First will not take over West Coast from December

[A0]

You've made it quite it quite clear that you want the railway to be run as financially efficient as possible and not putting passengers first - you actively support many cuts and oppose most expansion projects.

I hate to burst your ideological bubble - but what you've described is exactly how the railways were run when nationalised from 1948 - 1990s.

Every government expected the rail network to be financially efficient - having said that I can never understand why those on the left want organisations to be financially inefficient - most of the cuts to the rail network happened whilst it was nationalised and expansion projects didn't happen.

I know from previous postings you want a railway which runs to the destinations you want, when you want it at virtually no cost to you - well when you locate the magic money tree and fairyland where this can happen, please let the rest of us know. Meanwhile back on planet earth.....

The flows you cite all have cheap ADVANCE tickets, the competition between LM and VT has produced incredibly cheap WALK-UP tickets. Somehow I doubt Chiltern will provide much competition on flows from/to Milton Keynes and Coventry.

Would you like to qualify that statement please with some examples as I'm not sure you're right.

And aren't fares between BHM and COV limited in some way by the involvement of Centro?

 

[eastdyke]

Virgin and Virgin Rail Group and pretty much anything else mentioning Virgin are seen by most of the population as synonymous?

There has been much in this thread (and its predecessor) about the voracity of SRB with respect to PR.

CIPR (The Chartered Institute of Public Relations) has something to say:

Virgin Trains' lobbying campaign over the West Coast Mainline rail franchise has raised questions as to whether CEOs should be included on any register of those that lobby Government, according to the CIPR ..

... more ...

http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/1154093/cipr-suggests-ceos-lobby-register-virgin-trains-campaign/

Do they make any sense here?

 

[YorkshireRider]

I don't think it will be any great surprise if Virgin are granted an extension/management contract. It surely makes the most sense. I would also guess on similar deals with other TOCS who's franchises expire next year, with DOR continuing to run EC til Dec 2014.

 

[HH]

Story from the Daily Telegraph:

Government 'lost' key calculations on West Coast bid

The Government lost or failed to save key calculations underpinning its decision to award the West Coast rail franchise to FirstGroup, a report commissioned by the Department for Transport shows. The study from accountants PriceWaterhouseCoopers highlights crucial flaws in the handling of the bid that led to last week's decision by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin to pull the contract. They include the absence or loss of vital computations showing how civil servants arrived at their decision and the failure to examine the risks around GDP forecasts for the final three years of the contract. The DfT appointed PwC in late September to re-run the numbers on the rival West Coast bids after Virgin Rail, the losing incumbent operator, applied for a judicial review of the process.

Heavily redacted copies of PwC’s report were handed to the bidders earlier this week as the Government provided initial feedback on a decision that has left the taxpayer with a bill of at least £40m to reimburse bid fees and seen the suspension of three civil servants. One insider said: “It looks like they ran the numbers and didn’t save the results. PwC tried to repeat the outputs and it couldn’t.”

It is unclear whether officials failed to save results, lost key calculations or deleted some of the workings behind their decision. The report also shows the “GDP resilience model” was not properly applied for the last three years of the contract, while the DfT made errors confusing real and nominal inflation. It is in the final three years to the end of 2028 when there is a ramp-up in payments to the taxpayer from FirstGroup’s £13.3bn bid. Last week Mr McLoughlin admitted “mistakes were made in the way in which inflation and passenger numbers were taken into account, and how much money bidders were then asked to guarantee as a result”.

The PwC report shows revenue forecasts were not correlated with how many passengers could actually fit on the trains. A DfT spokesman said: “We are not going to give a running commentary on what went wrong.” A FirstGroup spokesman said: “The DfT has provided us with information and we are working through it.” Both PwC and Virgin declined to comment.

I understand that "the bidders" refers to First and Virgin. Other bidders, both inside and outside the ICWC bid might be miffed that this will give First and Virgin/Stagecoach a significant advantage in understanding DfT risk/solvency thinking.

 

[jaigee]

...... otherwise the 390s will be full and standing and the 350s will be trundling along empty except for a handful of people who actually need to go to one of the places not served by a 390.....

Could you please expand on your statement "a handful of people"?

As a regular traveller on the TV services my observations are that there are a considerable number of people go to the places not served by a 390, i.e. most stations on the route!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The FT now has a piece on the impact of the UQ (Ulcer Quotient) on the top DfT people from the West Coast events:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dd01a448-1135-11e2-a637-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28yvKMG5h

 

[jon0844]

Soon we'll be hearing that the DfT has mislaid the hat that it pulled the winners name from.

