Well I'll believe it when I see it. Wouldn't be atall surprised if in the coming year or two the headline "Bristol Metro plans axed" as Bristol City Council can't providing the funding or whatever.
Could have done with Henbury station being open during the years I lived out there! A bit too late now for me. But I'd still like to see that line and that station open again, along with Horfield station.
Dissapointing there was no report about this on The West Country Tonight or BBC Points West.
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I'm not sure what to make of the Keynsham etc stopping patterns. Both Keynsham and Oldfield Park, based on potential catchment, could comfortably support 2tph. On the other hand, Saltford could only support 2tph during the peaks (both for travel to Bristol and also as the local station to Bath Spa University). But would it really be fair to have the Wessex Main Line services, which is essentially an inter-city service, calling at these places? It would be better in my opinion to allow all non-shuttle services - including the Westbury/Weymouth services - to run non-stop between Bristol and Bath, and then to introduce a new half-hourly service between the two calling at all local stations in between, possibly including the previously suggested St Anne's between Keynsham and Bristol TM (not mentioned here)? This would also provide a fifth train between Bath and Bristol, which - subject to the ultimate lengths of IEP services via Bath - may prove invaluable.
I agree the Cardiff-Portsmouth services should not call at Keynsham, Oldfield Park and Saltford too(if that re-opens). The journey times between Bristol and Portsmouth are slow enough allready. At least some services should run more limited stop i.e. Bath-Westbury or Bath-Salisbury non-stop to speed up journey times.
Bristol-Weymouth services. Are very slow and take an eternity stopping at pretty much every stop enroute. Some of the services at least should be limited stop. However if the services are kept as they are, then they may as well just all call at Keynsham, Oldfield Park, and Saltford as the journey times won't be much different if they omit those stops anyway.
Whilst I fully agree there should be new half hourly services between Bristol Temple Meads(or maybe from Portishead or Weston-Super-Mare) and Bath Spa calling all stops. The problem is how are these services going to be able to pathed along the Bristol-Bath bottleneck? It would be a bit of a challenge scheduling those slow services(journey time of about 23 minutes between Bristol & Bath!) amongst the existing services. Unless parts of this line are to be quadrupled?(which I don't think could be possible).
Also if the Keynsham and Oldfield Park stops are cut from Cardiff-Portsmouth, Bristol-Weymouths or whatever, then people living at those locations will probably complain that they don't have a direct train service to Westbury, Salisbury, Filton Abbey Wood, etc anymore, and have to fiddle about changing trains.
As someone else here said, maybe if a new operator does take over next year they will plan a complete revamp of the existing services. Which would be very interesting.