Great Western Coffee Shop

http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/news/Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine-Railway-first-anniversary

Despite the some might say pedantic point about the maths, this is an excellent example of how a new service can be a roaring success. How many passengers might a reopened Portishead branch have in its first year of operation I wonder.

Actuary ...  ::) :D ;D

chris you got mail!

i think this also makes a good case for tavistock

Not only have the Scots opened this line but several others around Glasgow, all of which seem to be a great success. They are also working on the Glasgow Edinburgh link via Bathgate.

The Welsh have reopened to Measteg, Ebbw Vale and Vale of Glamorgan which is also seem to be successful.

Yet English DaFT cannot even give Melksham a decent train service where the station is there and the track and signals in place for a greater service frequency. So how they are ever going to be persuaded to  reopen Portishead where the rails are mostly in place I don't know.

Let alone To Tavistock where the track has to relaid.

To help compare England v Wales v Scotland, I looked up some populations:

Alloa 19,000
Portishead 21,000
Melksham 21,000
Tavistock 12,000
Maesteg 20,000
Ebbw Vale 18,000

Now that's not the full story ... catchment areas are hard to define, and the traffic carried will depend not only on what the local population is, but also on how much / little they need to travel. 

Grahame very interesting figures. All but Tavistock cluster around 20K.

As you say it does all depend on catchment areas and the need to travel.

Another factor to be added in  are the local roads. As I understand it, it is the poor road to Plymouth that is one of the main reasons why Tavstock wants to reopen the railway.  Poor roads also apply around Portishead, Melksham and Ebbw Vale. However, it is interesting to speculate that if some improvements to the local roads were to be made, how much would that be used as an argument to weaken the case for these reopenings.

Alloa appears to be within 7/8 miles in both directions of the Scottish Motorway System, however, as I understand it car ownership per head in Alloa is likely to much less than say Melksham or Portishead.

Melksham has some of the poorest areas of Wiltshire (I'm no great expect on how those are measured, mind you) so there are pockets of low car ownership.  I suspect that Portishead has higher car ownership; yes, Alloa may well be lower.

With regard to roads, there are major issues getting in and out of Portishead, and the A350 that runs along the same corridor as the TransWilts has some distinctly jammy bottlenecks - DfT graphic show it as heavily congested.  It  has been suggested to me in the past that one of the reasons that it can be so hard to get an appropriate service is that trains could be preceived as lessening the case for road improvements by pulling some traffic off the road; I'm not sure of the truth of that, but I was asked the other week whether an improved train service would reduce the passengers who use the bus route from Chippenham to Trowbridge, so requiring extra council subsidy ...

sidmouth 14,400....never going to happen is it  :-[ mind you the line would run threw ottery st mary 8556 and newton poppleford 1,682

 :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

Most of Sidmouth is an elderly population, so they are using the bus!

There really is nothing in Sidmouth anyway ;)

I really don't understand the logic behind the lack (reduction) of trains through Melksham. When we lived near Calne there was a reasonable selection of trains on this route. My daughter was at Southampton University and I remember that there was a train Sunday evenings which was perfectly timed for her needs.
When she needed a new suitcase she specifically bought a "hard-backed" one, so that when she had to travel via Bath, she had something to sit on !

exactly i want to get out!!

Alloa has the commuting market, as people don't want to be stuck in traffic everyday on the M8 into Glasgow! So even if car ownership is high,  I bet they'll be glad to ditch the car! (I would, the M8 in Glasgow is a nightmare, even when it is not busy! :o )

Now, both Portishead and Tavvy have this potential market/ road problems as well.

Melksham, perhaps less so, (please correct if wrong Graham!) but the speed of the train makes it advantageous. Not to mention linking the fact that it links the main 5 Wiltshire settlements!

Some very interesting comments re road improvements versus rail improvements.

What it highlghts is that the Scottish and Welsh Transport Departments take a very different view to English DaFT regarding rail improvements.

Bascially in both Scotland and Wales rail improvements are basically seen to be good, whilst in England rail improvments are, either perceived as too costly, or we're not sure they are really needed, thus making it a difficult job to prove that they really are needed.

There seems to be a sort of "look at the large numbers already travelling by train" syndrome. Which points out that many services are/were already overloaded, so why put on extra services, open stations just  to increase overloading and exacerbate capcity problems else where?

As I understand it, the money for such transport infrastructure projects in Scotland and Wales is simply not available in England.

Funnily enough, exactly the same argument is also used against building new roads -- they just fill up with traffic.

Maybe England will become the first country in the world to call a halt to all transport improvements on the grounds that they encourage people to travel.

But the very same people who then want the money "saved" to be spent on new schools and hospitals no longer use the same argument on them !

I don't know Tavistock ... but you're right on Portishead.  A TV program I saw which involved a two hour journey for the 12 miles into Bristol from there is far worse than West Wilts to Swindon.  "Less so" is a good way of putting it - we DO have major congestion on the A350 and it's likely to get worse when the A36 / A46 route via Bath is closed to heavy lorries, and we do have significant passenger flows.

i just found this online... its abit well shal we say interesting  :-\

http://www.railwatch.org.uk/backtrack/rw118/rw118p06.pdf