Great Western Coffee Shop

Highest ever independent National Rail Passenger Survey score since in began in 1999.

https://www.gwr.com/about-us/media-centre/news/2016/january/gwr-records-highest-score-for-customer-satisfaction (https://www.gwr.com/about-us/media-centre/news/2016/january/gwr-records-highest-score-for-customer-satisfaction)

Certainly performance has been noticeably better in the last couple of months - a much better 87.5% PPM score for the Thames Valley services last month is a result of far fewer 'signalling problems' however it's still easily the worst performing sector in the business.  HSS services were at 91.7 and Plymouth and Cornwall at an exceptionally high 98.2%. 

All sectors were higher than the Moving Annual Average.   What's needed is for several months of good figures though to really push up that MAA!

Just out of interest, did anyone else receive one of these in their email junk folder recently?


I'm not convinced of the validity of it - it's probably simply an email collection exercise. If it's genuine though, the question "Approximately how long have you been a customer of GWR?" should throw up some interesting responses given how the company was only formed last September.

Unless some wag puts 1838.   ;D

Where's the survey form?

It was a personalised link in the email.

I got one.  And I filled it in.

The question about whether I intend to remain a customer of GWR irked me. 
There was no option of 'I'm a london commuter and have no choice but would rather travel by other means'.

Makes you wonder whether the research company actually showed GWR what questions they were going to ask because that question sounds a bit bizarre to me  ::)

Akin to "How long since you stopped beating your wife?"

I have not seen the survey, but if it is simply a list of multiple choice questions and there is no free-format response options then it is nothing more than a survey designed to get the result that the company wants. I doubt it is an email collection exercise since they already have your email address - unless it is just looking for confirmation that you still exist.

I'd also wonder how many people can't be bothered to complain anymore as nothing really changes and all promises about being better in the future?

I've had a few surveys on trains (obviously none in rush hour as they can't move along to hand them out) and its quite difficult to complain in general terms about the service.

The only free text about gwr in general* was 'describe gwr in one word' which doesn't give much room for subtlety.

*there was space to describe how my last interaction with gwr customer service could be improved. I went for 'giving me a correct answer'.

One doesn't need to imagine the sort of one word answers the survey would have come up with  :o

I know. They're kind of leaving themselves open there. May as well have said 'name a word that rhymes with skit'.

I metaphorically bit my tongue and went with "Poor".

Yes these sorts of surveys are generally done to either prove that everything is wonderful, and becoming even better, or to justify decisions already taken.
As an example, a decision was taken to build the new shorter trains without buffets. AFTER the decision had been taken a survey was done to show that no one wants buffets these days.

The following are questions most unlikely to be asked !
"was the train long enough to provide seats for everyone"
"did you find the leg room sufficient"
"was there room for luggage"

Instead questions such as
"Did the catering offer meet your expectations"
"were the staff with whom you interacted polite"
"would you use this service again"

are more likely to be asked as the answers are likely to be positive. Of course the catering offer meets the expectations of most of those using it ! If it did not, they would not patronise it !

Most staff are polite

Most passengers would use the service again. Some have no realistic alternative. Others are probably already repeat customers. A survey probably wont catch that many of those who vow "never again" And by definition those on a train (or those emailed as known customers) wont include those who have decided that trains are unsatisfactory and therefore do not use them.

As an example, I have had very negative experiences of FCC and considered them to be the worst TOC of any that I used regularly. No survey carried out on their trains would reveal my feelings as I stopped using them. Neither would an email survey of known customers since I changed my email.

I did not even get the one word question! Maybe I answered the previous pages "wrong" so the survey did not think it worth asking?  ???

Down relief services from Twyford between 0745 and 0845 seem to be consistently late on a daily basis.  10,15 and 20 minutes late are not uncommon, but this doesn't appear on GWR's service status page.  The green banner "generally good service, but check individual routes" is a bit like saying that it is a beautiful sunny day where I am, but you should take your umbrella just in case.

