Great Western Coffee Shop

Passenger journeys at Melksham have risen from 3,000 per annum 20 years ago (when Peter Blackburn, our shortlisted volunteer at new week's ACoRP awards in Derby) took the chair for the first time at the Melksham Rail Development Group to 60,000 in the latest ORR figures published (year to March 2016).  If Melksham's traffic continues to rise until journeys per head of population in the catchment are comparable to other Wiltshire towns, we will see further growth - in a few years from now, we may well be looking at over a quarter of a million journeys per annum.

The current station platform and trains are getting to (or beyond) their capacity.   The road approach is daily swilling with people, bicycles, cars like it hasn't done in the living memory of most of us, mixed in with the industrial and commercial traffic of the thriving businesses there.   The station car park, with 22 extra spaces (making a total of 27), had just five free the other day (Thursday afternoon) when I took a look.   There's no formal short term (20 minute) parking, no direct access to the housing at the north (blocked by a fence between two pieces of council land) and no direct access to the housing to the West, where there's much new development - housing rather than employment.

A Station Masterplan, and also a capacity survey of the railway line, are being put together by various agencies and consultancies, lead by our local transport authority.   There's a strong desire for the growth to be able to continue, and a desire to do the logical thing and look at all aspects to work out what's needed, and how various steps in the development won't get in each other's way, nor create new issues or bottlenecks.  And to inform these processes, and processes of up-tuning services at the station (train and, we suspect, bus) too, we need to learn what current users are using the service for, their needs and desires, what's important to them and what's not.

So - from Thursday 19th to Sunday 22nd October 2017, passengers will be counted on and off every train.  On three out of the four days, every departing passenger group will be asked to take part in a short survey - with forms handed out at the station, and collected either there, or on train (a volunteer travelling on every train leaving on the Thursday, Saturday or Sunday).  Volunteer data collection will save ££ on consultant costs - allowing for data to be gathered at the weekend too rather than just on a single weekday.

I am seeking volunteers to help - both "leads" who have helped / have some experience in this, and other helpers coming along for the first time too.  Message me here, email me, etc.    And I will be writing around to many individually too.    If you can spare 2 or 4 hours on any one or two of those days, it would be fantastic.    I'll be working with the consultants to ensure travel authorisation, health and safety issues, briefings, robustness are taken care of.  In spite of the odd issues with trains and the station, for the most part the customers are delighted that there's a service available to them and you can expect an utterly positive response. It's a really worthwhile thing to do - and we'll make it fun too.

If my shift patterns work out, grahame, I would be delighted to join you - but I am subject to certain vagaries around my working hours.  I'll contact you separately with further details.

CfN.  ;)

That's fantastic thanks ... we may be able to "float" one or two "shift leads" ... I'll be doing quite a bit, but need breaks, which can coincide with the availability of other leads.

Almost ready to go ... just over a dozen people involved in some way and and it's all coming together:

Good job we're not doing the survey today:


In both cases


Let me see ... service has been running for nearly 4 years ... shouldn't that be enough time to get a decent supply of drivers?    Interesting feedback from a crew member very recently - "came in to work a Swindon diagram on Sunday and got sent to Weymouth instead" ... rather confirms our place in the pecking order.

Nothing else cancelled or short working in the area!

Wonderful day yesterday - Thursday of the survey

Big "Thank you" to our volunteers - Eddy, Miriam, Helen, Horace, Judith, Tracey, Rosemary, Roger, Bob and David who were out (variously) before dawn, after dark, and in the pee-ing down rain to help gather data and inform passengers with timetables and TransWilts updates.

For readers who aren't travelling over these three days - the timetable can be found online at:
http://atrebatia.info/tt_autumn_2017.pdf
and the update leaflet at:
http://atrebatia.info/trifold_oct17.pdf

A massive "thank you" to passengers too - for being so helpful in filling in the surveys, and indeed for all the time taken to write in extras which are so valuable in triggering thoughts and ideas 'out of the box'.

