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TransWilts - robust these days - no longer the first service to be cancelled

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2016-01-03 14:39:37 - Graham Ellis

Even in the best regulated systems, things will occasionally go wrong. And the question comes for the people who's role it is to look after these things "what do we do when it happens?"

The TransWilts train service - currently from Swindon to Westbury - is operated for 90% of its journeys by a train that's based / serviced in Bristol / Exeter ... it parks up each night in a siding at Westbury, and at some point each day a new (cleaned, refuelled) train arrives attached to a service to there from Bristol, the trains are swapped over, and the one that needs cleaning and refuelling goes back to Bristol on a later train. And with this remoteness from base, if something goes wrong with the train it's not just a question of replacing it with a spare one. There is no spare anywhere near!

Looking back three, or six, or nine years, the effect of the TransWilts train breaking down was a suspension of the service. In the list of priorities, it was regarded as the most expendable, and indeed in the winter of 2006 / 2007 the cancellation rate was some 30%. Not that, frankly, it mattered very much because that was just a month into a new timetable which, clever though it was at meeting government service requirements, wasn't carrying more than a handful of passengers. But this "first train to be cancelled" policy has come to matter more - much more - over the last couple of years.

In the year to March 1998, there were 3868 train journeys per day made to or from Melksham. That had dropped to 3266 by the year ending March 2001. By the year ending March 2006, that had risen to 24,426 journeys - but alas the unreliability and poorly timed remaining servives from December 2006 dropped usage back to a low point of 10,028 by the year to March 2010. Even this figure is questionable, as it comes from ticket sales and at that time it was cheaper to buy a Melksham to Bristol ticket than a Trowbridge or Bradford-on-Avon to Bristol ticket, and my own observations would suggest that real journey numbers were around the 5,000 mark. But look at the figures now - up from 12,080 (year to March 2013), 23,930 (year to March 2014) and 51,858 (year to March 2015). I wouldn't be surpised to see a further rise of 20,000 in the year to March 2016 - I'm guessing around 72,000 journeys although the figure will be distorted due to six weeks of significnat service changes (including lots of bus replacement) due to engineering works.

So the "first train cancelled" policy would have seriously effected around 30 journeys a day at the start of this decade (about a third of journeys on the line are to / from Melksham), whereas this year the same policy would effect around 500 journeys. And the effect of cancelling this train - with a service every 2 hours - if much greater than cancelling a service that runs 2 or 3 times an hour, where people can just wait for the next train.

Even in the best regulated systems, things will occasionally go wrong. Back to where I started.

On Monday, 21st December a failure of the train meant that it couldn't be used ... and rather than wait for the standard cycle of units, a carriage was grabbed off the back of a Bristol commuter train and sent over to Westbury attached to "The Portsmouth". Good - a couple of services lost, but operation resumed for the busiest (full and standing) trains of the day.

And today - Sunday 3rd January - another failure. This time, a 2 coach train at Westbury happened to be of the type that could be split into two single carriage trains, and that was done - no cancellations at all, and just a delay of 17 minutes on one service and 4 minutes on the next. Excellent work - and excellent too because actions, as well as words, show that TransWilts is no longer the bottom of the pile. Mind you - with 500 rather that 30 journeys effected on a daily basis, it also makes commercial sense to avoid 4 hour gaps between services ...

Note - where a train's cancelled, GWR will often provide you with an alternative. If the journey can be made by train within an hour anyway, you'll be expected to wait for that alternative - but if there's no such option then they'll usually provide alternative road transport - buses or taxis. There are some exceptional circumstances - such as bad weather making travel by any means dangerous - where an alternative may not be offered.



This diagram shows a screen capture from JourneyCheck, and another from TransWilts Station Enquiry page