A train arriving on time registers on the faces of Reading and Oxford commuters much like neanderthals discovering fire.

In my opinion, the only way to make GWR better is to create a open access franchise, from Bristol - London, to provide competition on price, frequency, reliability and staff.

It is interesting that outside of MerseyRail, the three best franchises are Grand Central, Hull and East Coast. Two open franchises in competition with the primary franchise East Coast

But there is no capacity at the London end for any additional services so new services would have to be at the expense of existing GWR ones.  Not sure if the open access rules allow this. Even if additional paths could be found the effects of the additional services would be to further increase knock-on delays when things go wrong. 

Also since many (most?) of the reliability issues are infrastructure related, open access operators would also be affected and there would be no improvement in reliability. 

Isn't Hull Trains run by First Group?

It is. Well, 80% of it.

Noticed one of their Class 180's at Old Oak as I was passing yesterday morning.

The main capacity issue on the Great Western was Reading Station, and this has been improved recently.

The limited capacity at the London end for extra trains is caused by most London main line stations being terminal. This adds a major capacity issue because it more than halves the throughput of a station. I've always thought it odd to have terminal stations without obvious reasons, for example Liverpool Lime St, go another mile and you hit water.

I am not sure what can be done to address this, but until every passenger can get a seat, prices relate to coach and car costs alternatives and every(!) train travels +/- a few minutes then I cannot accept that GWR doing well enough. I know a lot of GWR faults actually outside of their control but there is no talk from the Government, Network Rail or GWR to address these issues.   

Unfortunately the NIBYs of the 19th century banished railways from central London hence all the terminals in a ring and no large through London station.

Although I'm not sure how Holborn Viaduct got so far from the river and made link with the Met. Now Holborn Viaduct is shut and the line is underground from Blackfriars.

Yes but Cross rail is soaking up any spare capacity further East.  If you have a look at the RUS you will see there are will be major capacity problems very soon. 

What would capacity be like to run some services from Swindon and beyond into Marylebone once the line from Bicester is re-opened to Oxford?

Marylebone is full in the peaks in general.....

Mind you, rumour has it that an HST will find its way from OXP during the blockade at Hinksey in the summer

Exactly right! More permanently, the new railways drove development to the point where there was no room for surface extensions or connections without compulsory purchases of a completely unrealistic order.

Nothing at all... apart from electrification, resignalling, brand new long distance and Thames Valley stock with more capacity, more cascaded stock for increased capacity on the rest of the network, Crossrail, several major infrastructure improvements...

Nope, nothing at all's going to improve on the network over the next few years.

The options to improve capacity at Paddington are

• Add more platforms, will require land purchases and be expensive
• Add an upper/lower deck to Paddington, fortuneatly it is at the edge of the underground system so possible. Would be very interesting to link a low deck at Paddington with a low deck at Victoria, Waterloo or Kings Cross to allow through trains
• Batch trains together at Didcot/Reading into 2/3/4 joined trains that arrive/depart Paddington as a single train. Will need Platform lengthening and synchronising train times

New through platforms ARE being added at Paddington in a scheme called Crossrail! This will free up capacity in the current train shed for long(er) distance services and allow direct west to east services!

Platforms are also being lengthened at Paddington (13/14) and at least some intermediate stations as far as Reading in preparation for the arrival of new rolling stock for the great western franchise and Crossrail.

Isn't there still the possibility of one of the Paddington platforms being lost though, because the existing P12 and P 13 will be joined to form one full length platform, with a resulting simplification of the approach S&C.   (Although this part of the capacity project seems to come and go from the published plans.)

The net change with Crossrail is still more capacity for long distance trains though.

I didn't know that is in the plan, although it makes a lot of sense as those little platforms are really quite limited in their use and it makes sense that all platforms are immediately accessible from the main concourse area.

Agreed that Crossrail will free up a lot of capacity at Paddington by taking a lot of the local services away and hopefully we'll then see the end of 2 and 3 car trains occupying full length platforms. If all of the ongoing projects are successful it's certainly interesting times for Paddington and the GWML.

