Great Western Coffee Shop

Background at - http://www.passenger.chat/25473

Management thread - members responses, please, to the "Call for Evidence" for the GBR Transition Team.   Please follow up in the next 7 days (by end of 26th January 2022) on individual threads for each section and then we'll move onto a consolidation phase if we have stuff that's enough (and agreed enough) to consolidate.

Sections:
==> s1 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25897
Strategic Objectives for the Whole Rail Industry

==> s2 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25898
Meeting customers’ needs

==> s3 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25899
Delivering financial sustainability

==> s4 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25900
Contributing to long-term economic growth

==> s5 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25901
Levelling up and connectivity

==> s6 <==   http://www.passenger.chat/25902
Delivering environmental sustainability

If you want to follow up at a higher level (e.g. if you think the sections are wrong, something is missing, or the questions are not right) please follow up here.

Members are - of course - very welcome to answer the GBRTT directly too; if you do, can I encourage you to copy us here so that we can learn from your views, and perhaps relect and amplify them in othe responses.

Responses to the various threads here have been muted and slim and I'm going to suggest at this point that members make their own direct submissions if they wish.   Certainly the "call for evidence" makes us think about the future scope and structure, but there's certainly a limit to the time / resource each of us (and I ) have available and I suspect more tuned use is being made elsewhere.

Thanks Grahame

I think the nature of the questions is one of the reasons that there have been so few contributions.

Too many are simply inviting speculation about what might be the case in 5, 10 or 30 years' time. If this has been done in 2019, how many people would have guessed that the correct answer to many of these question would have been "The impact of a major unforeseen pandemic disease that will affect the whole world in 2020 and 2021?"

As it is, it invites contributions from those who (on the one hand) have detailed knowledge of "real world" railway operations from the inside to give informed comment, but who are prepared to speculate on what happens in the future (probably with no more idea than the next person).

If this was meant to be a consultation with passengers, and potential passengers it would have been better to approach this on the basis of "Why do you decide whether to take the train or not"

- Are stations sufficiently attractive, and if not why not,
- How would you like access to and routes to stations to be improved (including connecting public transport, foot and cycle ways, signage etc).
 - How would you like the experience of booking tickets and paying for them improved
 - How would you like to see information about train times, delays and problems improved...

and so on.

Separate consultations for those in the industry, local and planning authorities etc. should be undertaken so that each group can contribute for their own expert point of view or experience.

I have very little confidence in the combined contributions to these questions really helping, I am afraid. 

 

There's a typo in the link to the background - should be /25743 I think.

I haven't responded.  The whole thing rather leaves me feeling that it's just a giant exercise of going through the motions and being seen to give "stakeholders" (whoever they might be) the opportunity to feel involved.  In practice the outcome will never please everyone and the best we can hope for is that we will get as good a rail system as can be provided within the limitations of the funding and structure the government will accept/allow.  There ought to be people within the DfT capable of doing that, and of having a good feel for what the average passenger wants; it's what we pay them for!