Rail services in Wiltshire - up in the air? We need to say what is best required.
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-01-20 18:29:59 - Graham Ellis
Until last October (2012), we were all on course for a new franchise to be awarded to operate train services in the Great Western area - with four bidders (First, National Express, Arriva and Stagecoach) all finalising their bids, with an award of the franchise being due for announcement about now (January 2013) and with the new franchise starting in late April 2013.
The previous franchise had been highly prescriptive - with a result that there had been some lines and stations where the service being provided was being done to meet the rules rather than to maximise customer (passenger) benefit, and one of the features of the new invitation to tender was a more flexible scheme of service spcification which gave the bidders more flexibility in what they proposed / provided. There were certain worries in this in that they could come up with something radical and which would leave holes in places, cut through services but I don't personally believe that there was even a risk (for example) of the Portsmouth - Cardiff service being cut back to Portsmouth - Westbury, with everyone wanting to go north changing to a half-hourly suburban service onwards to Bristol, then a further change onto a Cardiff train at Temple Meads. This was all consulted on, quite extensively, January to March 2012, although with the ITT pubished within a couple of months of that consultation ending, it's questionable as to how much / little was changed as a result of the inputs, or if the consultation was in the end just a box-ticking exercise.
But there were also positives - the costed option for the TransWilts service is the one that's particularly dear to my own heart, as it gave us - after years - an appropriate service for Melksham. But it also had wider benefits; it would allow for flows such as Trowbridge to Swindon and Chippenham to Salisbury to be sensibly handled, and it would provide a far more useful Westbury to London service, with a change at Swindon rather than the sporadic Berks and Hants service mixed with Bath dogleg trains. It had the potential to sort out Dilton Marsh too, where the current service is one of those which seems more designed to meet specification than customer needs. And it would relieve overcrowding from Bradford-on-Avon to Bath, where passengers can find themselves left behind, by abstracting some of the West Wilts to Swindon traffic that's going all around the houses onto direct trains. And the amended / improved service has its seeding finance worked out. And it has elements of the LSTF funding to ensure that it's joined up and the stations and transfers will all be able to come when the train gets there. Alas the ducks in a row.
Then in October it all changed!
The Minister of Transport declared that there had been significant faults in the award of the franchise for the West Coast main line, and suspended the takeover of the operation by First. He also "paused" the bidding processes for three other franchises including the Great Western, and called for reports on (a) what had gone wrong on the West Coast and (b) where franchising / rail servivce provision should go in the future.
The second of those reports - the Brown report - was published a few days ago and I'm still digesting its 86 pages. But several things seem clear:
• there's no quick restart of the process of franchising
• it's very unlikely that a 15 year franchise will be awarded
• it's almost certain that a short term, caretaker operation will be run by First
• this whole business has wasted a lot of time and effort and cost a lot of money
• future franchises and their management will probably be very different beasts
• we don't know if all the ducks we had in line are still in line; the route looks far less clear
There's a need - a crying need - for improvements and changes to carry on through the next couple of years to the rail network and systems in Wiltshire. Traffic growth in the South West has been well above Network Rail forecasts and hugely above the figures used in calculating the current franchise, and a stagnation / stop on projects that are not yet started would build up further problems.
Electrification via Chippenham from London to Bristol carries on. To Newbury from London carries on. And the IEP program (Intercity Express Program) also carries on. Redoubling from Swindon to Kemble is happening already. Good - but what else? There's a very real need to look at the other linkages and elements around these, and to complete the job of getting the systems set up and fit for use rather than doing 90% of the work, not committing the final 10%, and ending up with only 70% of the benefits.
So we have something of a "what now?" void. We should be alerting our councillors, our MPs, the train operating companies, and the Department for Transport, to the issues they'll be storing up if the extra issues aren't addresses. We should help them by providing thoughtful / worked out inputs that give positive and practical routes forward for everyone (or as close to everyone as we can get). For times of change are also times of opportunity - opportunity to get good solutions, and opportunities to get solutions which the politicians can endorse, celebrate and which will help their community's support for them in due course.
