Fletcher On Tour - October 2008

[whole diary]

[gwr2006]

On the service being geared towards getting people into Oxford and London, an 0756 (0755 from December) arrival into Oxford strikes me as being too early. Any plans to improve this, or do commuters find it adequate?

In 2005, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sat down with local rail users and the county council and reshaped the timetable on the line to match local travel demand. The arrivals in Oxford allow connections with fast trains to London, i.e. 0756 into the 0807 to Paddington. It also allows time for people to travel out from the station to the Oxford hospitals. Most people who work in the city centre also tend to arrive between 0800 and 0830 from various directions (Reading, Didcot, Banbury etc.) so its an ideal time.

[IndustryInsider]

On the service being geared towards getting people into Oxford and London, an 0756 (0755 from December) arrival into Oxford strikes me as being too early. Any plans to improve this, or do commuters find it adequate?

In 2005, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sat down with local rail users and the county council and reshaped the timetable on the line to match local travel demand. The arrivals in Oxford allow connections with fast trains to London, i.e. 0756 into the 0807 to Paddington. It also allows time for people to travel out from the station to the Oxford hospitals. Most people who work in the city centre also tend to arrive between 0800 and 0830 from various directions (Reading, Didcot, Banbury etc.) so its an ideal time.

It wasn't quite that friendly as that was it? Tackley and Heyford commuters were basically told their two through turbo operated fast trains to London leaving around 7am and 8am were being axed when 180's started replacing the through services and the trains to/from Stratford were taken over by Chiltern Railways.

A more ideal time would have been to leave it as it was with the first through train arriving at London at 08:25 and the second through train arriving London at 09:10 for anybody on a days business, but at the same time arriving at Oxford at 08:10 which was more suitable than the current 07:56 arrival for Oxford commuters. The best solution of all would be instead of having two Oxford bound trains within about 25 minutes at 06:xx, there would be a second train from Banbury at 8am running half-an-hour after the 07:56 arrival at Oxford.

The return service is a little strange too - for a short while there was the embarrassing situation where FGW had to provide a rail-replacement bus every evening from Oxford as the franchise specification had been breached I think? Also current services from Oxford are at 17:44, 19:14, 20:53 and 21:39. The 17:44 is ideal for commuters, but the 19:14 should be half-an-hour earlier, then there should be a 19:44 and 20:44 to give a nice rounded hourly service. The 21:39 is pretty pointless running so close to the 20:53 after most people have gone home for the night and the argument about good connections from London commuters doesn't hold much weight as only the 20:53 has a good connection.

[gwr2006]

On the service being geared towards getting people into Oxford and London, an 0756 (0755 from December) arrival into Oxford strikes me as being too early. Any plans to improve this, or do commuters find it adequate?

In 2005, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sat down with local rail users and the county council and reshaped the timetable on the line to match local travel demand. The arrivals in Oxford allow connections with fast trains to London, i.e. 0756 into the 0807 to Paddington. It also allows time for people to travel out from the station to the Oxford hospitals. Most people who work in the city centre also tend to arrive between 0800 and 0830 from various directions (Reading, Didcot, Banbury etc.) so its an ideal time.

It wasn't quite that friendly as that was it? Tackley and Heyford commuters were basically told their two through turbo operated fast trains to London leaving around 7am and 8am were being axed when 180's started replacing the through services and the trains to/from Stratford were taken over by Chiltern Railways.

A more ideal time would have been to leave it as it was with the first through train arriving at London at 08:25 and the second through train arriving London at 09:10 for anybody on a days business, but at the same time arriving at Oxford at 08:10 which was more suitable than the current 07:56 arrival for Oxford commuters. The best solution of all would be instead of having two Oxford bound trains within about 25 minutes at 06:xx, there would be a second train from Banbury at 8am running half-an-hour after the 07:56 arrival at Oxford.

The return service is a little strange too - for a short while there was the embarrassing situation where FGW had to provide a rail-replacement bus every evening from Oxford as the franchise specification had been breached I think? Also current services from Oxford are at 17:44, 19:14, 20:53 and 21:39. The 17:44 is ideal for commuters, but the 19:14 should be half-an-hour earlier, then there should be a 19:44 and 20:44 to give a nice rounded hourly service. The 21:39 is pretty pointless running so close to the 20:53 after most people have gone home for the night and the argument about good connections from London commuters doesn't hold much weight as only the 20:53 has a good connection.

