9:38 to London no more after 13 December.

Tue 2 Dec 2008, 12:43

I stand by both of my previous comments.

If I want to go to Birmingham Chris then I accept that the new timetable probably makes things easier for me. However, in common with most Charlbury passengers, I tend to travel towards London far more often than I travel towards Birmingham; the abolition of the 09.38 will therefore inconvenience me and, judging from the comments made on this forum, a lot of other passengers will be negatively affected as well.

Regarding the overcrowding issue: I believe that FGW discourage passengers from travelling in two ways. The first is by providing an unpunctual, unreliable and substandard service. This is "passive" discouragement if you like. The second way involves imposing conditions of use on certain tickets so as to stop too many people from travelling on particular services. This is what I mean by "active" discouragement. The best example of this that I know is the restriction on passengers travelling back to Charlbury from London Paddington on certain cheap tickets in the late afternoon/early evening peak. For example, you cannot leave Paddington between 15.51 and 19.21 on a weekday if you hold a Travelcard. When I complained to Alison Forster about this a couple of years ago, she wrote back to say that this was a deliberate attempt to stop the trains between 15.51 and 19.21 from becoming too overcrowded. If that is not a means of actively discouraging people from travelling on certain trains then I don't know what is! Although many people may travel back to Charlbury outside of the restricted times, others will be negatively impacted and will either avoid travelling altogether or will use road transport instead.

The retiming of the 09.38 from Charlbury to London will probably reduce the frequency with which I travel to London. I am faced with two unpalatable choices: (i) travel an hour earlier and pay twice as much as at present; or (ii) travel half an hour later, get to London later than at present, have less working time in London and face restrictions on when I can travel back. In my mind, that is active discouragement to travel by train. I have more or less stopped using certain Cotswold Line services because they are so unreliable or inconvenient. These include the 10.10 from Charlbury to London on a Sunday and the 21.48 from Paddington to Worcester on a weekday; instead, I use other train operators' services or road transport or simply refrain from travelling at those times. It may be unintentional, but I am dissuaded from using FGW and from travelling by train in general.

The train length issue is one that has interested me for a long time. In the days before privatisation, there seemed to be more flexibility regarding the length of trains. A loco-hauled train could have four, six, eight, etc. carriages coupled behind it and thus was responsive to passenger demand. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but don't HSTs (eight carriages) and Adelantes (five carriages) comprise indivisible units? If so, then in my opinion it is this lack of flexibility regarding the length of the trains which handicaps the present-day privatised rail companies. To give one example, I have often travelled to London from Charlbury during the school half-term weeks. The trains I have used (09.38 or 10.36 out; 19.21 return) have usually been extremely crowded. However, FGW use exactly the same train sets to run those services as they do outside of half-term weeks when fewer people wish to travel. They seem to be either unwilling or unable to adapt the length of the trains to accommodate the number of passengers who wish to travel. I've travelled back on the 19.21 in half-term week and the train provided has been a three-car Turbo (!), which was inevitably rammed to the gills. Why not couple two Turbos together at peak times (this is done on "slow" trains between Oxford and Paddington)? Why not couple two Adelantes together more often and thus provide more accommodation than with an eight-car HST?

I have seen families with very small children forced to stand for long periods on busy trains. I have heard the parents say "This is the first time we have taken the kids on a train". Will those parents choose to travel by train again if their initial experience is so negative? FGW (and other rail companies to be fair) need to be more flexible and responsive to the needs of their passengers. They need to anticipate periods of likely high demand (it is not difficult after all to work out that lots of families will want to travel at half term!) and then make an appropriate response in terms of the form of accommodation offered.

Finally, I strongly believe that people should be enticed out of their cars and onto the trains. I don't feel that FGW, rail companies in general or the government are doing enough to bring this about at present.