RAIL passengers on the Cotswold Line are to be surveyed to help train operator First Great Western and councils develop a new timetable for the route after track redoubling work is completed in 2011.

Oxfordshire County Council and fellow members of the Cotswold and Malverns Transport Partnership, formed in the 1990s to support efforts to improve services on the route, are commissioning the survey, which will look into people’s travel patterns to decide whether there is demand for more services on the line.

The partnership wants to see at least an hourly off-peak service all day at the main stations between Oxford and Worcester. There are two-hour gaps in the late morning and early afternoon at present.

Adrian Saunders, the county council’s rail development officer, said: “The redoubling project offers potential for enhanced services.

“It’s all up for grabs and the survey will give us an understanding of where people are going and when, and how we can best make use of the extra capacity on the line.”

Asked whether a cross-Oxford shuttle service, possibly running between Didcot Parkway and Moreton-in-Marsh, in Gloucestershire, was a possibility, he said: “If we find people are travelling across Oxford to work at Didcot or Milton Park, then that is maybe something we would suggest to Network Rail and First Great Western.

“But we need a sound base of evidence for any suggested solutions we come up with.”

FGW’s Thames Valley route director Richard Rowland said: “We’re looking at how we will operate the line in the future and the resources we will need, such as staff and rolling stock, and ways to fill gaps in the current service, whether on parts of the route or throughout its length.”