Do you think this is still increasing Grahame, or it has levelled off until a better (more frequent) service is provided.
I'm not sure it's frequency so much as service unreliability. I am aware of several people who I'd formerly see very regularly on my commute who got tired of setting out not knowing if they'd reach their destination in time or if they did, whether they'd ever be able to get home again. They have all drifted away in the past few months.
There are a number of factors which have been holding back growth. And, yes, we need a "better" service.
Better is first and foremost in terms of reliability. Service failure (percentage of scheduled services that do not depart from Melksham) really needs to be consistently well below 2%. But here is the current record:
6.5% - June 2019
6.4% - July 2019
9.6% - August 2019
5.5% - September 2019
4.9% - October 2019
2.2% - Novemeber 2019
7.1% - December 2019
2.4% - January 2020
7.1% - February 2020
And starting March with 6% for the first four days.
At cancellation rates in excess of 2%
every single month (more than twice that level most months!), passengers are simply getting fed up and looking for alternatives. You can see this in the number of cars parked at the station, which has plummeted; car drivers (unlike many others) have the option of driving to Chippenham, Bradford-on-Avon or Westbury (or if they're driving out of town anyway, doing their whole journey by car!). You also see this mistrust in the behaviour of "kiss and ride" access to trains, where instead of dropping off and driving away, the norm is now to hover until the train pulls in.
The effect of a cancellation (also when a connection missed) is exacerbated by length waits for alternative travel. Not uncommon to see someone reporting having to wait for the next train - the 19:06 from Chippenham was cancelled about 10 days ago, and passengers reported on social media that they had to wait for the 21:00. And even for those who "know their rights" and demand better, there's been waits of 90 minutes at an unstaffed station for provision of a taxi.
GWR▸ have done a little better at times in providing a bus, and especially when a station is staffed, but there's still very slow provision of alternatives and a habit of answering questions from an operational viewpoint and not from a customer's persepective.
"I see the 19:06 is cancelled - when it the next train" ...
Operational viewpoint:
"Not until 21:00, I'm afraid sir"Customer perspective:
"Not for a long time sir, so we'll provide a taxi for you"We have long felt that cancelling a train when there isn't another one due for two hours should be a last resort. However, at times it feels like a first choice option - witness our cancellation rates versus GWR averages.
So
Better is first and foremost about reliability of the service. If GWR were to halve the number of trains they cancel, it would still be worse that other lines but if that were a
consistent improvement, it would for sure be better and numbers would grow. [bWith the present state of affairs, the single thing that GWR could do to provide a better service would be to run all except the very, very occasional train to the published timetable.[/b]
So - reliability,
reliability, reliability ... then what?
1. More frequent services
2. Extended operational day
3. Better connection and through services
4. Better and easier ways to get to and from the station
5. Interchangable rail and bus tickets on corridors where they both run
6. Better fare and timetable information
Before you suggest I am looking for just about everything ... I have NOT asked for
A. Better local fares
B. Safer trains
C. Politer staff
D. Longer trains
E. Buffet cars (or even trollies)
F. Quiet coaches
I know it's an unimaginably awful thing for all concerned and I'm reluctant to mention it even now, but to be brutally honest cancelling services between Westbury and Swindon for the best part of a day because of a person hit by a train in Didcot (as happened a while back) wasn't an easy thing for me to explain to a young guy who was in tears and desperate to get to his job in Trowbridge because he was already on a formal warning about his timekeeping. You don't see the M5 in Devon being closed because of an accident on the M74, so why should it be different on the railways? I'm sure there was a perfectly valid operational reason at the time, but it wouldn't have helped even if I could have explained it. I never saw him again either.
Three of the cancellation at Melksham last month were described as due to "Person hit by train". And in two of the three cases, the train that failed to call was long after the time specified on Journey check as "disruption is expected until xx:yy". Two of the three I can understand and forgive ... the third related to an incident far away some five hours earlier and it looked rather as if GWR had been left a train short so decided to cancel ours. I
did dare to express concern, and received a sharp response; there are certain code - AK, J4, VA, VC, VD, VG,
XC▸ , XF -
https://wiki.openraildata.com/index.php/Delay_Attribution_Guide where its feels in poor taste to even ask, but can leave one sometimes with the feeling that there may be other causes too. As a less sensitive issue, the recent use of "landslip" when the train was broken down anyway, and had it been in working order would have run Swindon - Westbury.
Click on the map to explore geographics
