Train GraphicClick on the map to explore geographics
 
I need help
FAQ
Emergency
About .
Travel & transport from BBC stories as at 17:35 28 Mar 2024
- How do I renew my UK passport and what is the 10-year rule?
- Passengers pleaded with knifeman during attack
* Family anger at sentence on fatal crash driver, 19
- Easter travel warning as millions set to hit roads
Read about the forum [here].
Register [here] - it's free.
What do I gain from registering? [here]
 02/06/24 - Summer Timetable starts
17/08/24 - Bus to Imber
27/09/25 - 200 years of passenger trains

On this day
28th Mar (1917)
Bideford, Westward Ho! and Appledore closed (link)

Train RunningCancelled
16:54 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
17:54 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
17:57 London Paddington to Worcester Foregate Street
18:37 Westbury to Swindon
19:33 London Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill
20:13 Swindon to Westbury
20:56 Worcester Foregate Street to London Paddington
Short Run
14:49 Plymouth to Cardiff Central
15:10 Gloucester to Weymouth
15:15 Plymouth to London Paddington
15:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
15:30 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
15:42 Exeter St Davids to London Paddington
16:19 Carmarthen to London Paddington
16:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
16:35 London Paddington to Plymouth
16:50 Plymouth to London Paddington
17:03 London Paddington to Penzance
17:30 London Paddington to Taunton
17:36 Swindon to Westbury
Delayed
12:15 Penzance to London Paddington
13:59 Cardiff Central to Penzance
14:15 Penzance to London Paddington
14:30 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
14:36 London Paddington to Paignton
15:03 London Paddington to Penzance
16:03 London Paddington to Penzance
Additional 17:17 Exeter St Davids to Penzance
PollsOpen and recent polls
Closed 2024-03-25 Easter Escape - to where?
Abbreviation pageAcronymns and abbreviations
Stn ComparatorStation Comparator
Rail newsNews Now - live rail news feed
Site Style 1 2 3 4
Next departures • Bristol Temple MeadsBath SpaChippenhamSwindonDidcot ParkwayReadingLondon PaddingtonMelksham
Exeter St DavidsTauntonWestburyTrowbridgeBristol ParkwayCardiff CentralOxfordCheltenham SpaBirmingham New Street
March 28, 2024, 17:50:55 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Forgotten your username or password? - get a reminder
Most recently liked subjects
[133] West Wiltshire Bus Changes April 2024
[132] would you like your own LIVE train station departure board?
[53] Return of the BRUTE?
[44] If not HS2 to Manchester, how will traffic be carried?
[41] Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption el...
[32] Reversing Beeching - bring heritage and freight lines into the...
 
News: the Great Western Coffee Shop ... keeping you up to date with travel around the South West
 
   Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Linked Events
  • Melksham Bus Meeting: February 07, 2020
Pages: 1 [2]
  Print  
Author Topic: Changes to bus services – Bath to Melksham and Melksham area  (Read 8375 times)
CyclingSid
Data Manager
Hero Member
******
Posts: 1918


Hockley viaduct


View Profile
« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2020, 06:57:08 »

£250m for cycling, 350 odd local authorities. Less than £1m won't get you far, especially for segregated cycle lanes or mini Hollands.
Logged
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2020, 12:06:50 »

Melksham Independent News

Quote
Huge public outcry in response to Bath bus axing

THE uncertain future of Melksham’s bus service to Bath is causing anxiety for its users, who have described the news of the D3 service’s axing as ‘devastating’.

First West of England announced last month that the discover D3 service between Bath and Melksham via Box and Atworth will be ending on Saturday 4th April, as it is failing to cover its costs and is making a loss.

The axing of the D3 bus  will leave Melksham with no evening or Sunday bus service to and from Bath, which has sparked a huge outcry from its users who rely on the service to get to work, go to college, get to hospital appointments, and get home in the evening. And an online petition to save the service has attracted the support of over 1,000 people.

Wiltshire Council – who currently contract the evening and Sunday service between Melksham and Bath to First Bus,  and support the service with subsidises –  has said that they are seeking an alternative operator for the service, but further information will not be available until mid-March.

However, local transport experts have urged residents to make their feelings heard at Wiltshire Council to ensure that they follow through with their promise – highlighting what happened in 2014, when Melksham lost its evening bus service to Chippenham when it was not replaced by the council.

