jonathan-bray.com
It was taken out of Nexus' hands and given to DB Regio. Who then proceeded to absolutely trash the service, fail to maintain any of the trains, and managed to upset all of their staff. DB Regio were so incompetent Nexus had to take back control, at significant cost to the taxpayer.
Come on now, it takes a lot of hard work and effort to scroll Twitter to select which vox pops to use.
Indeed, I should've been clearer that the linked blog post was more interesting than the BBC article!
Five years at University to study journalism and creative writing and Jonny Manning bashes that complete and utter drivel out and sits back judging it a job well done. Whatever he's earning from the BBC taxpayer he should pay it back.
No wonder nobody bothers with mainstream media anymore.
For those interested, the blog post in question is here:
Britain's most progressive railway - Jonathan Bray
With the opening of the Northumbria line and the arrival into service of new Metro trains it feels like a good time to tell the story of Britain’s most progressive urban rail network… There’s two key elements to a successful urban rail network – best use of emerging technology and local...
Mr Bray points out: the low fares, the fact that all stations are fully accessible, the way the system integrates into the wider transport network, the public art, the fact that mobile phones worked in the tunnels a good 15 years before anywhere else, and the iconic M symbol. And he points out what the system grew out of, a clapped-out and dilapidated local rail network which was teetering on the edge of being shut down entirely by British Rail.
I'd say he was spot on.
It was taken out of Nexus' hands and given to DB Regio. Who then proceeded to absolutely trash the service, fail to maintain any of the trains, and managed to upset all of their staff. DB Regio were so incompetent Nexus had to take back control, at significant cost to the taxpayer.
What short memories people have.
Nexus didn't have a choice. The Labour government at the time made the funding for Metro: All Change programme, together with support for the ongoing running costs, contingent on Nexus privatising the operation of the service.
I’m not going to pretend DB Regio were good as they weren’t, but your account of events isn't entirely accurate. DB Regio didn’t have their contract terminated early, they went when their contract expired in 2017 - there was an optional extension to 2019 which wasn’t exercised, publicly cited as being for poor performance, but in reality being more for political reasons. I seem to recall that DB had already decided they would walk away from the contract in 2017 if Nexus hadn’t already chosen not to extend it. Performance, to the surprise of nobody, didn’t improve once DB were out of the picture. Nexus should have been well aware before the DB contract was even awarded that there was always a chance they may have needed to take it back in house again either the end of the contract in 2017 or indeed earlier if DB had chosen to walk away for whatever reason. If Nexus weren’t prepared for it that speaks to Nexus’ incompetence.Five years at University to study journalism and creative writing and Jonny Manning bashes that complete and utter drivel out and sits back judging it a job well done. Whatever he's earning from the BBC taxpayer he should pay it back.
No wonder nobody bothers with mainstream media anymore.
For those interested, the blog post in question is here:
Britain's most progressive railway - Jonathan Bray
With the opening of the Northumbria line and the arrival into service of new Metro trains it feels like a good time to tell the story of Britain’s most progressive urban rail network… There’s two key elements to a successful urban rail network – best use of emerging technology and local...
Mr Bray points out: the low fares, the fact that all stations are fully accessible, the way the system integrates into the wider transport network, the public art, the fact that mobile phones worked in the tunnels a good 15 years before anywhere else, and the iconic M symbol. And he points out what the system grew out of, a clapped-out and dilapidated local rail network which was teetering on the edge of being shut down entirely by British Rail.
I'd say he was spot on.
It was taken out of Nexus' hands and given to DB Regio. Who then proceeded to absolutely trash the service, fail to maintain any of the trains, and managed to upset all of their staff. DB Regio were so incompetent Nexus had to take back control, at significant cost to the taxpayer.
What short memories people have.
Nexus could have specified the tender in a way that only their own in house bid would have been able to comply, that would have been permissible with the terms of the funding for All Change. Public sector bodies regularly specify tenders so that only their preferred supplier is capable of meeting all of the requirements.
They’re a few leaders on from then!
The Metrocars weren't life expired in 2010, far from it. They were closer to the end of their career than the start of it, obviously, but the Metrocars should have had another ten years left in them at the time DB Regio got their hands on them. The rot had already started in the last year of DB Regio's tenure and, once old machinery starts failing due to historical poor maintenance, you very quickly end up in a death spiral. As we're seeing now.
Nothing to do with Nexus and everything to do with Arriva Northern- who had their own staffing issues- poaching as many drivers as they could. Manchester Metrolink had a similar issue.
The political message at the time was that that was not an option.
The blogpost- I wouldn't even call it an article- was clearly just a collection of Mr Bray's thoughts. Maybe he is or was a consultant with NECA (his CV- linked to on his website- suggests that he was in the past but isn't any longer) but I don't see how that's relevant. It's clearly just What He Reckons. I thought his observations about the system, its history, and its importance were quite interesting.
Until I moved here in 2020 I used Metro to commute every single day. The issues are really very simple: light rail vehicles which were built with a 35-40 year life expectancy are now 43 years old and it really shows. New trains needed to be ordered ten years ago but they weren't; instead of giving Metro the funding it needed, the government cut its funding by £40m or so in 2015.
The Metrocars had a design life of 30 years - that ran out in 2010.
It was on Nexus as if morale had been higher fewer drivers would have left. Not everyone that left went to the mainline, a lot simply left the railway altogether.
I would agree about its history and importance but I think that what he said reflects what Metro was like 30 years ago, not today. There’s a lot more wrong with Metro than just old trains.
Nah, people left for money. I don’t blame them, I would too, but it was money. Metrolink had the same problem and only dealt with it by giving their drivers a 14% pay rise over two years. As Metro was losing money, Nexus’ hands were more heavily tied.
I don’t think there is. The old trains are unreliable and because- understandably- Stadler are doing the bare minimum, they look tatty and unloved too.
The new trains will assist with the anti-social behaviour as the scrotes won’t be able to hide in the rear set knowing there’s no staff to do anything about them.
The issue isn't necessarily that Stadler are doing the bare minimum (though many of the trains do look tired with remnants of graffiti, bubbling paint etc.) but that when you have an event like Wednesday night into Thursday morning where the cold weather knackers more than a third of the scheduled service for the morning, it becomes a constant battle to keep everything running *and* have enough sets spare. There are proactive attempts to mitigate this from across the business (outstabling in City Centre stations last night meant a much better level of service today) but at the end of the day, they're a fleet approaching 50 years old.
There’s an ever increasing number of infrastructure issues and new trains won’t solve them. The signalling is approaching end of life and needs replacing in the not too distant future, there’s an increasing number of OHLE issues causing disruption too.
On this matter, you need to account for the fact that morale, pay and several other factors are all related. The amount of money on offer directly affects people's tolerance to any BS in the workplace, and vice-versa.
I'm possibly being a bit harsh on Stadler but there is the dilemma all operators face when they're in the process of introducing new rolling stock. They don't want to spend money on the old stock if they can avoid it so, inevitably, they end up spending the bare minimum to keep the show on the road. It's not a new thing, look how the reliability of TfW's 175s dropped through the floor when responsibility for them transferred to CAF.
I completely agree however Metro drivers were getting about £30k and Northern were offering closer to £50k. That turned an awful lot of heads and you can certainly see why.
