A fast train may only be a few a day or one an hour, whilst the modern timetables ma have slower fast trains than those of old the frequency is greater. I would rather have a fast train every 30 minutes which is 10 minutes slower and one or two slow trains added in the mix, than a fast train which is every hour but with only one other services taking at least 20 minutes more time.
As if the one fast train gets me their too early but the slow train gets me there late, then that is no good to me. However, if (under the new timetable) the trains are every half an hour at most I'm only going to be 30 minutes too early meaning I can pick a service which more suites my requirements.
But you don't get a 30' fast service on the Portsmouth line after 1515, you have an hour to wait for the 1615 and again for 1715, because the service starts from either Fareham or Havant and the 1545/1645 are stopping services to pander to the public school club of Witley/Wormley (King Edwards) & Godalming (Charterhouse), plus the Rodborough & Broadwater lot.
The so called fast service on the direct is anything but because SN are always running late and you sit at HT19 at Havant Jn, to wait for them to cross and it's not uncommon to sit on HT19 for 4 or 5' because the signaller will not regulate the "fast" in front of a late SN service, come hell or high water.
The journey time from Petersfield to Havant is 12', we're allowed anything between 13 & 20' to do it. As it is I could use my TOC pass to go to Portsmouth, however it's now quicker for me to drive directly there, because of the Hindhead tunnel on the A3 has taken 15 or more minutes out of the journey time by road, so I can drive from where I live the 55 miles to the coast in about 55-60'. whereas a train takes 70-75' or even longer.
I don't use WoE line again because it's slow, I go across to Reading, down to Exeter that way, even if I want to go to somewhere like Honiton it's quicker to go Exeter by HST and back up!
Just about everywhere is quicker by road than train for me, unless it's London and even that's a shadow of what it was (35'-48') compared to 29'-37' before this so called more resilient timetable was introduced several years ago.
I'm not alone in thinking that the current timetable needs to be binned, because as any traveller who uses SWT frequently, will tell you it's as stable as a house of cards in gale, the slightest thing and it quickly collapses and if you throw a fatality into it, you'll be lucky if you see any meaningful service at all for the rest of the day.
Do I hold any hope for an improved timetable in the future? To be quite honest no, I expect more of the same slow & increasingly slower mainline services.
It needs to go back to the late 80's/early 90's timetable with the odd exception to get the SW Division back to what it was, instead of the bus company style of quantity of quality of service.