LETTER: Before we all get carried away by the prospect of having not one but two railway companies providing through trains to London from Shropshire, the proposal by Arriva Trains Wales to launch a direct service route between Aberystwyth and London Marylebone with stops in Telford and Shrewsbury should be regarded with suspicion.
Until the admirable Wrexham and Shropshire came on the scene no other railway company had shown the least interest in the service. This spoiling manoeuvre by Arriva must not be allowed to go ahead.
Far more sensible, especially for the long-suffering passenger, would be for the Wrexham and Shropshire to run the extra trains on to Aberystwyth, slotted in to its current schedule – and making it possible for the more caring company to gain some access to Birmingham.
The Wrexham and Shropshire has already been shown able to provide a superior passenger service that reflects that of owners DB, the German state railway, controllers also of its sister company Chiltern Railways. Customer satisfaction rates more highly with that organisation than with most British companies.
I urge Ieuan Wynn Jones, the Welsh Assembly Deputy First Minister and Minister for Economy and Transport to consider seriously switching his request for an examination of the options for the new service from Arriva to the customer-sensitive Wrexham and Shropshire.
Perhaps then in some small way we can benefit from the European railway experience.
John Beck
Condover
4 Comments
I think the Arriva proposal should be regarded as a positive move - although without doubt they are trying to muscle in on Wrexham and Shropshire’s market. In the same way, Virgin showed no interest in linking Wrexham into it’s London network until W&S started up. Yet these companies apparently did all they could to try and confound the Wrexham and Shropshire proposal to run a service!
But Arriva’s proposal still has some merit in my opinion. Much as I would like to see W&S run over a wider part of the network (Arriva could do with some serious competition in Shropshire - both on the trains and especially on their very low quality bus network), I suspect they or the Assembly would have to pay compensation to Arriva for loss of revenue if they ran on the Aberystwyth corridor.
W&S provide a very superior customer-focussed service (far better than Arriva and certainly better than Virgin) and I hope that there is some way they can expand in the future.
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The Aberystwyth route cannot cope with the rail services it already has, as proven by huge delays due to waiting for crossovers beyond Caersws. Unless double track is laid for the whole route all it’s going to do is cause more delays.
This needs to start at the basics.
While I think North Wales deserves a London link, at the moment there just isn’t the track to support it.
It would also be smarter to run from Shrewsbury to London Paddington - does every Shropshire train to London have to go into Marylebone now…? Surely other routes would provide variety for customers and better range of clientele for the providers.
And as Jeepers says, W&S provide superior customer service which Arriva and Virgin could both take a step out of their busy corporate spotlight-stealing to learn from). That is I think the big part of W&S’ success in running their route.
Arriva already struggle timekeeping their existing services (8.05 from Wellington to Holyhead this morning arrived 08.12, since the new timetables came out not once has it run to time). I suggest they would do better to consider how to improve these services before reaching out to take on more.
Full credit to W&S too for making other companies sit up and take notice.
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On the other hand Chiltern Railways customers who have been the the staunchest of supporters and the most loyal railway customers in the UK have recently been rewarded with the semi- removal of catering facilities a huge hike in fares and the bombardment of their sensibilities to use machines phones and so called smart card technology to simply purchace a ticket. When all we really want are nice friendly staff on clean trains that arrive at nice stations with equally nice personel. Chilern Railways was a most fantastic company. until they took their eye off the ball. Believe me Wales does not want a first class service just so it can decline into a second rate third world service in the future. Chiltern has not invested anything in its Trains its Staff for what seems a very long time now infact the passengers are left all alone now from Banbury to London with no onboard staff at all. how can this be???
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Britain as a whole requires massive improvement in its Rail Networks. Now is the time to create thousands of jobs in infrastructure.
What can it do for Shropshire and Wales? Firstly Re-Nationalise the line from North Wales to London. Build Stations and Trains that allow level entry; ie: NO STEPS. Prams, wheelchairs and mobility scooters, mothers with children will increase passengers by 10%.
Anyway the Olympics are coming to London, meaning millions of tourists for Wales, thousands of Paralympions will require access to Trains. Stop giving Banks money, give it to the Nationalised Railways and get people back to work.
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