Yes, it makes sense to have all terminal platforms full length, even if it means sacrificing one of the four shorter platforms 11-14 (11 is full length, but only if you cut off access to/from 12).  Crossrail should remove six arrivals and departures per off-peak hour from the main platforms at Paddington.  They will, at least in part, be replaced by the additional long distance services planned.

If they do eventually combine 12 and 13, I wonder if it might not be planned to be done until after Crossrail's full through running timetable starts?  On the other hand the Crossrail to Heathrow temporary high level service will be 4 tph using longer trains, so will need a long platform or two anyway.   Wasn't P14 also planned to be extended quite significantly as well?  Although it has been resurfaced and given a better platform edge I don't think it has been lengthened much yet?

Paul

The current improvements to GWR are not adequate, and only really cover the network growth uptill 5/10 years ago.

I totally accept that Crossrail, Electrification, New trains, Signal Chnages and Reading station upgrade will help. However whilst I never had to stand on way home from London to Bristol 20 years ago, I did on occasion 10 years ago and five years ago it got so bad I changed jobs to work in Bristol and got rid of the journey.

The track has been extended slightly, but the platform hasn't been done yet - I presume it will be, to accommodate 8x20m vehicles.


Well, there's no money available to do anything else, except for the slightly longer term commitments of the Western Rail Access To Heathrow (WRATH) and ECTS in-cab signalling - both of which will impact quite significantly on the dynamic of the GWML.

Batching trains together will only ever work in a very limited number of examples, but there will be scope to run plenty more 12-car EMUs in the future than are currently planned to provide extra capacity to Reading/Didcot/Oxford which in turn frees up seats on the longer distance Bristol trains you mention.

Once Old Oak Common is open, I suspdct it may become busier than Pad eventually...have to wait & see

whilst there may be space for a lower or upper deck, is there enough space in the station throat for the necessary remodelled approach lines?

ChrisB's point about Old Oak Common may well be prescient.  I was assuming that post-crossrail my regular London trips would involve leaving GWR at Paddington to catch a crossrail to Farringdon, but making the change at OOC (if that is as far as my mainline train went) would work just as well.   

Hmmm ... it's the number of trains that's the issue here, so you would need to stop and start trains at OOC to have any effect on that. Assuming it has only through platforms, you need to take trains out to prep them, and OOC is just about the worst possible place to do that from.

But seriously, Network Rail in the Western Route Study concluded the capacity pinch was on the twin line out to Airport Junction, and after ERTMS arrives it's the bit of plaiting from Ladbroke Grove inwards to spread trains over all the platforms. While they mention the need for platform capacity to cope, they don't propose doing anything about it. OK, they would like to get rid of Heathrow Express, but that's not their call.

The one thing the TOC is responsible for the is turn-round time, which no-one has mentioned. With 16 tph (post-Crossrail line limit, subtracting 4 HEx) and only 8 platforms (roughly as now) there is 30 minutes per train including all allowances for getting in and out. If there are even three more platforms, that become 40 minutes. That sounds enough, given that there will be no paper reservations and window posters to fix.

If, longer term, you could get NR's Ladbroke Grove flyover and evict HEx, that would be 24 tph in 13 platforms: 32 minutes. That doesn't sound impossible, for a well-organised TOC.

Old Oak Station, also called New Queens Park is not planned to open until 2026, so little more than a pipe dream?

Would all trains go Reading --> OOC -> Paddington?

Still not sure how this helps capacity on GWR. Without much larger trains and faster turn rounds at Paddington I cannot see how capacity of Paddington can handle the growth of rail use on GWR.

Lower deck - Crossrail tunnels would get in the way.
Upper deck - say goodbye to the Victorian and Edwardian train sheds.

That would be the intention, I understand.
OOC would take pax away from PAD, using the former to connect directly to Heathrow and/or Crossrail.