off, (3 walked, 1 cycled away)
20 on
   2 by bus
   6 on foot
   1 on cycle
   8 drove and parked
   3 had lifts
   0 passengers in car that was parked
   0 motorcycle
Train left with around 90 passengers (estimate only / 2 car train)

07:48 train (7 minutes late - waiting for NR train to clear line)
2 off (both walked away)
21 on
   4 by bus
   9 on foot
   0 on cycle
   5 drove and parked
   2 had lifts
   1 passenger in a car that was parked
Train left with around 60 passengers (estimate only)

Car park occupancy:
   Original car park - 3 of 5 regular spaces occupied (the disabled and taxi spaces both unused)
   New car park & spaces - 11 out of 22 spaces occupied
Note - 1 car already park prior to may arrival at station (06:38 passenger?)
     - during my visit, no-one parked for non-rail use of parking

New parking very much in use - there were just 7 spaces prior to improvement works, and we now have 14 in use.

We did not log passenger counts on Monday - first three trains we cancelled, an extra one (at a different time) was run to get stock into place (just 1 passenger on it!) and the fourth train started at Chippenham not Swindon.  Melksham Station car park had just 2 cars in it during the day, so the evening figures would have been much reduced due to lack of morning trains.

The pax numbers north of Melksham appear different to previous counts, where the later train has had the heavier loads, and most recently was approaching 80 a couple of months ago. Given both trains were reasonably on time (at least not late enough to distort numbers), I'm not sure why this might be the case.

I was on morning and evening peak trains on Tuesday and the suggestion was made that some people having made alternative arrangements because of the problems on Monday continued to do so on Tuesday. Possibly deciding not to buy a weekly season this week?  If they bought one on Tuesday it would last until next Monday when probably they weren't working and, until this afternoon, there wouldn't have been any trains anyway.

I think you're probably right Bob ... and perhaps it was a quieter week being the lead up to the Bank Holiday and another weekend of no trains! 

Here's my initial notes / writeup ... Week commencing Monday, 18th May.  Commentary:

There were daytime delays and cancellations on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th, and bus replacements between Swindon and Chippenham on 16th and all the way, all day on 17th.

No counts taken on Monday 18th; the first three trains were cancelled. An extra service ran at 08:33 from Westbury to Chippenham with just one passenger, with that unit then picking up a curtailed and late path getting to Westbury at about 10:00.  Car park at Melksham station had just 2 cars in it that day versus the 12 of later days in the week, and it's clear that the morning cancellations would have had a significant effect on the evening services.

On 2 days during the week, fatalities near to London caused connections at Swindon to the TransWilts to miss. On one day, a fatality in the Bath area caused passengers to divert onto our train. My judgement is that these changes probably balance each other out.

The week was the lead up to the Spring Bank Holiday; no trains are running from Saturday to Monday inclusive this weekend. Comment was made by several conductors that the trains are quiet this week.

About 5 people used the new Westbury to Frome extension each way each day (we had counters on 3 days), about half of whom were through passenger between Frome and stations north of Westbury.

Up journeys on TransWilts trains were 358 per day, and down 304 per day. Allowing for Saturday and Sunday at 75% of that follow and for no passengers at all on public holidays (so conservative figures) that works out at 220,000 journeys per annum. Melksham passengers at 143 per day gives an annual figure on the same basis of 47,000 journeys to / from the station.

Passenger journeys per train southbound: 29, 21, 31, 30, 42, 80, 51, 20
Passenger journeys per train northbound: 112, 59, 25, 38, 27, 46, 19, 21

Also took a look at commuters joining the first two Swindon trains at Melksham on Thursday. 37% of passengers arrived on foot, 32% drove themselves to the station and parked there, 15% came on the Melksham Rail Link bus, 12% got a lift / were dropped off, 2% cycled and 2% were passengers in a car that parked. Car parking is currently free for rail users, and there's still plenty of space in the new car park (but thank goodness it's there, as there are more cars now that there were spaces in the past!).   Note that these trains were not counted on Thursday, and that number joining at Melksham was significantly higher that number who had joined on the count day included in the figures above (the Tuesday).

Further studies on journeys / parts of route / variance to follow.

And the same numbers from October:      62, 63, 18, 21, 10, 20, 7, 7

So an increase in total from 208 to 347 and what is notable is that the increase is more or less across the board. Even the least used services are now seeing respectable numbers.  It's the same picture southbound, with even the first and last trains attracting at least 20 passengers.