When the First group took over trains to our town of Melksham, population around 24,000 and growing, we were served by 10 trains a day and ticket sales for journeys that started or ended at Melksham were rocketing. That was 1st April 2006.

On 10th December 2006, First withdrew all 10 existing trains and provided 4 new services - leaving Swindon at 06:19 and 18:42, and leaving Westbury, Wiltshire at 07:00 and 19:35. Unsurprisingly (to us who live on the line, at least!) they lost most of their business - people cannot travel on the railway if there's no train running, and the timing meant that even the targeted customers for the new limited service - commuters to Swindon - found it inappropriate as their days were extended by 90 minutes.

We have been told, quite honestly I'm sure, that the new timings are pushed into "marginal time" to save the company the cost of hiring an extra train, and that schoolchildren travelling from Stroud need the train at the time that we used to have it.

Attempts to have an appropriate service provided from December 2006 failed. A consultation recognised the problem, but gave us no improvement. Attempts to provide an appropriate service from December 2007 look like they have failed. Draft timetables that have been release under Freedom of Information show an improved service on which a huge amount of work has been done, but it's all come to nowt at the last minute. And we're now told to try for 2008. We HAVE got somewhere - we have had the case taken much more seriously than it was in the past, where we were a footnote on an internal page of a Strategic Rail Authority document, but people cannot travel and the economy of West Wiltshire cannot thrive on the serious consideration of a case. We need real trains!

You would have thought, then, that I would welcome the news this morning that the Managing Director of First Great Western, who was instrumental in First's specification of the new service both before and after the award of the current franchise, has departed from that role in rather less than a blaze of plaudits and glory. I do welcome the news - a hopeful new beginning, perhaps - but I do wish her personally well for the future. To a very great extent she is simply one cog in a big machine, and as the machine moves and the cogs turn ...

But let's look forward. In spite of a repeated series of failures of the players to provide an appropriate service we HAVE moved forward quite a bit. Distant decision makers in London and Aberdeen now know where Wiltshire is, and have learned that the towns of Swindon, Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Westbury, Frome, Warminster and Salisbury are bustling places and going to be growing rapidly, with travel requirements between over the next few years.

Let's work with those decision makers, and with the team as now constitued at First Great Western, to provide an appropriate service as soon as it can be practically achieved
(written 2007-09-19 13:30:15)

 

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