Bristol to Taunton/Exeter services

[whole diary]

[Wiveytraveller]

I travel between Taunton & Bristol, using an annual season. Although many journeys are undertaken using Virgin trains, which almost always run on time & are quicker, I am forced to use FGW^▸ (First Great Western) trains at some times, especially weekends, when fast services are not available.
The problems come with lack of communication about the late or non running of trains. The staff are great, but seem demotivated and even when I have spoken to Station Managers, they state that information is not being fed to them and therfore cannot pass it on.
The worst train seems to be the 08.15 Sundays, from Bristol Temple Meads to Penzance. It is usually late or does not run at all, and all the time the standard announcements about timely departures is made.
Sunday 23rd September, it was advertised on time until 08.29, then delayed, and came in at 08.39, departing at 08.43. The 50 or so pasengers waiting were also getting annoyed, and even the train crew seemed unaware of the reasons for the delay until it arrived from the depot. The taxi was late.
This may just seem like a winge, but I am not getting any sensible replies from FGW.
The last time that I complained to them (why was the last train from Exeter to Taunton at 20.35), the reply was that they weren't able to help me as they didn't have a timetable in the Office!

FGW seem to have insufficient staff, insufficient trains & very poor Customer service. The Customer is a nuisance, and the Government is only interested in who can give them the most amount for running the service.

I am listening to the news, where the new MD is stating that he will improve things - I just hope that it is soon, as the trains passing through Taunton are very rarely on time. Things go wrong occasionally, not all the time - all the time is a basic problem on how to run trains.

Trains need to run on time, have adequate room for the passengers (running 2 car trains to Bristol, when during the Summer there are sometimes 200 people waiting is unacceptable). I want to see better services and travel more by train as it is the best means of transport for longer journeys. Will FGW now take on the challenge?

[grahame]

Hi, Wiveytraveller, and welcome to the forum.   Incredibly, we have seen elements of movement / softening / potential improvements over the past 18 months, though there are some people who will suggest that "the plan" was always to take 12 steps towards a trimmed down system within the current frachise, then give a few steps back if they had to.   Those suggestions have gone on to say that they've actually had to backtrack rather more than they anticipated.

But, sure, the bid that was chosen was the one that payed the highest premium.   And the bidder would, I believe, have still been awarded the contract with a bid that was several hundred million pounds lower.  Which could, very nicely, have been shared between improvements and shareholders.

To some extent such comments are now historic - but actually there IS good news in that we've seen a number of areas where pressure has lead to a change in services - Severn Tunnel Junction, Ivybridge, Saltash, Bedwyn, Oxford and others to mention just a few.  The campaign I'm helping with - the TransWilts hasn't got any tangible improvements in operation as yet, but from having a case that everyone, frankly, laughed at without even reading the fine print we've now moved to a position where some folks HAVE read the find print and found it to be good.

So ... by letting folks know what you think, by presenting well reasoned cases, things can be changed for the future. Frustratingly slow at time, but I for one am not giving up on what could be an excellent service for everyone.