Some reassurance has come from Faresaver, who operate the X72 service between Melksham to Bath during the day from Monday to Saturday, who have  said that they intend to tender for Wiltshire Council’s evening and Sunday service contract; and that they are also currently working on a ‘enhanced’  X72 service that will provide a bus service to all stops on the D3 route that are not currently covered by the X72 – which includes Whitley and Melksham Forest – if they are adequately used.

[continues]


Quote
In response to questions from Melksham News about the future of the evening and Sunday bus service, cllr Bridget Wayman, Wiltshire Council cabinet member for highways said,  “Buses between Bath and Melksham are provided by two companies – First Bus which runs service D3 and Faresaver which runs service X72.  First Bus has decided to discontinue the service D3 but Faresaver will continue and is looking at whether its service can be enhanced during the daytime, to cater for those passengers who previously used the D3 bus.

“We are currently seeking an alternative operator for the evening and Sunday buses between Bath, Melksham and Devizes. This will require a procurement exercise and so further details of evening and Sunday services will be available mid-March.”

Essentially, Monday to Friday is currently split into a number of sections

1. Early morning, with the first buses being First commercial buses
2. Peak morning commuter time to early afternoon, when First and Faresaver both run commercial services
3. Late afternoon, when Faresaver buses are sparse because the vehicles are on school runs. First running.
4. Peak evening commuter time, when First and Faresaver both run commercial services
5. From Bath 17:40 to 20:00. Also the 21:30 - First are running commercial services
6. 20:00 and 23:20 - Wiltshire Council supported services

No problem with buses between the towns in periods 2 and 4.

If Wiltshire Council come in and place a contract, period 6 should be OK, and I think there has been sufficient visible concern to make Wiltshire Council aware of the need to retender and buy in the services that hey bought from First from a new provider.

It's the "shoulder" - periods 1, 3 and 5, where First have been providing a service - the only service - that are very unclear at the moment.   Whilst Faresaver have confirmed they are looking at them, they have not found it worthwhile to compete with First in those periods until now; I hope their judgement will be different now that they hold a monopoly.

Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #17 on: February 14, 2020, 12:20:05 »

From some slides from the public meeting






Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
Robin Summerhill
Transport Scholar
Hero Member
******
Posts: 1145


View Profile Email
« Reply #18 on: February 14, 2020, 15:03:38 »

Not that it is going to help passengers joining and leaving at intermediate stops, do enough of the good people of Melksham know that it is perectly posible to travel from Melksham to Bath and vice versa by train, changing at Trowbridge or Chippenham?

Of course, if Bradford West curve was reinstated...
Logged
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #19 on: February 14, 2020, 15:32:29 »

Not that it is going to help passengers joining and leaving at intermediate stops, do enough of the good people of Melksham know that it is perectly posible to travel from Melksham to Bath and vice versa by train, changing at Trowbridge or Chippenham?

Of course, if Bradford West curve was reinstated...

They're getting better at knowing ...but there's no easy universal information system in Bath that tells you whether you'll be quicker by train or bus, and if by train whether to catch the London train or the "via Westbury" train.   Perhaps the biggest issues is ticket - there is no ticket I'm aware of that's valid on the x72 (Faresaver), the x76 (Swindon's Bus Company) the D3 (First West of England) and GWR (Great Western Railway) - out on one and back on whichever is right for you at the time.   And as all services have massive gaps that's a real loss of flexibility and a frustration.

I haven't written about Bradford north curve for at least 8 hours  Grin

Regional Train services running every hour to Chippenham and Swindon (and ideally onward to Oxford), and also every hour to Trowbridge and Westbury and probably onward via Warminster and Salisbury to Southampton. Direct services to Bradford-on-Avon, Bath and Bristol Temple Meads should be added in the future but only in addition to hourly services via both Chippenham and Trowbridge.
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
grahame
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 40690



View Profile WWW Email
« Reply #20 on: March 13, 2020, 07:07:18 »

Follow up at http://www.passenger.chat/23037 - timetable published by Faresaver looking forward; very much deserves its own thread and I am delighted that most of the concerns voiced above are now of "archive interest only" quality. Thank you all.
Logged

Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

 
Pages: 1 [2]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.2 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
This forum is provided by customers of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link to report). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants

Jump to top of pageJump to Forum Home Page