Northern and TPE Consultation Document

[Old Hill Bank]

The attached link is the DfT Consultation.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-consults-on-the-future-of-rail-services-in-the-north

Rail passengers in the north are being asked what improvements they want to see for services across the region as the government considers how the Northern and TransPennine franchises can best make use of the massive investment being rolled out across the network.
Routes across the region will benefit from extensive electrification and upgrades over the next 5 years as part of the government’s £1 billion investment in the northern network, paving the way for up to 700 extra trains every day and 44 million additional passengers a year.
That will mean better journeys, improved connections and more modern trains for passengers and business commuters, travelling between the key strategic cities of Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle and onwards to Edinburgh and Glasgow.
To support this transformation and ensure that both franchises are best placed to meet the demands of passengers, the Department for Transport has today (9 June 2014) launched a consultation into the future of rail services across the region.

 

[northwichcat]

Proposals for route transfers have been included

Transfer from TPE to Northern:
 Manchester Airport to Blackpool North
 Services to Windermere
 Barrow-in-Furness to Lancaster/Manchester Airport
 York to Scarborough
 Doncaster to Cleethorpes

Transfer from Northern to TPE:
 One train per hour Doncaster to Hull (one train per hour to
remain with Northern)

Transfer from EMT to TPE:
 the Nottingham – Liverpool portion of the existing EMT
Norwich –Liverpool service

Transfer from Northern to EMT:
 Cleethorpes to Barton-on-Humber (if Doncaster -
Cleethorpes remains with TPE)

These franchise remapping proposals may result in a number
of stations being operated by a different franchisee.

Looks like South TPE may become Manchester-Doncaster-Hull and could be electric in CP6 if the proposed Hope Valley electrification goes ahead.

Also as Stephen Hammond hinted a couple of months back

In particular, bidders will be required to include plans, either in their core proposition or as an option, which would enable the withdrawal of all Pacer units from Northern services.

 

[47802]

I guess I'm not surprised about moving Blackpool Manchester Airport services to Northern , a bit surprised that they haven't chosen to consider a Scarborough Copy Pit Blackpool/Windermere TPX Service.

Splitting EMT service Nottingham Liverpool only makes sense to me if that section of route becomes entirely electric, although I guess its somewhere to stick redundant 185's

I haven't read to whole document but it looks likely bidders will need to propose new or precure from somewhere Suitable Electric Stock for the TPX route, and has already been said possible elimination of Rail Buses.

A lot of Talk about increased efficiency and reducing costs, and what it describes as a possible change of on Train Responsibilities between on Train Staff.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

DOO required for Northern electric trains - as I forecast.

• All Northern trains are currently operated by a driver and guard. A significant
task for the new operator should be to define and introduce a policy whereby
the driver has full responsibility for the safety of the train – already the case
on 30% of train services in Great Britain including many recently electrified
routes. Making such changes, where applicable, could enhance efficiency
and improve service to passengers by allowing other on-train staff to be
focussed on passenger needs and revenue protection

Something like 58% of Northern's cost is covered by subsidy (£324m of £559m).
The equivalent for TPE is 23% (£52m subsidy with £225m costs).

Looks like TPE will come close to being an all-electric franchise.
Lopping off Scarborough and Barrow means the main lines becomes Man Airport-Scotland and Liverpool-Leeds-Newcastle.
Dropping Doncaster-Cleethorpes means South TPE can concentrate on Liverpool-Nottingham/Doncaster, much of which will be electric after MML wiring.
Nothing explicit that I can see about Hull/Middlesbrough, except that they are on the short list for wiring in CP6.

The date for Preston-Blackpool electrification has slipped to March 2017 (consultation p30).

 

[ANorthernGuard]

DOO required for Northern electric trains - as I forecast.

Never happen (well not in my career anyway). There isnt the infrastructure and the costs are too prohibitive. Not only that it would cause industrial action the scale not seen for decades in the North

 

[northwichcat]

Splitting EMT service Nottingham Liverpool only makes sense to me if that section of route becomes entirely electric, although I guess its somewhere to stick redundant 185's

The CLC line is set to get platform lengthening to allow 6 car 185s at the main stations while they aren't cleared east of Peterborough and wouldn't likely be cleared to run at Sprinter speeds between Peterborough and Norwich.

 

[northwichcat]

Also now two prospectus'

Northern: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...ment_data/file/318233/northern-prospectus.pdf

TPE:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/318230/tpe-prospectus.pdf

 

[MidnightFlyer]

According to the TPE Prospectus there's the 'potential' for Man Vic and Oxford Road to transfer to Network Rail management.

