For those thinking of arguing for roads to replace railways, keep in mind that it’s normally considered more expensive to build a new road of equivalent capacity compared to building a new normal (not high speed) railway. And ripping up an existing railway and replacing it with a road of equivalent capacity is not going to be a very cheap solution.
Do the railways of the national network in England, Wales and Scotland cost too much to run? Yes. It’s very hard to prove, but it’s likely that BR before it started organising for privatisation was more efficient in terms of cost compared to either the privatised railways or the current railway organisation.
Unfortunately the current railways are organised in a very top heavy way. Above a front line worker (such as train driver, guard, signaller, station dispatcher, infrastructure worker) there are many, many “white collar” staff.
Don’t get me wrong, most of these have a valuable job to do. But a lot of time and resources are taken up with an obsession with internal railway bureaucracy. Or with one part of the organisation dealing with another via overly complex systems.
Network Rail’s current ideas on how to reduce costs are to reduce the amount of routine scheduled infrastructure maintenance carried out by its front line staff by half (50%). And to remove thousands of infrastructure jobs. But no significant change to any of the organisation above the front line workers (in fact there could be around a hundred more “white collar” staff going on their current ideas).
In short, the internal management of the national railways has become far too complex. Before cutting the funding, and before reducing the amount of maintenance, and definitely before reducing the front line workforce, the whole national railway management systems and support systems needs to be made more effective, more efficient and be fit for purpose.
That means not having countless different companies involved or countless different sectors etc.
In practice:
- the passenger rolling stock companies (ROSCO) need to be re-absorbed back into a national railway company, then efforts can be made to remove duplication and to reduce overheads.
- the various train operating companies (TOCs) need to be re-absorbed back into a national railway company, and of course it would be intended to reduce overheads by removing duplication.
- the various parts of Network Rail (and there are lots) need to be combined to remove duplication and to reduce overheads (as an example, an infrastructure worker can currently come under part of a maintenance organisation (each of which is split into routes/regions and then into delivery units), part of a works delivery organisation, or part of a central services organisation). And the part of Network Rail that “owns” the infrastructure is not the same part of Network Rail that actually “maintains” the infrastructure!
One of the most inefficient parts, is Network Rail’s use of contractors. Some contract staff spend most of their day standing around (or equivalent) doing no useful work. The reasons vary, but not having enough trained and experienced staff compared to unskilled labour is one reason. Poor planning of the job is another.
Network Rail use contractors to manage engineering blockades (T3 possessions), this includes the person in charge of the possession (PICOP) and the possession support staff. The possession support staff go on track at the start of the possession and place protection equipment on the track. They then typically do nothing else during the possession until it’s time to remove the protection equipment at the end of the possession.
It’s also concerning how many top/high level managers in the railways get paid huge salaries, rates that make what train drivers and signallers get paid (even with overtime) look tiny in comparison.
And the amount of money wasted by both maintenance, works delivery and major projects (contract companies) is plain silly. It’s not uncommon to see materials incorrectly stored, which then degrade and become useless. Or work is done (renewals of infrastructure equipment for example), which within a couple of years is overtaken by the same equipment being replaced/renewed again as part of a different scheme. Or a continuation of an earlier schedule (due to stop/start funding).
Or foundations for equipment being provided and never used.
I’ve seen ‘new’ signalling equipment that had less than three years of service being scrapped (as in put in a skip). Including LED signals.
