South Western Railways Waterloo - Bristol services axed

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Sunday night. Petition now north of 1000. Good work, Graham.

And good work, Mark, and others too - it's being a team. Here are the numbers of signatures by constituency, for those constituencies loosing all the SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) trains and left with nothing direct to London or only one Paddington train.

Trowbridge
South West Wiltshire - Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) - 279 signatures

Bradford-on-Avon
Chippenham - Michelle Donelan MP - 237 signatures

Oldfield Park
Bath - Wera Hobhouse MP - 92 signatures

Keynsham
North East Somerset - Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP - 73 signatures

[TonyK]

Use it or loose it?

[anthony215]

I've seen some on railuk forums trying to justify this withdrawal in my view.  Yes they may follow behind some gwr service's but these also carry their own customers some of whom may just decide to use their cars not good especially when boris is trying to promote his green agenda.

I've used the 0851 from Bristol regularly and many customers  used them including the 1920 from waterloo to Bristol TM^‡(resolve).  Staff who used to work on the wales and borders services along the route have said its always been popular even some very senior judges have used it yo travel from South wales to London Waterloo.

Even wales first minister  has had messages regarding this service in fact I've seen his predecessor  use it.

What I think needs to happen is for the withdrawal to be postponed for 12-18 months say till May 2023 and the 0851 from Bristol reinstated. Really put the effort into marketing it including fares and the journey opportunities available to south London.

Let us see how passenger  numbers recover and I suspect we will see plenty using it.  I think Gwr would rather see the back of it as its competition against them and swr it seems are willing to go along with it as stagecoach had no trouble getting seats filled on it.

I've wrote to the wales first minister seeing if he can push my suggestion of running these services to Cardiff on a more frequent timetable

[anthony215]

These are my own personal opinions.

I do think swr planning on using the class158/159's saved from scrapping the Bristol service to boost capacity elsewhere

Hopefully tfws class 158s should be available sometime in the  next 2 years i suspect they will be getting snapped up

[PhilWakely]

These are my own personal opinions.

I do think swr planning on using the class158/159's saved from scrapping the Bristol service to boost capacity elsewhere

Hopefully tfws class 158s should be available sometime in the  next 2 years i suspect they will be getting snapped up

Indeed, I believe SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) have actually stated that these units are required to strengthen the very overcrowded Salisbury to Exeter services.

[grahame]

Use it or lose it?

It is good to ask the question, and I am glad to see the ? on the end.

As a generality, "use it or lose it" makes sense. If a piece of public transport is carrying fresh air around, what's the point of running it?  It may be that the solution is to remove the service, OR to fix problems with it so that it becomes well used - change it into an appropriate service and those changes may involve changing times, fares, stopping patterns, advertising it, adding more services so that people can make their round trips, etc.  And there are a few circumstances where a near-empty service IS justified for operational reasons - in particular I know of services such as the mid afternoon Westbury to Warminster train with very few passenger to Warminster and then 50 or so coming back. I might add route learners where a train runs to help train crew about a line they need to know just in case they get diverted.  The GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Portsmouth to Cardiff via Eastleigh train is an example.

But the SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) services to Bristol have been (are in normal times) very well used.
So we are being given Use it and Lose it

A caveat.   We were told not to use trains during lockdown and pandemic restrictions. So, of course, we did not use the service(s) as much during that period.  It feels pretty darned unfair to be told not to use a service for a while and then have it yanked permanently because we have done as we're told.  We still want it and we would use it again.

Another caveat.   It's pretty darned hard to use a service if it's not running reliably, or at all.  And this service has not been running reliably of late.  Of course people won't use a train if it's not even running!

[RichT54]

Your spelling is loose, I think you mean lose. 

[grahame]

Your spelling is loose, I think you mean lose. 

Yep ... thank you. I have gone back and corrected it.

[TonyK]

Lose - I once had a train service, but now I haven't.
Loose - the screw holding the side of this train together isn't very tight
(Uxbridge English Dickshunnary)

[PhilWakely]

I could of taken you're advise, but I had no time too loose - so ignored it. 

[4064ReadingAbbey]

I could of taken you're advise, but I had no time too loose - so ignored it. 

Ouch!

[Mark A]

1470 signatures. When Graham said he intended to start a parliamentary petition, I laughed. I'm not laughing now.

[Lee]

1470 signatures. When Graham said he intended to start a parliamentary petition, I laughed. I'm not laughing now.

There may be the odd bit of past experience of such matters there, who can say?...

[grahame]

This morning, I have emailed Wiltshire and Town Councillors in the towns in the county that are affected - a tailored letter for each town.   Here's an example

An open letter to Trowbridge elected representatives (MP^▸ (Member of Parliament), Unitary Councillors, Town Councillors)

Dear Sir / Madam

After 10th December 2021, there will no longer be any through trains at all from London to Trowbridge, unless there is a late change of plans. The Saturday service (which was often full and standing) ceased last Saturday, with Sunday and Monday to Friday services run by South Western Railway ceasing in the lead up to Christmas

What an astonishing way to treat our growing county town, at a time when we are being encouraged to use public transport more for climate, clean air, congestion and other reasons.