 

[ANorthernGuard]

Page 56 in the Northern Prospectus makes interesting reading
Staffing

We will encourage bidders to develop
proposals which provide a greater level of effective staff presence while realising
significant efficiencies in areas which contribute less to meeting this passenger
need, such as:

All Northern trains are currently operated by a driver and guard. A significant
task for the new operator should be to define and introduce a policy whereby
the driver has full responsibility for the safety of the train – already the case
on 30% of train services in Great Britain including many recently electrified
routes. Making such changes, where applicable, could enhance efficiency
and improve service to passengers by allowing other on-train staff to be
focussed on passenger needs and revenue protection.

So they would like DOO but will not say how that would be achieved. Interesting. I am sure any Future TOC would want guarantees on funding of all the infrastructure requirements. See that to believe it!

 

[Tomnick]

It's interesting to see that the document refers to the importance of having staff visible (presumably mainly on trains, in rural areas with unstaffed stations) for customer service and revenue protection, then immediately moves on to the importance of DOO. If DOO was ever implemented on a large scale in the North (which I hope it isn't), I wonder how long it'd be before the majority of trains were going out with no staff other than the driver on board? The cost savings (guard vs 'customer service' type with no safety responsibility) can't be that great, especially considering the potential losses through faulty DOO equipment, increased delays and so on.

 

[northwichcat]

good luck agreeing putting 100's of people out of work

It could actually be done in a way that doesn't put anyone out of work but increases the number of drivers but not guards. For example, Northern take over Manchester Airport to Blackpool as a DOO route but TPE will need the same number of drivers, guards and units to introduce a new Manchester-Selby semi-fast.

From what I heard the past union objection to Northern Rail operating a DOO tram-train between Rotherham and Sheffield is the main reason Supertram will be operating the tram-train and not Northern. Although, the tram-trains will still operate as DOO with an on-board ticket seller.

I'm actually wondering whether the plan would be to operate EMUs with no staff other than a driver or whether it's the plan to put a ticket inspector/seller on all services at a lower salary than the current guard's salary. Having no ticket selling staff on board could well be false economy.

 

[YorkshireBear]

It says that York Scarborough to convert to Northern, does not say that this is to be a shuttle, just that this section of the route should be transferred. It is still the DfTs belief that attaching it to the Blackpool North service is the best option.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

DOO required for Northern electric trains - as I forecast.

Two generalised queries thinking of the Northern Rail Class 323 units:-

Who will assist wheelchair passengers by ensuring that the ramp is deployed then stored ?

Who will issue on-board ticketing that currently takes place ?

 

[ANorthernGuard]

Probably the likes of G4S or what other company can pay minimum wage and get away with it.

 

[northwichcat]

It says that York Scarborough to convert to Northern, does not say that this is to be a shuttle, just that this section of the route should be transferred. It is still the DfTs belief that attaching it to the Blackpool North service is the best option.

It's open for consultation (p49) but won't let me copy and paste that section.

Shuttle is one option, Scarborough-Leeds is another, Scarborough-Blackpool is a third, even keeping a Manchester Airport/Liverpool service is on the list of options.

 

[northwichcat]

I already did that's why I have plenty of time to make comments on here, made redundant due to a combination of technology and the Global economy, which is the reality for many people, and no I don't particularly like it, but that's progress and I don't see why the railways should be a special case immune from efficiency.

More people should be employed to operate the technology than actually are. It's all too common to use an unsuitable pre-pack solution, outsource the work to somewhere like India (to be done cheaply to a low standard) or to automate technology without manual checks when manual checks are needed.

I can't say which retailer but a major high street retailer had to pull an online sales event which had promoted all over the TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, billboards etc. The reason being no-one had performed a check to see how many visitors the server could handle and if they had they would have recommended the acquisition of a new server, which would then have required someone to set it up and test it. The one extra person required would have probably costed less than all the advertising to promote the cancelled event and the likely reduction in sales revenue.

 

[Masbroughlad]

Real shame if TPE no longer serve Scarborough. At least you get a decent train with them.

Scarborough and Cleethorpes will become poor relations if left to Northern.

 

[northwichcat]

Real shame if TPE no longer serve Scarborough. At least you get a decent train with them.

Scarborough and Cleethorpes will become poor relations if left to Northern.

