Taking my lead from another thread in which there was universal criticism of most bus stations ... I came up with a list of what (as a passenger) I would like to see included in the new bus station at Exeter Utopia.   In alphabetic order to avoid arguments ...

A bus station that is a pleasure for staff to work
A nearby railway station and a nearby taxi rank
Accouncements that are clear and not overdone ("mind the gap between the bus and the stand")
Cafe and / or direction to a 24 hour one just outside (can it have a bus station departure feed in there?)
Clean - litter, pigeon and rat free and an air of being well cared for
Departure boards to include local buses that call just outside but do not come in to the station
Direction signs as you get OFF a bus pointing to key locations and connection information
Electronic "next departure" boards visisble from the whole waiting area
Enough seating
Enough vehicle capacity for all logical services to use it, and with layover space if things go wrong
Large clear and working clock (also wanted on the transfer deck at Reading railway station)
Located where there is efficient access off the road network - no going round and round in congestion
Map and times of the routes served
Map of the immediate area
"Next bus to ..." or other electronic gizmo for places not (yet) shown on main boards
Personal attention / call / emergency button and / or member of staff at a usually fixed point
Place to buy tickets or clear information that you do so on the bus
Shelter that works in the wind and rain
Smoker / Vaper's area away from the entrance doors
Well lit to be and to feel safe
Well maintained

Anything you would add?   Any of these not required as design principles to be implemented?

Fair details.

Many thanks for tipping our members off ... I have added it to the Calendar.  More at https://bristolshoppingquarter.co.uk/bristol-clean-air-day-2019/

And closed last night.  The team Behind the Counter has taken a look at how our various forum projects have been moved forward this year; always an opportunity to look at how others see you as you write up these things, and a "Supremes" set of entries went in.  For the first time this year, the submission task for ACoRP was split across the team, and my huge thanks go out to those newly involved on behalf of the Coffee Shop and its members.

Hear, hear

Melksham Rail User Group summer and autumn timetable has gone off to the printers. Proof copies have been flying around - to MRUG^» (Melksham Rail User Group - site) officers, moderators/admins here, and our local CRO.  Huge thanks for feedback from MRUG and from the Coffee Shop team - a number of sillies were spotted before it went to print, and some excellent suggestion, many of which were adopted. 

First outings of the new leaflet - I should be taking them round to usual Melksham outlets (went round and got initial stock orders yesterday) on Thursday and they'll be at the Shaw Summer Fair on Saturday. Once they're on hand in printed form, I'll share the URL for the final online version.

From "Community Rail in the City", I have limited remaining stock of leaflets for three other CRPs^▸ (Community Rail Partnership) - very relevant to village fetes as they give destination data, so they'll be there. If anyone is available to help on Saturday 22nd June, member Reginald25 would love your help.

[serious]Once you get outside the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) (even GB^▸ (Great Britain)) knowledge drops and questions on "where is this" take far longer and need more clues.   Same thing if you move away from the immediate station.  Good in that it confirms that our knowledge base truly is UK ... sometimes a little frustrating for the original posts; they do help widen our view, though, with a good eventual answer[/serious]

I don't know where it is ... I look at a high res map of the French rail network and guess, starting at Abbeville and Amiens .... Dijon sounded nice, but does not really cut the mustard in this case.  I suspect we need a wide river and a late-built bridge.   

From Rail News

Brake systems from Melksham ... pantographs from Chard ...

Odd ... don't recall it (but then I never used it).  About how long ago did it go?  Are you sure it was on the Coffee Shop and not some other forum?   I've had a look through the option settings in case something had got changed by a fat fingered admin such as myself but I can find a button to push to turn this on.

You can "reply" on the bottom, or "quote" on an individual thread ... I'm slightly confused; you'll have to show me next time I see you.

Updating this "sticky" thread at the top of the forum introduction and unlocking it to allow comment / question too - we now (June 2019) have a constitution in place, ratified at our AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting) and we are working well forward more or less as proposed. A whole raft of ideas have been thrown up - directional, organisational, management and financial and from that raft some have been selected, others placed on hold and still others rejected. And when doing something new in association (perhaps close association) with others, concerns may be raised in places that need to be clarified / addressed. One such area where a clarification is useful is how our community is and will be working with rail in partnership, and how our agendae at our initial and general meetings considered desribing and implementing that in terms of pressing (actually not!) for early ACoRP^▸ (Association of Community Rail Partnerships) membership.  Text follows, tidied up from an email answer sent a few days ago and 'chewed over' by the admin / moderator team.

---

The Coffee Shop is an example of how community and rail can work in partnership. Describing it in that way gives a clear flag of how it's positioned to newcomers who don't know us.  Such a soundbite is useful because we're an unusual 'beast', with other online groups taking a much more protest than partner approach, and 'real life' groups taking a much more localised approach. These approaches are general directions; they do not stop the forum being the critical friend, nor of us highlighting town / line specific issues.

