Northern issue "DO NOT TRAVEL" warning for 08/09/2024

[Bevan Price]

Or just cut the timetable so you can staff it. For instance, does the Ormskirk/Colne/Blackpool S triangle or Southport-Wigan need to be hourly during the day on a weekday, could it be cut to 0.5tph? I think outside school hols it probably could. If you plan that properly and change the diagrams you can max out train lengths, you can't if you're just randomly cancelling.

The Unions would not like it, but there are two things that could be done to start to ease the "Sunday" problem.
1. Recruit people on part-week employment conditions - to work only at weekends.
2. For all new recruits, Sunday should be part of their working week.

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

If some comments on this thread are anything to go by I doubt ASLEF would be happy with its members doing anything as dangerous as driving road vehicles “on the job”.

What? Come on, we’ll even agree to a technology bonus if they agree to move on from Setright to Wayfarers…

 

[scrapy]

The Unions would not like it, but there are two things that could be done to start to ease the "Sunday" problem.
1. Recruit people on part-week employment conditions - to work only at weekends
2. For all new recruits, Sunday should be part of their working week.

As has been said many times before nearly 1/6 extra staff would be needed to bring Sundays inside the working week. The unions are the ones in favour of this. Those that pay for the extra staff be that private companies or the DFT are not willing to pay for it.

Part time staff would need the same training as full time. 1 year for drivers and 3 months plus for guards. This would be more expensive to recruit and train these staff than to bring Sundays inside. Northern are currently struggling to recruit and train full time staff let alone taking places up on training courses with part time staff.

 

[philthetube]

I’m confused here - operators lend their vehicles to who? The TOC? Are you suggesting that train drivers should be driving the hired in vehicles?



Doesn’t matter, I’ve checked and it’s still OK to manually record drivers hours, although you are expected to then input them into your driver card next time you use a digital tacho again.

That was not what I was suggesting, sorry if my post was not clear, There are loads of people around the contry with licences, or at least people who could renew their licences if worthwhile, get a list of these people and use them as a mobile RRB driver army when needed.

Daft as it sounds there are quite a few bus and rail enthusiasts who would love to do this sort of work, Free train ride to wherever then driving RRB'S all weekend, Heaven.

I was looking on line for than information on tachos and could not find it.

 

[43066]

The Unions would not like it, but there are two things that could be done to start to ease the "Sunday" problem.
1. Recruit people on part-week employment conditions - to work only at weekends.
2. For all new recruits, Sunday should be part of their working week.

Neither the unions nor the TOCs would accept option 1 (nobody will pay to train and keep guards competent to work only two days per week, virtually no existing staff wanting part time would want to work weekends only. The unions would see it as an attempt to casualise the workforce).

The unions would accept option 2, for a price, but the TOCs/DfT don’t want to pay it.

Until the powers that be decide to spend more money all the work arounds people suggest will count for naught, and this conversion will pop up every so often. The cheapest way to deal with it would probably be to leave Sundays outside and simply incentivise the current staff better.

That was not what I was suggesting, sorry if my post was not clear, There are loads of people around the contry with licences, or at least people who could renew their licences if worthwhile, get a list of these people and use them as a mobile RRB driver army when needed.

Daft as it sounds there are quite a few bus and rail enthusiasts who would love to do this sort of work, Free train ride to wherever then driving RRB'S all weekend, Heaven.

I was looking on line for than information on tachos and could not find it.

In principle that might work but again we’re back into the realms of saying if they have the money to do that, they could simply pay more to existing guards to come in, or offer a credible deal to bring Sundays into the working week.

The fundamental point is that, up to now, the DfT has been happy to see the service fall apart, rather than spending the necessary cash on any solution. That is what needs to change.

 

[PyrahnaRanger]

Daft as it sounds there are quite a few bus and rail enthusiasts who would love to do this sort of work,

Ah, got it. The only issue would be that if those people have other jobs, the hours they work in that job would count as “other work” under EU drivers hours regs, and reduce the amount of hours they could drive for - so they’d need the correct rest periods between their own job and any RRB shifts. Also, remember that technically positioning journeys count as “work” (you aren’t free to spend that time how you want), so if these people have to travel a few hours to get to where they are needed, you lose that as driving time too…

I’m not sure how it would interact with Domestic Hours as we mostly worked under EU regs.

A couple of other things to consider though:
who pays this army of drivers?
Who insures the vehicles/drivers? How/when do they do vehicle familiarisation/lift training etc?
Who checks their hours/licence/CPC?
Who co-ordinates all of the vehicles/drivers/work allocations?

None of it is insurmountable, but I don’t think it’s quite as easy a fix as it looks.

 

[ainsworth74]

I think we're probably done here. The reality is, for various reasons, the service in the North West is likely to be very unreliable on Sunday's and it is unlikely to either easily nor quickly resolved. It would seem there is little to be gained by continuing to go around in circles discussing exactly the same points over and over again.