Great Western Coffee Shop

The 0635 Bedwyn - London Paddington service was the most overcrowded train service in the UK in 2006 (link below.)
http://www.dft.gov.uk/foi/responses/2007/july2007/foitenmostcrowded/foicrowdedtrains2

The 0614 Oxford - London Paddington , 1752 London Paddington - Worcester Shrub Hill and the 1806 London Paddington - Oxford also made the "overcrowding top ten."

So , just to recap , 4 OUT OF THE TOP TEN most overcrowded train services in the UK in 2006 were operated by FIrst Great Western , whose fleet size was agreed to be reduced as part of the new franchise.

An interesting aside is this March 2007 Transport 2000 link revealing the 10 train services "that most urgently need their capacity increased." (link below.)
http://www.transport2000.org.uk/news/maintainNewsArticles.asp?NewsArticleID=365

For some reason , no FGW services appear.

A caveat would be that , although the request asked for the 10 most overcrowded services in the UK , the table states that "this table refers to arrivals in or departures from London , for London & South East commuter services."

That said , number 10 on the list , the 0637 Hertford East - London Liverpool Street service , had a load factor of 147% , whereas number 1 on the Transport 2000 list , the 0759 Durham - Newcastle service was over capacity by 88%.

The DfT table states "Load factor - the value in this column refers to the number of passengers in excess of the maximum allowable passenger capacity for that service , expressed as a percentage."

However , it also states "a train which has the same passenger load as the passenger capacity has a load factor of 100%"

So it could be read both ways.

The figures suggest that the top 4 services on the DfT list were between 50 - 55% over capacity. This means that they should all have made it into the Transport 2000 list.

3 of them are FGW services , and the other one , poetically enough , is a First Capital Connect service.

The Times have picked up on this (link below.)
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/article2051555.ece

A concerning article. December's timetable change is going to be very interesting indeed and remains to be seen how FGW are going to run extra services when they lose more rolling stock which looks like its going to happen despite rumours of renogiations with Dft. Surely we are not going to see another repeat of last December's chaos?????

There is a school of thought that says that the train operator knew there would be chaos last December and consulted widely in order to have passengers think that they really had an input ... and to think that the input provided lead to the best solution that was managable in the circumstances.   But the train operator is more sure that it can provide some positive changes this time (and it damned well should be able to, considering how low the current quality is!) so it doesn't feel the need to consult as widely.

Here is a BBC link on this.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6289430.stm

A very strong school of thought I would think. A five year old could have told you that if you run a four coach train between Bath Spa and Bristol and that on most days the service is pretty busy but enough room on most occasions to get a seat. You then remove two of the four coaches and what do you get? chaos and people left behind in the rain at Oldfield Park and Keynsham. Things are back to the OK stage at the moment because theres enough stock on hand once again, but what happens when we wave bye bye to 12 158s come december?  :'(

I hope MTLS are on standby for that but isnt it FGW's plan to stop HSTs from London at Oldfield Park and Keynsham so services from Frome and Warminster can run as two coaches as they won't need to pick up so many passengers at Bath, Oldfield and Keynsham?

I can see it now all the managers at FGW with cheeky grins round a table thinking we can solve all our problems at once, get rid of more stock saving lots of money, get even more return on the cattle truck refurb HSTs by stopping them everywhere where theres a platform, shut all those moaning commuters by giving them a nice long train and to top it all off whilst they are singing our praises cos we've solved the overcrowding problem and given them nice trains to travel to work on, we'll jack the fairs up again in January...Sorted! (well they will do that whatever stock they are running I know)

I don't mind them making good use of resources to provide a good service - praise where it's due - but I wouldn't want to forget that we took 10 steps back last December and need to take an awful lot forward to get things even back to where they were.

On the line I use (we've really wandered on this thread!) that would be be 3 extra round trips each day AND retiming the other two so that they're at a time when people want to travel.    And to be fair again - I don't know that the 06:19 from Swindon to Westbury is nearly empty as I've never had the means to get up to Swindon to try it out.   Has anyone used it?  Can they tell me about the loading?

Keynsham yes , Oldfield Park no. See quote below.

As a regular user of this service, I would contend that this is a complete misrepresentation of reality. Before the December 2006 timetable change, this was a 6 car turbo, and I would often enjoy four seats to myself throughout the journey. Following the timetable change it became a 5 coach adelante (starting back from Westbury), with a significantly shorter journey time. Even now, with fewer seats, I wouldn't call this train crowded (there is some standing between Theale and Reading). I can only assume that a single count took place on a day when there happened to be some service disruption, causing exceptional numbers to joint the train at Reading.

From my considerable experience of peak travel on several routes into London, I would say that Paddington commuters still enjoy relative comfort compared with some others (e.g. Thameslink, South West Trains), and I would seriously question the integrity of data which suggests otherwise.

Here are a couple of other views on this :