 

[HH]

Same story as Telegraph on Railnews: http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2012/10/11-west-coast-probably-biggest-failure.html

If you believe what has been written today it would suggest that the DfT never checked First's Crowding Model, and didn't have an independent model that they could use to check crowding. That would be in addition to the failures surrounding the solvency test.

 

[hwl]

Same story as Telegraph on Railnews: http://www.railnews.co.uk/news/2012/10/11-west-coast-probably-biggest-failure.html

If you believe what has been written today it would suggest that the DfT never checked First's Crowding Model, and didn't have an independent model that they could use to check crowding. That would be in addition to the failures surrounding the solvency test.

Given that First were planning to invest in 10 additional trains and virgin only 1 net (i.e. replace the voyagers rather than Firsts plan to retain them) might it not be Virgins crowding model that has issues as they were planning on large growth too?

First appeared to be going for a larger service recast than Virgin which might have evened out demand between services better.

 

[60163]

Sounds like an episode of The Thick of It Armando Ianucci didn't write.

 

[Philip Elliott]

I hate to burst your ideological bubble - but what you've described is exactly how the railways were run when nationalised from 1948 - 1990s.

Every government expected the rail network to be financially efficient - having said that I can never understand why those on the left want organisations to be financially inefficient - most of the cuts to the rail network happened whilst it was nationalised and expansion projects didn't happen.

Which is exactly why I don't want the railways re-nationalised. Good luck finding anything i've said that supports nationalisation because you won't find any but hey why not just assume / make up someone's views so you can make sniggering remarks to:roll: (tbtc has a long posting record of supporting cuts and opposing expansion). Your own postings suggests you are a Tory but I'll leave it to you to confirm/deny if you wish.

As for:

I know from previous postings you want a railway which runs to the destinations you want, when you want it at virtually no cost to you - well when you locate the magic money tree and fairyland where this can happen, please let the rest of us know. Meanwhile back on planet earth.....

Childish prattle - I have said nothing of the sort. I previously mentioned routes for re-opening that I believe to be of strategic importance if we want a truly usable national railway network / quality public transport system. I fully support many projects such as Tavistock, Uckfield-lewes, Portishead which have no use to me. East-West Rail is now to be a fully electrified main line - the government has clearly seen the need for improving east-west links.

Would you like to qualify that statement please with some examples as I'm not sure you're right.

And aren't fares between BHM and COV limited in some way by the involvement of Centro?

Cov - Bhm
CDR - £4.90 (Any Permitted)
CDR - £3.40 (VT Only)

MKC-Eus
CDR - £21.50 (Any Permitted)
CDR - £14.50 (VT Only)
CDR - £14.50 (LM only)

Centro subsidise many routes but competition has resulted in even lower fares.

 

[tbtc]

Did anyone see Watchdog last night?

Many complaints about Virgin making spurious claims about speed etc that they had no chance of backing up... okay, so it was broadband speed rather than train speed, but...

You've made it quite it quite clear that you want the railway to be run as financially efficient as possible and not putting passengers first - you actively support many cuts and oppose most expansion projects

Rail is great, I'm all for expansion. But railways are a pretty blunt instrument and therefore best at sticking to the kind of busy routes that require hundreds of people to be moved quickly.

Rail works well on a route like London to Birmingham. It doesn't work so well on a lot of the fanciful rural suggestions that I see on here for (re-)opening.

Since we struggle to match demand with supply on many busy routes it seems better to concentrate resources in these areas.

The flows you cite all have cheap ADVANCE tickets, the competition between LM and VT has produced incredibly cheap WALK-UP tickets. Somehow I doubt Chiltern will provide much competition on flows from/to Milton Keynes and Coventry

Well, we may be getting London - Milton Keynes via Reading/ Oxford, plus Chiltern's Warwick Parkway seems pretty good at attracting people from the "Greater Coventry" area...

...but the main point is, since I see lot of complaints about crowded services on the WCML (and know a couple who both commute from MK into London), should we be ignoring those unable to get a seat and instead flooding the market with dirt cheap tickets?

Northampton has basically no rail competition yet the trains seem busy enough through the town.

If you keep telling me on the HS2 thread that it is imperitive that Coventry retains its three fast trains (and three slow trains) to London each hour then how come so many of the seats on these services require significant fare reductions to be filled?

Having one TOC concentrating on the southern end of the WCML (West Midlands/ Trent Valley - Rugby - Milton Keynes - London) would still see busy trains.

Wouldn't they just take all the VT staff under TUPE?

External or internal - all would transfer in reality. But there is still work to do, on contracts for instance. These aren't drawn up and agreed overnight

I was just meaning the "top" staff - i.e. those who wouldn't move across - since we keep hearing that DOR wouldn't have the resources to take on another franchise.

