With the story concerning another fare strike making the front page in "The Times" today, I have been fielding a series of phone calls from the rest of the press looking for contact details for the person / people named in the article.
With 173 trains cancelled or failing to make all their scheduled calls over the last 48 hours (as against a specification level of 12 to 24 such service reductions), on top of the antagonism that
FGW▸ are suffering because of the fare rises, perhaps the only quiet place is Avonmouth where I see that arrivals as 09:40, 12:15, 13:15, 14:15, 15:15 and 16:15 were all cancelled. (source -
http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/running.php )
I think I'm glad to see the raised profile of some of the issues with our train services, although I'm not sure that I personally would put the January fare rises at the top of my list. I think I would list higher
the provision of an appropriate, reliable service and that means more than two round trips a day on the Swindon to Westbury line which serves 4 out of the five largest population centres in Wiltshire. Or if we can't have more than 2 then - PLEASE Mr FGW:
* Schedule them at time that people want to use them - not at 06:18 and 18:45!
* Reduce cancellations of the service down to 1% or 2% please
then you'll find that people will, happily, pay the fares!
But being a helpful soul, I have been putting the press in touch with MTLS▸ !
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