SIR - I hope local MPs of all parties, as well as the county council and other local authorities, will protest vigorously about First Great Western's decision to stop travellers from Worcester to London using one-day travelcards and cheap day tickets for their return journeys on trains leaving Paddington station between 5 and 6.30pm. The claim by FGW (Worcester News, January 5) that what they're "trying to do is encourage leisure rail users to travel off-peak" is a nonsense. This decision will particularly hit families with children who like to enjoy a good day out in London, but also to return home at a reasonable hour.
Now they are faced with a choice of paying higher fares to travel at more convenient times or being forced to return home at some unearthly hour much later in the evening.
These new travel restrictions fly in the face of the policy of both the Government and Worcestershire County Council, the local traffic authority, which is to encourage people to travel by train as far as possible and leave their cars at home. First Great Western and the other train operating companies are today getting more than four times the level of public subsidy than when the railways were privatised 10 years ago.
It was only last month that FGW was re-awarded the franchise to run trains out of Paddington. Yet no sooner had they succeeded in doing so they were, apparently, thinking of ways of reducing the quality of service available to the customer. The travelling public deserves better than this.
DAVID CANDLER,
Labour councillor, St John ward.
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