Looking forward to 2011, 2016, 2021 and 2026

Last year, we posted 24,295 messages on new 2,111 threads between us. That's a remarkable number and shows a great ongoing interest in rail travel and transport in the Thames Valley, South West of England and South Wales.

2011 starts differently to previous years; we're in the earlier years of a government that's making decisions rather different to those that may have been made one or five years ago. We're in a much resource-aware society, where everything from the supply of energy to the supply parking spaces causes concern, as does apparently changing climate pattern and the economic outlook; transport gets more expensive, with VAT^▸ putting up petrol prices and rail fares rising slightly more steeply in the next few days ...

We've also moved, during the time this forum's been running, from the early times of the current Greater Western franchise, with its teething problems, to its mid-life. Many of the teething problems have been resolved, but a few have left their unfortunate legacies. Other issues - such an unpredicted traffic growth across the railways - have lead to new matters that should be resolved.

Traffic statistics from 2002 were used in formulating services that ran for their first full year in 2007, and with growth figures forecast on them which turned out to be unduly pessimistic to the extent that they lead in places to a totally different service being provided to the one that would be appropriate. Regular readers will know I'm referring to my own home area / line - the TransWilts - where theres a gap in service from 06:34 to 19:01 in service from Chippenham to Trowbridge and Salisbury, when the more recent GWRUS^▸ (by Network Rail) shows that an hourly service would be appropriate. Cardiff to Portsmouth was specified as running with 2 carriages per hour - thank goodness that has been increased to 3 most of the time now. I note that it's been running as a five car service over the Christmas and New Year period, and I can't help wondering if it should regularly do so for much of the time in the future.

If 2002 figures were used as the basis for 2007, then 2011 figures will be used as the basis for 2016. Many of us weren't alert to the mechanisms that were in place for deciding what services should be operating at present when decisions were being made. Local inputs were light, and assumptions were pessimistic, and that lead to some of the situations we have in places at present. Inputs have already been made on the future shape of franchising, and from now on should be made on a wide range of service aspirations leading forward to 2026. The current government talks of local empowerment through the "big society" and - whatever our individual political views - we should seek to use that to help ensure that the most appropriate possible service are provided in and between the regions of the Thames Valley and South West - this decade and next.