Surely the demographic of Pill, Portishead and their respective catchments is somewhat different from that of the outer reaches of the Severn Beach line?
It's about the same in terms of population catchment and journey time, which are the factors that by far make the most difference. But it doesn't matter, because even if you got twice that number travelling and Portishead to Bath Spa journeys made up 10% of traffic, that'd still not change the equation. As I keep pointing out, even if every train from first to last were full, it wouldn’t really change the equation, because 1tph is not enough to justify such an expensive line, and more than 1tph can't run without incurring significant additional capital spend.
Maybe because Bath is very difficult by public transport at the moment, and not much better by road. There is lots of commuter (and indeed shopping) traffic to Bath from Yatton and Nailsea - no reason why it would be any different from Portishead if there is a realistic way of doing it.
From Nailsea & Blackwell to Bath Spa in 2021-22 there were just under 11,000 journeys, or just over 7%. From Yatton to Bath Spa it's even smaller, under 9,000 per year and just over 5%.
I'd like to point out how good of an example this is for conversations we see repeated across these threads. What to you is "lots of commuter and shopping traffic", is, in the big picture, a very small slice of the customer base of that station. It's not that you're wrong, you're not, Bath
is the next most popular destination after the adjacent stations, Bristol and London. it's simply that it needs to be looked at in proportion, and with a clear mind.
Diesel-powered passenger train services are expensive per journey, especially if you're wanting a second member of staff onboard, and most especially when you only have two or three coaches per train. That's simply an unavoidable fact of life which isn't going to be changed. As such deploying more of them needs to be done very carefully. I know it's a very bitter pill to swallow given the car-dominance of Bristol, but this isn't a good use of them. Instead changing the car-dominance will need to be about changing our national approaches to the tax system, allocation of road space, and land use policy, and improving bus services. It also would benefit from more light rail. In most countries on the continent, Bristol would be borderline big enough for a central tunnelled metro, and Portishead or Clevedon would be the perfect outer limit for that in that direction.