French Railways has, or at least used to have, a 'white period' of an hour or so in the middle of the day when no trains were timetabled to allow for inspection of the infrastructure. This was mostly on the trunk routes and the train service was never so intensive anyway - suburban services (at least on the Île de France) seemed to keep running.

Note, though, that the Gibb report only suggests this a short term measure until the other recommendations bring longer term improvements in reliability.

I wonder if today may be a day where the available resource is stretched to the extreme.
* Glastonbury, with extra services around
* Sunday with the whole service being run by crew volunteering for overtime
* Long diversions via Gloucester because of the emergency engineering works in Patchway Tunnel.
And that last (at least) can't have been planned weeks in advance, and was dropped on GWR by Network Rail. There was less excuse yesterday ... it wasn't Sunday, so the crew is rostered as part of their normal work, and Patchway tunnel was open.

That's how (and why) I voted. If passenger usage thins out enough on a given route during the off-peak period, it makes sense to reduce the frequency a little from say a 6tph service (every 10 minutes) to 4tph (every 15mins) or 3tph (every 20mins) provided that this does not put off many passengers and would not result in passengers not getting a seat who otherwise would have one. However, any route which has less than 3tph should not be subject to any reduction in services, since intervals any longer than 30mins are likely to introduce many cases of "there isn't a train when I need it".

We thrive on debate. Please do not be put off if you start one. 

I think you're misreading that too. The "it" that has a 30 minute break in its operation is the train, as a physical object, not the service. Provided there are more trains is use that day than the service requires, and crew (e.g. at a kind of shift change, at least for that train), your 2 tph service can be continuous. He explicitly warns against running the maximum peak service all day, partly for than reason.

One reason perhaps?

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=387700548249573&substory_index=0&id=174679842884979

 

Bear in mind that many staff, drivers in particular, at most depots on the great Western are having to learn to maintain and operate new traction, something entirely foreseeable for some years now, and you begin to realise the ongoing scale of the problem.

First Group's primary reason for existence, like other PLCs, is to make money for its shareholders, you could be forgiven for not realising this, judging by some recent significantly serious failures in its services to its customers, or rather passengers as the Government correctly describes rail travellers.

An interesting (if predictable!) response.............surely it's incumbent upon GWR to ensure that they have sufficient staff available to run their advertised service as specified?

Hmm. Yes, he did, and more.

"At least a 30min break in its operation" equates to losing one train in a 2tph service, for one hour. In addition, that means losing 2tph in a 4tph operation, and 3tph (consecutive) in a 6tph operation

Unless you're willing to pay the excess in costs that will incur through (another) hike in fares, very little/nothing