The reduced timetable will commence on Saturday the 8th of January and will mean that GWR can provide most of its usual planned services whilst providing customers with the confidence to plan journeys ahead.
The temporary timetable will see weekly updates and is only anticipated to be in place for a short period of time, whilst the effects of the Omicron variant reduce.
GWR Managing Director Mark Hopwood said:
“We are taking some sensible measures using the experience, knowledge and good processes we have developed over the past 20 months to give customers confidence in our timetable.
“In the past few weeks we have already taken steps to maintain service levels across the network, including cancelling all non-safety critical staff training.
“Like many other businesses we are expecting prolonged periods of staff absence due to Covid to continue in the coming weeks and the objective of this temporary timetable is to provide a service that can be relied on, reducing the potential for ad hoc short-notice cancellations.
“This means reducing our timetable a little to shore up the large number of services we continue to operate. We have prioritised high-use school, college and other known key worker services and we very much hope that the changes will only be needed for a short period.
“We will be reviewing the need for temporary changes weekly and will update journey planners and our website gwr.com with details of any changes needed for the week ahead.
“As always our advice to customers is please check your journey before you leave home at journeycheck.com/greatwesternrailway.”
Services between London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads and South Wales will be running on an hourly frequency through weekends due to pre-planned engineering work and will also mean a slightly reduced service from Monday to Friday.
Some reductions in long-distance services will also be affected for other routes on the network.
Further affected routes include some services on the Devon and Cornwall branch lines, with the St.Ives branch reverting to hourly services for weekdays with some services in the West also being impacted.
Due to planned upgrade work between Newton Abbot and Paignton, there will be no trains running over the next two weekends, however, a bus replacement service has been put in place.
The rail industry ‘Book With Confidence Scheme' has also been extended through to the end of March and will allow passengers to change their travel plans up to the evening before departure without any fees being charged if they decided against travelling and will be able to get a refund for their unused ticket.
Customers planning to travel by train are being advised to check their travel plans ahead of leavingvia http://journeycheck.com/greatwesternrailway
If a train does get cancelled passengers will be able to travel on a service immediately before or after their booked train.
Many of the GWR train crews have been reluctant to wear face masks so it is not surprising that the result is prolonged periods of staff absence due to Covid.