TransWilts Status report for Melksham Without Parish Council

Sharing here as this is a quick update, useful for many of our community partners who are interested in the transport issues as a small element of everything else that's going on.

TransWilts for Melksham Without Annual Parish Meeting - written 9th March 2015 for 16th March 2015 meeting

Trial extra services started on the line through Melksham (the TransWilts line), and passenger journies have risen from around 20,000 per annum to around 160,000 as a result. Around 3,000 journeys have been made on the Melksham Rail Link Bus which runs from Bowerhill on Monday to Friday mornings, via east Melksham, to the station to connect with commuter trains to Swindon (and there's an evening service back too). Funding from the the Local Sustainable Transport Fund has allowed these trials, and also significant improvements in station facilities, and in the wider sustainable transport arena such as electric car charging points, plus maps, and the Connecting Wilthshire travel planner amongst others.

The services are making a significant difference to many families in the area - especially those who are unable to drive, and there are numerous examples of people changing their jobs / able to take up opportunities that wouldn't have been previously available, as well as the trains bringing people into the Melksham area. It's truly life changing for many people, and some of the trains that didn't even run just over a year ago are reported as nearly full. Some Saturday trains have been strengthened recently to cope with crowds.

A huge thank you to the Department for Transport and Wiltshire Council for making this possible. Thank you to to Melksham Without Parish Council for your ongoing support for the Melksham Railway Development Group, without whom there wouldn't have been a service to improve, nor the local knowledge and enthusiasm to do so. Thank you too to First Great Western for taking on and supporting the service with great enthusiasm, and to all the community volunteers who have helped in so many ways - we counted around 70 different names last year! And a huge thank you to people who are using the service.

But the service is just a trial. Funding for the Melksham Rail Link Bus runs out this summer, and for the trial train service next year. The bus service runs free of charge to users (so that it can wait at the station if the train is late, without getting into trouble with the traffic commissioners for being a late-running fare-collecting service) and we are hoping - but not with great expectations - that First Bus and Faresaver will add stops near Melksham Station to their routes, and co-ordinate but and train times better. There's some sign of elements of this happening, with the late night buses from Chippenham and Trowbridge accepting train tickets.

The train service funding finishes in the latter part of next year. By that time, the current First Great Western franchise will have been replaced, and we'll have a new government, potentially with different priorities an policies. Our current MP^▸ has been instrumental in bringing the services to where they are today and continues to offer his support; other candidates for the seat that includes Melksham talk of improvements at Chippenham Station and re-opening Corsham, without reference to keeping the trial service running at Melksham beyond next year, even in circulars printed for (and delivered to) Melksham. So the future is far from a foregone conclusion, even though passenger targets for the first year were met in just 17 weeks.

In order to look to the future, the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership has become a division of the newly formed TransWilts Community Interest Company, and there's a launch of "Vision 2020" at 10:30 at Chippenham on Saturday 21st March. All are welcome (10:01 train from Melksham) - see http://twcrp.info/vision2020 for details. We're looking not only at TransWits line trains, but other trains and bus services right across Wiltshire looking to get rail and bus users and groups together and looking to the future with a co-ordinated and positive approach. The current times of great change in pubic transport in our area lead to grave risks, but also a great opportunity for us to make sure that we end up with an integrated system on rails and road that's heavily used and so only lightly subsidised, and provides the travel faciities that people want and need.