Passing madness for train commuters

I READ recently about problems with rail commuters, and my husband has had exactly the same problems with One trains.

Since One has replaced the train service with a bus it has been a nightmare for my husband and his fellow Whittlesey commuters to get home from Cambridge in the evening at a reasonable time.

When the bridge near Ely first collapsed, Central Trains kindly stopped some of its trains at Whittlesey which worked really well.

But now there is a replacement bus service journey times have become ridiculous, increasing to two hours or more. For people working normal office hours the first train you can get from Cambridge is the 17.49 which goes to Peterborough (passing through Whittlesey!) and gets in at 18.43. The timetable then tells you there is a bus replacement service leaving Peterborough at 19.49 (an hour's wait) getting into Whittlesey at 20.04. That is just madness.

How long does it take to stop at a station that you are passing through anyway? This same train stops at March at about 6.30pm so I have been bundling our 14 month old son into the car and driving to March to pick my husband up, getting back to Whittlesey at 7pm.

This is not exactly convenient. Luckily there are other commuters from Whittlesey who have offered a car share from March to save me having to disrupt our son's bedtime routine.

There is a really great service to Cambridge in the mornings (run by Central Trains) -a direct train taking only 45 minutes (the 07.19).

I do not understand why the evening service is so poor (it always was, even before the bridge collapsed).

Whittlesey is a growing town no doubt full of people who would love to go to work on the train if only there were more trains that stopped here. Those who do commute on the train I think are getting a bit fed up of the poor service offered for Whittlesey residents. You begin to wonder what the point of having a train station in the town is.

MIRIAM TORDOFF

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