Like many in their mid-20s, Tia Costell feels young people are being priced out of finding their own place to live.

"It's hard enough for people to rent in London, let alone get on the property ladder. Properties are so expensive and hard to come by - if you can't get there on the same day, you can't even get a viewing."

This is a familiar story across the country, and particularly in London. But has the capital's flagship infrastructure project - the Elizabeth line - made renting even more expensive?

The Elizabeth line opened in May 2022, and has become the UK's busiest railway line, carrying one in six train journeys in the whole country, according to Transport for London (TfL).

Figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest there has been a disproportionate rise in rents along its route.

(BBC article continues)

Doubt over future of the West of England's dial-a-ride Westlink minibus service


Government funding for the dial-a-ride Westlink minibus service is set to expire in March 2026

There are doubts about the future of a bookable minibus service after it emerged trips have been costing up to £50 a passenger.

Westlink was introduced in 2023 by the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) after several regular bus routes were lost in the area.

The scheme has government funding until March, but will have to pay for itself for it to continue after that.

WECA mayor, Helen Godwin, said her team are "evaluating how best to keep people connected, improve these demand-responsive services, and ensure value for money".


David Redgewell said some have been taking advantage of the service, using it like "their own personal taxi service"

Passengers book trips on an app and are taken to existing bus routes for a £2 fare.

The service was set-up to run in areas of Bristol, Bath, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset in 2023. However it has carried very few passengers and at points it has cost £40-£50 per passenger per trip to operate the service.

David Redgewell is a member of the South West Transport Network that campaigns for transport users in the region. He has used the bus service and said often he is one of the only two people on the minibus. He said the service has come down in cost and now works out at about "£14 per passenger, [which is] still a lot of money".

Roger French, who writes a bus and train blog, said the minibus service is "completely financially unsustainable".

Mayor Godwin said the contracted buses predated her time as mayor but she appreciates the "challenges of trying to fill the gaps in the commercial network".

20.04 on Sunday from Paddington to Hereford started 22 late and ended 55 late. Fortunately the Royal Blenheim in Oxford is a very convivial waiting room.

The passenger is not happy and starts arguing with the officers. We are in the concourse of Ealing Broadway Elizabeth line station which is a fare evasion hotspot. The Transport for London (TfL) enforcement team has asked him to produce his ticket after the barriers flashed he was travelling on a child fare. He certainly doesn't look like a child.

The argument gets more and more heated with the passenger insisting the barrier machine has taken his ticket and that's why he can't produce it. Rather comically he turns out his pockets. He is trying to charm his way out of the situation.

The laughs slowly stop as it becomes clear he is in trouble. Suddenly, he bolts straight out of the station. The officers shout at him and try to shepherd him away from the exit but there doesn't seem to be much they can do. They aren't allowed to restrain him or arrest him. They have a hands-off policy and their safety comes first.

Welcome to the world of trying to stop London's fare evaders.



The officers have seen it all. People hurdling the barriers, or even crawling under them. There is a lot of "double gating" where the evader tucks in behind someone else going through the barriers. These officers are in Ealing Broadway to try and stop fare evasion.

It is a huge problem for TfL, costing it £190m a year. Fare evasion has increased since the opening of the Elizabeth line as more passengers use the TfL network, and many stations on the line don't have staffed barriers. The loss equates to 3.5% of all fare income. TfL wants to get that down to 1.5% by 2030 although it admits this will be a significant challenge.



Nasir Ahmadi, one of the officers, told BBC London: "One of their main excuses is, 'It's very expensive, we can't afford it.' 'We can't afford it' or 'Transport should be free' or 'I left my Oyster card at home or my bankcard at home', things like that. The fact of the matter is everyone is paying their fare and they should be paying for their fare. It's not fair on the general public that they are paying for their fare and you're double gating and pushing your way through."

Another revenue protection, Tomi Ogunsuyi, has also heard plenty of excuses: "On a daily basis we usually see people pushing through the barriers. We see them crawling through as well. Our aim is to stop the violence and aggression and to support the front-line staff. We tend to hear common excuses like, 'I haven't got any money, I didn't know. Why can't travelling be free?' We tend to hear a lot of excuses, to be honest, but we are quite used to it so we explain the reason why everyone should pay for their journey."

