Great Western Coffee Shop

Please see below passenger stats for Melksham 07:17 & 19:11 week day service.

www.wwrug.org.uk/pix/Melkshamstats.pdf (http://www.wwrug.org.uk/pix/Melkshamstats.pdf)

Sion, thanks for those stats.  ;)

It does occur to me (as a complete outsider) from those figures, that the Melksham train service is not particularly 'commuter friendly'?

The number of passengers travelling in the morning is seldom matched by the number travelling back in the evening - so one can only assume that any 'commuters' have had to make alternative travel arrangements for their return journey?  ::)

If you travel up from Westbury / Trowbridge / Melksham on the (busier) morning train to Chippenham and Swindon, and talk to the people on it, you'll find that the majority of them are going to be coming back that same day, but in a different way.  These different routes home include car sharing with someone else who works shorter hours at their destination, cycling along the canal towpath / national cycle route from Chippenham, dogleggig via Bath (for destiniations where that alternative routing exists) and being picked up from Chippenham.  Notably very few (none?) regularly use the bus back.

The metrics of the evening train are different; it is not all short return journey people, and there is quite a proportion of one-off longer-distance stuff.  Swindon to St Austell, Chippenham to Chichester are two that roll off the tongue.

Talk to the morning people and they would return by the direct train if it ran (like Wessex used to run it!) an hour earlier.  And most of them would be happy to start their day half an hour later too (if the morning train ran at the time that Wessex used to run it). I have yet to get a good answer from anyone as to what new / improved passenger flows First Great Western's changes of December 2006 made. If any of the people 'in the know' here can fill me in, I would be grateful.  As it stands, it looks like a cynical trick to run the train when it happens to be spare from other duties rather than to meet a real passenger need and the passengers you see on it are the tip of the iceberg of people whould would use it if there were appropriate services in between the existing 06:15 and 18:45 from Swindon, and vice versa.