Latest commitments from First Great Western

Sun 23 Nov 2008, 19:29

Thank heavens for some sense on this subject! (I refer in particular to William's postings). Yes, the quality of the service improved between the two FGW meetings held in Charlbury this January and April and the improvement was sustained throughout the summer. In my experience however, there has been a decline subsequently and I can date it exactly to the first weekend in September when I travelled to London from Charlbury and the train was terminated at Oxford. The reason? No guard was available to take the train onwards. Nothing to do with leaf fall or rail adhesion Ed, just plain incompetence on the part of FGW! If they can't recruit and retain sufficient staff to operate their services then they shouldn't be permitted to run a railway.

Ever since that September Sunday the service has been dodgy to say the least. Yes, there have been some good days but I would guesstimate that about 1 in 5 of the trains that I have taken in the last two and a half months have been delayed or cancelled and many of those have been significantly late (20 mins or more). I have recorded some of my worst experiences on the Commuter Blog. The most frequent problem seems to have been signalling difficulties between Oxford and Didcot. I have not heard the leaf fall excuse used once this autumn, even though I have been travelling several times a week on average. If it was a serious problem Ed then I'm sure we would have heard about it by now (FGW are not usually slow to blame problems on someone or something other than themselves!).

It is very mischievous of you to suggest Ed that as the service has improved so much we should all have to pay a "proper fare" again now. We "enjoy" some of the most expensive rail fares in the world in this country but we get very little in return. Fare increases might be justified if all the trains were luxurious and ran perfectly to time. In reality, most FGW trains are grotty and frequently run late if they turn up at all. The service might still be better than a year ago but think what it was like last winter! A small improvement from a very low baseline does not justify a big increase in the ticket price.

Oh, and finally, the reason that the Commuter Blog is so quiet these days is that most people probably realise that unless I analyse the data then nothing happens to it! It is not that there are no problems to report, just that most people can't be bothered to post because they know that it is a waste of time (except of course that they have the satisfaction of "letting off steam" and keeping their blood pressure down as a result).