The DfT served FGW with a remedial plan notice to improve services. First Great Western was regularly at the very bottom in the punctuality statistics.

Only last month FGW doubled the compensation paid to season ticket holders and apologised for delivering a poor service over the previous 12 months.

Passenger group “More Train Less Strain” staged another fare strike in the Bristol area in protest of First Great Western’s fare increases on 2 January 2008 which saw the cost of some of the most overcrowded routes increase by up to as much as 10%.

In December a seven-year-old girl fainted in the Bath area on an overcrowded commuter train operated by FGW. The train was so jam packed that the girl was wedged upright between passengers despite having lost consciousness and her grandfather as well as a nurse could not reach her to lay her down on the floor or a seat.

In a remedial plan agreed with the DfT, First Great Western aims to invest £29m for service improvements and an increase in compensation paid to customers. The train operator is planning to provide additional rolling stock and speed up the refurbishment of its Thames Valley commuter trains.

The key points of said plan are as follows:

• Passenger compensation – Between January 2008 and January 2009 First Great Western will double its compensation rates under the passenger charter. This will benefit any passengers who suffer disruption as well as season ticket holders who renew their tickets. These are the customers who have been most affected by the unacceptable performance. From January 2009 to January 2010 there will be a fifty per cent increase in compensation rates.
• Fares offers – an additional 500,000 of the cheapest off-peak tickets will be made available for a selection of First Great Western’s most popular destinations. Fares offers will commence from 1 April of this year until 31 March 2009.
• Additional trains on the Cardiff-Portsmouth route – from summer 2008 until summer 2011 every through train will have an additional carriage to provide extra capacity. This will increase trains from 2 carriages to 3, an aggregate increase of 40% capacity. This will mitigate the overcrowding on one of First Great Western’s most popular routes, which runs through Bristol.
• Upgrade of station customer information systems – new and additional high quality information equipment will be installed at more stations. This will include additional modern monitors. This will finish by end of December 2010.
• Accelerating the refurbishment of Thames Valley commuter trains – First Great Western will refurbish these trains earlier than contracted and will spend double the previously agreed amount. Refurbishment of Thames Valley commuter trains will commence this year and will be completed by 2011. Refurbishment will include the modernisation of carriage interiors to a far higher standard than originally planned. Lines to benefit will include London to Reading, Oxford, Newbury and Reading to Gatwick.

Additionally to that Andrew Haines, Chief Operating Officer at First Great Western, said that FGW wants to:

• Recruit new drivers, guards and technicians to improve customer service and reliability.
• A £4m enhanced customer service training package for FGW’s passenger facing employees.
• Establish a new performance directorate to improve management of disruption alongside Network Rail.
• A package of additional fleet and depot improvements to enhance reliability.
• To ensure resilient operating performance, provide an additional High Speed Train in April 2009.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said “The £29m package of benefits agreed with First Great Western will make a real difference to passengers. It includes over 500,000 cheaper tickets on the busiest routes, extra carriages between Cardiff and Portsmouth and vastly increases investment in the refurbishment of Thames Valley commuter trains. “The measures I have announced today will lead to a reduction in train cancellations and also provide a substantial package of benefits to First Great Western’s customers.”

Regular passengers on FGW will breath a small sigh of believe as they have been calling for service improvements on the Great Western Route for quite a while.

However, one wonders if the provision of five additional class 150 units and one more HST will be sufficient to tackle the daily overcrowding on some of the operator’s services.

Failure to deliver the commitments specified by the remedial plan would constitute defaulting on the franchise agreement on the part of FGW, for which the DfT can terminate the franchise

Further information:

• Financial Times article
• Times article
• First Great Western press release
• DfT press release

There will be an hourly passenger service (run by Arriva Trains Wales) in both directions with six stations served in Phase 1 of the reopening, the journey taking approximately 55 minutes. These stations are Rogerstone, Risca and Pontymister, Crosskeys, Newbridge, Llanhilleth and Ebbw Vale Parkway. There are plans in the future to extend the service to Newport as well as the Phase 1 terminus of Cardiff which would include a further four stations if approval was granted: Ebbw Vale, Abertillery, Cwm and Pye Corner.

The six reopened stations will be unmanned and feature only a basic set of facilities. There will be shelters with seating, real time service information boards, lighting, help point, CCTV monitoring, cycle lockers and car parking.The project was generously funded by three bodies in the main: European Regional Development Fund (£7.5 million), Corus Steelworks Regeneration Fund (£7 million) and the Welsh Assembly Government Transport Grant (the remainder). The total route from start to finish is 18 miles.

The full route plan can be viewed on Blaenau Gwent Council’s website dedicated to the new line reopening project.

• Interactive Route Plan

We wish the area luck with their new reopening and hope that Phase 2 can be expedited for operational use as soon as possible. If this kind of thing was done nationally throughout the United Kingdom, we would have a railway system that was actually fit for purpose and not run just for the convenience of government and its executive agencies.

You can chart the progress of the railway reopening project from the early stages in 2006 from the colourful brochures made available by the construction partners below (these are pdf files so you’ll need Adobe Reader to view them):

• Winter 2006/07
• Autumn 2007
• Spring 2007
  
• Summer 2007