Many would argue that A lot of what TFW have gone through is simply down to poor planning and the inability of having a fallback when things go wrong.
It can be taken back as far as when TFW took on the Franchise;
Pacers were due to leave, and no fallback was arranged. An issue under the control of Arriva at the time.
769's were brought in, a new concept of making an old electric train become a diesel. That didn't prove succesful. TFW would argue they arranged to bring in one Class 37 and non-compliant carriages service. The reality of outside those peak service, when the class 37 didn't fail, was passengers ultimately suffered from the poor reliability of the 769's that were in use, once they finally made it into service.
With the lack of Pacers, the 150's were stretched further, resulting in previous 4 car formations being 2 car and a stretched fleet that used to have some slack in it.
TFW would argue they were 2 150's short after the Craven Arms collision. Well, the 2 Northern 150's were brought in, and TFW still used it as an excuse. They brought in a bunch of 153's which had costly refurbs and only have so much life left in them.
The 230 introduction was heavily delayed, another electric train being made diesel that wasn't successful (see a pattern here?). No contingency for that not happening in a timely manner and now the Bidston line is a complete mess.
TFW continued after covid to reintroduce services. Introducing Newport - Crosskeys, bringing separate swanline services back and increases to HOW services, further stretching the requirement placed on the fleet, with even less slack when things go wrong.
TFW would argue the 175 fires caused a huge shortage of the fleet. Many would argue that the 175 fleet were due to start to leave as 197's were introduced. As has been shown know where CAF are unable to manage both the 197 introductions and the remaining 175 fleet alongside each other. Was it always going to work? I doubt it. Again poor planning and preparedness for the fleet crossover.
TFW are trying to introduce a brand new fleet of 197's, 231's, 756's and 398's, as well as the 769's, 230's and Mk4's. All of which requiring a huge amount of train crew training, hence the regular cancellations due to lack of train crew, many of which are on training with other overtime not being taken to cover the short falls. With a reduced service there would be more slack in train crew availability and less cancellations.
When you look at all of the above, TFW had no contingency for when things went wrong. They had the grand plans to deliver a complete transformation in a short amount of time. James Price admitted himself to the parliament group that that wasn't such a good idea.
On the topic of longer term buses to replace trains, had they bit the bullet back in 2018/2019 and worked with WG to introduce temporary bus services on certain routes then that would be a viable alternative to some train journeys. But now they are too far gone to introduce any kind of decent replacement bus service, because ultimately in 1-2 years time most of the fleet will be in and most of the training complete. Investing in new buses to run a service for what would be a matter of months or 1 or 2 years would not be financially viable.
Any major change to timetables now would not get through until at least the December timetable, if not much later. And at that point things will be very different anyway.
