Transport for Wales has taken over the rail line through Ludlow, with international rail company KeolisAmey providing the service. There are promises of major investment in trains and stations, cheaper fares and better services. It could not come a moment too soon. Punctuality has been falling, trains are often overcrowded and the older rolling stock is getting unreliable. Unfortunately, last week was a pretty shaky start for KeolisAmey.
It can be a pleasure to travel by train. I travel several times a month, to Shrewsbury and Hereford, and often to Birmingham and other exotic destinations. But delays to trains are not only frustrating, they can lead to missed connections and appointments. Regular travellers will have noticed that the performance of Arriva Train Wales has deteriorated in recent months. I’ve been looking at the performance data.
The On Line Trains website provides invaluable data on train reliability station by station. It is the basis for the analysis in this article.
Looking at the last six months, fewer than three in ten trains arrived absolutely on time at Ludlow. However, more than two thirds of trains arrived within five minutes of the scheduled time. Nearly a third of trains were delayed by five minutes or more – that can be enough to miss a connection. Two in one hundred trains were cancelled.
Ludlow train punctuality (14 July to 11 October 2018)
There is a feeling amongst some passengers that delays in this area need to be tolerated because we are rural. I don’t agree. If we look at the 2,620 railways stations in Britain, Ludlow is 2,473rd worst for timekeeping. Pretty much bumping along the bottom.
Is there a pattern to this? Let’s first look at the raw data.
Daily punctuality over last twelve months
As is obvious, weather has a major impact on punctuality of Ludlow services and cancellations. But it is not the entire picture. There is an underlying trend and that trend is a decline in performance.
Punctuality trend over last year
Ludlow station has peaked at around the 1000th worst station for delays but recently it been around the 2,500th worst.[1] This is not all the fault of Arriva Train Wales. Network Rail shoulders a lot of responsibility for poorly maintained track.
Growth in passenger numbers has also stalled at just over 800 people arriving or departing daily.
Passenger arrivals and departures
There is considerable room for improvement. Unfortunately, it has not been a good week for KeolisAmey. The aftermath of Storm Callum and overrunning engineering works blighted Monday. Many trains ran late on Friday. The line is closed this weekend for engineering works.
Delays on Friday 19 October
Transport for Wales and KeolisAmey are promising considerable improvements.
New trains will be built for services serving Ludlow and Shrewsbury, along with refurbished trains from other lines. The Class 158 and Class 175 diesel multiple units will be replaced.
Class 178 DMU enters Chester Station
A Class 175 DMU passes Shrewsbury famous signal box
The Cardiff to Holyhead service will use refurbished Mark 4 coaches pulled by diesel units.
Mark 4 coaches
The Milford Haven to Manchester service will get new CAF Civity diesel multiple units.
CAF Civity DMUs
These trains will be introduced between July 2021 and May 2022, along with additional services such as direct services to Liverpool. Transport for Wales is promising of fare reductions between Leominster and Shrewsbury and a Community Rail Partnership on the Crewe to Hereford line. Smart ticketing will be introduced across the network, and through the extension of free travel to under-11s with half-price fares for 16 to 18-year-olds. Passengers will be able to claim compensation after a 15-minute delay, not 30 minutes as at present.
The new franchise, worth £5 billion over 15-years, has had a low-key start. The Transport for Wales brand is being rolled out and references to Arriva Train Wales scrubbed out.
Goodbye Arriva Train Wales
It looks like being a while before we see significant improvements. They can’t come quickly enough for me.
Notes
[1]. Network Rail uses a different performance measure to rank train operators. A long distance train arriving at its destination within ten minutes is considered on time, as is a commuter train arriving within five minutes. On this measure, Arriva Train Wales is above average. That includes all its services. My analysis relates to the trains that serve Ludlow station.
I went to London this weekend and got into a ticket pricing nightmare. For years I’ve travelled there and back via Crewe for about £50 using my Senior Railcard. This time it looked as if it would be the same but I was worried about missing the replacement bus so rushed over the bridge and got what I thought was my usual ticket. On the bus I realised I’d got some super saver that required me to go via Hereford, so I went to the ticket office at Shrewsbury and explained. Nice bloke did the calculations and said it would cost me an extra hundred pounds.. my ‘usual’ fare is now apparently only available online and ‘I can’t sell you that here’.
Irrespective of the punctuality, overcrowding and cleanliness of the trains, the totally confusing pricing structure makes rail travel so unattractive I’m not surprised people take to the car. Even though it’s also stressful and expensive and you can’t park etc etc you do know how much it’s costing, and two can travel as expensively as one.
So the world carries blithely on towards climate catastrophe…