Future of the commuter blog

Mon 17 Mar 2008, 12:46

The results of the first of the new analyses of the Cotswold Line blog are given below (please see the rest of this thread for the rationale behind this change). All the data refer to February services. I picked three outbound trains from Charlbury and two return trains; I would…

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Sun 24 Feb 2008, 15:49

Frances, the blog is very much still arrive and its latest entries were for Saturday. Please put all timings of trains - be they late, early or on time, onto the blog, so that when Derek analyises the data, it is all in one place. Thanks

Thu 14 Feb 2008, 07:40

While keeping a records of FGW's incapacity to deliver a reliable train service is one way of venting frustration, it's easily ignored by those charged with the responsibility. This is attested to by the fact the no one at FGW has ever directly responded to the submission of these records. What FGW management does appear to respond to is direct contact from David Cameron's office (when enough of his constituents direct their complaints there), and the threat of coordinated passenger boycotts of the service. The latter has achieved results on the Bath and Bristol line. And anyone who thinks that the meeting senior FGW management in Charlbury the week prior to the threatened Oxford consumer action was mere coincidence, is just being naive.

Thu 14 Feb 2008, 07:01

Sorry all - did bean reporting ALL trains, be they on time or delayed. I do do this. And yes I agree with Derek's suggestion - however 5.31pm is what I call "a Friday train" in as much as many people leave work early on Fridays (including me) and manage to catch this train! But we should all be campaigning for everyone to register train arrival/departure times - then we can get a better picture. For instance, the 7.29 is reported usually by me as far as Oxford, Andrew reports as far as Reading but not often is reported at Paddington. Please pass on the word ! Carry on with the great work Derek - you are a star! And Happy Birthday Blog !!!

Wed 13 Feb 2008, 20:27

Thanks to Derek for the analysis. I would support Derek's post - carry on reporting on all trains but focus analysis on those with the highest proportion of reports - this will reduce any opportunity for FGW to use "small sample size" to defend themselves. These are probably (by implication) the trains most of us use. Could we also report on "worst delay" every month to highlight poor performance outside of peak (reporting) hours ?

Wed 13 Feb 2008, 17:01

I agree with you Ian and assume that was just a slip of the keyboard on Susie's part! Some days it does seem as if all the trains are delayed so the mistake is quite understandable! I include all "on time" trains in the calculation of the average delay (they are accorded a delay of 0 mins) so they do get analysed.

Susie: I agree with you about the 06.37, which is a well-reported train at present. However, the 18.21 from Paddington was only reported four times (out of a possible 22!) in January. Ian mentioned that I should report on the 16.48 and 17.31 trains from Oxford but neither of these trains was recorded on more than 50% of occasions in January. I suggest I use my discretion each month when performing the analysis and pick several peak-time trains in each direction (say 6-8 in total) for which there are a good number of reports.

Given the feedback over the last 24 hours, can I suggest the following course of action for the future:

1. The blog be renamed "The Cotswold Line Blog". Richard: if you are in agreement, can you make this change at some point please? (Done --Richard)

2. The reporting procedure is left unchanged, i.e. all weekday and weekend trains can be reported on, so as to give the fullest possible picture of FGW's performance.

3. The monthly analysis is restricted to well-reported peak-time services, as detailed above.

Does everyone agree?

Wed 13 Feb 2008, 16:01

Susie,
I would take some issue with your first statement:
"Personally, I think we should still record all trains delayed,", we should be recording all trains used whether they are late or not, a zero delay is just as important to reduce reporting errors. We should always try and report an "On time" when it does occur!
Ian L

Wed 13 Feb 2008, 14:13

Personally, I think we should still record all trains delayed, be they off peak or weekends. It just goes to show what a shambles FGW are in. And Derek, you didnt mention the 06.37 which many people are catching now, as they 7.29 is so unreliable. The 6.21pm from Paddington is also a commuter train and should be included. If Richard can give you the stats you need, that should make everyone happy.

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 17:08

Yes, that train was 75 minutes late last night, they blamed "line congestion"

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 15:09

John,
In response to your query about the 15.19 from Hereford yesterday, I noted in the commuter blog last night that I thought I saw it leaving Oxford station at about 18.45 (not 100 per cent sure as I was just coming on to platform 2 from the rear gate as the HST set off). This would tally pretty closely with what you suggest above, as it is due into Oxford at 17.36.

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 15:08

I definitely think the change of name to 'Cotswold line blog' would be a good idea. The train service is for *everyone* in Charlbury, and we all need to pull together to get the situation improved - both regular commuters, occasional commuters and leisure users. When a train is cancelled or 30 minutes late, it's deeply frustrating - no matter what you're using it for.

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 14:23

Strange as it may seem, some of the worst performing trains seldom appear on the Charlbury Blog.
The Cotswold Line Promotion Group has been monitoring the situation on a much wider basis, since the new timetable started in December. As far as we can tell, by far the worst performer is the 1921 from Paddington to Great Malvern. This may not be all that dreadful at Charlbury, so, little mention of it appears on the site. Its problem is at Worcester SH, where it is supposed to make a 7 minute connection into the 2148 London Midland train to stations to Hereford - the last train of the day. From our monitoring, it appears to have missed that connection on at least 24 occasions out of 38.
Another train which has started to cause trouble is the 1519 from Hereford to Paddington. Since it became a HST, it struggles to depart from Hereford on time. Yesterday (11th) was a good example of this. It left Hereford 26 minutes late. This increased to 44 minutes at Ledbury and remained much the same as far as Evesham. What happened to it next is uncertain, but, having regard to the single track through Charlbury, it appears to have been held at Ascott-under-Wychwood for some 25 minutes, making it around 70 minutes late at Charlbury. No further report appeared on the National Rail web site, so it is not clear whether this was, in fact, what happened. Perhaps someone can confirm.
The CLPG has a meeting in Swindon this afternoon with Andrew Haines and other senior management of FGW and we hope to be raising issues such as these and what FGW does to enable passengers to complete their journeys. A report of this meeting will appear on the CLPG's web site - www.clpg.co.uk in due course.