It is true to say that the rewriting of the timetable led to some vociferous opposition from local people who stood to lose their through London trains in favour of being forced to change at Oxford. Ultimately it led FGW to sit down with the rail user group and local councils and come up with the pattern that retained two through services. Because the remedial timetable was introduced at short notice I recall there was the situation where a bus replaced the evening peak train out of Oxford for a while, calling at each station on request of any passnengers.

It must be a nightmare timetabling that line these days with its mix of half hourly CrossCountry, hourly Freightliner trains and local trains that do limited business stopping at the intermediate stations. The downturn really occured when DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) decided to move the Stratford trains to Chiltern Railways - also breaking the popular tourist trail between Windsor, Oxford and Startford. Figures I have show that journeys dropped by 36.7% in the year after those services were taken away.

[Btline]

Yes, but it is good that Stratford now has London trains with Chiltern, not FGW^▸ (First Great Western)!

[IndustryInsider]

On the service being geared towards getting people into Oxford and London, an 0756 (0755 from December) arrival into Oxford strikes me as being too early. Any plans to improve this, or do commuters find it adequate?

In 2005, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sat down with local rail users and the county council and reshaped the timetable on the line to match local travel demand. The arrivals in Oxford allow connections with fast trains to London, i.e. 0756 into the 0807 to Paddington. It also allows time for people to travel out from the station to the Oxford hospitals. Most people who work in the city centre also tend to arrive between 0800 and 0830 from various directions (Reading, Didcot, Banbury etc.) so its an ideal time.

It wasn't quite that friendly as that was it? Tackley and Heyford commuters were basically told their two through turbo operated fast trains to London leaving around 7am and 8am were being axed when 180's started replacing the through services and the trains to/from Stratford were taken over by Chiltern Railways.

A more ideal time would have been to leave it as it was with the first through train arriving at London at 08:25 and the second through train arriving London at 09:10 for anybody on a days business, but at the same time arriving at Oxford at 08:10 which was more suitable than the current 07:56 arrival for Oxford commuters. The best solution of all would be instead of having two Oxford bound trains within about 25 minutes at 06:xx, there would be a second train from Banbury at 8am running half-an-hour after the 07:56 arrival at Oxford.

The return service is a little strange too - for a short while there was the embarrassing situation where FGW had to provide a rail-replacement bus every evening from Oxford as the franchise specification had been breached I think? Also current services from Oxford are at 17:44, 19:14, 20:53 and 21:39. The 17:44 is ideal for commuters, but the 19:14 should be half-an-hour earlier, then there should be a 19:44 and 20:44 to give a nice rounded hourly service. The 21:39 is pretty pointless running so close to the 20:53 after most people have gone home for the night and the argument about good connections from London commuters doesn't hold much weight as only the 20:53 has a good connection.

It is true to say that the rewriting of the timetable led to some vociferous opposition from local people who stood to lose their through London trains in favour of being forced to change at Oxford. Ultimately it led FGW to sit down with the rail user group and local councils and come up with the pattern that retained two through services.
It must be a nightmare timetabling that line these days with its mix of half hourly CrossCountry, hourly Freightliner trains and local trains that do limited business stopping at the intermediate stations. The downturn really occured when DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) decided to move the Stratford trains to Chiltern Railways - also breaking the popular tourist trail between Windsor, Oxford and Startford. Figures I have show that journeys dropped by 36.7% in the year after those services were taken away.

It might have retained two through services, but who on earth would use them as through trains when it's quicker to change at Oxford? An average of nearly 2hrs is not an appealing prospect as a through train is it! Granted the local trains do limited business, but if you take the old evening paths from Oxford of roughly 17:50, 18:55 and 19:46 (two of which were expresses from London) and compare that with the current schedules of 17:44, 19:14 and 20:53, it is clear that the service has suffered quite badly. Those paths must have existed then and FGW must have had an opportunity to retain them?

Can I ask what the 36.7% drop in figures actually refers to, and whether they have improved since? Chiltern's service is more regular (every 2hrs throughout the day), and takes the same time as the old Thames operated service - granted Paddington is a more established terminal than Marylebone and the Oxford stop-off was attractive to some tourists, but I can't believe that through London-Stratford journeys would drop off that much.

