Great Western Coffee Shop

September performance measures

Running (rather than cancelled) and arriving at final destination "on time" - i.e. within 5 or 10 minutes of when due ...

80% - Bristol Suburban
76% - Cardiff and Portsmouth

Target is 86%.

In September, there were 662 cancellations attributable to FGW and 222 attributable to Network Rail.

Extra Staff

Recruiting - 24 drivers, 36 guards, 45 catering staff
In training - 50 drivers, 50 guards, 60 customer service staff

"In order to make more efficient use of staff, rostering and control has been centralisesd but continues to be under review"

Andrew Griffiths, 9th October 2007, Westbury

Note also - December '07 timetable said to be more robust (e.g. longer layovers) so that should also improve figures quoted above

But what do these figures represent, just cancellations attributable to FGW and Network Rail.

What about those cancellations caused by suicides, trees falling on the line, rain falling like a monsoon flooding the line and 100's of acres either side of it and lineside fires which neccessitate the line being closed etc, etc.. Do these cancellations figures include services which are curtailed for example a Paddington - Paignton service which terminates at Newton Abbot due to late running and starts back to Paddington at Newton Abbot. Although the service(s) are not cancelled in its entirety, to a passenger waiting at Torquay for the service to Paddington, that is a cancellation. So really those figures are a nothing to me but if the figures relate ONLY to cancellations attributable to FGW and Network Rail then it is an indictement of how bad FGW are, an average of 22 services per day, how does that compare with the other TOC's and what percentage of the total services timetabled does it represent.

Again with the punctuality figures what percentage of the late services were as a result of FGW, Network Rail, other TOC's services running late or outside influences like leaves on the line, wrong kind of snow, etc.

Finally, was the meeting useful.

The figures on the cancellations are those attributed to FGW and the "hold there hands up" and say "we need to make a big improvement in those".  That's what a whole lot of the extra staffing and refurb expenditure is about - a major part of the refurb is to increase reliability for everyone's benefit.

The punctuality figures clearly are a combination of all causes; I'm not saying that 20 % of Bristol suburban trains were delayed / cancelled by FGW and NR alone. The figure will include delays caused by things like the bridge strike the other day at Pilning.

Useful?   Yes.   Most of it I had (personally) heard before but there was a good number of extra nuggets.  And a chance to keep waving the flag to say "we're still in need of an appropriate TransWilts service".