 

[HH]

Given that First were planning to invest in 10 additional trains and virgin only 1 net (i.e. replace the voyagers rather than Firsts plan to retain them) might it not be Virgins crowding model that has issues as they were planning on large growth too?

First appeared to be going for a larger service recast than Virgin which might have evened out demand between services better.

The difference was that by the end (15th year - the one that everybody forgets) First had increased volumes by 105%, while Virgin had increased them by around 70% in the same time period IIRC their claims.

Those extra trains account for only around 9% extra capacity. Both were also making additional use of existing capacity, First maybe a little more (it's hard to say on the information we have), but these would be relatively small increases (say in the order of 2% maximum). Based on these numbers First's trains would be approximately 65% seat occupancy to Virgin's 50%. The latter is high, but the former is AFAIK higher than anything ever achieved on a similar railway in the UK.

A Crowding Model would predict where/when the heaviest usage would occur. You would attempt to manage away some of the usage, but on some of the most popular trains, e.g. those on a Sunday Afternoon, your levers are not very strong - the fares are cheapish (off peak) already, and people do not want to travel on the Saturday or Monday. What the model should do is crowd some of the passengers off, and put a fraction back on, distributed on earlier and later trains with available space.

In my, and many others who understand this sort of thing, opinion, First's growth numbers do not seem to have allowed for this crowding off. I can only think of two reasons for this - their crowding model was broken, or their assumptions (on what displaced passengers would do) were heroic.

As to why they would want these assumptions to be true - if they weren't they would have needed considerably more new rolling stock to carry these extra passengers. And this extra capacity would have only been needed right at the end of the franchise, and wouldn't have paid back, given that there would be no section 54.

--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I was just meaning the "top" staff - i.e. those who wouldn't move across - since we keep hearing that DOR wouldn't have the resources to take on another franchise.

Sometimes these move across as well. I guess it depends whether you see a career with VRG as a good bet or not.

 

[Greeby]

Cov - Bhm
CDR - £4.90 (Any Permitted)
CDR - £3.40 (VT Only)

MKC-Eus
CDR - £21.50 (Any Permitted)
CDR - £14.50 (VT Only)
CDR - £14.50 (LM only)

Centro subsidise many routes but competition has resulted in even lower fares.

And has made life considerably harder for people on both sides of the glass at MKC booking office. Competition can only be a good thing in my eyes when the Any Permitted fare is reduced to match the fare that undercuts it. On the CDS, this has happened. But for London Terminals CDR, and therefore Travelcard ODT, there should only be one fare.

 

[Realfish]

Story from the Daily Telegraph:

...It is unclear whether officials failed to save results, lost key calculations or deleted some of the workings behind their decision...

Presumably DfT's IT facilities provider (Capita or EDS, I think) will quickly be able to track down and recover what was not saved or what was deleted? Assuming the bid team were not using crayons and colouring books to do their working out.

 

[merlodlliw]

enjoyed reading this article in The Scottish herald, giving a different slant, the header is "Blood On The Tracks" leading paragraphs below

LIKE all the best mysteries, it started with a noise in the night.

It came from 33 Horseferry Road in Vauxhall, central London, headquarters of the Department for Transport (DfT), which put out a startling announcement around midnight on Tuesday.

It said that, in view of certain irregularities with the process for renewing the rail franchise for the West Coast mainline between London and Glasgow, the choice of Aberdeen-based transport company FirstGroup was revoked. Instead, the DfT was going to set up two inquiries, one into the West Coast process and one into the whole system of rail franchising.

The DfT proposed to pay £40 million to the shortlisted bidders for the costs of preparing bids – the others being Virgin Trains, Abellio and Keolis – and that it would no longer contest its impending judicial review battle with Virgin over the award.

It said it was also putting the brakes on the next three franchise renewals, for Great Western, Essex Thameside and London Thameslink, in what is expected to lead to delays of at least a year in awarding them. The ScotRail franchise, due to be awarded by Transport Scotland to start in 2014, appears unaffected. Westminster Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin – only weeks in the job following the Cabinet reshuffle – called the matter "deeply regrettable".

Early on Wednesday there came an update on some of the characters in this Cluedo-esque drama. Three civil servants who had been involved with the bids had been suspended. Their identities were not revealed, though two were understood to be fairly senior. Full story below

http://www.heraldscotland.com/business/company-news/blood-on-the-tracks.19070071

 

[HH]

Presumably DfT's IT facilities provider (Capita or EDS, I think) will quickly be able to track down and recover what was not saved or what was deleted? Assuming the bid team were not using crayons and colouring books to do their working out.

Anyone who has ever done such work will know that there must be numerous copies of this file around. It beggars belief that it could have been lost. Given how embarassing losing the file is, then what it contained must have been really bad.

