Great Western Coffee Shop

I talk with people ... and a lot of those people aren't rail users and don't know where there local station is, let alone where they could go or how they would buy a ticket.  Some are at the "I know we have a station somewhere" level and others think they've got to go to another bigger place to catch a train.   Yet the UK has over 2,500 stations.

Thinking of people on the street where YOU live, what percentage of them would know how to go to your local station and be able to use a train from there?

Not an issue in a place like Swindon.

Are you sure of that?  Last year we found a significant number of people (through non-rail media) who came on the Weymouth Wizard for a day at the seaside making their first train trip ... advertising targeted to Swindon ... up to 100 in this category on each of the four Saturdays.

First time of *using* the train maybe - but I bet most knew *where* the station was in somewhere like Swindon.

Two different questions really

I'd think Charlbury would be as high a percentage as anywhere on the GWR network, perhaps in the country. But even here it's far from universal. There is certainly a class divide: catching the train is largely a middle-class thing. The free bus pass tilts some over-65s towards using the S3 to Oxford rather than the train, even though it takes forever. And I did once meet an elderly lady (late 80s, at least) who would walk four miles along a busy road to Enstone, for the Sunday bus, in preference to taking the train!

I've based my response on the basis that all of the houses in my road have a minimum of two cars on the driveway and hence I don't feel that they would bother considering the train (exclude me from that statistic as I use the train all the time and could probably find my way to the station blindfolded ::) :P )

Is this question -

a) do your neighbours know *where* their station is? (the way I read it)
or
b) Are your neighbours likely to use the station/train? (the way most members seem to be reading it)

"Do your neighbours know where the station is and enough about it to be able to use a train"?

Since I live near, about 3km, from BPW I expect most of my neighbours know of it and where it is, although I am not sure how many are comfortable using trains.

The 'guts' of our rail systems where ripped out 50 years ago, and whilst rail is getting more popular, until the lost and new lines are returned to use (where userful), linking more communities to the rail network.

In Bristol, the bus system does not link well with the local rail system, probably for the best considering the frequency of some rail lines, but once MetroWest and MetroBus are completed, a serious case should be made of using rail stations as bus hubs, encouraging passengers to use mixed route journeys.

When this happens, rail will be seen by more people as a full member of the public transport system and people will use it more.

 

The poll presupposes one knows ones neighbours.  ;)

At this point, adding options would destroy the integrity of the data gathered so far.

If
- you don't know any of your neighbours
- you live in a street of otherwise empty houses or in a caretaker's apartment on an industrial estate
- you are the only inhabitant on one of the small Scilly Isles
please feel free to comment to that effect.

Have to go past station to get out of my estate unless going out the back way and then pass Coombe Junction, so can either pass liskeard or coombe junction. Neighbours both sides are taxi drivers so hope they know of it!

I know some things about my neighbours. I know that one sold a product to Microsoft a couple of decades ago and has been living on the proceeds ever since, another was released from jail last year and another is a foster parent. But I've never talked about trains to any of them.