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December 09, 2005
A Quandry
Thank goodness I'm independent! That I can express my views and ideas without having to ensure that they're the views of others too. I had a crazy idea. A silly thought playing around with figures and schedules and data, and something that David Redgewell said at the West Wilts User Group meeting on Wednesday; struck a chord and perhaps not in a direction he intended,
It's radical. But there's a way to increase passenger journeys on trains by around half a million a year on the TransWilts corridor (i.e. on trains to and through Melksham) AND to reduce the operating costs / save money in the grand scheme of things. Problem is, it involves taking off some duplicated / parallel running on the neighbouring line and using some of the stock released to provide a service on a line which is otherwise closed (to all intents and purposes) except in the evening.
Questions:
a) If Melksham had a reliable hourly train to Chippenham, would people be prepared to change there for Swindon, Reading and London?
b) If you want to get from Salisbury to Bristol in the early afternoon, how about using the 13:41. Is the 13:51 really needed too?
c) If you want to get from Bristol to Salisbury mid afternoon, how about the 15:40. Or is that unacceptable and will you insist on travelling on the 15:52?
d) There's a train from Westbury to Salisbury at 09:31. There's another at 09:37. Is this because there's a lot of traffic to be carried at that time of day? Is the 09:37 really needed?
Posted by gje at December 9, 2005 06:58 AM