Great Western Coffee Shop

This week, the TransWilts line celebrated "Golden Tuesday".  It was Golden because all of our train actually ran - to the timetable pattern that's required by Great Western's contract with the Department for Transport.  On each of the other six days out of seven, some services were cancelled.

If "our" line had a frequent train service - a train to run every 30 minutes (so that's between 30 and 40 services each way per day), loss of a handful of services - providing they weren't directly after each other, wouldn't be a problem - people could just drop back to the following service.  But when the service is scheduled to be less than ten a day, it's a different matter. Loss of a single train often leads to a gap of four hours in the service, with people turning up in the middle of the gap for the cancelled train having to divert, wait, or be sent via alternative road transport.  That may not sound too bad - until you learn of long waits for alternative transport being provided (if at all), followed by much slower transit times.  And if anyone has a dog, or a cycle with them - tough luck; in a wheelchair and the provision of road transport is more certain, but the wait is likely to be longer.

As a long term advocate for the services on this line, where passenger numbers have rocketed in recent years, it's heartbreaking to see all the good work that's been done by our volunteers, by Great Western in the past, and by the team who operate the trains, squandered in a failure to provide enough people to operate the trains as timetabled. People can be very understanding if they're told "we have had to reduce the service for a week because a safety issue on the trains has come up and we can't run them" but they're less understanding if they're told "sorry - we haven't enough staff" when the contract for the service has been in place for a long time, and when cancellation rates like 15% (yes, that's what they're doing) seem unique to our line.  Grant you our cancellations aren't unique, but they are far the worst - and they have the worst effect on each individual because of the horrific service gaps they leave.

Explanations have been given as to why it's hard to staff our trains - and I know there's truth in the reasons.  But I also know that there's data left out from the reasons given which mitigate / dilute them. And I know that whilst it might be hard to organise the staff to operate the contract you've accepted, you're also carefully selected and well paid to do that hard job.

If, as the more optimistic voices suggest, things get rapidly better in the new year (longer and reliable trains), it'll be a huge sigh or relief for us all.  If they stay better for many years (bearing in mind these current problems are said to have their roots in the biggest modernisation program in a generation) then we'll be able to look back and celebrate how the hard times were overcome.

January and February see the conclusion of public consultation into the next 10 years of Community Rail, and into the next GW area rail franchise.   They offer an opportunity to suggest how community, rail industry, government, and other parties should all work together to help ensure that systems go forward for the wider mutual benefit - to help ensure that the current failure to supply the specified and contracted level of reliably is truly a once-in-a-generation failure.

Melksham Station has been consistently the fastest growing in the area in recent years. People are kind and thank us for our activities to make that happen, but in practise the dire, low starting point, the much improved schedule which was quite reliable until this spring, the crying needs of people in the area, and local and central government and industry support gave us a "can't fail" product that has sold iteslf.   However, I don't expect to see the same fast growth in the 2017-18 year.   The demand grows (and could grow more if we were to promote it), but the supply has run out.   Trains that people can't fit onto (or if they do once, they say "never again"), trains that don't run, service gaps which have needed filling as use grows but haven't been filled. I'm not saying "no growth" this year - the final outcome depends on the next three months - but it's certainly going to be stunted.  And I hope we can work forward so this stunting is only a one year blip.

And looking forward to the consultations - is there some way / some mechanism through which we can ask for a future framework that helps the operator meet their obligations - that gives us a strategic direction?   I'm not a great one for extra controls on TOCs - but the TOC can't object if they've every intention of meeting their spec over coming years, and indeed having those extra elements there will help them pull the levels of their funding and specifying stakeholders where conditions external to them threaten their ability to deliver.