If Liverpool-Nottingham goes to TPE and uses released 185s then they'll be refurbished 158s up for grabs. Plus by then other 158s should have had a fully accessible refurbishment.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Real shame if TPE no longer serve Scarborough. At least you get a decent train with them.

Scarborough and Cleethorpes will become poor relations if left to Northern.

As electrification comes online the 185s will likely stay on the remaining diesel parts of the TPE network. Something which is you feel strongly about you should respond with in the consultation.

It might not be Northern it could be any franchise remember?

We have to look at making the network efficient, these are two ways of doing so.

 

[Moonshot]

We expect bids to be based on our regulated fares policy, including the outcome
of the Fares and Ticketing Review. We are currently working with Rail North on
options to address fares anomalies and potential relaxation in fares regulation to
help fund enhancements.

Above is a cut and paste from the prospectus......this is a very key point. It is impossible to make rational investment decisions when the true market price for use of that investment is not subject to market forces. This is a point I have made time and time again on this forum , and is totally lost on a good number of forumites. Its the biggest reason why at operational level, the industry is inefficient.

The prospectus also higlighted the fact that a fair number of stations suffer from low footfall - its pointless investing anything in these and the rational decision would be to close them......however that would be subject to a re definition of what the " social raliway " is, and what subsidy is designed to do - a point which the Transport Select Commitee made not so long back !!!

 

[7griffinjack]

The date for Preston-Blackpool electrification has slipped to March 2017 (consultation p30).

You are correct as it does state this but then it contradicts itself on page 57 by saying...

"The Blackpool North route is planned to
be electrified by December 2016 as part of the North West
electrification programme. "

Madness!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The prospectus also higlighted the fact that a fair number of stations suffer from low footfall - its pointless investing anything in these and the rational decision would be to close them......however that would be subject to a re definition of what the " social raliway " is, and what subsidy is designed to do - a point which the Transport Select Commitee made not so long back !!!

Somewhere in the Prospectus it says that station and line closures are not contemplated for the new Northern franchise.
But tailoring services closer to demand (read: skipping more stops), and resolving fare anomalies (read: increases in PTE areas) are very much part of the tweaking process.
It's notable that Rail North is charged with coming up with solutions to these problems.

 

[Leylandlad]

Once Manchester-Preston-Blackpool and Manchester-Leeds-York are electrified, how many 185s will this free up for redeployment?

With them almost entirely off the Scottish routes now, I'm guesstimating about 30 :-?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Probably the likes of G4S or what other company can pay minimum wage and get away with it.

It is rather worrying to find that STM Security who now hold the security contact with Northern Rail are only paying their staff the minimum wage since they took over from G4S when they lost the contract.

 

[yorksrob]

But tailoring services closer to demand (read: skipping more stops), and resolving fare anomalies (read: increases in PTE areas) are very much part of the tweaking process.

So we're going to have exorbitant fares across the whole of the North, rather than just outside the PTE areas.

Oh goody.

 

[Moonshot]

It is rather worrying to find that STM Security who now hold the security contact with Northern Rail are only paying their staff the minimum wage since they took over from G4S when they lost the contract.

And nobody is forcing anyone to work for them......people who do so are doing this by choice. Nothing to stop them applying for higher paid roles....and in fact I am aware of 2 who are justy about to start on a conductors course.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

So we're going to have exorbitant fares across the whole of the North, rather than just outside the PTE areas....Oh goody.

Just imagine how this news will be received by TransDev when the price differential between their X43 Lancashire Witch Burnley to Manchester service (which actually runs) and the eventual rail service from Blackburn-Burnley-Copy Pit Line-Manchester (currently a mirage) will be then examined by prospective travellers.

 

[Moonshot]

Just imagine how this news will be received by TransDev when the price differential between their X43 Lancashire Witch Burnley to Manchester service (which actually runs) and the eventual rail service from Blackburn-Burnley-Copy Pit Line-Manchester (currently a mirage) will be then examined by prospective travellers.

isnt that what competition is all about?

 

[Manchester77]

According to the prospectus for TPE, Victoria and Oxford Road may be run by Network Rail rather than Northern or TPE.

Page 82 "The potential transfer of Manchester Oxford Road and Manchester Victoria
from the Northern franchise to Network Rail managed station status"


(From SCC)

 

[TUC]

And if DOO is proposed I hope that whatever the disruption is caused the TOC's tough it out with the backing of the government

If we're ever to get an efficient, modern rail industry, the relics of the past need to go.