Severn Beach / Bristol Rail Problems

How is it that First can make the money to pay the government 1 billion pounds over 10 years, as they've said they'll do under the Great Western franchise? Read the announcements carefully, and you'll see that they're actually receiving a subsidy for the first few years, which they then pay back and more towards the end of the contract.

The award was announced in 2005. Where will things stand by 2010 and 2015? How can the operator (any operator) achieve those figures?

Traffic levels ARE on 'the up', almost across the board, by rail. Nothing so spectacular as the 35% compund rise we've seen on the transWilts, but on 'the up' never the less. But the system's also creaking at the seams; 2 coach trains run on the Portsmouth to Cardiff service are inadequate, and breakdowns / substitutions on Weymouth, Severn Beach and other services as laid down in the link above. I have been told that even if the 1 coach 153 train was packed every time it ran through Melksham, it would not make the money the operator needs - and that was from one of the operator's senior managers, who was also saying that the same thing applies to "even Exmouth" which is their flagship branch.

So - it can't be done by traffic growth on the current setup. How csan the balance sheet be positively influenced?

a) By raising fares. 16p per mile, Melksham to Swindon, 50p per mile, Chippenham to London. If you could get away with trebbling fares, you might have a better balance sheet. Now ... Melksham to Swindon Return COULD rise on a good service level to 9.50 return and I think most people would be happy to pay for the improvement. But to 21.00 return??

b) By cutting out all of the services on which a premium fare could not be charged / all the services that are run with shorter trains, with intermediate stops. This gives you a network (all expresses) in our area:

1) Cardiff, Newport, Filton Abbey Wood, Bristol, Bath, Bradford, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Romsey, Southampton, Fareham, Portsmouth. Run every 2 hours with a unit such as an Adalente or a Voyager, you'll be back very much to the structure of my youth when there was a handful of Swansea to Portsmouth trains each day

2) London, Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Stroud, Gloucester, Cheltenham Again, every 2 hours

3) London, Reading, Didcot (alternate trains), Swindon, Chippenham, Bath, Bristol every 30 minutes possibly extended to Weston-super-mare and Taunton every 2 hours unless the cross-country service continues to run South of Bristil

4) London, Reading, Newbury, Pewsey, Westbury, Castle Cary, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbott, Plymouth, major stations only to Penzance every hour to Plymouth, every 2 hours beyond

5) London, Reading, Swindon, Bristol Parkway, Newport, major stations to Swansea every 30 minutes to Cardiff, every hour beyond

These are all 50p / mile services; super-savers have gone already together with a lot of other economic ticketing options, and one of my influential contacts the other day described the new single book-ahead options as "unworkable" for him as he can't plan his timing to be sure of catching the appropriate train. So on average people will be paying closer to the full fare that has been historically the case.

You'll note that my model includes no train service at all for Dilton March, Bruton, Frome, Yeovil Town, Chetnole, Yetminster, Maiden Newton, Dorchester West, Melksham, Avoncliff, Freshford, Avoncliff, Oldfield Park, Keynasham, Patchway, Pilning, Stonehouse, Kemble, nor for all staions from Stapleton Road to Severn Beach inclusive. (Further afield, it only serves Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bristol (2 stations), Weston and Taunton on that route, and it excludes branch services to Exmouth, Barnstaple, Paington, Gunnislake, Looe, Newquay, Falmouth, St Ives.)

Existing passengers who require public transport from the places that my model does not serve? Why - there's so often a bus run by the same operator close at hand. And that operator is investing in buses, with DfT approval / grants, to parallel routes such as Bath to Bristol (covering Oldfield Park and Keynsham).

The business plan just could be to have this "premier express" only train network running by 2010, and to cream in the money from it until 2015. With a continental style, high performance bus feeder interchange system integrated with it, with freed-up rail capacity being used to get freight off the roads, wouldn't that be great? Great theory - but I really fear for a half-baked measure that would give the operator all the profit, at the expense of an overall much worse service for those of us who have to travel.

If "The Twigg and Forster plan" is indeed to turn the railways into an intercity and freight network with good integrate buses - if that's the vision - the would Mr Twigg and Ms Forster please come clean and tell us? Perhaps we could then all work together for the mutual benefit of government, supplier and customer. As it is at the moment, it looks like we may have a plan that's being implemented in a secretive and underhand way, and IMHO that's very unlikely to be a visionary way forward for the future.