I now have a good pile of cards sitting on my table; not yet all of the ones from yesterday and some members of our team have "home" stations that aren't Melksham and were scheduled to start / end at their base.  That's good news; although this particular survey is all about Melksham station and traffic, the total line case is made by all traffic, and [examples] cutting 40 minutes a day off the round trip from Trowbridge to Chippenham (i.e. halving the journey time), or providing good connections from Swindon through to the west via Westbury is also what we're about - same train, same crew, more farebox income which helps make us viable.

By having volunteers help, we achieve a great deal.  We're able to gather the data for three days not one, which (assuming no service failures) will give us a full not just a weekday picture for the future. We're getting an excellent response from passengers which I suspect exceeds what would be obtained via employed / contracted staff (due to the enthusiasm of our team, and the fact that our team comes across as passengers friends, rather than authority's demands for data). And we're helping our volunteers interact, inform one another, get to know our team and the GWR team too - it's fun, it's rewarding to see the results of all the effort that's put in over the years, and it's something to do on a wet Thursday morning  ;D

And so ... I'll be spending a little time to day sorting out the rest of the returns box, writing up my observation outwith the elements on the survey form, and having a bit of a rest.  Looking forward to two more days of talking with volunteer friends and passenger.

Melksham station has risen from around 3,000 journeys a year at the turn of the century to 60,000 - and should continue growing significantly for many years to come if the right facilities are in place. So far, we have a well-educated guestimate of the facilities; these few days work help us make that less of a guess, and more of an effective business proposition with lessened risks and better return on the right investments.

Lots of passengers on the 18:54 and 20:19 off Melksham today  :-\

Been lots of outbound passengers this morning ... so there's likely to be a few taxis or a rail replacement bus.

Mind you, we looked as far as possible for a "typical" weekday,  Saturday and Sunday for our surveys, and it's pretty typical to get cancellations, so I suppose in a perverse way it works for us.

18:54 has another train 63 minutes behind it.

20:19 is last train of the day - poor cancellation choice, but thank goodness that the 16:34 and 17:44 calls are still running.

Public thanks - as well as by email - is due to all the volunteers who helped.

Unaudited indicators (a couple of returns still awaited ...)

Thurdays - train average 33/15
Saturday - train average 31.6/17.9
Sunday - train average 40.6/14.4

In each case, first figure is number of passenger journeys made anywhere on the Chippenham to Trowbridge section, and the second number is the number of passengers making use (i.e. getting off or getting on) at Melksham.

On Thursday 18 out of 18 ran.  On Saturday 16 out of 16 ran.  On Sunday 11 out of the scheduled 13 ran, and I have divided the totals for that day by 11. 

Sunday Cancellations due to shortage of Drivers.  Advise for one of the cancellations was to wait for the next train (happened to be just over an hour as that's the time of day that the old "Parly" goes through to Cheltenham Spa) and for the other was to have them call as taxi (final arrival).  I saw one taxis arrive at Melksham Station with 3 people 45 minutes after the train should have arrived.  I suspect additional taxis, but if the taxi drivers were nice they would have dropped people who walked on their outward journey on the footpath beside the bypass, rather than carrying on down into the back oof the industrial area where the station is located.

Saturday - blowing a gale / storm Brian, and Swindon Town playing at home.    Sunday, line in full working order; we got noticeable diversionary traffic (common at weekends) as passengers looked to avoid rail replacement buses - mentioned to me was the Basingstoke area, though I also note the Berks and Hants was showing as having engineering changes.



Edit note: A couple of minor typos corrected, purely for clarity. CfN.  ;)

That would imply annual passenger ons and offs for Melksham are currently running in the region of 85,000 to 90,000.

I would agree with that.  It may not be reflected in ticket sales - a lot of young children use the train (accompanied of course) ... and there are other non-ticketed categories too (to be reduced when the barriers go in at Chippenham)

cough

 ;)

Today's Melksham News:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/min_surveyreport_20171026.jpg)