Melksham - a comparison of train reliability

[whole diary]

[grahame]

following on from ... http://www.passenger.chat/27849 ... I have drilled down to my local station at Melksham









I am not impressed by the performance.  Of course, someone has to be bottom, but we come out close to the bottom even with the true cancellation figures  hidden.  Yesterday, I stood talking with people at the Food and River Festival, and the biggest reasons that people gave for not using the train were "I have a car", "Trains cost too much (to use)" and "It's unreliable" - the latter with tales of woe, and less than helpful alternative provision if any - typically spouses being called out to rescue!

What do I mean with "true cancellation figures hidden"?  Look at that 1st September log.   4 trains, all on time.  Was that good?   It shows up as good but the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) timetable that's displayed at the station and is published for the season online shows 18 trains.   14 were removed from the timetable because of a lack of staff to run them.  And Joe Public in the park doesn't care if it's an industrial dispute, a lack of enough staff on the books, a failed train blocking the line, signal failure - it's. cancellation - a train that's planned to run when and where he wants to go that he's planned his life around, an is not running.

Edit - The station ranking graph is misleading - there are only 2616 stations in the database, but the graph scale goes to 3000, given the impression at first glance of there being some 380 stations with a worse performance.  Below is a copy of that graph to which I have added grey panels to help highlight the true data area.

[TaplowGreen]

That's shocking, and with only a few days attributable to industrial action.

.....and yet there are a few hundred stations where performance was even worse?
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