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| Case Study No-one has told me why the train service from Swindon to Westbury (via Melksham) ... with some trains continuing on to Salisbury and Southampton ... has been singled out as the only service to be scheduled to be discontinued when the new franchisee introduces his timetable late in 2006. But rumour has it that the service just isn't used. Now that's emphatically NOT what I've seen - but I didn't have any figures so I took a ride on what was supposed to be a quiet train - lunchtime on a Sunday. There were 15 passengers on the train when it arrived in Melksham, and five more people waiting there for it. At Chippenham, 4 people left and 2 joined for the ride to Swindon.  On the return journey, we left Swindon with 19 passengers. At
Chippenham, some got off but rather more got on and there were 30
passengers to Melksham. At Melksham, where I left the train with 9 others,
I counted at least 3 more getting on.Where were people going? Were they just local passengers? No, they weren't. I got talking to a few people (I'm not pushy enough to be a market researcher!) ... and the lady I talked to on the journey up to Swindon was transferring on to the London train from there. On the return journey, there was a lady headed all the way from Swindon to Southampton, and a group of 5 young gentlemen travelling to Salisbury. It's not just the one-stop traffic; each of the 30 people who were travelling on the train when we left it had paid a substantial fare, and would have had a much slower or impractical public transport journey if it was't for "the Melksham train" ... |
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