How FGW fleeces its passengers

Earlier this year, First Great Western, operator of overcrowded trains to the West, found a great way to fleece its long-suffering passengers. Having made great play of simplifying the fare system with a peak and off-peak fare, it decided to divide the off-peak and charge an extra tenner - a 20pc increase - to travel at many off-peak times from Bath to London. To leaven the blow they allowed an extra half hour at both ends of the day, which meant one could go to or leave the capital a little more conveniently. Having got away with that increase, I discovered today that they have removed the concession and reverted to the old hours, price increase firmly intact. A full price standard return costs about £160 - a hundred pounds more than the dearer off-peak. Of course the change also nullifies convenient connections too. And they do so without fanfare. FGW should offer masterclasses in ways to fleece customers.

The Tories' planning paradox

Listening to Tory transport spokesperson Theresa Villiers trying to explain on the Today programme why she couldn't take up Andrew Adonis's generous offer to give her early sight of his transport white paper and why she couldn't back a high-speed link to Birmingham - apparently it would undermine her commitment to yah-boo politics - I was struck by one extraordinary paradox in the Tories' approach to planning. After years of frustration, Labour sensibly established a fast-track planning mechanism to support large projects. Now Ms Villiers plans to undermine any chance of a UK high speed rail network a mere 20 years after our major competitors by handing the decision back to interminable planning inquiries.

However, her saner colleague Michael Gove who has seen how such Nimbyism can impede the establishment of academies, has decided that planning decisions about new schools, including new primaries, will be taken centrally in his department should be become secretary of state. So major national infrastructure projects like high speed rail will be taken only after every parish council has had the chance to complain, but local councils will have no say on whether new primary schools should be established in their communities. That's localism in action, I suppose.

This posting has been picked up by Stumbling and Mumbling.

I'll take the trains, thanks

Brian Cooke, chairman of London TravelWatch and a board member of Passenger Focus, whatever that is, has moaned to the Times about a deal whereby £29 million will be spent by the admittedly grim First Great Western on a better service, including new carriages on the dismal line that I use every morning. (The trains, it must be said, were even worse when they were operated by Wessex Trains before FGW won the franchise.) Has Mr Cooke, who presumes to speak for us, ever asked the commuters in Bath, Keynsham or Bristol who suffer from the absence of such carriages whether they would prefer the money to disappear into Treasury coffers as a fine, or to be used to provide more trains? Somehow, I don't think so.

The West's rail woes

Time for a bit of parochialism. The protest by anti-First Great Western campaigners seemed to have fizzled out by the time we got to Keynsham (where we live) and Bath stations this morning, my daily commute. But the protesters have done a splendid job in drawing attention to the failings of the West's rail services. Our train was not overcrowded but was ten minutes late today due to a 'mix-up over platforms' at Bristol; I arrived back from London to Bath on Thursday twenty minutes late, and five minutes after the hourly connection to Keynsham had left. And there is a lot in their arguments about the unreliability of the service; and the £140 peak return fare from Bristol to London is daylight robbery (it is £48 as a saver, and less if you book off-peak in advance). Some services operate with too few carriages. However, that is not the whole story. Much as it galls me to say anything good about FGW, their service from Keynsham and other smaller stations around Bristol and Bath is better than that offered by Wessex trains: there is (when it runs properly) an hourly service; there are reasonable connections; and there are more direct trains to places like Bristol Parkway, Cardiff, Gloucester and Swindon. Moreover, the local fares have not had the same crazed increases as the London services. All of this, I think, we can attribute to the campaign against plans to cut Keynsham services two years ago, which were greeted by 8000 individual protests. But then having spent fifteen years on London's Northern Line and my teenage years waiting 40 minutes for never-arriving Dublin buses, it is possible to have a sense of proportion about one's daily ten minute commute!