Great Western Coffee Shop

Trains Westbury to Chippenham, then buses on to Swindon.   Why do passengers have to wait half an hour from the arrival of the train to the departure of the bus (and vice versa), turning a 28 minute journey into a journey that takes an hour longer?   Do that planners not realise that around 60% of passengers arriving into Chippenham from Trowbridge normally stay on the train to Swindon?

I don't know the answer ... if anyone does, please let me know.  I have also asks on Twitter ... response awaited.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/sillywait.jpg)

And in the same pattern every 2 hours

The Chippenham to Swindon buses are clockface, at xx35. From experience if a bus is full they'll send it early.

The trains are clock face (every 2 hours) too  ;D

It would appear that care has been taken to have the Bath to Chippenham trains connect well with the buses, but that same care hasn't been extended to the Westbury to Chippenham train, which seems to creap in and out about half an hour offset, which I suspect is quite operationally convenient, and will probably help (by virtue of the poor connection) avoid the need for too many buses ...

GWR help says


Which - if I paraphrase - means that "the bus from Chippenham to Swindon leave a few minutes after the train from Bath arrives, and that's what the timetable's based on".  Or put more cynically: "tough luck that the train from Westbury doesn't connect - it's other connections we've look out for".

The train service is usually every 30 minutes on a Saturday ... why not run the replacement bus every 30 minutes, then the connection times wouldn't be a problem, and journey times would be about an hour (Melksham to Swindon example).  Sure - that's more than twice the normal time, but it's understandable and explainable.  Dumping people at Chippenham for over half an hour could suggest something of a lack of caring for customers ...

The fewer customers on your train is the answer, together with whether there is space to 'store' twice the number of buses. If TransWilts were dumping 45+ pax at Chippenham each train, I suspdct they'd need extra buses to move everyone. As you don't, the decision was taken to move everyone on one bus.

Unfortunate, but I can understand the decision taken

With a wait of over half an hour, I doubt we'll be dumping 45+ passengers off - irrespective of how close to that the numbers would be getting if the train went through.

Plenty of space available for bus parking.

I can understand the decision, but that doesn't mean I agree it, nor the message it sends to customers.

Given the normal service on the main line is every 30 mins (excluding the TW services), to only run one bus an hour, that takes more than twice as long as the train journey, is unacceptable. As well as point to point journeys, the problems that gives connecting passengers compounds the issue. What happens when a train from London or Bath is delayed?  Does the connecting bus wait or go?         

There may be multiple buses running in each hour - but as a convoy / on the same schedule on Saturday.   I hope so; correspondence for the week has suggested a mixture of low floor buses and coaches from Chippenham to Swindon, with a request noted that at least one vehicle on each run be low floored.   The proportion of "classic" disabled wheelchairs - certainly on TransWilts - is not high, but there are so many very young children with their pram / buggy / wheelchairs who are regular user outside the peak; lots of bags, etc.   Low floor taxis could be sourced as backup - except that the CabFind system that's being used has only got 2 low floor vehicles registered based in Chippenham (26 in Swindon) according to my data.  There are more if you draw a 10 mile radius circle to look.   

Even finding a taxi at Chippenham Station for Rail Replacement duties can be problematic (45 minutes the other week - mid week, mid afternoon, nothing special going on) took 45 minutes for able bodied passengers when the connection from Bristol into the 15:29 to Westbury failed.  Taxi drivers at Chippenham try to avoid taking the "white chits" for GWR journeys; reported to me that it's because payment is a bit slow.  Very embarrassing for passengers to be hanging around while the alternative is found (and for readers not familiar, the next train isn't yet until 17:53)

You'll find I'm writing statements of issues here, and not providing solutions.   Where a carefully worked train timetable (Simon and his team are experts at knitting connections by rail together in the public schedule) has one of its legs replaced by buses with journey times up from 15 minutes to between 40 and 50 minutes, added to which needs to be a change time, it's not going to be the same level of service as normal, and there will be compromises to be made.  I do have a number of "what about ... if"s I would ask during an informal chat and if (based on local knowledge) they resulted in some tweaking next time, so much the better.

Here's the official GWR explanation ... asked on Twitter of GWRHelp; reply took 80 minutes which I take to indicate that the answer was researched / thought through rather than being one of those questions for which the answer was easily to hand.

last night the buses were branded University of Bath Students Union.  Presumably a service not required through the summer so available for these duties.