On Wednesday evening I attended a meeting of RRUG when Chris Gibb, Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Trains spoke. Virgin operate the London to Scotland service which passes through Rugby on the West Coast Main Line which has just been the subject of massive public investment leading to a revised service . Communcations are vital to Rugby's prosperity and so it was interesting to be involved in a discussion on recent changes among regular and knowledgeable users of the service. The service to London has settled down as much improved both on reliability and journey time as I know from my own experience of fairly infrequent jouneys down to Westminster. More contentious has been the reduced frequency from Rugby to the north west which has arisen from the political imperative to shorten journey times between London and the major connurbations of Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. The easy way to do this is for the train to stop less frequently and so there are now fewer stops at Rugby and places like Lichfield and Crewe. Again I have had my own experience of this and have decided that it will probably be better for me to travel to party conference in Manchester by car rather than wait to change at Birmingham New Street. It will be important to continue to lobby people like Chris to ensure that the needs of all of Rugby's travellers are taken into account in any future changes.I learnt a great deal about the structure and operation of the railway industry including the nature of the franchises offered to operators and the tender process; the intensity of use on the West Coast Mail Line and the challenges of meeting all the demands placed on it; the time for a station stop within a timetable (5 minutes) and the minimum time gap necessary between trains (7 minutes); the nature of the Christmas 2007 disruption; the problems caused by the rising price of copper leading to cable theft; the complexities of different IT systems running the ticket booking process; concerns about travelling with cycles; and the challenges of developing a new and separate High Speed Service and the possible implications of that for Rugby.
I hope to take a closer look at the impact of all of these in the near future.
