The Welsh Liberal Democrats have criticised Great Western Railway
(GWR) for ‘ghost trains’ after trains after 21:00 between London
Paddington and Swansea for Monday to Thursday next week
(11th-14th) disappeared from the timetable.
The tickets have been removed from the timetable so passengers
are unable to buy them but the trains don’t appear as
cancellations on GWR’s disruption information online.
This means the trains aren’t technically recorded as
cancellations in GWR’s reporting to the Department for Transport
(DfT) and so GWR aren’t penalised for it. However, not giving out
passenger information is a breach of Rail Delivery Group (RDG)
guidelines on passenger information during disruption.
Liberal Democrat Transport Spokesperson said:
“The lack of publicity about this stealthy change to the late
evening timetable could mean many regular travellers who don’t
book specific trains could turn up at the station to find there
is no train home that night.
“These ghost trains are the latest in a long list of failures in
recent years by GWR. Just days ago GWR was criticised in
Parliament for ‘delays, overcrowding and ticket costs.’ Now we
find out trains have been removed from timetables without telling
anyone. This simply isn’t good enough.
“Given GWR’s passenger satisfaction levels are the worst they’ve
been in more than a decade, we’d expect GWR to be pulling out all
the stops to improve services and keep passengers happy.
Unfortunately this doesn’t appear to be the case. I call on GWR
to urgently act to improve their passengers’ experience.
“Earlier this week Assembly Members voted to call for the
devolution of more powers and funding for rail to ‘deliver the
railway the people of Wales deserve.’ We welcome the Assembly’s
calls and urge the UK Government to devolve these powers at the
earliest opportunity.”
