Personally, I really don't care that they make 2% with about half at risk. Those are the terms of the NRC. I can see why, in an emergency they were offered as a pragmatic short term solution. I would like to see them replaced with a more appropriate contract as soon as is sensible where there is a sensible balance of risk and reward with the right incentives in place. Whether that should happen now or later I don't know, but I don't think the relatively trivial management fee should be the factor which forces the government one way or the other.
Ultimately, the fee which FG receives and remits to profits is a tiny proportion of the cost of the operation. Realistically, there won't be any meaningful savings left out of it after the OLR's administrative costs are taken into account. Certainly there will be no additional funds made available for TPE operations if and when it goes to OLR. There will however be some handover costs.
I don't think all of TPE's woes can be traced back to that. It certainly didn't help, but even on routes where all the crew sign the appropriate traction, e.g. Hull, South route (mostly) and Anglo Scot, there are still huge levels of cancellations.
Hitachi stock provided through the agility trains conduit is expensive but not the fleets that were ordered direct by operator/rosco mechanisms.
Not sure that is entirely correct. IIRC the 2015 ITT was written so as to permit the use of loco hauled 442s to meet the near term capacity requirements, rather than requiring an all new fleet.
Of course, trying to actually use that specific solution would also have been a total disaster. It was a terrible idea to try and continue using them at SWR from the first also, and TPE wouldn't have been any better. Also the use of the mark 3 sets that had been in the 'Pretendolino' previously was also a pretty poor strategy.
What is a pretendolino?
Certainly not defending them here, but the theory behind the use of the Mark 3s was to get the drivers trained on Class 68s hauling coaches whilst the Mark 5a coaches were under construction.
A nickname for the Mark 3 coaches painted in the red and silver Virgin Trains livery.
Spent a large amount of time hired to GA on the Norwich route. Couldn’t believe it when we secured that deal. Some are quietly rotting away in Vauxhall Carriage sidings in Great Yarmouth.
The way things are tilting, FG (with TI) looks likely to retain an improving Avanti, but lose TPE to OLR who could be told to merge it with Northern.
I assume there's been no official suggestion about a merger between the two, and this is just speculative? Beyond managerial positions, there's very little cash to be saved by bringing these two together now, and the brands would likely remain to distinguish the different levels of service.
The rail minister himself (Huw Merriman) said that a merger was a possibility during his evidence to the Transport Select Committee recently.
Even several years ago, I experienced an aggressive and arrogant response from TPE "Customer Services" to Delay Repay claims (I had to escalate one to Transport Focus before they eventually backed down). In the same era Northern was generous with offers of free tickets for two people to travel anywhere on their network over two days, as an alternative option to a cash repayment of only a few pounds.
Indeed. PPM recently in the high 80s/low 90% range. No "short notice change to the timetable" malpractice anymore on the west side too. Zero cancellations currently listed on their Journeycheck, which is quite unusual for a Sunday.