Over a three-month period this year, TfL had 9,934 open cases under consideration for prosecution for fare evasion, including both one-off and repeat offenders. Since April, it has issued more than 30,000 fixed penalty notices, which have recently been increased to £100, and has reported over 9,000 individuals for possible prosecution.

Tfl says it is also increasing the number of on-train checks. It says its enforcement teams have completed over 2.8 million checks on board Tubes and trains. It also uses a combination of data, travel pattern analysis and CCTV to identify persistent evaders.



TfL's head of compliance, Anand Nandha, says they have just employed a team of specialist investigators to focus on persistent offenders. He won't go into too much detail about how they track offenders down but he's confident they will catch more passengers who don't pay their fare. "It's not a victimless crime at all," he told me. "We have customers who pay their fare and they will end up having to pay more because we are losing more revenue on the network. So we want to ensure that revenue is used for public services and to help [keep] fares at a low level.

"We have up to 500 revenue inspection officers deployed on the network. We are using different methods of detection. We have a team of investigators who we have just employed who will use different methods to go after persistent offenders, like plain-clothes operations on the network. We are also looking at technology. We have numerous sources of data to look at patterns of fare evasion and we are also looking at infrastructure on the network to see how else we can reduce fare evasion."

An estimated £45.5m of annual revenue is being lost from passengers not paying for tickets, South Western Railway (SWR) has said.

The data was released after a campaign group submitted a Freedom of Information request to SWR, which said the overall rate of ticketless travel was about 3.9%.

The rail operator runs services in London, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire.

An SWR spokesperson said: "Our revenue protection team is focused on effectively deterring fare evasion and bringing down the rate of ticketless travel."

It said ticketless travel had reduced by 40% since 2017 and was now at its lowest ever level.
The figure appears to be £5m higher than what SWR said in May, while across the rail industry in the UK, it is estimated fare evasion costs nearly £240m a year.

The Freedom of Information request also said that SWR spent more than £370,000 reimbursing passengers for hotels and taxis due to delays and cancellations.

Additionally, 7,293 trains in the last year were short formed and had less carriages than planned, due to train faults and other issues.

Savernake Forest, and Marlborough close by, make for a wonderful day out from Melksham - a riot of colour in spring and autumn, lovely walks in summer and on the better days in winter, and always a lovely town to look around.  Or rather that's how I remember it - it is years since I visited even though it's not far from home.

This Saturday, 25th October 2025, I'll be visiting Marlborough by public transport from Melksham as part of my research and picture library update.  The 08:02 train from Melksham to Swindon, changing at Swindon onto the 08:40 bus at stop L on the new bus boulevard (Fleming Way) - route X5 that runs to Marlborough, Pewsey, Amesbury and Salisbury.  Gets to Marlborough at 09:17.  I am going that early as the Melksham Amateur Photography Group is meeting about an hour later, about a mile out of the town, about an hour later.

Coming home ... buses on X5 at about 5 minutes to the hour up until 17:53; onward trains from Swindon timetabled at 15:14, 17:35, 19:44 and 21:10.  Other buses and services available too in both directions.

Others welcome to join me for the journey and for the photo session if that's your thing.  Normally I would illustrate this article with my recent pictures but - err - it's so long since I was there I don't have any. So please forgive a recent picture of the bus interchange in Swindon, and some from 2010 of Marlborough and some of the nearby woods and forest.

Where is the Transport scholars section,please.

Do you find it interesting to work out why things are done as they are?  To study any analyse the issues around service disruptions?  Do you have background experience and knowledge to share, but fear getting pulled down into a sea of explanations to a public that really wants to complain rather than learn?   Do you want to post about goings on on your local line and solicit views and comment, without giving the oxygen of publicity to what might be a very bad - but very rare - incident?

Until last month, the Coffee Shop hosted a board that was designed to give members an ability to post and discuss subjects such as those above - actually specific to the TransWilts line and service, and some very useful work was done there.   I am now re-launching such a board for use right across the area and topics covered by the forum.

If you wish to become a member of this "How Stuff Works" area, please send me or any admin a message and they'll add you in to the Transport Scholar member group.  Or - to make it even easier - simply like this post and I'll add you in next time I'm around.

