Response to Local Transport Plan 3 / Draft report consultation. Submitted by Graham Ellis on behalf of the Transwilts Community Rail Partnership, and with the principled agreement of other bodies with which I am associated such as the Melksham Chamber of Commerce and industry.

"Management Summary"

* Good Work - good and agreed aims

* Needs to balance treatment of modes of public transport and to provide excellent connections and alternatives for those who for practical reasons make some or all of their journey by private vehicle.

* Integration, best use of existing infrastructure, and information systems are key.

Let's hope we can all work together to get efficient, cost effective travel - private and public - in, into and out of Wiltshire for the economic, lifestyle and climactic benefit of everyone who lives, works or visits the county.

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Dick Tonge in his introduction says that priorities are geared towards economic recovery, [road] safety, [road] maintenance, public transport and addressing climate change. Those are excellent priorities - for gearing travel and transport planning towards economic recovery helps towards making better use of the facilities provided, at more direct income from the users and less in the form of support. And - whilst we note that safety and maintenance is specified to be only for "road" we appreciate that the other main powered mass transit provision in Wiltshire - the railway - is maintained outside the remit of the council, and also has a national safety regime which only involves the council on the periphery.

The needs for certain services change over time. And there are a number of provisions in Wiltshire (as elsewhere in the UK) which may have been appropriate when they were specified, but are now less so. And at times of economic downturn, where services are being cut or re-organised into more efficient groupings, there's every bit as much of an opportunity to meld things for the future as there is at a time when services and investment are rising. Although the Local Transport Plan is for "2011 - 2026', much of the draft consultation paper relates to issues in the much shorter term which will be long since forgotten by 2026, save for the legacy that may have been left.

Transport is unique - it's used to get people to and from places, and there are always two places involved in a transaction (journey) - FROM and TO. That means that it differs from other aspects of planning - a library or a school, where the main provision is AT a place and can be handled by a single area-based authority in the main.

*** It is good to see that Wiltshire Council proposes to work closely with other neighboring authorities, with Community Partnerships, with the Dft and others for the full provision of services that integrate across the boundary of the area - from West Wiltshire to Bath and to Swindon, for example.

Wiltshire is not an isolated republic, but relies very heavily on people and services that come from beyond its borders, and indeed provides people and services beyond. Phone to donate to an emergency appeal, and chances are that your call will be answered in Melksham. Attend a training course on a niche computer programming language such as Lua, and you'll find you're travelling to Wiltshire too.

*** Local Transport Plans needs to make fuller consideration of LONGER DISTANCE JOURNEYS - the integration of the systems that run within the county - for travel to London, to airports, to other parts of the UK - with a view to making end to end journeys efficient throughout, and encouraging and enabling those journeys to be undertaken by a differing and appropriate mode of transport in individual circumstances, including transportation for those who cannot or prefer not to drive themselves at all, or for the complete journey.

Too often at present, longer distance journeys start very slowly and inefficiently in Wiltshire, and then become much more efficient beyond, or vice versa.

Example (recent personal journey):

Central London to Melksham.
* Left Paddington - 12:00
* Arrived Chippenham - 13:10
* Arrived Melksham Town Centre- 14:20
And this is to the centre of our 4th largest town ... not to a limited-service village!

The local transport plan needs to make fuller consideration of INCOMING VISITORS - the people who drive our economy, come to see the tourist spots. Honey pots are mentioned - Castle Combe, Avebury, Stonehenge, Lacock. Significant numbers arrive at Stonehenge by coach, or by the regular public transport from Salisbury Railway station. But look at Lacock and you'll find that the bus goes from the other side of Chippenham, without clear information that's easy for the tourist to find at the station.

*** The suggestion that bus routes that serve railway interchanges should be considered strategic is correct. Incoming visitors journeys (and longer distance journeys) are rarely completed in a single piece of transport, and the system should be more fully planned and integrated

*** The suggestion that best use by made of existing infrastructure is correct. Please ensure it's clear that this includes all modes of transport (including rail) where there is substantial infrastructure in place, and well maintained, linking Chippenham, Trowbridge and Salisbury, but with service provision well below what has been evaluated to be appropriate. (This route also serves the not-insignificant towns of Warminster, Westbury and Melksham, and the growing area of Westbury Leigh and Dilton Marsh).


QUESTION 1

The focus should not be on maintaining the status quo, but rather on making efficient use of the resources which will probably mean that exist for historic reasons may be lost, but others gained.

Example: There are 2 buses an hour from Melksham to Bath and they run 5 minutes apart. Local transport provision should ideally be one bus every half hour, but if that cannot be achieved then one bus per hour, with the resource freed up being used elsewhere, would be sensible. A plan that mandates or implies the maintenance of the current setup is poor planning for future resource use, be they public or private sector resources.

An intelligent, overall, strategic look should be substituted for maintaining the existing.

QUESTION 3

We disagree with the high priority (top of the list) for buses, but only medium for passenger rail. Public Passenger Transport should have an equal (and high) priority for the appropriate mode.

If we are looking to encourage users onto public transport - with the economic, congestion, health, climate change and peak oil positive implications - then we need to provide the "carrot" of an appropriate service as well as waving the sticks of things like limited parking at work and high fuel tax.

And an appropriate service is one that provides smooth, faster regional services linking our main towns - a rail backbone from Swindon to Salisbury via West Wiltshire (Chippenham, Trowbridge) - with connections into buses that truely connect (i.e. call at the stations at times just before / after trains) for the urban areas around the stations and surrounding villages.

It would be a very restricted and distorted overall plan for the area to include the feeder services but not the rail backbones, and major cross-county lines, as high priority issues.

