Hope for more investment in region’s railway

MARk Hopwood said one of his biggest wishes for 2023 was for the Bristol region to attract similar levels of investment in its railways as cities like Manchester and Leeds.

The managing director of Great Western Railway (GWR) believes that improving suburban services in the West of England is a huge opportunity for growth and supporting city centre economies.

He said Bristol’s rail network suffered some of the worst cuts of the Beeching era and suburban services had never since quite matched those in other English city regions.

But recent investment from GWR –and rail industry partners such as Network Rail – has already offered improvements, with more in the pipeline.

Bristol and Bath have both recently introduced clean air zones (CAZs) in a bid to cut pollution.

And rail can offer a real alternative to the private car for local journeys around the West and is competitively priced –certainly when compared to city centre parking fees and CAZ charges, if applicable.

Mr Hopwood, pictured inset right, said: “Actually local fares around Bristol are often cheaper than the bus and the cost of driving into Bristol and paying for car parking.”

This year should see the opening of the first new station within Bristol itself since 1927 – at Portway Park and Ride, near Junction 18 of the M5.

Once open, the station will provide another choice of sustainable travel into the city centre as well as to destinations along the Severn Beach line and connections to the wider rail network.

Few sectors of the economy have witnessed as many changes since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic as Britain’s railways.

With large parts of the national workforce now either working from home or on a more flexible basis, the business model of the railways has been challenged.

Added to that it has been beset by industrial action in recent months, with waves of disruptive strikes hitting services.

Mr Hopwood said he was desperate to see that dispute resolved as soon as possible, so that the focus could return to some of the successes that had been achieved, such as demand for leisure journeys having already overtaken pre-pandemic passenger numbers.

He acknowledged: “We know that some of the disruption caused by industrial action is on people’s minds and we very much want to see that resolved and move on from that.”

However, he said investment in recent years in the electrification of the main line to London and on GWR’s fleet of trains meant services between the West and the capital were excellent.

The opening of the Elizabeth Line in London in late 2022 had, he said, also brought many parts of London – such as the City, Canary Wharf and Stratford –much closer to the West.

This, he said, was a boon to businesses, with commuters from the region arriving at London Paddington now having much quicker onwards journeys, as well as opening up the South West’s tourist hotspots to those travelling in the opposite direction.

“You can be in the City of London in the financial area around Liverpool Street in 10 minutes,” he said.

“The connectivity and speed is quite good.

“I think the Intercity Express Trains from Bristol to London and from places such as Bath and Weston-super-Mare are a good quality train and they have brought a lot more capacity.”

Mr Hopwood added: “I think despite some of the challenges that we all face and the pressure on the finances of the industry and the country as a whole, we are going to see quite a lot of improve- ment in rail around Bristol. We would like to get on with delivering more of those new stations in the Bristol region.”

He mentioned Portishead, MetroWest and delivering more frequent services to places such as Gloucester and Westbury in Wiltshire.

“I would like to go beyond that and do even more. I hope we could see Government bringing forward investment in Bristol in the same way that it has done in the North of England.”

He also said trains could level up inequalities within the city region by bringing people across the city closer to good jobs.

Among the things in the pipeline this year is hopefully the start of construction work on a station in the Ashley Down area of Bristol, which could be completed in 2024.

It will be built on the railway between Bristol Temple Meads and Filton Abbey Wood, with services also eventually running to the new YTL Arena.

The new Ashley Down station is part of the MetroWest Phase 2 project, which will, over the next two to three years, see new stations built at North Filton next to the new arena and Brabazon development, and at Henbury.

Late in 2022 the project to restore the Portishead branch line also received a boost, with the development consent order approved by the Government in November.

If the project’s £152 million business case receives final approval from the Treasury, it could also potentially open by 2026.

Previously completed significant work, such as the Filton Bank Four Track project, increased capacity north of Bristol and will bring the benefit of more frequent services between Bristol and Gloucester.

One of the major things GWR invested in last year to help passengers achieve best value from travelling on the region’s railways was its GWR touch smartcard.

The pay-as-you-go smartcard – which covers stations between Cheltenham in the north of the region and Westonsuper-Mare in the south and from Severn Beach in the west to Chippenham in the east – was launched in August and has transformed ticketing in the region.

It combines payments and tickets into one, ensuring customers get the best value on the day of travel.

Mr Hopwood said it “just makes life easier” for people and that was important for encouraging them to use trains more often.

The smartcard is particularly attractive to ‘hybrid’ workers who might spend two or three days in the office and then use the railways for leisure journeys.

They might previously have bought a season ticket when they worked in the office five days per week, but the new smartcard takes away the challenge of working out which combination of tickets is most cost-effective in the post-

Covid working environment. Users tap the smartcard on entry and exit and it automatically applies the most appropriate fare for all the journeys made, on a daily or weekly basis.

The fare is based on the ticket types available on the day and the time travelled. It then charges the best value walkup, flexible fares as available on GWR. com, made up of Standard Class Anytime, Off-Peak and Super-Off-Peak Day Single, and Day Return Fares.

Mr Hopwood told the Western Daily Press that he would ultimately like to see the smartcard extended to the region’s bus network.

A trend seen across the rail network in the past 18 months has been the growth in passenger numbers at the weekend, something Mr Hopwood anticipates continuing.

Working patterns is, though, one of the issues that rail unions and the industry are still in dispute over.

Mr Hopwood said: “Our timetable on a Sunday, for instance, is restricted by the number of staff we can bring into work, because of some of the legacy practices.

“If now we are seeing the majority of our revenue coming from leisure, we need to behave more like a leisure industry and most leisure industries are geared up to deal with weekends being their busiest time.”

He added that, where possible, he would like to see more maintenance carried out on the railways at night, rather than during weekends, to reduce the risk of disruption on what are increasingly busy days.

Sustainability is near the top of the agenda for most businesses, and an exciting development GWR is trialling at the moment is a battery-operated train, with the potential to help the journey towards net zero.

Mr Hopwood said: “We hope in the first few months of 2023 to have a battery train up and running in West London and that technology, if it works, will have applicability across the whole of the Great Western patch, including around Bristol.

“Battery doesn’t really work for highspeed, long-distance trains on long distances. But on local trains, where you are stopping frequently and you can recharge, it can work.

“It is early days for that project, but it has a lot of potential.

“Compared to what this business looked like five years ago, we are using far less diesel fuel and emitting far less carbon.”