SWR Consultation for December 2022 - for members only

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

This is all water under the bridge now, but...

... thinking of yesterday's online meeting with the rail company people, for the Bristol to Waterloo service SWR^» (South Western Railway - about) flagged costs of £1 million per annum: I can't recall if that was the costs of operating the service but without the income, or was this their balance sheet for the service?

I believe we now have at least screenshots of the slides this time, SWR having failed to respond to a request for the slides they used at the Trowbridge meeting. As I was working from a mobile phone yesterday, from here, they weren't quite visible.

Also, on the use of the service, when challenged that the May 2019 window for passenger numbers were not representative of previous years ('cos sustained SWR industrial action at the time), I had the impression that the SWR rep felt that he was on somewhat shaky ground.

With a decision made by the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) in February, the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) needs now to have the same conversation that it had in the mid 1960s - the one that resulted in the 1968 transport act, and the acknowledgment that certain railway services would never pay their way but were nevertheless socially valuable and worthy of a secure existence.

Then, eventually, the equivalent of a 'Regional Railways' could evolve, and be given just enough breathing space to act on the enterprise to be hungry for the new business to be won for the railway by the development of innovative inter-regional train services.

#AndThenIWokeUp

Mark