We understand that current financial arrangements put the legal responsibility for road and rail into somewhat different authorities, but an LTP for 15 years needs to look at transport requirements as a whole, and rise above the "not my job" syndrome - it needs to look at transport requirements as a whole.

Table 4.5

Links with Swindon - Amend "Melksham to Swindon line" to "West Wilts via Melksham to Swindon line". This is not purely an issue for Melksham; it also concerns Trowbridge, Westbury and Warminster (and also Frome) to Swindon.

Paragraph 6.66

Can we clarify - "intelligent combination" - not just bolting routes together, but doing so in such a way that logical routings are provided.

Table 7.11

We are concerned through this section at the short term nature of these financial plns in a document headlines to go forward 15 years, and to times that are going to be very different. Look how much the world has changed in the last 15 years! We understand that the document cannot completely talk in generallities, but i should be made even clearer than it is

Paragraph 7.21

Please add Melksham. Larger than Devizes, huge numbers of houses just being occupied as I write, and I have yet to see any public transport in that new area - just people's cars. Can we get links in to town and station (and with a train service onwards?) to stop people having to buy extra cars.

Once families have made extra travel provision (typically cars), it's far harder to persuade them to use public transport, and they add to town centre congestion, reducing the attractiveness of popping ito town for everyone ...

Page 107 / SO5

Can an indicator be added for the proportion of visitors to the county who do NOT bring their own vehicles?

Example: As a business, we keep statstics ... in 2006, 40% of our visitors arrives and left by public transport. In 2008, that had dropped to 4% (owning, we believe, to Melksham being cut off to all intents and purposes from the rail network). The figure has recovered somewhat - estimate is between 6% and 9% for 2010, but it could / should have been over 50% by now and would have been if the trains arriving at 09:11 and leaving at 17:05 had not been withdrawn.

Page 108 / SO6

Can we add an indicator for use of rail infrastructure? Past experience prior to the culling of Transwilts services in 2006 indicate that an 8% to 10% growth rate, compound year on year, is possible for such a service and so (somewhat cynically) there's good scope for adding an indicator that would show really good progress should the infrastructure be more appropriately used.

Page 112 / S14

Public transport use is beneficial to health over private car use too - people get significant exercise as they make their way to the public transport and as they use it.

QUESTION 8

With reservations, yes, we support the long term strategy. The reservations are that the long term strategy should be irrespective of transport mode, so that bus, train (and anything else) should be given equivalent consideration in the overall plan.

As it stands, the plan implies direct support for buses but only encouraging others to support trains. The LTP should state support for all, and the council could look to Oxfordshire, Devon and Bristol for examples in the South West of where rail support is actually provided already.

QUESTION 9

l,k,j,n, and integration of services (not listed as a specific option). We are somewhat concerned at ranking things which greatly effect each other in this way, but have provided this input as an indicator of how we feel things should be baised to help in your planning.

QUESTION 10

Can we be clear (make it clearer) that the "Primary Strategic Network" includes all public transport - both road and rail?

Having been assured of that level playing field then, yes, we are in broad agreement - indeed we welcome the hourly weekday service on the strategic network route which surely includes Salisbury - Trowbridge - Chippenham.

Some sections describe "daytime" as 09:00 to 15:00; in our view, "daytime" should be 07:00 to 18:00 to cover the critical periods when people are travelling to and from work, especially where parking spaces for people are being restricted at planning time. It makes little sense to consider funding in the middle of the day when there's less call, but not at the times that a service would be most used, though the result of that extra use in the peaks would result in a different funding model.

Appendix B

B34

We applaud the identification of the Transwilts corridor via Melksham as a primary case for an improved service for economic and sustainable reasons.

Table B 10

Agree support for community initiatives and to work with any operator for appropriate improvements in Transwilts service via Chippenham and Trowbridge. Also agre other rail actions. Please add support via developer funding which is exclusively bus as written into rail section. Also add rail funding in a similar way to bus funding; public transport funding should be dependent on the route, requirements, traffic offered and economic and social gain therefrom and not based on the particular mode used.

B51

The heirarcy of services is excellent and should include integrated interchange between all vehicles / modes of transport. In other words, rail services where lines exist to passenger standard should be included in the strategic network, with appropriate service modifications to provide integrated travel solution within, into and out of Wiltshire.

B70

Much public rail funding is indeed provided by central government, but local government is not excluded and it is a past ploitical decision not to fund rail in Wiltshire that leads to this statement. The statement should be reworded to allow future funding options to include rail within the long term strategy. As written, the county will fund a local bus journey of 2 miles to the tune of 1.75 per mile (3.50 per journey) but will not fund a journey of 25 miles to the tune of 0.02 per mile (0.50 per journey) that would make a significant difference on journies from Chippenham to Salisbury, Trowbridge to Swindon, and Melksham to anywhere.

B71

These are excellent positive steps, to be encouraged and supported. We note support for other rail partnerships, and would like you to name the Transwilts Community Rail Partnership, being formed, as an example of others to support.

B73

This should apply to all modes of transport.

D39

Support for Information systems - agreed to be radical.

It is no good providing an excellent service if people do not know about it / cannot easily find out, and that is too often the case at the moment. There have been dramatic improvements with better software and technology in recent years, but there is still a long way to go.

I look forward to the day that I can arrive at a station such as Chippenham and see details of the various onward serices (train and bus) to Melksham, Trowbridge, Lacock, etc clearly displayed together with departure points and fares.

Summary

Much of this submission is, by the nature of the request for inputs, highlighting areas where we feel that adjustments should be made. However, there is very much good work in the LTP3 draft which passes without comment above.

Please feel free to contact the author of this input if you would like further detail / discussion on any of the points raised.