Regular readers will know that I've been helping the campaign to retain the train service through Melksham at an appropriate level and, much to my surprise, a request that I made under the Freedom of Information act brought my 1kg of papers at the start of this month, followed by yet more information on line a couple of days back.

It appears that consultant's reports written in 2004 recommended the retention of peak trains, plus three daytime services, plus an evening service. And the consultants came down AGAINST retiming the commuter train so that it wasn't truely a peak service anymore.

I don't think the consultant's reports said what the people who commissioned them wanted them to say. We're ending up with no daytime service, and with the commuter train retimed away from the peak. I agree with the consultants that this isn't a good idea and will have a negative economic effect on the area, and on income for long distance journeys (to the tune of millions of pounds a year), whilst making a miniscule saving in the local area. Incredibly, the consultants reports were all based on growth predictions of less that 2% per annum when the real figure is around 35% for our line, and 41% over 3 years for all the services in the Bristol area.

So what do I and the other campaigners do now? We have official evidence / reports / suggestions that the service be retained. We know that our elements of the report have been rejected - perhaps by the franchise bidders who were given the freedom to come up with alternatives, of perhaps by the Deparment for Transport. But having evidence of what looks like mismanagement is a very different thing from being able, at this stage, to do anything about it, I fear.
(written 2006-09-24 06:32:14)

 

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