Bristol City Council Statement On 40 Min Frequency Severn Beach Line Service

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May 24, 2012, 08:44:05 AM

Recommended service - hourly, according to the GWRUS. Let's work towards that service and towards ensuring all services are used.

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1. FOSBR, as part of the Severn Beach Line Working Party, have been kept informed of the results of ongoing negotiations between the City Council and First Great Western. The financial elements of these negotiations have not been disclosed but FOSBR have been updated on a regular basis on both the ability to provide the additional service and timetables for the service. The City Council will continue to inform FOSBR of any material developments, as and when they occur.

2. The extra services for the Severn Beach Line do fall outside of the franchise specification. However it still needs DfT approval as all use of rolling stock needs to be agreed with DfT. FGW have confirmed that DfT have approved the additional rolling stock for the Severn Beach Line.

Both the Council and FGW are resolved to providing this service in May 2008. We will be able to provide absolute confirmation as soon as contractual details are finalised.

3. FGW have acquired 12 units to replace the 11 going off lease. As such they have in effect already procured an additional unit, which they intend to use on the Severn Beach Line. Although this extra unit will be available in December, it is required for route training and to substitute for units being refurbished.

The 12 units FGW have acquired are class 142s; 11 of these are being deployed in Devon, which meets their franchise requirement for that area. Without City Council funding, only 11 units would have been acquired.

4. The City Council will have a signed contractual agreement with First to ensure that this additional unit is available for providing an enhanced service on the Severn Beach Line from May 2008. We are still negotiating the final details of that agreement.

5. The first draft May 2008 timetable showed that not all trains are able to call at all stations, due to pathing difficulties. The Council has asked FGW to review the timetables to ensure that all stations are served.

6. The draft May 2008 timetable includes 1 train to Severn Beach every 2 hours throughout the day. In total the draft timetable has 11 trains running through to Severn Beach. The existing pattern is that a total of 7 trains run through to Severn Beach, at the beginning and the end of the day.

7. Negotiations are ongoing but the City Council is seeking to include some element of the contract that equates payment levels to performance related indicators.

As you know, the December 2007 timetable includes 3 additional return journeys on the Severn Beach Line in the morning peak. The City Council has pressed FGW to ensure that these additional services call at all stations on the line, including Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road. With the exception of the 0746 departure from Temple Meads, this has been achieved. We are therefore delighted that some service improvements will be seen in December.

The City Council is also committed to establishing a widely representative project group to plan and deliver station and information enhancements on the Severn Beach Line for May 2008. I hope that FOSBR will be represented on this group.

A Redland resident will be making the following statement to Bristol City Council Cabinet on 6th December 2007 :

As a local resident and user of the train service I’d like to express concern about the proposed changes to the Severn Beach Line, including the increased frequency of the services. As a user of the service, I would like to express concern that the position is so unclear. I can find no information at all on the First Great Western website, and the BCC press release in September now begs more questions than it answers. The increase from 15 trains a day to 18 a day in the December timetable is progress, but is certainly not the 40 minute service that had been expected, let alone the 30 minute service that ought to be possible according to independent consultants and given the funding for an extra train on the line. Furthermore, on 18th October 2007 I received a written undertaking from Andrew Haines (Chief Operating Officer at First Group) that “all services on the Severn Beach Line will continue to call at all stations.” However, the December timetable clearly shows that this undertaking too has been broken, with daily services now not stopping at Lawrence Hill and Stapleton Road.

Concerns by local residents

As a local resident living next to a station, I am aware of some local concerns at the increased frequency of the service, and the start of Sunday services. There is general support, but only if the trains are seen to be well-used and the community is engaged and consulted (as it has been over the improvements to the local station). For the service to be well-used, it needs to be promoted to people and businesses along the line, which in turn requires that the service is frequent and reliable. In conversations with Business West among others, there is a definite willingness to help promote the service when it becomes frequent and reliable. However, without a clear, open, contractual relationship between BCC and FGW so that expectations are clear, none of this is possible. This puts local and community advocates for the improved service in an impossible position.

Bristol City Council and Severn Beach Line Development Plan

Members of Bristol City Council from all parties clearly supported the improved service on the Severn Beach Line and backed this with investment from Bristol taxpayers. The lack of a firm contract has already led both to a significant delay in the implementation of the proposed service improvements, and to firm undertakings by FGW (eg that services continue to call at all stations) being broken. I would hope that a contract is now finalised as soon as possible, and that the relevant parts of it are immediately shared with community partners, to ensure that the community is properly involved, and to mitigate the risk of further delays and broken promises. There is a risk that a major element of the Severn Beach Line Development Plan, achieved as a result of considerable work by all parties, will be fatally compromised by an apparent lack of commitment now to implement it.

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