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Taplow Rail Service: Proposed Dec 2006 Timetable
Taplow Rail Users Group Feedback on Dec 2006 Timetables
This is the response from Taplow Rail User Group to First’s March 2006 consultation on its 2006 timetable.
Background
First issued its draft 2006 timetable in late Feb 2006, with a deadline for feedback of 8th March 2006. (Weekend service proposals were not included in the consultation).
Draft Monday-Friday timetables were accessed on the web at: http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/franchise/en/Timetable.php. This response was emailed as requested, to: tt06@firstgroup.com on 8th March 2006.
1. Monday-Friday changes to existing timetable
Overall, the existing half-hourly service is maintained, with some changes to arrival/departure times. There are changes to both Up and Down services.
• Improvements include removing service gaps, more even service intervals and more (2) Up services;
• Taplow continues to receive fewer services than Burnham;
• Reductions in service include longer Taplow<>Paddington journey times for the majority of services and fewer peak morning down trains.
1a. The proposed timetable does away with a variation in late evening services between Monday-Thursday and Fridays, giving a more even interval service to Taplow. This improvement is welcomed.
1b. There is an increase in Up services from 35 to 37 services. The number of Down services remains unchanged (37). The increase in Up services is welcomed. In both cases, the service pattern is more evenly spaced than at present.
1c. Within Up services (depts from Taplow), the main change are additional services and more regular intervals between trains. A late evening service gap remains between the proposed 9:33 pm and 10:36 pm services.
• Although service frequency is poorer in the late evening than during the rest of the day, a gap of 77 minutes between the current 09:39pm and 10:55pm services, is reduced to one of 63 minutes between the proposed replacement services (9.33pm/10.36pm depts). However, the need for a gap at all is not evident.
• There are additional late evening services: the previous last pre midnight service was the 10:55pm. There are now services at 10:36pm, 11:03pm and 11:33pm.
1d. Within Down services, improvement is mixed.
There is one definite early evening improvement (see 2 below).
• Early and peak morning services are significantly changed, and are less good in certain respects.
i). Instead of a 5.54am, followed by a 6:35am service, the proposal is for a 1:12am, followed by a 6:20am.
This change will not affect a substantial number of passengers at Taplow, but could be significant at Burnham. To address this, the 5:28am Paddington>Reading could stop at Burnham and Taplow.
ii). There is a reduction in service frequency in the period between 7:05am and 8:20am.
Instead of four services (7:05am, 7:23am, 7:35am and 8:05am), there are now three (7:20am, 7:50am and 8:20am).
TRUG opposes this loss of service during a period when a large number of Desborough School pupils travel from Taplow to Maidenhead, within the morning peak. To address this, TRUG proposes an additional service between the proposed 8:20 am and 8:50 am Taplow departures.
iii). Increased service gap in late evening: instead of a 34 minute gap between the 9:54pm and the 10:28pm services, there is now a 50 minute gap between the replacement 9:50pm and 10:40pm services.
TRUG believes that a 30 min service interval should be maintained up until the final 11:21pm service.
2. Improvements
There is one clear and welcome improvement that removes an early evening service gap in Paddington departures between 1835 and 2003.
Existing Proposed
• This illustrates the benefit of an even interval service, which TRUG believes is the best way of encouraging passenger growth at Taplow, and in general.
3. Other Changes needed in proposed Dec 2006 Taplow timetable
3a. Services that stop at Burnham should also stop at Taplow. The increase in journey time to other stations is minimal for a sample of services checked by TRUG.
3b. Reduced morning peak Up fast services from Maidenhead will displace passengers to local trains.
An extra carriage should be added to Taplow stopping trains to prevent this.
3c. A Sunday service to Taplow is badly needed.
3d. Replacement bus services provided in the event of engineering work should operate from both Maidenhead and Slough, using Taplow as an accessible pick-up/drop-off point.
3e. In the long-term, the main line platforms at Taplow should be brought back into use, (with benefits including more convenient replacement bus service station access, during an envisaged period of several years of engineering works). In the meantime, TRUG supports the plan to bring platform 1 at Maidenhead back into use.
3e. Journey times under the new time-table are increased in many cases. This aggravates the problem for Taplow of presently falling between two stools: it neither benefits from the fast services provided to Maidenhead, nor from slow service frequencies provided at Burnham.
• Of 37 proposed Up services from Taplow, the new timetable offers 5 services that are faster to Paddington than at present, two for which the current time is unchanged and the remainder for which journey times are almost all 3 or 4 minutes slower.
• Of 37 proposed Down services, almost all up until the new 5.17pm. departure from Paddington take 40 minutes, and are 8 mins slower than at present, including during the morning peak period.
• Between the 5:17pm and 7:17pm services, journey times are all 35 mins, and are slightly improved. After 7:17pm, the remaining evening proposed services are slower than at present by between 3 and 8 minutes.
Overall, TRUG is very concerned at the extent of longer journey times under the new timetable.
TRUG considers that the extent of poorer journey times reinforces the need for some faster service Taplow trains to be introduced, especially to meet commuter needs.
4. Changes needed in timetable to deal with overall weaknesses in service pattern
4a. TRUG is concerned that the proposed service pattern appears to lack design resilience in important respects.
• This is clearly evident in the bunched service pattern at Ealing Broadway. During the Up morning peak (specifically between 8:06am and 9:01am), there are 12 arrivals at Ealing, with irregular arrival times across this period. This makes Ealing a “delay bottleneck”, at which one delayed train will inevitably have a cumulative knock-on effect, and lead to subsequent trains being delayed and routinely disrupt peak Up services for commuters from stations west of Ealing Broadway.
4b. TRUG suggests a ‘flight service pattern’ as an alternative timetable design concept. This approach would potentially reduce Ealing Broadway Up morning peak bottleneck delays, and similar Hayes>Slough problems during the Down peak period.
The concept is based on the principle that faster, longer distance trains with relatively fewer stops precede slower, shorter distance trains making more stops.
‘Flights’ should be arranged to repeat at regular intervals. Interval options that would provide 12 trains per hour at Ealing Broadway include:
• 3 train group repeated every 15 minutes;
• 4 train group repeated every 20 minutes;
• 6 train group repeated every 30 minutes.
On the basis of initial analysis, TRUG favours the 20 minute flight option.
4c. Although TRUG’s suggested flight pattern model would mitigate some inherent weaknesses in the December 2006 timetable, basic issues would remain regarding the provision of fast services to Slough on relief lines. TRUG thinks that the use of Dolphin Junction and the running of 90 mph trains with superior acceleration on the main line as far as Dolphin Junction, is less detrimental to overall time-keeping than running these trains on the relief lines.
060307:trug:jf/jw
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• User feedback to First from neighbouring rail users' group the Maidenhead-Marlow Passengers Association is on the web at http://www.mmpa.org.uk/tt/response.html
-- JonWil - 30 Mar 2006
-- JonWil - 31 Mar 2006