The Coffee Shop is run purely by volunteers (without employees), has no formal local government involvement (though some members have local government roles), does not have a specific line / line group / service it works with, so has no station adoption buildings / safety certificate. Which does place it outside the guidelines of what would be expected of an organisation applying to be a full member of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships.  As part of our definition, we laid down overall objectives in the constitution, which was ratified earlier this month. The purposes of the Group are: * providing a voice for the community * promoting sustainable, healthy and accessible travel * bringing communities together, supporting diversity & inclusion * supporting social and economic development ...  which seem to us to both reflect our approach, and to line us up with the pillars going forward for Community Rail, if not the conditions of membership of ACoRP. 

This closeness to and agreement with the new Community Rail Pillars, yet the issues described above which currently preclude membership of the association, have given rise to concern in some quarters. So - an open comment for anyone reading this who was not at the AGM to re-assure them that the Coffee Shop is very much an example of the community working in partnership with rail, but that as things stand we do not have "becoming an ACoRP member" with all that requires on our objectives.  Indeed, I would be very wary of recommending we make changes to fit the current rules. Of course, we don't know how we (or they) may move forward in the future and with objectives and ethoses that line up, who knows?

Maybe the opposite end of the spectrum, but some spectra turn out to be circles with the beginning and end in the same place.

Could it just be that your excess is so unusual and rarely done the the good staff of Neath identify you as a notable customer by your purchase in amongst the great sea of similarity they see on a daily basis?

I don't have a regular journey / regular excessing habits, but I do use the facility from time to time.  And I find that the level of knowledge amongst staff of these products and how to set them is often lacking, with there being no clear way on (many?) ticket machines to consistently and accurately issue them.   If a price comes in as being rather silly, I consider it to be an offer and will chat about how it's worked out;  not infrequently that results in a more reasonably priced way of doing it being found.   Funny things, excesses.

Does your sister live near Teeside Airport by any chance ...

I have so much to add ...

This forum has changed - moved forward - over the years and one of the elements where we have been doing that is in setting up routes and dialogues for discussion.   The past couple of days has been intensely valuable in helping that along, and yet at the same time it "merely" built on the groundwork we had or were having in place. We have communication channels that I've not seen reflected in social media groups in other parts of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - but then I'm not party to their internals.  And those communication channels include a "checkpoint" every 3 months so that we can pick up on outstanding issues (and raise new ones and new ideas) both ways.

Great Western employs around 6000 staff.  For sure, most are operational but then a considerable number are either managerial or specialist too, and you / we cannot expect the "head poncho" to be able to instantly and unprepared answer a question on what any has been said or done by any of them.  Nor can we expect him to be the one who answers everything and anything that comes his way - I want him to get on with running a darned good railway, motivating his staff, negotiating an excellent setup for his passengers, giving his managerial overview and direction where it's best employed - helping connect things.  So - on "the largest investment since Victorian Times" and where it came from, no, please, getting an answer to that can be delegated and you'll probable be able to get a far better answer from the person/people who came up with it than from Mark.   

Whilst the answers won't be as quick as on a forum, so many questions do get answered - perhaps slower but more fully, and with some we are probable best to be pragmatic and accept "don't know" or "do we really need to put considerable resource into researching that".   But with the keeness of so many of the GWR team, thos categories are much rarer than you might imagine.

I first engaged with the First Group - First Great Western as it then was - some 12 years ago. And I campaigned and fought against some of the things they were doing - be they things off their own bat, or under contractual and supplier instruction. Words like "against" and "fought" have faded - perhaps not to the point of total elimination - to largely be replaced by "with" and "co-operated".  "Campaign" is still there - but for the most part it's campaigning or working alongside towards mutual goals. I can still be the critical friend; I can still ask the awkward "why don't you xxxxx" and I can still argue for passenger benefit (and long term business growth) where the HQ^▸ (Headquarters) and contract instruction majors on short term financial expedients.

I am a long way from answering "largest investment".  What I can tell you, based on discussions over these last few days, that we're getting ever better at getting good answers, and providing community inputs to our local rail industry too so that we partner in making as much better as we can for all - even if we don't get a surfboard special from Newquay at the end of Boardmaster's week, complete with a buffet, and a three hour run from Plymouth to Paddington.

Dunston is a very interesting case of a station ... I passed through on a train that called there about a fortnight ago and was struck by how little passenger traffic there was on and off the train at the shoulder of the evening peak at a station within a city.  Looking back at historic data, I read of a station closed over 90 years ago, re-opened 35 years ago and having had a very patchy time since then. 

On our station comparator page (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/DOT.html ) we record a rise from just 82 journeys in the 2003/04 year to 12966 in 2017/18 ... fuelled by a much increased service, and surpassed (no doubt) by a frequent bus service into Newcastle and to other places along the main road off which the station is situated.  Although 12,966 journeys is 150 times up over the period of our record, it's still just 18 arrivals and 18 departures a day.

Until the 1980s, the line through Dunston was on something of a byway, but with the closure to trains of the Scotswood Bridge over the Tyne, Carisle line services now leave Newcastle over the same bridge as London train before turning off and heading west through Dunston and Metro Centre.