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Cornwall lost services on two of its branch lines for an entire week to salve the cuts made in the Bristol area. They said it was only for a week, but is this not setting a bad precedent?

The cuts and bad service I have been discussing seem to be the product of badly written franchise agreements, greedy directors and shareholders and a government who doesn’t want the problem of creating an excellent train service, save to keep feeding people into London which – the Department for Transport’s only priority for the railways. To hell with the rest of us.

In my correspondence with Passenger Focus, the rail passengers representative body, they said:

3 January 2007

“Some of the reasoning behind this change is because of a Government initiative where there is a clause added to First Great Western’s franchise agreement. This clause basically means that they must provide extra capacity to the severely overcrowded London routes. As the extra capacity needed have come from elsewhere, services such as yours have had carriages or even services removed. While I do understand why this has needed to be introduced, I can also see where this is in turn creating problems for other parts of the country.”

The PF representative went on to say:

“We feel that the long term solution to solving the rolling stock problem is investment, but accept that at this point in time train operators have to do what they can to manage the stock they have within the individual financial climate of their franchise.”

I am currently investigating current profit margins and other financial aspects of the First Great Western franchise. They claim they are investing 2 million pounds in the network. I think this is a piddling amount after what they spend on unecessary advertising and the payout to directors and shareholders.