May I draw your attention to the petition I have created at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/598397 asking the Department for Transport to leave the service in place through 2022, pending consultation and the provision of acceptable alternatives. This approach is recommended by Transport Focus, the Department for Transport's own passenger watchdog.

Please sign the petition. Please pass it on to friends and colleagues. Please raise the matter with the councils on which you sit. Wiltshire Council is the "Local Transport Authority" with legal responsibilities, and the Town Council has a great deal of influence too in matters such as this which relate to the economy, well being of the town, and local environmental issues too.

There is a great deal more written at http://www.passenger.chat/25503 and user stories at https://www.twotunnels.org.uk/waterloo/quotes.html

There is a public meeting in Trowbridge on 20th October 2021 - near the station, of course, and connecting with the train in question for those from other towns involved. Also on Zoom - code will be at http://www.passenger.chat/25522 and there's a meeting poster at http://www.wwrug.org.uk/flyer.html and at http://www.passenger.chat/bri-wat_20211020.pdf .

You may ask "why did you, Graham, create this petition - you don't even live in Trowbridge". This is not just a Bradford-on-Avon issue, and someone, somewhere needed to alert people in Keynsham, Oldfield Park, Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge and Warminster all of whom loose all (or all but one early morning) though trains from London. To alert people in Bristol and Bath who loose their through trains from south London, and Westbury who are down to just one train from South London, leaving Waterloo before 8 a.m. *Someone* had to put their individual name to it. It's a service I use (connecting in at Trowbridge from the x34c bus) and I know a lot of the people involved too - so I start from more insight to the case better than many.

The meeting on 20th October is promoted by the West Wilts Rail User Group, Railfuture (Severnside), the Two Tunnels project, Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways, The Coffee Shop Passenger Forum, and TravelWatch SouthWest (TWSW^» (TravelWatch SouthWest - website)) - groups along the line and in the region coming together.

The objective of the petition and meeting has to be to get a MORE APPROPRIATE DECISION IMPLEMENTED and not just to "raise a stink" after which we roll over quietly. The Department for Transport and SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)'s MD have already given (various different (!)) explanations that, frankly, don't hold much water and are based on poor, outdated, and even wrong data, and there's an easy solution, with the first step already recommended by their own watchdog. So the petition and meeting are a step in a process - the outcome sought is the service running 5 trains each way per day (as it was at the start of last year) for 2022, and for 2023 probably a train every hour or two, with the new houlry trains planned for that year on MetroWest extending beyond West Wilts to Salisbury where it becomes the London, Brighton or Romsey train. Forward looking, green, sustainable economically, good for Trowbridge and very much in line with the Great British Railway agenda.

Please do feel free to get in touch with any questions, to forward this email, to come to the meeting (limited physical space, but a very big zoom meeting I expect), to write to your MP (sorry, Andrew!). Thank you for your help, and I look forward to seeing you on the train next year!

Graham

Graham Ellis - graham@wellho.net
01225 708225 or 0797 4 925 928
48, Spa Road, Melksham, SN12 7NY
* Well House Consultants Ltd
* Webmaster at Coffee Shop forum
* Melksham Town Councillor for South Ward
* Vice Chair Melksham Transport User Group

Each of the four letters published on Facebook - each town has its local groups, so there's no one size fits all there.  Example:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/spottedbradfordonavon/posts/585104725972060/

[grahame]

1470 signatures. When Graham said he intended to start a parliamentary petition, I laughed. I'm not laughing now.

Petitions are a "risk" in my view and can show just how few people are interested, as well as how many are. And they need to be a stepping stone, and not just a safety value through which the community can vent its feelings before the show moves on anyway.

Looking at the three constituencies that lose ALL their through trains from London:
South West Wiltshire (Trowbridge station) Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) - 422 signatures
Chippenham (Bradford-on-Avon station) Michelle Donelan MP - 386 signatures
Bath   (Oldfield Park station) Wera Hobhouse MP - 111 signatures

Also look at the constituency that is reduced to one train per day to and from London:
North East Somerset (Keynsham) Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP - 87 signatures

Now - government petitions are NATIONAL things and we have an issue here which has potential national repercussions (if they can withdraw direct London services to Trowbridge, could they withdraw them from Chester, Bradford, Lincoln, Inverness, Carmarthen, Corrour and many other places too?). However, it manifests itself locally and so we have essentially a campaign that needs to be LOCAL and that does not make it easy to even approach national petition target such as 10,000 to even get an answer, or 100,000 to be considered (!) for a debate.   But hang on a moment - let's look at that another way.

I'll take Michelle's constituency as an example, as that's where I live.

It takes an average of 15.3 signatures per constituency to trigger a government response.  Michelle has had 25 times that number of signatories since last Friday

It takes an average of 153 signatures per constituency to trigger consideration for a debate..  Michelle has had 2.5 times that number of signatories, and that since last Friday.

The figures for Dr Andrew Murrison are even more striking!

It would really be a rather good idea for them to have the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) take a look at the decision and see if they can find a solution - and we have petitioned in such a way to leave a forward looking solution staring them in the face.   The community could get what it wants, the MPs boost their popularity rating, the government gets brownie points for listening, and hopefully, next time there will be consultation so we don't have to go through this sort of thing again.

Shucks - do I need to edit the figures?  Up from 1470 to 1511 since you posted, Mark A