I'd have thought the Reading upgrade now gives scope for some non-stopping peak services from Taunton/Bath/Bristol Parkway and maybe Oxford in due course.
No chance of the capacity for more Oxford-Banbury trains, and to bite the bullet with Cotswold Line redoubling Wolvercot-Charlbury would mean some huge undertaking to increase capacity at Hanborough - with its potential to be a bigge railhead. The current platform and parking even with the extension is very busy; to the south one of these Garden Villages is coming (on land just outside the Oxford Green Belt and the Cotswolds AONB) and you would probably need additional car parking there - which would not be popular with locals. (No chance of doing that at Charlbury)
But the obvious thing would be some non-stop Reading-London shuttles at peak.
As noted above a couple of the Bristol services each hour will be non-stop through Reading - but they will, I believe, be worked by single five-car IETs, so you can see the logic there.
Hanborough residents may not like the idea of more car parking but they like the idea of people parking all over the verges near the station even less - which was what happened until the car park was extended.
As I have pointed out in the Class 800 thread, there will be a stream of Class 1 387 services starting at Didcot and heading to Paddington in the morning peaks from January 2, which will no doubt be expected to take up plenty of traffic from Reading en route.
I'd like to see a better service on what are currently the Oxford stoppers between Reading and Didcot. I'm aware of the constraints on the Didcot-Oxford stretch and the lack of wires and am therefore sufficiently realistic to expect there can't be any more local services to Oxford for the time being. However, running a Didcot-Reading shuttle, especially off-peak to fill in what are currently very large gaps in the late evening would be very helpful. It would also support Didcot Town's drive towards expansion and becoming a destination in its own right.
I'd suggest you take a look on realtimetrains for services in the area as of January 2 onwards. There are big changes as a result of the overhead wires to Didcot becoming available for passenger services, so you might see some of what you want happening that soon. There should be same-platform or cross-platform changes between the 387s and Turbos to/from Oxford at Didcot.
There has been some discussion on the Class 800 thread as well of the IETs avoiding Reading, or making pickup/drop-off only stops, to avoid commuters filling up long-distance trains.
Would it be possible for GWR to have tickets which are not valid on high-speed services, whether by establishing a sub-brand or by marking the trains as such on the boards? Does this happen elsewhere?
Why are so many people obsessed by the idea of trying to drive Reading commuters off long-distance trains?
Due to the well-known (at least I thought they were) limitations of GWR's rolling stock fleet, there haven't been alternative services available to them up until now. That changes as of January, with the 387 services I mention above specifically targeted at giving outer Thames Valley commuters - the Reading ones included - fresh options and a far better chance of getting a seat, with a minimal journey time penalty compared with HSTs or IETs. The full new timetable structure then comes in at the end of next year, with Crossrail following in 2019. Please can people spare us all this segregation talk until all those changes get the chance to bed in and have an effect on how people travel.
Wouldn't Oxford to Banbury be better served by Chiltern exclusively?
Be good to see the Stratford to Leamington shuttle made clockface hourly and extended all stops to Oxford making use of the new bays there.
Alternatively a new Birmingham to Leamington hourly shuttle introduced and then this extended to Oxford.
Is the Oxford-Banbury line really so much in need of being 'fixed' as some people seem to think?
It already has a half-hourly interval XC service all day - the only problem with that being it is operated by laughably low-capacity Voyagers that either need to be replaced by longer trains or doubled up to offer the extra seats that are needed between Manchester, the West Midlands, the Thames Valley and the South Coast.
There is no need whatever for an hourly stopping service on top of the XC trains, especially not one calling at the intermediate stations every hour. Do you know anything about those villages? The traffic just isn't there to justify hourly trains all day - which is why they get the level of service they do at present.
I can't see Chiltern having much if any interest in running into Oxford from the north - they prefer to focus on flows to and from London with lots of volume - ie Oxfordshire and the West Midlands conurbation. They aren't really interested in serving Stratford-upon Avon and would probably be delighted if a new GW franchise included direct London-Stratford trains, giving Chiltern the perfect excuse to ask to be allowed to drop their remnant of a through service.