We’Ve Made Train Services More Comfortable and Reliable, but There’s a Lot More to Do
Alison Forster, managing director of First Great Western, has a vision of how train travel will keep improving in the 21st century A YEAR ago, 4,400 people working the length of the railway track from Paddington to Penzance and Pembroke Dock to Portsmouth came together to create a single train company. It is now one of the largest and most complex in the whole of the UK – First Great Western.
Literally overnight, three rail companies merged into a new giant that carries 1.5m passengers every week on more than 9,000 train services.
To expect everything to work exactly to plan was optimistic – and it didn’t. Customers, media, and politicians have rightly taken us to task for that and we have worked night and day to sort out those early problems.
Our train services are a vital transport link for the communities we serve – whether with inter city, regional, commuter or sleeper services. So even while we were sorting out our problems we were working hard with our customers and stakeholders to help shape the services for the future.
Behind the scenes we have been making the trains more comfortable and more reliable, to provide the extra services and seats passengers say they want and to investigate what we can do to deliver cheaper and simpler tickets.
Individually, each one of our changes does not make a headline, but taken together they are like a barometer that is moving from stormy to change and on to fair.
The time to judge us will be when each of the individual improvements we are making are complete and brought together, demonstrating a comprehensive range of improvements.
Already, more comfortable, reliable, refurbished trains are starting to roll out of our depots. By around the end of the year the entire high speed train fleet will have been refitted. The engines will be twice as reliable, the coaches more comfortable and we will be able to offer millions of extra seats in and out of Paddington every year. The first refurbished high speed train is now in service in Wales.
The rest of the fleet is being given a pounds 4m makeover so passengers travelling on the Cardiff to Portsmouth Harbour will also soon be travelling on new-look refurbished trains.
One of the successes of the past year has been the introduction of lower fares in Wales; this is a discounted rate, not a special offer.
For example, passengers can now buy a weekly season ticket to travel on First Great Western trains from Newport to Cardiff for just pounds 12.
One of our significant achievements in Wales since we took over the franchise has been the introduction of our Welsh language policy, which we launched at the National Eisteddfod in August 2006.
For a number of years we have been producing bilingual documents including the Passengers’ Charter, conditions of carriage, fares leaflets and timetables for Wales-bound services. However, our new policy now goes one step further and actively encourages and promotes the use of the Welsh language. More of our literature will be available in Welsh, there will be Welsh pages on our website and staff will be encouraged to speak Welsh wherever possible.
One of the biggest hurdles we face is the ageing infrastructure our trains have to run on. There is a massive renewal programme here too, designed to make track and signals more reliable, to remove bottlenecks and to raise track speeds.
We are working closely with Network Rail to ensure its upgrading of the rail infrastructure in South Wales causes minimum inconvenience to our customers.
This is a major investment of pounds 400m from Network Rail, and one we support. Some of the current signalling systems, particularly between Newport and Port Talbot, date back decades and work is urgently needed in order for us to be able to deliver an efficient and reliable service.
Unfortunately, in order for this work to be carried out passengers will suffer some disruption, but we are doing everything we can to keep this to a minimum. Ultimately, the new infrastructure will deliver substantial benefits to passengers in terms of increasing reliability and reducing delays and we hope people will bear with us during this improvement period.
The first 12 months of the Greater Western franchise have seen a lot achieved in Wales and are a clear indication of our commitment to the region.
This is just the start for us, with another seven years to run on the franchise and the possibility of a further three years after that, there is a lot for us to do.
So that’s year one – but what will customers notice in the coming year?
Well our revamped trains will all be in service, more seats will be available, customer service will improve, train reliability will be boosted in line with track improvements and there will be more ticketing initiatives to give better value and more joined-up travel.
I can’t promise an immediate, total upgrading of all your services. I wish I could. What I can promise is that all 4,400 of us will be working flat out to make sure your services are as smooth, comfortable and reliable as we can make them.
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