Coronavirus: Great Western Railway reduced services

[whole diary]

[RailCornwall]

Received an interesting survey from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) tonight

 
In response to COVID-19 and the government’s guidance, we’ve reduced our train services.
 
And with the rail passenger independent watchdog Transport Focus by our side, we want to hear how these changes have impacted your journeys.
 
By sharing your recent experiences and your needs for essential travel with us, we'll better understand where improvements can be made. So please take a few minutes to tell us your thoughts.
 
Don’t forget that your responses are entirely confidential and your personal information is fully protected.


A worthwhile exercise in my view.

[IndustryInsider]

In the great scheme of things I guess this is a minor issue but does anyone know whether the performance measures for season tickets, etc. are still be measured during this period of reduced services?

I believe they are.  I’m not sure about last week, but this week I expect it’ll be based on the emergency timetable trains only, so expect very good figures!

[grahame]

Received an interesting survey from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) tonight

[snip]

A worthwhile exercise in my view.

In my view too (and I have heard a bit of background).  The email contains a personalised link - from a data quality viewpoint that makes sense but it has meant that there's not been a useful link for me to pass on.  If you, member reading this, get a survey request - please do complete it!

[grahame]

Out of region, but "Woman fined £660 for refusing to tell police why she was out".

British Transport Police officers at Newcastle Central station received a report from rail staff of a woman loitering between platforms.

Makes me wonder about my having popped into Tilehurst Station to help myself to a Metro. (Theft might be added to other alleged misdemeanours ...)

[snip]

The police and courts (let's be generous to them) are at times misunderstanding and overimplementing the law.  From the Independent

Her conviction is to be quashed after police admitted that the wrong law was used to prosecute her, and the case “shouldn’t have happened”.

The Independent has learned that Ms Dinou was not even in the courtroom when a judge found the offence proven after reading statements from British Transport Police (BTP^▸ (British Transport Police)) on Monday.

a very long analysis and catalogue of issues follows ... finished with:

“Regardless, we fully accept that this shouldn’t have happened and we apologise. It is highly unusual that a case can pass through a number of controls in the criminal justice process and fail in this way.”

The senior officer added: “BTP and the CPS will undertake a more detailed review of the case to ensure that any lessons to be learned are integrated into our shared justice processes.”

BTP said it has shared official guidance on how to enforce the new laws with officers “to help them interpret the new legislation”.

The only rail case I've come across, but not a unique overimplementation ... Wiltshire police hereabouts have had to "debrief" one of their PCSOs after a "slight misunderstanding" (!!) which involved turning away people who were out for vital supplies and following all the rules.

SO much is new that there will be odd issues ...

[Celestial]

Received an interesting survey from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) tonight

[snip]

A worthwhile exercise in my view.

In my view too (and I have heard a bit of background).  The email contains a personalised link - from a data quality viewpoint that makes sense but it has meant that there's not been a useful link for me to pass on.  If you, member reading this, get a survey request - please do complete it!

I'm glad you highlighted that, as I would have ignored it otherwise. 

Edit to clarify quoting

[rogerw]

Survey completed

[grahame]

As we progressively downsize and have reduced our business over the last few years, we have taken back some roles and responsibilities that were delegated - and one of those rolls is doing some of the garden. With the start of the grass growing season, I find that daily exercise can be taken walking up and down pushing a lawmnower in front of me. The semi-mindless task without a keyboard in front of me or a notpad and pen to hand gets me thinking - algorithms and potentially wild ideas too.

I got myself thinking ... "what is a truly skeleton service that still fulfills its purpose" ... found myself coming up with guiding logic and principles.  Then I read ...

Part of my day job over the last 2 and a bit weeks, I along with many other colleges, have been working on the Domes Day scenarios of what to services, lines and stations to prioritise in the event of staff shortages due to Covid-19.

The plan is well developed and is in place now

Ah - I'm going to defer to your expertise here; there are some difficult decisions - and they have already been made.  Thinking from a passenger viewpoint, I came up with minimum service thoughts for key workers and it will be very interesting to see how they fit should Doomsday come.
* "plus 15%, plus 15 minutes" on regular length of journey is fine
* No more than a 2 hour gap between services
* First and last services to be no later / no earlier than normal

So Half an hour can go up to 50 minutes
An hour can go up to an hour and 24 minutes
Two hours can go up to 2 hours and 33 minutes
And three hours can go up to 3 hours and 42 minutes.

