"but how effective have you been ..." asks a post on the "Save the Train" website for which I'm the webmaster. The site is dedicated to the Swindon to Westbury, Salisbury and Southampton train service that's under threat, in spite of dramatic traffic growth and much more potential.

Frankly, the question stung. And I felt a repost of "and where have YOU been, what have YOU done" coming on to my newcomer poster. But a minute or two to calm, and the question's one that we should be asking ourselves ... and it could be for all I know that my newbie poster has only just moved to the line's catchment area from somewhere far away.

When the "Save the Train" website was set up, the Swindon to Southampton service withdrawal was a line item on page 32 of an SRA report. The consultation period had already passed with none of us train users even knowing it was going on, and just 7 submissions had been made in its favour. A "did you know this is happening?" letter in the paper alerted us.

The objectives of the site were to get the case for the current service, or a forward-looking modification of it, very seriously considered based on substantive evidence, rather than having it just swept quietly under the carpet but some Whitehall Mandarin. At that stage, I did not know the economic case and I wasn't going to commit to recommending any particular decision.

What has been achieved, then?

Derek Twigg (Minister at DfT) is still trying to sweep it under the carpet. His 20th June letter to me refers back to a snapshot survey taken around Easter 2005 on which the original decision was based, and he makes no reference what so ever to any later reviews. And he makes it look very personal - " I was sorry to hear that the retimed services will be less convenient to him. I hope, though, he will understand that it is not always possible to satisfy all passengers with the train services they would like". He chooses to ignore traffic figures of 109,000 journeys per year, and pictures of packed trains to be cancelled from December that give lie to his argument.

BUT ... Derek Twigg and his DfT official, and their chosen service operators (the First group) HAVE had to listen to the case. The BBC's radio 4 interviewed Mr Twigg and asked him about the service (and he chose to talk about investment on the West Coast main line to 'answer' the questions). All 4 MPs with stations on the threatened section spoke in Westminster against plans and again, Mr Twigg had to listen and chose to talk about other issues instead in his reply. And I understand that they're very much aware of the continuing pressure, and disgusted at their decisions, through West and North Wiltshire.

As I write, it very much looks like the official policy remains "sweep it under the carpet", as it has been for the past year. My own view has changed over the year, though. As I've learnt so much about running trains, hire costs, timetabling, planning, capital cost, and politics, and more politics, I've moved from "don't know" about the future of the service to a conclusion that the current service of 5 trains a day is the MINIMUM acceptable in any reasoned argument, and that 8 trains a day is the optimum ... and that optimum is in a harsh economic environment. Take a "throw money in" attitude, and an hourly service is justified.

I'm pleased that we've made the case to this level. I'm delighted with all the support it's pulled in. Sure, I'm disappointed that I've not yet been able to post any sort of positive decisions based on hard facts.

Some wonderful side effects (and these also was back into the mainstream). The visit by the shadow transport secretary for transport augers very well for a change of policy, and services such as that through Melksham getting appropriate consideration under a Tory government, for example.

I choose my battles carefully, and this is one that I've chosen to be a part of with care - yet realising that chances of success were slim. Getting the government to change its mind was never going to be easy.

Could we have done more? Yes, if those of us who are involved didn't have other lives and could have been giving all our waking hours to the campaign. Yes, if we were good at putting ourselves forward - approaching officials as they walk up to their offices, raising awkward questions at council meetings, making "cold" phone calls. But everyone has their own skill and their own comfort level. And I do have to ask my original questioner "and how effective have YOU been, mate".
(written 2006-07-12 08:47:53)

 G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility
  [2668] Is it worth it? - (2010-03-09)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2532] Analysing Google arrivals by country of origin - (2009-12-10)
  [2519] Status Page / breaks of service in early December - (2009-11-30)
  [2410] Removal of technical resources from this site - (2009-09-19)
  [2389] Writing with our customers words - (2009-09-01)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielillä - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Opplæring, Open Source datamaskinen språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Formação, Open Source computador línguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formación, de los lenguajes de código abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2225] How important is a front page ranking on a search engine? - (2009-06-09)
  [2065] Static mirroring through HTTrack, wget and others - (2009-03-03)
  [2056] Web Site Loading - experiences and some solutions shared - (2009-02-26)
  [1982] Cooking bodies and URLs - (2009-01-08)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)
  [1961] Making our things easier to find - (2008-12-26)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1888] Find the link - (2008-11-16)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1833] Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls - (2008-10-11)
  [1797] I have been working hard but I do not expect you noticed - (2008-09-14)
  [1793] Which country does a search engine think you are located in? - (2008-09-11)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1711] Rapid growth leads to server move - (2008-07-17)
  [1653] How do Google Ads work? - (2008-05-25)
  [1634] Kiss and Book - (2008-05-07)
  [1630] To provide external links, or not? - (2008-05-04)
  [1610] PHP course dot co, dot uk - (2008-04-13)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1541] Colour, Composition or Content - (2008-02-16)
  [1534] Where in the world / country is my visitor from? - (2008-02-07)
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1437] Above the fold with First Great Western - (2007-11-19)
  [1297] Stuffing content into a web page - easy maintainance - (2007-08-09)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1212] What brought YOU to our web site? - (2007-06-01)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1186] Two new pages / sites - (2007-05-14)
  [1184] Finding resources - some pointers - (2007-05-13)
  [1177] Sorting out for a site map - (2007-05-05)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1055] Above the fold - (2007-01-28)
  [1029] Our search engine placement is dropping. - (2007-01-11)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [976] Santa at the station - (2006-12-09)
  [916] Driving customers away - (2006-11-07)
  [893] Visibility - (2006-10-14)
  [767] Finding the language preference of a web site visitor - (2006-06-18)
  [757] Horse and Python training - (2006-06-12)
  [732] Where is a web site visitor browsing from - (2006-05-24)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [681] Mirroring a dynamic site - (2006-04-12)
  [658] Keeping the visitors happy and browsing - (2006-03-26)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [533] Bigger Box Campaign - (2005-12-18)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [492] New Navigation Aid - Launch of My Wellho - (2005-11-11)
  [414] Form Madness - (2005-08-14)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)
  [369] CMS - the minefield of Choices - (2005-07-05)
  [348] Graveyard pages - (2005-06-15)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [314] What language is this written in? - (2005-05-17)
  [311] Growth pains - (2005-05-14)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [284] The Iconish language - (2005-04-19)
  [278] Cover all the options - (2005-04-13)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [274] Our most popular resources - (2005-04-10)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [222] Who are all these visitors? - (2005-02-20)
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [197] Allow for peak traffic on your web site - (2005-02-01)
  [182] Your personal Google ranking - (2005-01-19)
  [179] The hunt for unique words - (2005-01-16)
  [173] Data Mining - (2005-01-09)
  [165] Implementing an effective site search engine - (2005-01-01)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [117] A case of case - (2004-11-14)
  [109] URLs - a service and not a hurdle - (2004-11-04)
  [98] No more 'Error 404' pages. Something better. - (2004-10-24)
  [32] Web design platoon - (2004-08-29)
  [23] Skills and responsibilities - (2004-08-22)

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The Courts, Holt
Not shouting
undefined reference to typeinfo - C++ error message
Simple polymorphism example - C++
Effective web campaign?
The case for exceptions
References and Pointers in C++
Writing up new C / C++ notes.
Busy day in Melksham
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