Staffing and other problems on Cardiff - Portsmouth

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Taxis will be available

... or indeed a coach

Further Information
A South Gloucs coach will operate between Westbury and Chippenham and vice versa calling at Trowbridge and Melksham.
Customers are requested to wait for road transport in the designated road replacement areas. Customers are advised that buses will run later that than the advertised train times due to line of route and additional time required for loading and unloading.

Strikes me as a bit ironic with these staff shortages that you end up with just as many (if not more) drivers conveying passengers from place to place - just a different type of driver, and taking longer about it.

[ChrisB]

And no shelter from likely rain either, I'll bet!

[Timmer]

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s 'West of England' services continuing to be the fag butt of the franchise.

[grahame]

Last Swindon to Westbury train 15:28 rather than 19:53 ...

Taxis will be available

... or indeed a coach

Minor problem with a coach or taxi is that it fails to meet - by miles - the SLC^▸ (Service Level Commitment) (Service Level Commitment) that's part of the franchise.  Take passengers headed for that 19:53 who find it's been bustituted.  Here's what should have happened

19:53 from Swindon, arrive Westbury at 20:37 - that's a 44 minute journey (SLC allows up to 50 on Sunday?)

what probably happened

Passengers required to wait for 20:14 train at Swindon (actually left 20:17)
Arrived Chippenham at 20:29
Bus possibly left by 20:35 (if it all joined up - I'm being generous in my assumption)
Call at Melksham Station 20:53 to 20:55
Call at Trowbridge Station 21:13 to 21:15
Arrive at Westbury Station 21:27 - that's 94 minutes after the time you should have left Swindon.

[ChrisB]

There must be allowances for bustitutions, otherwise they'd all fail.....

[grahame]

There must be allowances for bustitutions, otherwise they'd all fail.....

There's a big difference between a bus replacement that's planned and advertised well in advance for engineering works and one that happens during the day because the transport service provider can't find the staff to run the train, but can find people to run a bus.   Former case - there certainly should be a derogation ... later case, really no excuse where it keeps repeating. 

(Occasional train driver taken ill, and I would rather have a bus driven by someone who's capable on the day)

[ChrisB]

I very much doubt there's any separate derogation. They will all be.