07:45 Westbury to Swindon due 08:34
08:44 Swindon to Westbury due 09:25
21:16 Westbury to Swindon due 21:58
22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12

20/10/25 22:31 Swindon to Westbury due 23:12 will be cancelled.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

To be fair, considerably better than nothing?

 
And with

 
e.t.a. 55 minutes late into Westbury.

21:34 Swindon to Westbury due 22:16
21:34 Swindon to Westbury due 22:16 will be cancelled.
This is due to a shortage of train crew.

Replacement road transport has been arranged to run in lieu of this train service. There will be a minibus from Travel Southwest departing Swindon at about 21:55.

21:55 Swindon to Westbury due 23:11
An additional bus service has been planned to operate as shown 21:55 Swindon to Westbury due 23:11.

World of cricket's farewell to umpire Dickie Bird



Cricketing stars from Yorkshire and beyond were among the mourners who gathered to say farewell to legendary umpire Dickie Bird at his funeral earlier.

The Barnsley-born son of a miner was 92 when he died "peacefully at home" on 22 September, according to Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

The service at St Mary's Church in Barnsley was attended by former England cricketers Sir Geoffrey Boycott and Michael Vaughan and was followed by a private family-only cremation and a wake at the town hall. Well-wishers gathered at the statue of Bird on Church Lane where the funeral procession paused for a moment of reflection.

The invited guests also included Yorkshire chair Colin Graves and former director of cricket Martyn Moxon, the sports commentator John Helm and the ex-sports minister Richard Caborn. Sir Geoffrey and Graves both gave eulogies and a poem by local poet Ian McMillan was read out.

Sir Geoffrey made sure the colourful character of his friend of almost 70 years shined through. "I first met Dickie Bird when I was 15, at the time I was playing cricket for Hemsworth Grammar School," Sir Geoffrey said to a packed church. "He called me Gerald for years."

He added: "Surprisingly with all the nerves he had as a batsman, he became a great umpire because he could channel all that nervous energy into good decisions. Dickie was refreshingly different. Eccentric but fair. It would be hard to find anyone who didn't like him."

Bird officiated in 66 Tests and 76 one-day internationals, including three World Cup finals, between 1973 and 1996.

He began as a player, batting for Yorkshire and Leicestershire before an injury cut short his career in 1964.

Bird was awarded an MBE in 1986, an OBE in 2012 and the Freedom of Barnsley in 2000.

In 2009 he was immortalised by a statue in Barnsley that depicted him raising his index finger to indicate a batsman was out.

At Yorkshire's home ground, Headingley, he paid for a balcony outside the dressing room for the players to sit and watch the game. Both the balcony and a clock at the ground bear his name.

Former England and Yorkshire cricketer Ryan Sidebottom said Bird was so committed to Yorkshire cricket that he would be on the pitch even for county matches he wasn't umpiring. He said: "He'd be out looking at the wicket and wandering around. But it looked like he'd just come in from a night out, like an 1980s John Travolta, because he had the full suit on with a large collar and tie and really fancy suits and flared trousers. We used to see him regularly with different suits, some naughty suits, some proper naughty suits."

Bowler Sidebottom retired in 2017, after taking more than 1,000 career wickets, and he said Bird "absolutely loved" the sport. "Great bloke and a lovely man who would do anything for Yorkshire cricket. He just loved Yorkshire, he was so passionate about the game and Yorkshire in general," he said.

And it was love for Yorkshire, and its people, that chair of Yorkshire County Cricket Club Colin Graves remembered at his funeral. "He had a reputation for not being the first at the bar, but he was a very generous man indeed," he said, adding that almost 1,000 children had been recipients of grants from him.

Among the junior cricketers to have received financial awards from Dickie was Harry Brook - now an England international.

Speaking to the BBC when he turned 90 two years ago, Bird said his secret to a long life had been his love of sport and exercise. "I run, I go out down to the local football ground here in the local park and I lap around the ground. I feel that's done me good. I'd like people, elderly people, if they could to just try and do a few exercises, move your arms, run on the spot, it occupies the brain. I'll keep my exercises up as long as I can."

As a young man, he played for Barnsley Cricket Club alongside Boycott and the journalist and broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson.