Double Standards?

I've always been puzzled as to why there have seemed to be double standards in the last couple of years with regard to our Swindon to Westbury via Melksham line - traffic growth at a compound rate of 35% per annum. On one hand we're congratulated on the spectacular growth to 110,000 journeys a year and on the other hand we're told that it would have to grow much more - so much more that the train would always be uncomfortably overcrowded - for it to be economically viable. And at the same time, friends travelling regularly on main line trains tell me of just 2 or 3 passengers per carriage in service that were slated for withdrawl, but have been saved.

Our train operator tells us that "you've made a good and correct case" showing that it's more economic to run 8 trains a day (single shuttle train), than the two that they're proposing - an 06:20 service in the early morning that's too early to attract much custom, and an 18:12 that's too late. But then they refer us to the Department for Transport as "we're just a contractor and do as we're told". And the Department for transport tells us (Alastair Darling's March letter to The Times, for example), that operators ARE allowed to run more services that tendered, provided that there's an economic case *unless there are other issues such as capacity*.

A year ago, I would have accepted the view that the cuts were because no-one in Whitehall had heard of the service and had based their decision on limited on-train statistics which I have always suspected covered the 2 week period including Good Friday and Easter Monday as if they were normal weekdays. But as we've moved forward I can no longer say that no-one's heard of Melksham. I have speculated as to why so many services have been brought back from the brink - Southampton to Salisbury stoppers, the Penzance sleeper, and most recently services calling at Ivybridge - but Melksham appears to have been subjected to an orchestrated silence whenever questions are asked.

The BBC sent a radio 4 reporter (Mark Holdstock) to Melksham to cover "closures by stealth"; he interviewed me and then went to London and interviewed Derek Twigg for "You and Yours". Great broadcast, except that Mark's questions on Melksham were met by answers concerning great things that were being done on the West Coast main line and it was as if the Melksham questions hadn't been asked.

All four MPs who represent stations on the line specifically asked about it in a Westminster debate in late April. Questions were asked about Ivybridge, Saltash, and a whole series of other lines in the same debate and Derek Twigg answered on most of those but again made no reference back to Melksham at all ... as if it had not been raised.

Is it that, truely, the service through Melksham is the lowest of the low in terms of usage? No, it isn't. Look at the tender request for the East Midlands franchise and you'll find that the passengers per train figures for four lines are all well under those for Melksham (on DfT figures) and that eight lines are under those for Melksham on what I believe to be the true figures of passengers per RUNNING train (bear in mind that the weekend service is cancelled more that it runs because of engineering works, and there's been up to 25% cancellations during some weeks as our line is always the first to loose its service if there's not enough stock or drivers; we're unfortunate to be operated by Cardiff to Portsmouth main line train units)

Is it that Melksham really has NOT got through to the people at the DfT, GOSW and elsewhere? Maybe - I am NOT a campaigner by nature and I don't have many local contacts in the media, etc. And Wiltshire folks are generally quite in nature and accepting of their lot - not campaigners nor complainers just in the way I'm not, so there's quiet disgust in the community and "it shouldn't be allowed to happen" but that doesn't rise to the intensive lobbying.

Is it that services through Melksham are paralleled by a bus service operated by the same company that operates the trains? Now there's an interesting question - indeed I visited the DfT sponsored web site yesterday and found that the service recommended to start a journey for me was a bus, and it was labelled "rail replacement bus link" ..... Hmmm.

Is it that Melksham is seen as a good candidate for railheading? County Council Stats that I've had sight of show that some 60 cars a day drive from Melksham and park at Chippenham station ... the only other town around with that level of drive-to-Chippenham-and-train traffic is Calne. Now - which is most economic for the operator - get people to park at Chippenham or pay the same amount extra for a train ticket up from Melksham?

Is it that Melksham is a town that's moving to a new constituency at the next election, and so our MP doesn't need to offer quite the level of support he offered to Bedwyn (service saved). I have to admit, I'm very much in two minds on this question. He HAS done stuff and is doing more for us. And yet I still have a disquiet that's rather beyond what I'm writing here.

Is it that the Melksham line is conjested, or that there are platforming / capacity issues at either end? I don't think so; there's a possible argument that Westbury, with the newly extended from Bedwyn terminating there AND the Exeter semi-fasts saved AND some extra services from both Southampton and Cardiff terminating there COULD be getting busy. However, contacts tell me that platform sharing is allowed so that the issue should not be as big as might be expected if there's a will to provide the service.

And yet the line through Melksham is forecast for medium growth up to 2015. I don't know how that's to be achieved on 40% of the trains we have at present, and on trains that are shifted away from the times that they would be busiest to times of day when there is not a heavy call on rolling stock on neighbouring lines. I do know that the line forms a natural part of the only uncongested through route from the South Coast (around Southampton) to the Midlands, and that the sections through Melksham would be very much a "pinch point" as it's single track with a realistic maximum capacity of one train each way an hour if trains run in alternate directions.

And Melksham station itself is on quite a tight curve which effects traffic though - slowing it right down and perhaps effecting the loading gauge. Oh - I'm no expect, but the track itself seems in incredibly good condition and much "cleaner" than many other lines. An odd case of expenditure.

The First group who took over the station in April tell us of many improvements that will be made to stations ("including Melksham") such as a new information point, improved signage, cleaner, smarter, cleaner facilities. New uniforms for staff .... all positive stuff except that they're pretty pointless if there's hardly any trains .... and surely First are smart enough to realise this.

I have no "smoking gun". I have no-one telling me that, yes, there's a proposal to withdraw the remaining trains too. But there's no answers on how the line usage will continue to grow from 3,000 journey tickets sold to / from Melksham in 2000 beyond the 27,000 sold five years later, when most of the trains have been withdrawn and the remaining "commuter train" has been retimed away from commuter time in direct contradiction to what was asked for in the 'consultation'. I do have a discussion between the SRA and Department for Transport dated April of last year, looking to see how the effect of the consultations could be minimised but kept legal, which does rather imply that decisions were not going to be strongly based on feedback from stakeholders ... and I do have a disquiet that some of the support / encouragement I've received from official sources may have been provided more with the intent of ensuring that support was seen that with the intent of being effective.

Anyway, in summary I remain a committed "don't know" on what / whether anything is going on behind the scenes. But I do feel that it's sensible for us to look at actions and lack of words as well as words, and to put out case based not only on what we're told officially but also on what we see around us. I don't think that the Department for Transport's new closure system that looks designed to make it easier to close lines is just being put on the statute book because civil servants have nothing better to do, and promises of improvements that turn out on certain lines to be quite the reverse just might be seen as part of a softening up process were I a cynic.

This text is a modified part of an email just sent to a campaigner for another line that's up for re-franchise at present in order to help provide a comparison.