Adventures on Network Rail Acton to Ealing

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Angie Bray gets more answers from rail executives

Another week, another visit to Acton Main Line with Angie Bray. This time was much more exciting, though as we took a trip on a train. How many of you have been to Ealing Broadway from Acton Main Line? It takes about 3 minutes and costs £2.40 for an off-peak cheap day return.   

Angie had managed to persuade the Chief Executive of Network Rail, Iain Coucher, to come with his colleagues Richard Cole and Dave Ward (Route Director). Also present were Councillors Seema Kumar, John Ross and Jim Randall. Libby Kemp Acton resident and London Acton resident and board member of London Travelwatch and John Beeston of EPTUG (Ealing Passenger Transport User Group).

We all took a trip to Ealing Broadway to in order to assess the problems with the line and to look at problems in that station and Acton Main Line. (Seema Kumar took her research a lot further but more about that later).

Increasing the number of trains stopping at Acton Mainline appears to be a problem, which depends on many different issues. CrossRail plans for the two car trains on the Greenford branch to run on a shuttle service from West Ealing to Greenford. This will free up paths into Paddington with CrossRail stopping a proposed four times an hour at Acton Main Line.

Once CrossRail has been given Royal Assent, Network rail will begin developing this service with the Slough ‘stoppers’ and Heathrow Connect stopping at Acton ML until CrossRail is completed. So there should be more to report on that next year.

However, it requires FGW to run at some 95% reliability (currently around 87%) before this happens, and the executives talked of "an integrated programme over 5-10 years."

In September at Acton Main Line, First Great Western promised to put up signs telling disabled passengers how to access a free taxi service. These have still not materialised. Nor is there a much-needed security camera.

In the mean time, we looked at Ealing Broadway Station which is the fourth largest First Great Western station in terms of passenger numbers. Certainly, throughout our time there passengers streamed in and out of the station. According to Dave Ward, the station is "in the top 100 on the national stations improvement programme".

Disabled access at Ealing Broadway (and at Acton Main Line) is non-existent. There may be some money to tackle this, at least at Ealing Broadway, coming through in March. We looked longingly at the closed up London Underground entrance to Ealing Broadway, an impressive and historic building (pictured right) which could be opened up, probably improving disabled access and providing another entrance, thereby lessening the congestion and chaos at the barriers. Angie said she would table questions to Ken Livingstone about this as soon as possible.  

Other topics discussed included a scheme for more bike parking outside the station, the often erratic reliability of the service and improvements to information systems.  

Iain Coucher said afterwards that there was "Quite a lot to talk about after today's session."   Angie is keen to organise round table groups in constituencies to produce a checklist which would be followed up in regular meetings. Network Rail said they would help to organise these.

The journey back was delayed by about 3 minutes, which - judging by the complaints about the newly London Overground-run Acton Central is not bad. However, the information systems could definitely be improved, as Seema Kumar, wanting to get back to Acton, found herself swept non-stop all the way to Paddington.

November 30, 2007