Consequences of Short Forms.

[F Great Eastern]

Should there be such penalties when the short forms go over a certain level?

Should there be exceptions for stock that is getting refurbished or introduced into service or different levels of stock that is of a certain age?

Just think out loud, because of the daily shenanigans on Greater Anglia and the fact some other operators seem to be dealing with more than normal as well.

Obviously there are situations where short forms cannot be avoided on a small number of services, but when it becomes commonplace, should season ticket holders get a few percent refund?

 

[Ianno87]

Some franchises (at least) have targets set by DfT for the maximum number of short formations they are permitted to have.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I would be surprised if GA had this in their franchise, but it would be good if someone could confirm.

Not uncommon to see up to 60 reports on Journeycheck of short forms at one time, and I'm not even sure everything is being reported on there, since I was on a couple of trains recently that didn't show up.

 

[Domh245]

I would be surprised if GA had this in their franchise, but it would be good if someone could confirm.

Not uncommon to see up to 60 reports on Journeycheck of short forms at one time, and I'm not even sure everything is being reported on there, since I was on a couple of trains recently that didn't show up.

Yep, plenty of details in the franchise agreement on short formations - how they are calculated, when they are calculated, the means by which failures will be dealt with, and details of what the expected levels should be. Pages 397 - 466 covers short formations (+ some other performance related things in between the two extremities - cancellations, delay minutes, etc)

The target performance should be 0.00%, the breach performance level is ~0.6% and the Default performance level is ~0.75%

 

[Starmill]

There is a potential for penalties already - refer to the Franchise Agreement. Although don't necessarily expect things to be comparable between one franchise and the next!

 

[Alfie1014]

It’s certanly been pretty awful of late and the recent press release about things improving seems to have been somewhat premature! The published performance figures for Period 4 on their website claims only 110 short forms. This works out just over 5 per working day and with them currently running 34115 train per period that comes out at 0.33% well short of breach (0.59) or default (0.76). That said period 3 was 158 which was around 0.46%.

There seems to lie the problem; the benchmarks seem way too low as we’ve seen it’s not un-common for there to be 50-60 short forms a day advertised on Twitter or JourneyCheck. To be fair to them shortforming a contra peak service is not going have an effect of passenger experience, but too many of the ‘proper’ peak trains and many of the rural services do not seem to be captured adequately.

Possibly something Transport Focus should consider investigating?

 

[Domh245]

I suppose a more interesting and reflective way to measure it would be to do it on a "PiXC" (passengers in excess of capacity) basis - if you substitute a 153 for a 156 on a quiet off peak service, and there is little impact on passengers, then that shouldn't carry the same weighting as subbing a 4 car for a 12 car (which is normally full and standing) - obviously it's far more difficult to do something like that, especially as the TOCs will argue that the number of passengers carried (or affected) will vary from day to day, depending on weather, events, etc, whilst they would probably be assessed against predetermined average values, but it certainly seems a good way to accurately punish a TOC for impacting passengers.

 

[F Great Eastern]

It’s certanly been pretty awful of late and the recent press release about things improving seems to have been somewhat premature! The published performance figures for Period 4 on their website claims only 110 short forms.

Well, I'd love to know what technicality they are using to exclude some of the short forms for the figures, because that seems way too low compared to what I am seeing.

Are there some circumstances were a short form can be excluded from the figures, such as during service disruption, where they could attribute short forms due to this to help the figures a little bit?

I guess there might also come a point if the figures are getting tight that it might be beneficial to cancel a train so it adds to the cancellation numbers rather than the short form numbers.

There seems to lie the problem; the benchmarks seem way too low as we’ve seen it’s not un-common for there to be 50-60 short forms a day advertised on Twitter or JourneyCheck. To be fair to them shortforming a contra peak service is not going have an effect of passenger experience, but too many of the ‘proper’ peak trains and many of the rural services do not seem to be captured adequately.

I can look at JourneyCheck in the morning and I can see 40-50 short forms on a regular basis in morning and evening peak and one occasion it was closer to 60. Yet Abellio claim they're only short forming on average 5 a day. Something is not right here is it?

If I had time I'd read the franchise agreement and see what is counted as a short form as far as performance metrics are concerned, but the ludicrous number of pages in that document means I'll probably give it a miss.

 

[F Great Eastern]

I suppose a more interesting and reflective way to measure it would be to do it on a "PiXC" (passengers in excess of capacity) basis - if you substitute a 153 for a 156 on a quiet off peak service, and there is little impact on passengers, then that shouldn't carry the same weighting as subbing a 4 car for a 12 car (which is normally full and standing) - obviously it's far more difficult to do something like that, especially as the TOCs will argue that the number of passengers carried (or affected) will vary from day to day, depending on weather, events, etc, whilst they would probably be assessed against predetermined average values, but it certainly seems a good way to accurately punish a TOC for impacting passengers.

Certainly there needs to be a way of measuring it that is better than it is now.

As someone who is rarely on the west side it shocked me when I was alerted to the 4 cars there replacing 12 cars, I thought it possibly couldn't be any worse that it was on the east side but I was clearly wrong

On the subject of 153s there's been a few recently coupled together and subbing for other two car units with diagrams normally operated by 153s cancelled. I wonder if that is to try and bring the short form numbers down to minimise hitting the trigger figures more than anything else.

 

[theageofthetra]

I'd like to see proper financial penalties for this as well as toilets locked out or defective heat/aircon.

It might actually put some focus onto sorting these issues out.

 

[Alfie1014]

If I had time I'd read the franchise agreement and see what is counted as a short form as far as performance metrics are concerned, but the ludicrous number of pages in that document means I'll probably give it a miss.

I don't think you'll find it, the public version dates from franchise award and there are many redacted measures and the train plan whch it is based on is not included in it. It will be updated every timetable (and diagram) change as well. You could try a FOI request to the DfT for the data or raise it with your MP?

 

[Dieseldriver]

I'd like to see proper financial penalties for this as well as toilets locked out or defective heat/aircon.

It might actually put some focus onto sorting these issues out.

Ditto. To be honest, I find it utterly embarrassing how often these problems occur.

 

[skyhigh]

It’s certanly been pretty awful of late and the recent press release about things improving seems to have been somewhat premature! The published performance figures for Period 4 on their website claims only 110 short forms. This works out just over 5 per working day and with them currently running 34115 train per period that comes out at 0.33% well short of breach (0.59) or default (0.76). That said period 3 was 158 which was around 0.46%.

There seems to lie the problem; the benchmarks seem way too low as we’ve seen it’s not un-common for there to be 50-60 short forms a day advertised on Twitter or JourneyCheck. To be fair to them shortforming a contra peak service is not going have an effect of passenger experience, but too many of the ‘proper’ peak trains and many of the rural services do not seem to be captured adequately.

Possibly something Transport Focus should consider investigating?

Is it possible short forms are measured by diagram, as opposed to services?

 

[F Great Eastern]

Is it possible short forms are measured by diagram, as opposed to services?

GA themselves define short forms as: "Trains which have operated a service with a shorter formation of carriages than advertised."

They have 30 short forms between 17:00 and 21:00 alone tonight and are at around 150 for the week based on JourneyCheck. Yet according to their stats they only had 110 in the whole of the last 4 weeks.

Clearly there are some short forms being excluded from the figures, but the performance figures make no reference to any exclusions, which in turn means that whilst the description of the performance metric says that it is the number of trains that have operated with a shorter formation than advertised, in reality it isn't because so many of such trains appear to being excluded from the figures.