Great Western Coffee Shop

Many thanks to everyone (over 1700 people) who signed the petition calling for an appropriate tran service on the lines run by First Great Western using their "West" fleet based in Bristol.

The petition read as follows:

We received a petition asking:

    "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to provide a reliable train service with adequate capacity at times that travellers wish to make journeys from Swindon to Westbury, Bristol to Severn Beach, Portsmouth and Weymouth to Cardiff, Taunton to Cheltenham, Swindon to Cheltenham. This includes all intermediate stations and journeys in both directions."

    Details of petition:

    "On 10th December, train service were slashed over the "Bristol Commuter Area" with some stations such as Melksham loosing as much as 60% of their service, remaining trains being shortened, and frequently cancelled. This has resulted in severe overcrowding, massive delays, and the transfer of many journeys to inadequate local roads to the detriment of the environment and at economic cost. This petition requests the immediate return of a service that meets the needs of travellers in Wiltshire, Bristol, BaNES, South East Wales and surrounding areas. Where the service use was growing dramatically prior to last December, to increase future provision to meet future travel flow requirements. Further information and discussion forums are available at http://www.savethetrain.org.uk and other web sites which are linked from there."

The Government answer is as follows:

Thank you for your petition concerning the provision of rail services in the South West of England.

Ministers have raised the issue of improving train performance, including cancellations and short formation of trains, directly with First Great Western, which operates the train services in the greater Bristol area. First great Western have given assurances that appropriate measures are being taken, including bringing in additional rolling stock, and have accepted responsibility for underestimating the capacity requirements of the new timetable introduced on 10 December. First Great Western have already taken steps to restore capacity in some areas and expect the position to improve further in the coming weeks.

The Department for Transport will, of course, continue to monitor the performance of the FGW franchise to ensure that commitments given to Ministers and the public are met and that a significantly improved service is provided to passengers in future. Performance issues not directly under the control of First great Western itself are the subject of action plans between the company and Network Rail, which are monitored regularly.

The petition calls for the number of services at Melksham and other stations to be brought back to the levels provided before the timetable change on 10 December 2006. In planning the new franchise, the former Strategic Rail Authority found that usage of most trains on this route was very low, and set a minimum specification in order to achieve best value for money. First Great Western is free to operate additional services over the route subject to capacity on the track being available.

My View

FGW have been selected (perhaps rightly) as trhe scapegoat for relaibility and capacity issues, though I can't help wondering if some of the blame should go to the DfT / SRA / Jacobs report that built the new specification and invitation to bid based on figures that are now nearly 5 years old and with a near-zero growth assumption when in practice growth was in double figures.

Apart from the "TransWilts" line from Swindon to Westbury, no answer at all has been offered to the request for trains at times that people want to travel .... there's no acknowledgement at all of many of the journey opportunities that have been lost, and with that loss of opportunity there has been loss of rail customers and further growth on the roads.

I agree entirely. FGW have been blamed for errors which in part stem from government policy. Naturally, as First Group has benefited greatly from the recent round of franchising, the government can lay this blame with the secure knowledge that First Group won't mind one bit.

Bottom line is that flawed specifications lead to flawed franchises. Except of course that FGW could have chosen to do things differently...

Yes, they chose to pay the government over 1.1 billion pounds during the life of the franchise, which is equivalkent to a tax of 2 pounds per journey on everyone who arrives in or leaves Paddington on their trains.   The ironic thing is that their bid, was, I understand, 300 million higher than the DfT was expecting from anyone.

First could have bid 800 million and they would have won the franchise.

They could then have spend 50 million more on services through the 10 years which, it is estimated, is more than enough money to right all the wrongs.

They could have encouraged more travellers by spending 100 million on mareking and special promostions to help fill those extra trains, and to provide (for example) book-on-the-day travel from Melksham to London at a reasonable cost.

And that would have left 150 million pounds to give to their shareholders in increased dividends.

Who would have lost the 300 million? My understanding is that it's treated as a windfall by the DfT ... it may be ploughed back into other rail projects, or it may be spend on overrunning road budgets.