SARPA is the local rail users group for the Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth
line
running from the English border through Montgomeryshire to the coast of
North
Ceredigion and ending up in the increasingly important University (and
Assembly administration
) town of
Aberystwyth. We exist to preserve and promote the line so that there is a
more sustainable
transport system for future generations. SARPA is one of the more active
rail
user groups in Wales and meets monthly. We are continually campaigning on
various issues from train times and frequency to station maintenance and
welcome any comments anybody has about the rail service in Mid Wales.
We hope that during 2012, Arriva continues to make improvements.
We are also pressing for the introduction of the hourly service on the line, which was promised for 2011 by Welsh Assembly Government.
If I could wind back the clock I'd stop Central Trains and the WDA unleashing the "hourly
service to Aberystwyth". In December 1999 the cat was let out of the bag. Over a decade
has been lost where any thought of incremental service improvements or addressing
individual problems have been answered with the "hourly service will address that".
Stakeholders and the press love it as it's short and sweet but as I've outlined before it's lost
as no one articulates what it's about, apart from running extra trains at extra cost. A number
of sources in South Wales tell me it's seen as lots of extra cost and with ATW getting a
staggering £1.4 million per annum out of WG to run a handful of extra trains to Fishguard,
a price tag of over £4 Million for the Cambrian hourly has apparently been floated. Another
South Wales source goes on to tell me that the old pre-Deutsche Bahn owned Arriva were
happy to tell the Welsh Government it would all be new additional cost (and extra profit for
ATW), when in reality a fair amount of the cost could be met out of re-jigged diagramming
of existing units and crew. In essence it's been hijacked and inertia has resulted. It has
also become in people's minds the one and only issue for the Cambrian, which is far from
the case.
So let's get the agenda firmly back on a proper footing that addresses real issues
with a clear focus. I'm sending the hourly service to Room 101.
The glaring deficiencies on the Cambrian are not the lack of a daytime hourly train
service (whatever that is) but:
- Lack of a commuter train into Shrewsbury in the middle of the AM peak.
- Lack of connections between the coast line and Aberystwyth (and vice versa).
- Appalling connections at Shrewsbury with destinations in the northbound direction (Crewe, Manchester, Wrexham, Chester).
- Lack of Cambrian peak time capacity all the way to Aberystwyth and at the
Shrewsbury to Birmingham end of the service on a daily basis in the AM and PM
commuter peaks.
What's wrong with coming up with solutions to these issues rather than chasing the
hourly service? The hourly service doesn't actually address a number of those real issues
anyway. The hourly service is wrapped up in public funding, politics, unions, business
cases and inertia: back in 1997 we came up with something that would have been self
funding.
The Newtown to Shrewsbury shuttle if it had gone ahead wouldn't have involved
spending £millions on infrastructure. We just pathed a single car Class 153 starting at
Machynlleth in the morning in the gaps in the then timetable; it ran to Shrewsbury and then
came back to Newtown and back to Shrewsbury repeating half a dozen times before going
back to Machynlleth for the night. The timetable wasn't clockface, and of course it didn't go
to Ceredigion, but should have made some space on trains going further west from
Newtown. I have a nice letter from Central Trains costing it at £400K per annum. With the
then average rail journey generating around £4 in revenue it would have need to attract
around 100,000 new users. Fanciful? Each extra train ran would have needed just 28
passengers to break even. People sucked their teeth and wondered if rail use could grow
back then. According to the Office of Rail Regulation the existing service on the Cambrian
mainline as it turns out has grown by around 30,000 per annum between 2000 and 2010.
Services on our line currently run 2200 unit miles per weekday. The current timetable
sees 8 trains the whole length of the line, 6 of these have an extra 2 carriages between
Machynlleth and Shrewsbury, there's also an additional 3 each way movements between
Machynlleth and Aberystwyth. That's the equivalent of 13 two carriage trains running the
entire length each day. The train leasing, track access and running costs would all be the
same. I don't believe for one second that we couldn't be more creative with those 2200 unit
miles: the current pattern may be simple and operationally convenient for the operator, but
some intelligent planning could deliver some key benefits without increasing the costs too
much. As for crewing I'm also told that the drivers' diagrams in particular are very
inefficient at the moment, and people claiming to be drivers at Machynlleth depot have
posted message on web forums complaining that they're fed up with sitting around and
want to drive trains! I'm also told it's down to the ASLEF union intransigence that anything
new always has to be accompanied by new drivers (and new union members). I have it
from a reliable source that if better diagramming was introduced the hourly service could
be met out of existing staff.
Why don't we be smart instead of tying ourselves in multi million pound knots?
Someone needs to bang some heads: after all we've got all that infrastructure sitting there
waiting to be used.
Gareth Marston
Newtown, December 2011
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