And...how many car journeys to Brunel's only mistake, (aka Swindon),
could be avoided with more imaginative timetabling?
One of the tragedies of the case is that "more imaginative timetabling" IS available - Swindon to Westbury at 06:18, 09:02, 12:02, 15:02, 17:55 and 18:45, with Westbury to Swindon at 07:02, 08:09, 11:02, 14:02, 16:53 and 19:32 - most services running beyond Westbury to/from Dilton Marsh, Warminster and Salisbury.
"Pipe dream of an enthusiast?" you may ask. No - it is NOT just something I came myself up as 'wouldn't it be nice if ' ... this is a draft timetable produced by an expert at First Great Western, validated for December 2008 by Network Rail, resourced in terms of rolling stock, supported by large numbers (1700 on a PM petition, 500 local signed up supports on "Save the Train") ... but killed by (I'm almost too furious to write!) a system that's got distorted financial values (ORCATs, the need to meet a specification rather than serve the passengers, an inability to risk even the slightest delay to franchised services), and a lack of political will and interest by a handful of key players, all of whom (as a Melksham voter) I have never had a chance to vote for or against!
That draft timetable was / is excellent. It took the travel flows identified and provided a decent service at low cost - it's significantly less trains that the "appropriate service" for the line - but it's sufficient in my judgement to trigger a return to the significant (very much above average) growth that was seen on the line prior to December 2006. [[There are some other options around as well, researched to a better or lesser degree, looking further ahead in some cases.]]
In terms of "number of car journeys removed" ... I don't know, G.uard. It depends on what year you're asking about. For a service re-introduced this December, after recovery to the 2006 level which would take a year or two, you're probably looking at around 150,000 to 200,000 car journeys cut out by 2011 or 2012. I feel a bit uneasy with this estimate, as I'm not sure how many passengers on average travel in each car on the route, and whether the transfer to train would be a typical cross-section of these, or would be biased towards the single occupancy vehicle. There would also, I'm sure be a lot of car journeys reduced from longer distance (Warminster to Swindon, say) to just a short drive to the local station.
The full timetable that fell at the hurdles placed in its was is at
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/tp.htmlRemember - it has pretty darned good support, and it's based on excellent background work by the
FGW▸ technical and evaluation team who's members deserve full credit for it (but any mistakes in translation should be laid at my door!)
By the way - here's a soundbite for you -
"I estimate that the number of passengers per carriage on this service would exceed - on average - the number of passengers you'll find in an HST▸ carriage"