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TravelWatch Southwest
Newslog Monday March 3rd 2008

Improving performance on First Great Western

Ruth Kelly MP, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced on Tuesday 26 February that First Great Western (FGW) had been issued with a remedial plan notice, under the terms of the franchise agreement, for exceeding the threshold on cancellations in the second half of last year – the remedial plan sets out a plan for reducing cancellations, with milestones, including the acquisition of additional rolling stock and the employment of additional train crew and engineering staff.

FGW has also been issued with a breach notice for misreporting the number of cancellations – this notice specifies the corrective action to be taken by FGW to rectify the problem.

A twenty-nine million pound package of customer benefits has been agreed, including:-

• Additional rolling stock – FGW will five additional class 150 two-carriage trains, which will enable all through trains on the Cardiff Central – Portsmouth Harbour to be worked by a three carriage class 158 unit, increasing the seat capacity on this important corridor by forty per cent. FGW will also acquire an additional high speed train in December 2008, in order to improve operational performance
• Improved punctuality and reliability – FGW has agreed with DfT Rail a comprehensive plan to improve punctuality and reliability including the recruitment of additional train crew and engineering staff, a package of additional fleet and depot improvements and the establishment of a new performance directorate to improve the management of disruption with Network Rail
• Enhanced customer information at stations – FGW will invest a further seven million pounds to enhance customer information systems (CIS) at stations. The total CIS investment of fifteen million pounds will provide improved consistency, coverage of more stations, much improved information during times of disruption and additional monitor
• Customer service training – four million pounds will be spent on an enhanced customer service training package for all passenger facing staff employed by FGW
• Passenger Compensation – a fifty per cent increase in compensation payments under the passenger charter for the year commencing January 2009 (FGW has already doubled compensation payments for this calendar year
• Fare offers – an additional five hundred thousand of the cheapest Firstminutefares will be made available to customers during the year commencing 1 April 2008
• More investment in train fleet – an additional investment of five million pounds will be spent on improvements to the London and Thames Valley ‘Turbo’ rolling stock

New bus network for Plymouth

First Devon and Cornwall have announced major changes to the company’s existing bus network in Plymouth and Saltash from Sunday 6 April 2008 – full details of the changes, including the revised timetables, are available on the company’s website.

Office of Fair Trading granted more time to consider Truronian acquisition

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has been granted additional time to consider the anticipated acquisition by FirstGroup plc of Truronian Limited – the OFT now has a new deadline of Friday 28 March 2008 to make a decision on the proposed acquisition.

First Great Western wins two rail business awards

First Great Western won two titles at the tenth HSBC rail business awards. The company won the Rolling Stock Excellence award for the success of its refreshment of the interiors of the company’s entire fleet of high speed trains. FGW also won the Engineering Excellence award for reengineering all the company’s one hundred and seventeen power cars, including replacing the engines with MTU units.

People

Tom Joyner has joined First Great Western as the Route Director (High Speed Services) – this is a new role which reports to Mark Hopwood, Performance Director.

And finally,

First Great Western high speed train power car ‘43034’ was named ‘TravelWatch SouthWest’ in a ceremony held at Taunton railway station on Saturday 1 March