Letter: Shropshire’s public transport is going nowhere
Thursday 10th March 2011, 6:00AM GMT.
Letter: I am writing to comment on the terrible public transport situation in Shropshire.
The rail services in our county are, in my opinion, in a state of total chaos.
1) There are no Sunday rail services at all throughout Shropshire due to the current Arriva Trains Wales strike.
2) London Midland trains are regularly cancelled due to an overtime ban by some staff and are totally unreliable.
3) With the closure of the Wrexham & Shropshire Railway there are no direct trains to London and it is at least £169 for a return ticket to arrive in London by 9am by the poor alternative services.
4) London Midland is proposing to reduce the opening hours of our local ticket offices (which has an impact on security, toilet facilities, waiting rooms and the provision of information).
With regard to our bus services, they are being significantly reduced due to the council cutbacks in subsidies and Arriva reducing other services.
With petrol at £1.30 a litre there is no viable alternative means of transport.
As a country we compare very badly with Germany and France in terms of public transport!
What message does this give to prospective tourists or businesses considering Shropshire as a venue?
What are our MPs and councils doing about this?
Alan Morris
High Ercall
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I completely agree that Shropshire is now very badly served by public transport. Our rail services are the worst in the whole country and the rural bus services are quickly being withdrawn. We compare extremely badly with similar countries in Europe. Our MPs and Councils seem oblivious to this issue!
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But more importantly what are YOU doing about it ?
Starting thinking the ‘Big Society’ way !
We need people who are entrepreneurs if we’re going to get out of this mess, not those who block it.
Here’s your business plan, I’ve prepared it for you…
1/ Buy a train and a bus
2/ ??????
3/ Profit.
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I would love to operate passenger trains but the system is heavily weighed against any “open-access” operators, with the government subsidised monopolies having all sorts of “rights” (as well as the subsidies). Look what happened to Wrexham & Shropshire, which would have been profitable if it weren’t for Virgin and Arriva ensuring they couldn’t operate at certain times or call at certain stations.
As for buses: many rural buses are almost empty. The reason? Because having a timetable where there’s just one or two a day per direction means people don’t use them. A bus route has to have frequent buses to be used. By cutting the number of buses actually means the buses left are often less used! Catch 22.
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I agree, everyone’s always complaining, and not doing anything to solve the problem.
PS, loving the classic south park reference!
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Ah…back to the weekly charabanc pottering through the Shropshire lanes..it’s going to look like 1951 but with lots of brummies and suicidal boy racers
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I grew up in Shropshire [Market Drayton] in the 1960s-74 and transport was even worse then. To get to Chester on public transport one had to go from Drayton to Natwich and then on to Chester. A three hour journey for 40 miles. It was the work of a mathematical genius to find out which connections were needed to travel from Shrewsbury to the Potteries as there wasn’t a through service. Midland Red didn’t coordinate their timetabels properly with PMT so if the Midland Red bus was delayed you missed the PMT bus [and vice versa]. Newport just 8 miles away might as well have been on the Continent; Telford [Wellington as was] was out of bounds and the villages were just about covered by Butters Buses. It seems that 50 years on there’s no difference. Perhaps if we leave it another 50 tehre could be an improvement.
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London Midland have for a while cut staffing to a minimum. So its no surprise that people have sought alternative ways of purchasing tickets because of the poor service provided by the trail operator. Our MPs should be keeping an eye on this as the train operators are subsidised. I just think less people will buy a ticket and will cause disruption on the trains.
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I agree completely – rail transport in Shropshire is in a state of choas and our politicians seem powerless to do anything about it. Perhaps the Shropshire Star might want to invite the minister Philip Hammond (secretary of state for transport) to visit Shropshire by train to see how inconvenient and expensive it is!
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There are no Sunday rail services at all throughout Shropshire due to the current Arriva Trains Wales strike.
London Midland trains are regularly cancelled due to an overtime ban by some staff and are totally unreliable.
I commute from Shrewsbury to Birmingham daily – yes there have been no Sunday services but I still got to work – drove and last Sunday there was a bus service to Wolverhampton
I mainly use London Midland and I can’t remember the last time a service was cancelled and to say they are totally unreliable is just nonsense. Some people clearly haven’t got anything better to do than to moan about things they actually don’t know what they’re talking about
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Alan you are so right; sadly private enterprise has shown itself unable to meet the challenges of a national transport structure. We will have to get a grip of this sooner rather than later as the present volume of private motor vehicle use is not sustainable. It is not inconceivable that we will see £5 per litre for petrol/diesel fuel within a very short time.
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its never been the same since the railway privatisation, i am convinced the only answer is renationalisation, there private sector are just too inefficient and dont invest enough in new stock
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What to do?
Privatise the rail net work, oh wait its already been done.
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