Trains on Time?

WHY DON’T THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME?

see also Rail Fares

Nicholas Newman 1May 2007

Yes, like Mussolini, I wish my First Great Western Train (FGW) would run on time. It is a mystery to me why FGW has such a problem. The Swiss do it, and even the French do it.

I know travelling by train should always be with a sense of adventure, as with Agatha Christy’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. But at least in fictional stories, the train does turn up, the service is impeccable, the company interesting, the food and comfort excellent.

Instead, my experiences of travel on First Great Western are far from what one should expect. Yes, there is adventure, it’s the expectation that the train will not turn up, not be on time, no seat will be available, while the food, despite the efforts of the staff, will be overpriced and dire. As a regular traveller I could do without such realities.

Luckily, for me, living in Oxford there is a choice. When I need to catch a train to London or Birmingham, my local Chiltern Railways station at Thame is the preferred option. Unlike FGW, they have learnt to provide a predictable and comfortable service to my destination.

So what broke the camel’s back? After all these years of appalling services that I and my fellow passengers had suffered, when FGW was awarded, in December 2005 the train operating franchise, Ed Vaizey had said in Parliament, ‘We had no reason to doubt that First Great Western would provide a good service’.

However, last December, timetable changes, resulted in drastic cuts in services and seat capacity. OX RailAction group spokesman, Susan Westlake, said, "We want to see longer trains, with more seats. We have calculated that the timetable changes last December had resulted in the loss of 80 per cent of the seats that were available for Oxford commuters, which was even worse than we thought."

This resulted in demonstrations at stations, massive media coverage, questions in Parliament, with demands by Oxrail Action

Commuters, finding existing pressure groups not much to their liking, set up new more politically militant groups including OXRAIL Action. Travelling, on commuter trains in December and January, felt a bit like a cultural revolution had taken place amongst the many well-heeled privileged elite that tend to use FGW rush hour trains.

Yes, even local MPs including David Cameron and Ed Vaizey joined the bandwagon of protestors, demanding action. However for keen observers of the Westminster scene, many found it somewhat amusing that the very same MPs that were demanding action to be taken were those that had supported the FGW bid. This was despite much lobbying by local authorities, such as Ealing council, which had warned that if FGW won such a bid, drastic service cuts would take place, because the merger of a commuter franchise with a long-distance franchise meant that commuter services would lose out, and Theresa May MP in Parliament said, ‘I am sure that that is exactly what has happened’.

I recall demands were made by local MPs and passenger groups, that the government should do something immediately, though what, was never really made clear. The trouble was the public, but especially the Politicians at Westminster, had seemed to have selective amnesia about the rail industry reforms that they themselves had passed. This meant the government had less power to determine day to day operational policy decisions made by train operators like FGW? In fact our MPs had missed their chance to prevent these cutbacks in rail services in the first place.

All government could do, in the short term, was to persuade, which disappointed the commuters and enabled many of the MPs to make cheap political points blaming the government for doing nothing. In fact government, working in tandem with established rail industry stakeholders, had been busy. By April there had been significant improvements in rail services, reinstatement of many old services, retiming of other trains and more seats available.

It is now over six months since the original case by these militant rail travellers had been raised. There are increasing doubts that these vociferous campaigning groups had had much real impact on the problems that face the rail industry and its customers. I won’t be surprised if many of the new protest groups will not merge with existing groups, as they learn that tackling the rail industry’s problems, means having the patience for being an active intelligent poker player in the long game of finding a solution.

As for First Great Western and Ministers getting trains to run on time, there has been some improvement. But it will take a long time before I will experience the Chiltern Railways quality of service on FGW trains that run on time!