 

[eastdyke]

Anyone who has ever done such work will know that there must be numerous copies of this file around. It beggars belief that it could have been lost. Given how embarassing losing the file is, then what it contained must have been really bad.

Unless of course the file(s) never existed in the first place?

 

[Manchester77]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19911432 - not exactly rail but all part of virgin. shoudl we really believe what they say? video about Virgin Media's dodgey adverts

ive posted it because, its another incriminating point to show that virgin arent as great as they claim. anyway, penalise me all you want idc

 

[dvboy]

According to the Wolverhampton Chronicle (which is the free weekly version of the Express & Star), Centro had been in talks with FirstGroup about taking over the lease of Wolverhampton station in the new franchise because it would be easier for them to secure £96m to have it rebuilt.

 

[jon0844]

You obviously work for [insert rival ISP name].

 

[dvboy]

You obviously work for [insert rival ISP name].

I assume you are referring to the poster above me. Let me point you to the "Quote" button...

 

[Manchester77]

You obviously work for [insert rival ISP name].

:roll:assuming you mean me by that delightful comment. god forbid i'd post anything anti virgin group. and how do i "obviously" work for First? explain that to me. ill elaborate more when you reply

 

[Eagle]

:roll:assuming you mean me by that delightful comment. god forbid i'd post anything anti virgin group. and how do i "obviously" work for First? explain that to me. ill elaborate more when you reply

First are an internet service provider now? News to me.

 

[Philip Elliott]

Rail is great, I'm all for expansion. But railways are a pretty blunt instrument and therefore best at sticking to the kind of busy routes that require hundreds of people to be moved quickly.

Rail works well on a route like London to Birmingham. It doesn't work so well on a lot of the fanciful rural suggestions that I see on here for (re-)opening.

Since we struggle to match demand with supply on many busy routes it seems better to concentrate resources in these areas.

There are very few flows where "hundreds" are on each train even London to Birmingham rarely has 200 people doing end to end on a single service. For these block flows, most people have already travelled some distance and without sufficient "local" services that inevitably means by car. Do you really want the railway network to only want car owning people on their services?

The "busiest" services are in the south east where the services call at lots of usually quite small places. It is no accident that houses within walking distance of a station in the sout east are far more valuable than those not.

If you keep telling me on the HS2 thread that it is imperitive that Coventry retains its three fast trains (and three slow trains) to London each hour then how come so many of the seats on these services require significant fare reductions to be filled?

The fare reductions (VT only) were to allow VT to get a greater share of the pie. LM operates less seats than CT did to Coventry and trains are not significantly busier - VT are carrying the passengers instead. VT evening services out of New Street can be incredibly busy (were amongst the first to get allocated an 11-car 390) but after Coventry are whisper quiet. The big flow is to Coventry not London. Put a service reduction in and you've got problems.

...but the main point is, since I see lot of complaints about crowded services on the WCML (and know a couple who both commute from MK into London), should we be ignoring those unable to get a seat and instead flooding the market with dirt cheap tickets?

Very few services on the WCML are overcrowded, it just happens that one of the busiest services is popular on here owing to it being formed of an antiquated sets of coaches on a Friday...

 

[Stats]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19911432 - not exactly rail but all part of virgin. shoudl we really believe what they say? video about Virgin Media's dodgey adverts

ive posted it because, its another incriminating point to show that virgin arent as great as they claim. anyway, penalise me all you want idc

It shows nothing of the sort because Virgin Group have very little to with Virgin Media other than a licensing of the name.

 

[HH]

It shows nothing of the sort because Virgin Group have very little to with Virgin Media other than a licensing of the name.

They all have Branson in common, therefore it certainly shows something.

 

[snail]

The fact that they have no other franchises is by the by. Interestingly, of course, only since it came fairly apparent that Virgin were NOT just going to be handed another extension and pots of money on a plate have they started going on about how this issue of them not physically being able to bid and having to disband.

So by your reasoning no TOC bidding to retain a franchise should be able to factor in the savings from not having to start from scratch as it would give them an unfair advantage over the other bidders? Why not simply ban them from bidding in the first place? Or does this apply only to TOCs with a 'V' in their name?

 

[8J]

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk...coast-mainline-train-services-99623-32008124/

Interesting...

 

[HH]

So by your reasoning no TOC bidding to retain a franchise should be able to factor in the savings from not having to start from scratch as it would give them an unfair advantage over the other bidders? Why not simply ban them from bidding in the first place? Or does this apply only to TOCs with a 'V' in their name?

What are you trying to say here? It has already been shown that plenty of companies have bid, and continue to bid, without having a Franchise. Virgin have no special right to hang on to a TOC to make their life easier.

That said it looks very likely that they will do so.