Great Western Coffee Shop

Claire Perry, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, will be visiting Melksham and Corsham on Friday afternoon.  It's a Chamber of Commerce / Conservative campaign arranged meeting to which I and other have been invites - "Melksham Transport Links" are the title here, but as Ms Perry is very much a rail rather than road minister, I can guess which way the slant will go.

If any of our members / readers would like an invite - especially with business interests in Wiltshire - please let me know and I'll see what can be done.    Report to follow too.

I remember attending a meeting in support of a re-opened Corsham station back in the 1980s. I suspect Ms Perry would have to be some sort of genious with the ability to move mountains to get this project looking as if it will ever succeed. But you never know..

Indeed, you never know. But if she does, will she be 'away with the fairies again? '. Perhaps she will be the Wiltshire version of Titania .....

It's a dream that may be realised, you never know. Perhaps by Midsummer next year?

;D

These puns are murder!

The presentation to the minister (beware - huge file) is at
   http://atrebatia.info/dft_minister_20140829.pdf
and during the presentation questions were being asked and matters discussed.    Many of the early picture slides are purely "for the record" and were passed very quickly indeed.  The basis of future discussions were the Chamber of Commerce input to the GW consultation at
   http://www.melkshamchamber.org.uk/coc_to_dft_may2014.pdf
and the TransWilst CRP input at
   http://atrebatia.info/dft_resp.pdf

* The minister brielfy but strongly spoke of rail investment - comparing electrification works underway now compared to what they were just a few years back.

* The minister acknowledged the growth we [TransWilts line] had seen - well beyond target, and healthily in excesss of our own forecasts, achieved with just a single extra carriage

* The minister asked excellent question concerning how we have surveyed passenger numbers, how our future growth potential figures are detived, and on regular v irregular users of service and whether we were seeing a launch-year "blip" after which it might settle down once people had tried out the service.  Potential growth limiters, such as train capacity, were discussed as significant risks.

* The minister agreed that the current actual service would form the basis of the likely direct award period from September 2015, and not the service as described in the document which could be read as incorrect for the TransWilts and also for certain other stations such as Pewsey.

* The minister declined to roll the TransWilts as a fully fledged service into the next stage, as we alreadt believe we have proven the three year case.  She told us that the single year's figures were insufficeient as we might see a different emerging pattern after the initial burst, and the ongoing service should be specified based on a longer record rather than a short sample. She informed us that the three year roll in system is a "pretty cast iron guarantee" for the proven ongoing service, and if we wait [we have no choice, it seems!] for year 3 that ongoing service can be better tuned to the longer term performance rather than being based on a single year's results.

* The minister made notes to look to including the TransWilts CRP into the continuing franchise in a similar way to other CRPs are included as formal stakeholders.   We all acknowledged that the absence of the CRP in the consultation document wasn't a surprise, considering that the docuemnt was virtually complete before the CRP was admitted to ACoRP.

* Although not for the next franchise period / short term, some of the longer term visions shown in the slides were openly discussed - bearing in mind that some attendees hadn't been able to arrive at the meeting by train due to the still-long intervals between services. It was noted that this was the week when Swindon -> Kemble was redoubled - a line singled at the same time as the TransWilts - and that the TransWilts is on another logical freight route from Southampton to the Midlands and North.

* The minister congratulated us on what we have achieved so far [actually, we have a non-seasonal, double-ended line so that makes our task much easier than many!] and asked if she could put other groups in touch.  We confirmed that we're very hapy to talk / share our experiences, both with well established groups (who, perhaps, we don't have too much to tell, though some of our activities are believed to be quite advanced) and with groups who are learning their way through the process of establishing themselves and thus their effect of their line / service.

A word of caution - as I was doing a lot (probably too much) of the talking, the above is written from memory - I may have missed out some gobs of data and I may have misquoted.   Readers will also appreciate that I was rather more intent on contributing to the meeting, and ensuring that the minister left well informed and with positive memories of what we can do, and how policy and actions can help mutual goals, rather than taking good pictures.  So please forgive the camera shake ...

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/cp1_20140829.jpg)
Peter Blackburn, Chair of Melksham Railway Developement Group and Vice Chair of TransWilts Community Rail Partnership
Anne Lock, Corsham Stalward
Clair Perry, MP for Devizes and Minister of State at the Department for Transport with rail franchise responsibility
Michelle Donelan, Conservative Candidate for the Chippenham Constituency
... all picture discussing TransWilts and Wiltshire's new railway age yesterday

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/cp2_20140829.jpg)
Michelle Donalan and Claire Perry - a rather better picture.
Note the TransWits flyer - material by FGW and our community, prepared by the community and printed by Wiltshire Council

Whilst I obviously get and wouldn't disagree with your point about the TransWilts being a non-seasonal, double-ended line that makes our task slightly easier, I wouldn't want it to be misread as "build it and they will automatically come".

Having gained a lot of experience (both as part of my day job and as a CRP volunteer) going door to door talking to residents along the TransWilts corridor and trying to persuade them to use public transport, I can tell you that, while there is obviously a huge amount of goodwill regarding what we are all collectively trying to achieve, it can be a battle in certain areas (predominantly parts of Chippenham & Trowbridge but also certain areas of the mainly-benign Melksham too) where people have become so used to using their cars as a default option.

This is where I would tend to agree with Claire Perry - due in no small part to our collective graft on the ground, we have manage to persuade an impressive number of people who are not by nature inclined towards public transport to honour us with their trust and patronage over the first year. However, the real challenge will be for both us and the service itself to prove worthy of retaining that trust and patronage, and continuing to attract & keep more passengers on that basis, over the medium to long term.

Anyone reading this should be in no doubt whatsoever of our determination to make it so - There is certainly no complacency here.

Lee, I back that up 100% ... we're looking to back up the excellent early start and launch season with robust and continued growth over coming years.   Inputs, discussions, meetings, plans ... I have my first two diary dates for 2015 already.   Over coming years, the whole provision / timetable pack of cards in this area is being thrown up in the air as electrification, new trains and new schedules hit the spine routes from London to Cheltenham, to South Wales, to Bristol, and to Taunton and the South West.    And our inputs are going to be really important in blowing just a soft breeze at some of those cards to ensure that they land well aligned and right side up.     It's not so much a question of campaigning - more a question of all partners working together to ensure it goes on working.

The questions "will it continue to grow / what evidence do you have / how far" and "how much of the use this year is novelty value?" are / were excellent ones (I have paraphrased slightly).   We have multiple independent indicators that tell us that, yes, it can continue to grow and by factors not percentages, and that only a very little of the traffic is "novelty".   Those journeys that perhaps were do, in any case, often result in repeated travel.    Figures this year will have passenger numbers 7 or 8 times what they were last year ... please don't expect next year to be 7 to 8 times this year.

Now - having cast a positive light, there are reasons that the fare income could reduce or even fall back. For example
* If the service was reduced again, it would be very hard to keep passenger numbers growing.
* If the trains become so full that people can't board / are turned away.
* If we have significant reliability problems, either on the service itself or missed connections.
* If we have too many late notified engineering changes (in the plan for 2015 is appreciated - after timetable printed is a problem)
* If engineering changes result in non-connecting buses - e.g. 55 minute wait at Chippenham
* If infrastructure improvements and linked transport do not keep pace with growing use / are even cut back
* If revenue collection isn't improved as it's currently stretched to the limit even for people wanting to pay
* If people were to not have current information about the service easily available