tbtc
Veteran Member
The point being made here is how a two hourly service acts as a deterrent to using rail when you have a choice of transport modes.
My personal opinion is that if I wanted to go to Cardiff, and there was only a two hourly service, I'd be worried about missing a train back by a couple of mintues and then having to wait for almost two hours. I'd probably consider driving in those circumstances, particularly if I was going to an event where the ned time was unpredicatble.
When considering journey options, too much emphasis is placed on speed in relation to other factors such as frequency, comfort, reliability and convenience. Again, just my opinion!
Nobody wants to wait two hours, agreed, but if I did miss my intended train I'd want to be fairly secure in when the next one was (hence me banging on about clockface timetables).
There's not sufficent demand for a frequent direct service from Yeovil to Taunton, in the way that there isn't between a lot of similar sized places that distance apart, but a regular timetable with regular connections are the way round that.
I agree about the obsession with speed being a bad thing - spending millions to shave a few minutes off here and there is poor value (I'm only in favour of HS2 for capacity reasons).