Great Northern - Northern City Line to TFL?

[Failed Unit]

That's always been true of a lot of NR metro area operators though. TfL have proven their ability to quickly go in and do some easy wins that the NR TOCs have had decades to do, but didn't. For example the North London Line and the GEML and Lee Valley metro services are far improved, within only a few years of TfL operations.

Meanwhile TOCs, like Southern and Southeastern in particular, still have plenty they could do to improve the metro services, but don't. So although yes "the existing operator could do this today" , they have had decades to do so and haven't - if TfL are prepared to do so, I think let them try.

Admittedly - and I say this even as a proponent of devolution of metro services to TfL - it is less clear on the Great Northern Inners what improvements TfL could actually make.

Upgrading the rolling stock to 717s was a fantastic improvement and was imo the easiest win on the line - already done by GTR. Station refurbishments and improvements maybe?

But in terms of improving the train service, separating the Inners from the rest of GN may prove to be difficult or more trouble than it's worth, I honestly don't know enough to know.
But, it was clearly possible to do so when Overground gained South London Line, Lea Valley, and GEML metro services away from existing TOCs that otherwise continued to operate.
(Silverlink was a bit different as the entire North London+GOBLIN operation was already quite segregated so I believe easier for TfL to annex, though someone like @ChiefPlanner will have better knowledge of that and how it compares to GN now.)

Just on that subject the Lea Valley line has the same problems. If the line via Tottenham Hale is closed, it is typical to divert via Seven Sisters. Is TfL treated on equal terms here with respect to thinning out of the service? I know long distance travellers (LNER) have less choice, but I assume some of the Stansted Express and London - Cambridge also get dropped.

I do think LNER probably get too many paths in disruption, but that is a different thread.

 

[bramling]

That's always been true of a lot of NR metro area operators though. TfL have proven their ability to quickly go in and do some easy wins that the NR TOCs have had decades to do, but didn't. For example the North London Line and the GEML and Lee Valley metro services are far improved, within only a few years of TfL operations.

Meanwhile TOCs, like Southern and Southeastern in particular, still have plenty they could do to improve the metro services, but don't. So although yes "the existing operator could do this today" , they have had decades to do so and haven't - if TfL are prepared to do so, I think let them try.

Admittedly - and I say this even as a proponent of devolution of metro services to TfL - it is less clear on the Great Northern Inners what improvements TfL could actually make.

Upgrading the rolling stock to 717s was a fantastic improvement and was imo the easiest win on the line - already done by GTR. Station refurbishments and improvements maybe?

But in terms of improving the train service, separating the Inners from the rest of GN may prove to be difficult or more trouble than it's worth, I honestly don't know enough to know.
But, it was clearly possible to do so when Overground gained South London Line, Lea Valley, and GEML metro services away from existing TOCs that otherwise continued to operate.
(Silverlink was a bit different as the entire North London+GOBLIN operation was already quite segregated so I believe easier for TfL to annex, though someone like @ChiefPlanner will have better knowledge of that and how it compares to GN now.)

TFL were able to achieve improvements on the ex Silverlink routes because a massive amount of money was spent, both on station staffing and on the infrastructure.

West Anglin didn’t get this, hence why there generally hasn’t been much of a change. This isn’t the 2000s and there isn’t a massive pit of money sloshing around.

GN has already had the new trains, the stations generally already have a fairly high level of staff presence, and aren’t in a particularly bad state, albeit some of the tunnel stations could be a touch smarter.

This doesn’t leave much for TFL unless you happen to like the colour orange.

IMO the priority for the route is sorting out the performance of *all* services. Currently the Fen Line is far and away the worst performing group, probably followed by Horsham-Peterborough and Cambridge-Brighton. These serve a lot more people than the inners, so this is where the focus should be. The Welwyn metro route is always going to be fairly insignificant, being heavily duplicated by the Northern and Piccadilly lines, and with the outer-suburban services taking the load from the busiest stations Welwyn GC, Hatfield and Potters Bar.

 

[rmHawk765]

As ever the problem has often been reliability, in particular driver-related cancellations.

I think we can agree that the amount of these cancellations has, for whatever reason, decreased considerably over the past year. There's not been a net gain for GN with the poor reliability of Cambridge trains but certainly the Inners have improved. As much as an 8tph peak Gordon Hill service will be required relatively soon to meet demand, it is important to first get 4+6 running reliably (which has finally been achieved). ETUG did indirectly quote a GTR representative ago when asked about if the 8tph peak service will return, and while they gave no useful information for the 'no' answer I don't see any real infrastructure reason why it can't be done. My only guess is platform capacity at Finsbury.

The 2tph since Covid is poor, however taking into account the fleet replacement as well, I don’t think anyone can say the inners have done badly over recent years.

The fleet replacement makes the 2tph just about be acceptable in terms of capacity but it is something I think TfL would look to do something about. They do not have any LO routes which see a higher off-peak frequency on weekdays than weekends.

Wasnt the May 2018 only 4tph weekdays? I don’t remember it being 4tph on Saturdays at any point

Yes, this is the only actual improvement over May 2018/19 that has been made, and I will check the timetable to see if the late evening service was better.

I think who ever operates the service they need to separate the drivers diagram.

