Wiltshire Travel Times - Chippenham, Trowbridge, Salisbury and other places too
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2012-03-07 14:31:30 - Graham Ellis
The three major largest urban areas in Wiltshire are Salisbury (a city in the south of the county), Trowbridge (the county town, in the west of the county) and Chippenham (in the north of the county). All are part of the Wiltshire Unitary Authority area, with many facilities (public and private) available in some but not others. So there are strong, and growing, flows between the three towns.
The natural route from Chippenham to Salisbury takes you via Melksham (the fourth town in population) to Trowbridge, after 14 miles. You then carry on via the substantial towns of Westbury and Warminster to Salisbury, 33 miles from Trowbridge and 47 miles from Chippenham.
Alas, major roads and public transport in Wiltshire predominantly run east - west, and journeys between the north and south can be relatively slow even by car, and if you take public transport (which senior, disabled, unemployed and educational traffic often has to do) it can be painful. Here's a comparison of journey times - examples for an 07:00 departure on a weekday, heading south, with the nearest practical train or bus times quoted.
Chippenham to Salisbury
64 mins - 07:00 -> 08:04 Private Car (*) (#)
69 mins - 06:28 -> 07:36 Direct Train (06:28 and 19:01 only) (*) (#)
92 mins - 06:39 -> 08:02 Trains, change at Bath (1 or 2 per hour) (#)
112 mins - 07:40 -> 09:32 Bus to Trowbridge then train (most hours) (*) (#)
160 mins - 07:24 -> 10:04 Buses, change at Devizes (most hours)
Chippenham to Trowbridge
19 mins - 06:28 -> 06:47 Direct Train (06:28 and 19:01 only) (*)
24 mins - 07:00 -> 07:24 Private Car (*)
35 mins - 06:55 -> 07:30 Bus, fastest service (*)
49 mins - 06:39 -> 07:28 Trains, change at Bath (1 or 2 per hour)
50 mins - 07:28 -> 08:18 Bus, peak hour timings (*)
Trowbridge to Salisbury
49 mins - 06:47 -> 07:36 Direct Train (and at least once an hour) (#)
51 mins - 07:00 -> 07:51 Private Car (#)
99 mins - 08:21 -> 10:00 Bus, change at Warminster (first practical bus of day) (#)
Services marked (*) also serve Melksham
Services marked (#) also serve Westbury and Warminster
Data sources:
http://www.travelinesw.com/
http://www.theaa.com/route-planner/index.jsp
It's such a shame that the direct trains from Chippenham are so infrequent - just twice a day. There's been a great deal of work done on checking the viabiity of the case for an improved service, as there's plenty of capacity available on the line, and lots of other traffic (such as Trowbridge to Swindon) which would be served. But the question is asked "would people actually use a more frequent service?" All the logic says "yes", and the evidence says "yes" too.
There are already many commuters by rail from Warminster, Westbury and Trowbridge to Chippenham and Swindon - on certain peak trains, dozens of people change at Bath to "dogleg" from Trowbridge to Chippenham in 49 minutes ... simply because there's no train doing the direct 19 minute journey. And when First ran some extra trial services last summer that gave people day return trip opportunities (on a Sunday), they were crowded out. A Chamber of Commerce survey elicited responses from no fewer that 664 individual saying that, yes, they would regularly commute using such a better service.
And - when you take a further look - there are other reasons than purely speed to take the direct train. For a start, you save on having to find somewhere to park at your destination town. And you save on the cost of parking there. You'll probably end up being less stressed at the end of a train journey than one you have driven. And you'll have saved time (sometimes a lot of time) over the bus.
The potential traffic I've mentioned so far is, though "abstraction". That's traffic which already travels, and would simply be switching from one mode to another - so what is the advantage for the local authority / HM Government in helping to improve the train service?
Firstly, the Trowbridge -> Bath trains that dogleg commuters use are full to the extent of overcrowding; people are sometimes unable to board for journeys like Bradford-on-Avon to Bristol, and taking dozens of people off that service onto the direct line will help those trains to cope where they don't at the moment. Secondly, one of the reasons that buses and cars are relatively slow is the congestion at places such as Beanacre and Yarnbrook; an improved rail service will cause some element of relief there - not a huge element, but then road improvements would be a huge expense. Third, the town centres in places like Salisbury can run out of parking spaces.
But this isn't just looking at abstraction - it's looking to the future too. All three towns are designated as high growth, in terms of both business and residence, but with imbalance - and that also involves the other towns I have mentioned. So there will be more people, and people wanting to travel - from Melksham, where there are 2000 new homes but just 4 hectares of new employment land, to Salisbury where the new employment opportunities will outstrip the new population for example. And it's about bringing business visitors and tourists into the area where they simply don't come at the moment. And as a corollary, you end up helping the economy of all the places linked, you cut down on the cost and problems of deprivation and you get people into a public transport habit. Better to invest a little in appropriate public transport than to have to invest a lot in private transport, just at a point that fuel costs rocket again and we worry about oil running out.