Is Charlbury in the bermuda triangle

Fri 31 Jul 2009, 18:14

I don't think that the coach drivers are using anything as technologically advanced as sat nav Roger! I used the coach to return to Charlbury from Oxford on the first day that the line was closed. The coach driver had been summoned from an assignment in Wales at short notice and didn't even know where Hanborough was! Luckily, some of the passengers were able to give him directions!

It would perhaps be a good idea if the drivers were encouraged to use one approved route to/from Charlbury rather than a route of their own invention. I have used the replacement coach seven times in the last fortnight and it has used at least five different routes to get between Charlbury and Oxford. We've been via Enstone, via Combe, Stonesfield and Fawler, and twice via Witney (bizarrely, but apparently that was because drivers don't like reversing into the station drive at Hanborough and so prefer to continue in the same direction rather than retracing their steps).

A strong protest must be lodged at FGW's use of coaches rather than minibuses to form this road service. Even returning from Oxford in the late afternoon/early evening, the coaches I have been on have been less than half full. The coaches leaving Charlbury in the early afternoon (13.28 etc.) have usually carried no more than 6-8 people. On the way back from Oxford on Monday afternoon, we passed a coach heading in the opposite direction with just one person on it! One person on a 52-seater coach! This is incredibly bad for the environment and such large coaches are totally inappropriate for the narrow, winding roads of West Oxfordshire, as Roger has described and as I have observed personally in the last fortnight.

On the positive side, the coach transport has been very well organized by FGW, with lots of posters displaying timetables, labelled coaches, staff on-hand to answer questions, etc. Virtually all of the coaches I have taken have left on time and they have mostly arrived on time unless held up by traffic, which is not really FGW's fault.