Campaign update

A initial committee meeting was held on Tuesday night, and we have decided to call ourselves OxRailAction. We are going to campaign on the basis of three things:

1. That the levels of overcrowding on the peak morning trains from Oxford to London is severe and dangerous.
2. Since the timetable change, we have lost 80% of our seats (i.e. free seats that come into Oxford).
3. We demand immediate action.

We believe that arguments based on the frequency of trains will not win – FGW will blame the government for setting this timetable and the government will blame FGW for not dealing with the problem – there is nothing in their franchise agreement that says they must run a certain number of trains. However, severe overcrowding is breaking their franchise agreement, and to rectify this they will have to run more trains from Oxford.

Already the campaign has had many successes – we have had coverage on BBC South Today, in The Oxford Mail and the Oxford Times. Last Wednesday, Evan Harris MP brought up our problems in parliament, and the MP for Didcot, Ed Vaisey, tabled on Early Day Motion to rectify the severe timetable problems.

FGW have acknowledged that there is a problem – the regional manager is looking into the overcrowding. We must campaign for immediate action.. not just monitoring of the situation. We need to put pressure on government, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Office of Rail Regulation.

What next?
The first action is to ask Alison Forster to travel on one of our packed morning trains, and to spend time that evening in Oxford station listening to passengers problems and answering questions. One of our regular commuters is having a meeting with Alison today to ask for this to happen in January.

Secondly, a public meeting will take place to which members of OxRailAction and other interested parties from Oxford, can present their questions to representatives from FGW. We think this will be in late January, but we will keep you posted.

There may be a slight dip in activity of the group over the Christmas period. Do not fear – we will be back campaigning with extra zeal in the New Year.

In the meantime, we want your help. Firstly, we would like you to collect evidence. Please record descriptions of your journeys, take photographs or film the overcrowding and record any incidents or announcements made by train staff about overcrowding.

Secondly, if you would like to get further involved, we need skills. We need people with legal skills, experience of campaigning, knowledge of statistics and the general ability to help (e.g. hand out leaflets on trains).

To get in contact with OxRailAction, please e-mail saveourtrains@googlemail.com

Campaigning for Oxford’s trains

On 10 December 2006 First Great Western introduced a new timetable for their train services, and the quality of life of Oxford’s commuters took a dramatic turn for the worse. The new timetable reduced the number of fast direct services from Oxford to London in the crucial 06:00 to 08:00 period from 6 to 3. And to make matters worse the 3 cancelled services used to start empty at Oxford. Overnight the carrying capacity of the service was reduced by 80%, meaning a significant number of people now have to stand all the way from Oxford to London.

Out of this chaos, the OxRailAction campaign was born. It started as a petition signed by over 250 people, and now it has been formed into a fully fledged campaign. Our aim is simple – to restore the previous capacity of fast direct train services from Oxford to London in the crucial period between 0600 and 0800.

Check back to this site for updates on the campaign, but, most importantly, if your are concerned about these changes then consider taking action yourself. We have provided some initial ideas of actions you can take.