ALL DAY HALF HOURLY TRAINS FROM COOKHAM? - YOUR OPINION

[Cookham Society]

At present our branch line has an hourly service throughout the day with additional trains during peak periods to give a half hourly service for the busiest times. For several years, The Cookham Society has been arguing for a half hourly train service throughout the day between Maidenhead and Marlow.

This would align well with the RBWM Active Travel campaign, encourage people to walk to stations and use public transport rather than cars. Also with the big increase in local housing as proposed in the RBWM Borough Local Plan and the large developments coming forward in Bourne End we need to make the maximum possible use of the branch line route across the river to ease the expected traffic flows.

Would you or anyone in your household use the trains more if there was this improved half hourly service throughout the day? We'd love to hear your opinion.

[zenti]

I wonder if this is necessary considering the usage of the trains outside of the peak periods. Does the Cookham society have access to any information on usage numbers?

I would rather shine a light on rising costs that year-on-year run above inflation. This is also always an inflated cost based on the previous years prices, which are also well ahead of inflation every year. I would think that running free-to-use for pensioners and further reduced costs for students and young people, like other forms of public transport, would help increase the usage of the empty hourly trains.

Lets not get started on the poor timetable links even during peak on the current timetable, I would say this is probably a more pervavise problem for the current userbase.

Half-hourly would be great for the odd daytime trips into Marlow/Maidenhead, but will a private provider really look to double their off-peak offering at increased cost for this reason? I am not sure I see a strong case here, bearing in mind the network provider is known for cutting costs and providing sub-par services as a standard.