Ticketed journeys on the Swindon to Westbury "leg" of the Swindon to Southampton service for 2003-2004 were 109,000 and for 2004-2005 were 104,000; note that in that latter year, the service was shut down for over 2 weeks without any prior notice so that the line could be used as a diversionary route while First's main line wasn't available.

Traffic levels calculated when evaluating a line are based on passengers leaving / joining each train and tickets sold per train. A recent parliamentary answer told us that the statistics inlcude cancelled trains AS IF THEY HAD RUN ... which means that under this measure a DROP in usage would be shown, even though passengers per trains THAT RAN rose, and ticket sales continued their dramatic increase.