-- Nothing there about maintaining through trains - indeed the "plus 15 minutes" specifically allows a change of train. Stroud and Kemble have already dropped back from through London services to a connection at Swindon.  The "plus 15%" allows intermediate stations to be served by trains that would otherise just pass through.

-- Nothing about capacity; as it stands at the moment I believe there is plenty of space even allowing for social distancing, though I think I read that one TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) has gone back up from 4 to 8 carriages on their reduced peak service to add such space.

-- The suggestions apply to buses as well as trains; looking at our Melksham to Bath run, I can actually understand and accept the drop from eight services in the two hour peak (a month ago) to just one. Where I do worry is about the first bus arriving in Bath at 08:20 - nearly an hour later than it has been; in essence the first four buses have all gone. Anyone who works at the RUH (Royal United Hospital) probably can't use the bus to get there now. The final bus back at 19:10 is a far cry from the 23:20; I can be somewhat more forgiving of that cut for the short term because the evening buses lost were primarily returning people home from education, hospitality industry jobs and leisure, all of which are suspended.

[BBM]

I've just been browsing RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) and certainly as far as my local station TWY^▸ (Twyford station) is concerned today's service is the same as for the rest of this week, i.e. there were fast trains to PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) at 0736 and 0807 (and yes they did run according to RTT) with returning services at 1650 and 1751. I can't ever recall there being any sort of fast train services at TWY on public holidays in the past - if there had been, then I would have definitely used them for a day in London!

[TonyN]

There are certainly some strange outcomes from the bus timetable changes. While out for a walk yesterday I saw a Stagecoach X18 arrive in Pershore.
This is the Stratford on Avon to Evesham service and it includes 2 journeys extended to Pershore on a Sunday only.
Needless to say it was empty both ways.

[IndustryInsider]

I hear that GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are planning and expecting to step up services from the current emergency timetable (to an new enhanced emergency timetable) from 18th May.  There's been general talk nationwide of a Saturday type timetable, so we'll see if that's what we end up with.  I imagine that is conditional on lockdown restrictions being eased, as there's no point running anything more at the moment.

[IndustryInsider]

As I think is fairly common knowledge, the next major service uplift will be on Monday 14th September.  GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are planning on reinstating around 94% of weekday services (based on Dec 2019 levels), 90% on Saturday’s and 75% on Sunday’s.

There will be a few minor additions here and there before that, to try and cater for school demand and other areas where the trains are now filling up.

[grahame]

As I think is fairly common knowledge, the next major service uplift will be on Monday 18th September.  GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are planning on reinstating around 94% of weekday services (based on Dec 2019 levels), 90% on Saturday’s and 75% on Sunday’s.

There will be a few minor additions here and there before that, to try and cater for school demand and other areas where the trains are now filling up.

Monday 14th, I suspect 

[TaplowGreen]

As I think is fairly common knowledge, the next major service uplift will be on Monday 18th September.  GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) are planning on reinstating around 94% of weekday services (based on Dec 2019 levels), 90% on Saturday’s and 75% on Sunday’s.

There will be a few minor additions here and there before that, to try and cater for school demand and other areas where the trains are now filling up.

Monday 14th, I suspect 

Allowing for this happening, and with a potential rise in passengers, it's likely that there will still be social distancing and other measures in place - how will GWR ensure that these measures are observed and enforced where necessary?

[IndustryInsider]

Allowing for this happening, and with a potential rise in passengers, it's likely that there will still be social distancing and other measures in place - how will GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) ensure that these measures are observed and enforced where necessary?

Perhaps one to ask GWR direct via customer services or Twitter for an official response?

A few points from me though on social distancing on public transport, some of which have been touched on before:

1)  It's very difficult to ensure 100% compliance with social distancing guidelines.  In fact, the way the rail industry operates it's impossible, just as it is in many other industries.
2)  They are only guidelines, not the law.
3)  It's not a problem at the moment on the vast majority of trains, and I personally doubt it will be much of a problem any time soon...
4)  ...but it is sometimes gonna happen.
5)  I have seen a few trains where social distancing is perfectly possible, but people are choosing to sit closely to others and in aisle seats.
6)  Barring serious transgressions, and as with many other places where the public mingle, it is unlikely staff are going to wade in and get too involved.  The police might do, but obviously can't be everywhere at once.
7)  If it was to get too bad, then the risk of an increased infection rate would probably force the government to react...by making rail travel for key workers only again!

[CyclingSid]

On my limited experience it is much more of an issue on SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) on lines to the coast; e.g. Brighton and Bournemouth. Not sure what it is like in similar situations on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), as II suggests no great problem in the Reading, Oxford area.