The second Wiltshire Link meeting takes place on Saturday, 2nd February, and this topic is top of our agenda. The outcome should be:
a) An identication of issues that need to addresses beyond the status quo carrying on
b) Possible solutions to those issues
c) The effect of those solutions on the wider community.
We need to remember that although we're Wiltshire based, we need to look to far wider aspirations too - to the strong desire for a 3 hour service from Plymouth to London, and for the need for a robust South Wales to London electric service, even at times that the line between Swindon and Didcot and Reading isn't available due to engineering works.
I will follow up prior to the 2nd Feb meeting with some of the local issues identified; in the meantime, please email us (info@twcrp.org.uk) if you would like to come along ... the call is to all transport user groups in the county and with interests beyond that go through the county, and / or where there is no such suitable group to concerned individuals. With thoughtful localism, you and I have an opportunity to make a positive difference!
Until last October (2012), we were all on course for a new franchise to be awarded to operate train services in the Great Western area - with four bidders (First, National Express, Arriva and Stagecoach) all finalising their bids, with an award of the franchise being due for announcement about now (January 2013) and with the new franchise starting in late April 2013.
The previous franchise had been highly prescriptive - with a result that there had been some lines and stations where the service being provided was being done to meet the rules rather than to maximise customer (passenger) benefit, and one of the features of the new invitation to tender was a more flexible scheme of service spcification which gave the bidders more flexibility in what they proposed / provided. There were certain worries in this in that they could come up with something radical and which would leave holes in places, cut through services but I don't personally believe that there was even a risk (for example) of the Portsmouth - Cardiff service being cut back to Portsmouth - Westbury, with everyone wanting to go north changing to a half-hourly suburban service onwards to Bristol, then a further change onto a Cardiff train at Temple Meads. This was all consulted on, quite extensively, January to March 2012, although with the ITT pubished within a couple of months of that consultation ending, it's questionable as to how much / little was changed as a result of the inputs, or if the consultation was in the end just a box-ticking exercise.
But there were also positives - the costed option for the TransWilts service is the one that's particularly dear to my own heart, as it gave us - after years - an appropriate service for Melksham. But it also had wider benefits; it would allow for flows such as Trowbridge to Swindon and Chippenham to Salisbury to be sensibly handled, and it would provide a far more useful Westbury to London service, with a change at Swindon rather than the sporadic Berks and Hants service mixed with Bath dogleg trains. It had the potential to sort out Dilton Marsh too, where the current service is one of those which seems more designed to meet specification than customer needs. And it would relieve overcrowding from Bradford-on-Avon to Bath, where passengers can find themselves left behind, by abstracting some of the West Wilts to Swindon traffic that's going all around the houses onto direct trains. And the amended / improved service has its seeding finance worked out. And it has elements of the LSTF funding to ensure that it's joined up and the stations and transfers will all be able to come when the train gets there. Alas the ducks in a row.
The Minister of Transport declared that there had been significant faults in the award of the franchise for the West Coast main line, and suspended the takeover of the operation by First. He also "paused" the bidding processes for three other franchises including the Great Western, and called for reports on (a) what had gone wrong on the West Coast and (b) where franchising / rail servivce provision should go in the future.
There's a need - a crying need - for improvements and changes to carry on through the next couple of years to the rail network and systems in Wiltshire. Traffic growth in the South West has been well above Network Rail forecasts and hugely above the figures used in calculating the current franchise, and a stagnation / stop on projects that are not yet started would build up further problems.
So we have something of a "what now?" void. We should be alerting our councillors, our MPs, the train operating companies, and the Department for Transport, to the issues they'll be storing up if the extra issues aren't addresses. We should help them by providing thoughtful / worked out inputs that give positive and practical routes forward for everyone (or as close to everyone as we can get). For times of change are also times of opportunity - opportunity to get good solutions, and opportunities to get solutions which the politicians can endorse, celebrate and which will help their community's support for them in due course.
The second Wiltshire Link meeting takes place on Saturday, 2nd February, and this topic is top of our agenda. The outcome should be: