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| An Open letter to First Greater Western's MD NEW - the reply I just got Dear Ms Forster, May I congratulate you on the award to you of the Greater Western Franchise for the next 10 years. With the addition to your previous franchises of the former Wessex Trains operations, you've acquired the rights and responsibilities to provide a rail service to Melksham in Wiltshire - a town of 24000 people, with a further 1000 homes under construction or authorised and a very heavy traffic flow to places such as Chippenham and Swindon. Most of the journeys made from Melksham in recent times have been by road rather than by rail, although train ticket sales (figures from the office of the Rail Regulator) have grown by 35% compound for the last five years. This growth has been in spite of a very infrequent service (there's a gap from 07:45 to 13:35 in northbound trains, for example) and frequent service suspensions for engineering works or for the running over the line of main line diverted trains. Melksham offers you a real opportunity to run a profitable service. If you compare the town's ticket sales to those at the neighbouring (and smaller) town of Bradford on Avon, you'll see that the smaller town generates 10 times the amount of traffic with half the population ... and it's because the Bradford on Avon service is more frequent (approx hourly) and, I think, more reliable. If you were to run the single 153 unit currently providing the service, just between Chippenham (where it could reverse in either platform) and Westbury, you would be able to offer a service at a similar frequency to Bradford, and ticket sales / traffic levels would increase to a similar level. My calculations suggest that the local service would break even if the number of ticket sales was just two times the current level. And I'm not including long distance tickets in that figure either - just "on the line" amounts. I'm a private individual running a business in Melksham. I moved here in 1999 and find the people of the town are welcoming and friendly - and I know they'll work very much WITH you as they do with us to make a positive plan such as this come to fruition for our mutual profitable benefit. Yours sincerely, Graham Ellis graham@wellho.net 01225 708225 To: Alison Forster Managing Director First Great Western MH42, Milford House 1, Milford Street Swindon SN1 1HL |
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