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A few more trains means a LOT more passengers. Why?

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-07-30 18:07:04 - Graham Ellis

If you take a train service that's 2 trains per day, and you increase it up to 8, will you really make much difference? Will you make 4 times the difference?

Such are the questions that are asked about the service on the TransWilts line, linking Swindon which is by far the largest population centres in Wiltshire (Postal County - it's so big it's got its own governance!) to the next four urban areas in terms of population, which are Salibsury, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Melksham.

Let's see what journey opportunites the current service provides... I'm showing here arrivals into and departures out of Swindon.



So that's just ONE commute / journey opportunity per day - arriving into Swindon at 07:48 and leaving again at 18:44. And I've coloured it orange to signify that it's really too long a day for most people - 11 hours for an 8 hour day means people have 3 extra hours even before they travel home.

Let's increase the service up to 8 per day - that's a factor of 4. The extra times are already shown in red on the diagram above to let you get some sort of comparison. But here come the extra lines:



The number of round trips with over 9.5 hours at destination has increased from 1 to 6 - that's pretty good in its own right. But there are 8 more round trip opportunities of between 7 and 9.5 hours (I've marked those in green, as they're near idea fr full time workers), 8 more short day opportunities (4 to 7 hours) and 8 more part-time opportunities of up to 4 hours. I haven't even counted very short opportunities - and yet I have thirty times the number of opportunities that I had before.

So - a four fold increase in trains would give rise to a thirty fold increase in traffic? It's not quite that simple. Indications that we have are that for everyone who will use the train with 11 hours at destination, there are a further six who would us it if it was around 8.5 hours, four more for a shorter day, and two more for a quick trip... and if you multiply those numbers together, you get 102 times the traffic.



So - a four fold increase would give rise to a one hundred fold increase in traffic? It'n not quite that simple. Around a half of potential commuters on a single opportunity service are put off by the fact that they can't stay late / work overtime / vary their plans. If a train's available later / earlier and they can move their travel by up to an hour to take advantage, you'll get their business. So let's increase that factor of 102 to a factor of 200.

Am I suggesting that 2 trains carrying a total of 20 passengers would increase to 8 trains carrying a total of 4000 passengers? No, I'm not ... but I aware that a survey we ran found 600 commuters, and that most potential commuters I talk with say "what survey - I didn't hear about that". So I am suggesting that a service of 8 trains would be - err - rather busy!

Of course, it's not that simple. It needs publicity. It needs sensible fares. It needs to feel safe. And it needs to be reliable. But these are things that are very much within the capability of the train operating company to provide, with the support of the local community.

And - as we move from "if" towards "when", that's why we need to formalise the community involvement. Watch this space!