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 13:43

Derek, Concentrating on just those four services would be a big mistake, it would ignore the problems FGW have in running the 1551 train from Paddington and the 1731 stopping service. While the 1551 may not be a peak service from london by the time it gets to Oxford it is very much in peak time.

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 13:33

I'd agree with David as to the value of keeping a method of reporting off-peak services. The peaktime services are bad, but believe me, you've not experienced how awful the Cotswold Line can really be until you have:

• Been stuck at Charlbury for 1hr40 in the "contra-peak" (i.e. going the other way from the peak flow), waiting for a train that was held at Ascott all that time so as not to delay any of the peak trains;
• Arrived at Paddington to catch the last train home on a Saturday, only to find that (with no publicity at Charlbury) it's starting from Ealing Broadway that day... and has already left;
• Had a five-change journey completely thrown out of kilter by delays at Charlbury;
• Boarded a train at Worcester Foregate Street on a Saturday evening, only to be turfed off at Shrub Hill because the train has run out of diesel, and loaded onto a coach whose driver appears never to have heard of Oxford let alone Charlbury;
• And so on.

What's needed for your purposes, Derek, is - I think - just a customised "view" of the entries, so you could say "show me all entries for trains x,y and z within the last n days". That's very easy - it's all held in a database. Just let me know what sort of query you'd like and I can set that up.

(Thanks to the Train Fellow for the illustration!)

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 12:48

Igor: I don't say it would make them respond, I just think that by concentrating on a smaller set of services we would be able to produce more valid and representative data. At the moment the blog is constructed so that anyone can report any service (weekday, weekend, peak, offpeak). This means that we are trying to report on about 900 trains a month. Although last month was the best-reported month since the blog began, we only managed to cover about 25% of all Cotswold Line trains. What I am saying is that, if we restrict the blog to peak-time weekday services only, then we should be able to increase our coverage to 60-70% of these trains. This should therefore give quite a good picture of the performance of commuter trains on the line. I don't know if FGW would take more notice of these data because I don't know what goes on inside the head of a FGW manager (!) but they certainly couldn't argue that the figures were unrepresentative.

Thank you David for a very thoughtful and interesting post. I had neglected to consider the therapeutic benefits of continued posting so thank you for pointing that out! Maybe what is needed is simply a name change for the blog, perhaps to "Cotswold Line Blog", so that it actually does what it says on the tin. I especially like your idea of just analysing a small selection of peak services (less work for me is something I am always happy to vote for!). Based on the reports for January, I would suggest that, for the time being, I analyse just the following four commuter services: 06.10 CBY to London (anecdotally the most frequently cancelled train on the network!); 07.29 CBY to London; 18.16 OXF to CBY; and 18.55 OXF to CBY. What do other people think?

Tue 12 Feb 2008, 07:31

I hesitate to dissent from Derek’s proposal regarding the blog, as I know how much he does for it in reporting faithfully and analysing the results. But here are a few thoughts from a frequent but irregular victim of FGW:
1) Should this be just a ‘commuter’ blog? Isn’t the larger aim to have a railway that serves all the community’s needs, and attracts people out of their cars, not just the largely captive commuter market. A big problem for off-peakers and those making complex journeys with lots of connections is that the delays are on top of a service that is already so infrequent. CLPG has been working for a long time to try to improve off-peak services, and I think the blog should support that.
2) The sheer volume of complaint must say something …?
3) it’s therapeutic to be able to let off steam in the blog and see that one is not alone!
I agree that the low reporting rate makes it hard to give a robust picture of off-peak train performance, but allowing these trains to be reported does still add to the value of the blog as a resource.
Regarding the workload on Derek, what about picking just a couple of well-reported peak trains as indicators? For example, looking over the last two weeks, the 0729 was reported on all 10 occasions when it ran and was on time on 7, late on 3, giving a punctuality of 70%. Similarly the 1750 Paddington to Charlbury was reported on 8 out of 10 occasions, of which 4 were on time 4, 4 were late. That means its punctuality was at best 60% (i.e. assuming all unreported cases were on time. Simplified analyses like this would give a more statistically valid indicator of performance, and changes over time, to FGW.
But what do others think?

Mon 11 Feb 2008, 20:36

"we have been sending statistics extracted from the blog to FGW in recent months but as far as I know they have never responded."

Um, streamlining the analysis IS going to make them respond?

Mon 11 Feb 2008, 19:13

Also, remove the default 0610 from the time......if it isnt entered properly then the post should be rejected...this will save me forgetting to set the time and by default entering a record for the 0610. (as in this morning!)

Mon 11 Feb 2008, 17:32

As the blog will be exactly one year old tomorrow ("Happy birthday to you..."), I would like to suggest making a few changes to it which I think will improve it.

The reasons for my proposed changes are as follows: (i) to increase the overall proportion of the chosen set…

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