[grahame]

In 2005, FGW^▸ (First Great Western) sat down with local rail users and the county council and reshaped the timetable on the line to match local travel demand.

It wasn't quite that friendly as that was it? Tackley and Heyford commuters were basically told their two through turbo operated fast trains to London leaving around 7am and 8am were being axed ...

... but if you take the old evening paths from Oxford of roughly 17:50, 18:55 and 19:46 (two of which were expresses from London) and compare that with the current schedules of 17:44, 19:14 and 20:53, it is clear that the service has suffered quite badly ...

It has been suggested to me that I draw a parallel with the TransWilts and compare Melksham to Tackley and Heyford.   Although the 2001 census showed that there are more London commuters from Melksham (pop 22000) than Westbury (Pop about half of that), the morning service of trains at 05:52 and 07:45 to Swindon and 06:56 and 09:12 to Southampton was replaced by a single service at 07:17 to Swindon and a single service at 06:40 to Southampton.  In the evening, services at 17:02 and 21:33 to Swindon were replaced by a single train at 19:50, and arrivals at 18:09 and 22:37 were replace by a single 19:11 arrival.

There was, indeed, a consultation exercise run on the draft timetable by FGW in 2006. They were clearly told that the proposed number of services was inadequate, and that if they DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) reduce them, then the proposed morning service was too early and the proposed evening service was too late.   So what did they do in their review after the consultation?  They moved the already-too-early morning trains even earlier (and the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) changed the SLC^▸ (Service Level Commitment) to allow this!) and moved the evening train even later. We really felt that we were being s****ed on, and questions were asked (and still are) as to whether the provision of a service at times that are not appropriate to the market is a step back to Beeching days, where services were reduced to a minimal level and timed to be impractical as a prelude to saying "look - it's not used - we may as well close it" ...

OK ... there's the comparison drawn.  I would be biased (living on the TransWilts) of course and say that it's an even grosser case that Tackley / Heyford ... but there are still places / services that need to be sorted out, and that seems from what I read here to include Tackley and Heyford as well as Melksham and the TransWilts.


P.S. The draconian Jacobs report that the SRA^» (Strategic Rail Authority - about) based the current franchise on made a lot of suggestions about cutting things out that weren't implemented - some of the Devon and Cornish branches to be none-stop services with just half the current services, for example. And yet on the TransWilts, it came out in favour of a 2 hourly service.  It strikes me that with awful traffic issues in Oxford, a good service on the Banbury line would be sensible .... park and ride opportunities?

[Lee]

The points made about a choice of peak arrivals/departures being the ideal (along with good connections and a 2-hourly off-peak service), pretty much correspond with what I feel would be an appropriate TransWilts service (link below.)
http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/sdcstrategy/westburyswindontt.xls

Judging by a recent meeting we had with FGW^▸ (First Great Western), they agree with this principle. This is backed up by other exchanges with those within the company.

However, we still remain frustratingly short of implementing a solution.

[willc]

It strikes me that with awful traffic issues in Oxford, a good service on the Banbury line would be sensible .... park and ride opportunities?

There is a good service on the Banbury line - where it's needed, between Banbury and Oxford, even if XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) don't want all the commuters cluttering up their trains. Tackley, Lower Heyford and Kings Sutton are all small villages, so with the best will in the world, the passenger numbers just aren't there to justify much higher frequencies. They only stayed open beyond the 1960s because the villages are all off the main north-south road, so bus services bypass them.

Kings Sutton is served by several Chiltern services anyway and it's a short drive from Heyford into Bicester for a frequent service to London and there really can't be that many people travelling from Tackley to London. I have always understood that the more important flow beyond Oxford for these villages was actually to Reading (and Didcot to a lesser degree), not London.

Where the railways do stand to make a killing from a better service into Oxford is the Bicester Town route, but that will not happen until the track is improved and the journey time comes down from the current 25-minute trundle. It will be interesting to see what happens if Chiltern do get the go-ahead for their scheme here.

[Lee]

Where the railways do stand to make a killing from a better service into Oxford is the Bicester Town route, but that will not happen until the track is improved and the journey time comes down from the current 25-minute trundle. It will be interesting to see what happens if Chiltern do get the go-ahead for their scheme here.

There are moves afoot on this, some of which are covered in the link below.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=3761.msg29019#msg29019