I was going to mention this but have talked about it already on the forums. The GN Inners are a metro service - they need reliability. It's especially important here because the route uses entirely 6-coach trains and therefore relies on a high frequency to meet capacity requirements. 6x20m is relatively short for any London suburban route really. It isn't operated by 12-coach 700s that have plenty of spare space. I don't know how TfL arranges crewing on the North London Line and ELL (though we have all seen the shambles the NLL has turned into lately), but would it be possible to have the crew managed by TfL with trains still maintained by GN at Hornsey? GTR has no drivers and sometimes no trains at Hertford, no drivers at Welwyn, etc... and the current peak crew diagrams interwork between Welwyn & Hertford, which demands extremely good driver availability.

Granted the Hertford Branch is an issue, if you are diverting the ECML that way because of the incident on the main route, you are going to need to thin out the Hertford stoppers.

If there's disruption on the ECML south of Stevenage then the Hertford Loop is the diversion, and unfortunately this means that the local stopping services end up getting thinned out of cancelled all together.

This is why I have suggested several times the idea of loops at Gordon Hill. The Hertford Loop is a strategic diversion route and as such there are several benefits that would come with such an improvement. It is not realistic to drop down the service in the middle of the peak to 2 or even 1tph - as much as it may appear there are alternatives, in most cases they are poorly positioned and poorly served. It's just basic resilience really and it surprises me this has never really even been considered.

Regarding 4 trains per hour v 2 trains per hour late evening and Sundays. Are there perhaps concerns that enhancing the timetables to the fullest extent of 4 trains per hour looks good on paper but would be prone to ad hoc staffing unavailability cancellations?

4tph all-day, every day, is really the bare minimum for a busy London suburban route... but it is very well possible GTR still cannot achieve this reliably.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Sep 2026 ==

IMO the priority for the route is sorting out the performance of *all* services.

As you say, the fundamental issue with all TSGN services is crewing. It doesn't work. As much I would like to have an expected level of service on my local suburban line I still think the Cambridge & Fen line issues need resolving before anything else, and then the Brighton and Horsham services seriously need to have improvements made for reliability. But perhaps with TfL managing the Inners it would allow GTR to focus more on its completely broken outer/regional services?

 

[NCT]

The routes are still National Rail so the Network Code applies - when there are disruptions everyone shares the pain equally.

Beyond that, what TfL wants, rightly, is control of the financial risk and incentive mechanisms. A single organisation (a GBR 'unit') responding to two paymasters with different priorities wouldn't work, and even if you erect internal Chinese walls the day-to-day temptation of robbing Peter to pay Paul will always be there. The GN inners will need to be properly independent, just like the Weaver Line is independent from Greater Anglia.

 

[Olivine]

To do this there would have to be very tight - if not draconian - contractual arrangements to prevent TSGN treating the TfL services as the poor relation whenever there is service disruption. Notably it is a solution that TfL have never previously adopted.

It would be a bit of a weird solution though.

Devolution leads to London running its transport network (broadly speaking).

It then takes control of a line from said government.

It then contracts it back effectively to the government to run.

The government may or may not then hold TFL to account for performance that has been contracted back to the government.

I know this is hugely simplistic but it is a little strange from this point of view.

 

[Class15]

It would be a bit of a weird solution though.

Devolution leads to London running its transport network (broadly speaking).

It then takes control of a line from said government.

It then contracts it back effectively to the government to run.

The government may or may not then hold TFL to account for performance that has been contracted back to the government.

I know this is hugely simplistic but it is a little strange from this point of view.

Isn’t this how the RER (Paris) and BG Voz (Belgrade) work?

 

[bramling]

It would be a bit of a weird solution though.

Devolution leads to London running its transport network (broadly speaking).

It then takes control of a line from said government.

It then contracts it back effectively to the government to run.

The government may or may not then hold TFL to account for performance that has been contracted back to the government.

I know this is hugely simplistic but it is a little strange from this point of view.

It’s quite ridiculous really to be even having the discussion as to whether one government department can run a service better than another.

 

[Failed Unit]

The routes are still National Rail so the Network Code applies - when there are disruptions everyone shares the pain equally.

Beyond that, what TfL wants, rightly, is control of the financial risk and incentive mechanisms. A single organisation (a GBR 'unit') responding to two paymasters with different priorities wouldn't work, and even if you erect internal Chinese walls the day-to-day temptation of robbing Peter to pay Paul will always be there. The GN inners will need to be properly independent, just like the Weaver Line is independent from Greater Anglia.

I guess that could actually help if it was an independent operator. If Network Rail says ”Cut your capacity by 50%” that is still 2tph. Now the larger group does the same thing, but it choose to cut the stopping trains (better use of capacity granted)

 

[NCT]

It’s quite ridiculous really to be even having the discussion as to whether one government department can run a service better than another.

It's not ridiculous at all. It's a run-of-the-mill political argument about devolution happening just about the world over - about the optimal size and scale of organisations for economies of scale, accountability and flexibility.

 

[Olivine]

It's not ridiculous at all. It's a run-of-the-mill political argument about devolution happening just about the world over - about the optimal size and scale of organisations for economies of scale, accountability and flexibility.

Those three things are arguably squarely against the concept of devolution which the devolved transport system aims to achieve. It’s about having local control over local services to follow local priorities. Regardless of the real world outcomes of that, economies of scale, accountability and flexibility aren’t three aims of that.

 

[SynthD]

It’s quite ridiculous really to be even having the discussion as to whether one government department can run a service better than another.

Both will contract it out in very similar ways as a concession. I’d expect more difference in how they demand standards are kept up by the concession holder. But disruption recovery is out of their hands, all franchisees and concessionaires during lengthy issues have staff in trains wanting to get back to their shift end location. With that in mind, the passengers are well served by that company, their complaints may be about NR.

If the drivers are split, then would there be more mainline trains timetabled on the loop to keep track knowledge?