Even more delays (somehow.)

[william.martin]

Good evening everybody (or whatever equivalent it is for when you read this.) After reading al78's post on the "[Train Company] Apologizes for the Delay/Cancellation" thread, I decided to research further from the article he posted Here


So after doing more research I found this, an article by the guardian: And this:

Here is the link to the website.
Anyway, the amount of delays has rised since last year which means one thing: the railways are getting worse, and I want to know why, what are TOCS doing wrong? Why are people (certainly myself) being put off using the railway for there commute?
Well, you could argue that strikes are partially the cause however the main point about this thread is about the other multitudes of potential delay causes that are on the rise and here is the big question?
WHAT ARE THE RAILWAYS DOING SO MUCH WORSE AT THAN PREVIOUS YEARS?
So surely there must be a reason other than the strikes and I (and hopefully at least 1 or 2 other forum users) would like to know the answer.
In my mind if the railways get any more unreliable people shall simply use the car or coach.
So what are the railways doing wrong and is it a avoidable problem as far as TOC's are concerned (obviously things like sick leave and the careers available not being popular are classed as "unavoidable disruption")
However after a few scrolls through RTT at Euston I found the following causes for cancellation today (30/12/22)
1 train fault.
5 "issue with train crew"
1 Due to over running engineering works (showed as due to late arrival of inbound service)
2 Severe flooding.
4 Late running.
1 Signalling failure.
1 Unknown.
2 Temporary speed restriction due to temperature of the track.
Total cancellations: 17
Please note that I have not included the duplicate delay reason as the trains did run to the same destination at the same time and via the same places but was duplicate on the system, these were all Avanti voyager services.

So here is the second main question:
WHAT ARE THE RAILWAYS GOING TO DO TO SOLVE THIS ALL TO COMMON ISSUE?

A reply would be greatly appreciated as maybe NR already have a master plan and it has just gone by without me noticing, if not I would like to know your thoughts on the matter.
Kind regards, Will.

Explanation of acronyms:

URL = Uniform resource locator.
TOC = Train operating company.
RTT = Real time trains (website/ app)
NR = National rail

Thanks and credit for resources and information:
Users: @al78
Websites: Guardian, Yahoo

 

[Horizon22]

Good evening everybody (or whatever equivalent it is for when you read this.) After reading al78's post on the "[Train Company] Apologizes for the Delay/Cancellation" thread, I decided to research further from the article he posted Here


So after doing more research I found this, an article by the guardian: And this:

Here is the link to the website.
Anyway, the amount of delays has rised since last year which means one thing: the railways are getting worse, and I want to know why, what are TOCS doing wrong? Why are people (certainly myself) being put off using the railway for there commute?

That's an incorrect assumption. Whilst the railways might indeed be getting worse from a number of quantitative and qualitiative metrics, correlation does not equal causation in this regard. An increase in delays may well be due to more trains running compared to 2021 with many operators still ramping up post-Covid. If you keep the same capacity and add more flow into it (i.e trains), the likelihood of them to impact each other is increased (and not just proportionally); you should have seen how well trains ran in Spring 2020 when the service was reduced to almost 50%! The more interesting - and probably more representative - comparison would be with 2019. Also for many of those places, 1-2 minutes really is very little indeed. Most train companies and delay attribution wouldn't kick in until 3 minutes. At some of those Overground stations for instance that accounts for the vast majority of the overall delay. Otherwise the reasoning is complex, but you better believe that industrial action, and the whole context of that about staffing has had a critical impact.

A better source (on cancellations) is this Guardian article - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-in-great-britain-hit-highest-level-on-record

Analysis of ORR figures by the Guardian shows that 187,000 trains were fully cancelled and 127,000 partly cancelled in the year to 15 October, the equivalent of 860 a day. The figures exclude trains cancelled because of strike action.

This works out as 3.8% of planned services – meaning one in 26 rail journeys was disrupted or cancelled last year – the highest proportion since records began in 2014-15.

This is up from 2.9% in the year to October 2019 and 3.1% over the same period in 2018. The number of cancellations fell sharply in 2020 and early 2021 because of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Well, you could argue that strikes are partially the cause however the main point about this thread is about the other multitudes of potential delay causes that are on the rise and here is the big question?
WHAT ARE THE RAILWAYS DOING SO MUCH WORSE AT THAN PREVIOUS YEARS?
So surely there must be a reason other than the strikes and I (and hopefully at least 1 or 2 other forum users) would like to know the answer.
In my mind if the railways get any more unreliable people shall simply use the car or coach.
So what are the railways doing wrong and is it a avoidable problem as far as TOC's are concerned (obviously things like sick leave and the careers available not being popular are classed as "unavoidable disruption")

Again, you're asking the wrong sorts of questions and coming at this from a viewpoint that isn't necessary correct at a fundamental level. However I am sure many - including myself - are happy to talk to you about knock-on disruption and it's impacts. A better analysis would to be see of all the overall disruption, what % was attributed to various causes (e.g. fleet, crew, weather, external events etc.) The industry holds this data, and I'm pretty sure it's open-source, whether it's been analysed is another matter.

Some things are avoidable and some things aren't. Not sure what you mean with regards to the "careers available"? And you can argue that "sick leave" is avoidable by having suitable available spare resource based on an expected average % of sickness. That's part of the rostering and resourcing side of TOCs.

However after a few scrolls through RTT at Euston I found the following causes for cancellation today (30/12/22)
1 train fault.
5 "issue with train crew"
1 Due to over running engineering works (showed as due to late arrival of inbound service)
2 Severe flooding.
4 Late running.
1 Signalling failure.
1 Unknown.
2 Temporary speed restriction due to temperature of the track.

So be careful not to take all of those at face value. At Euston, "issue with train crew", "severe flooding" and "late running" could all be related to the poor weather as listed in this thread. These delay reasons are all input manually by customer information staff at stations or more likely in control. Different TOC's have different methods of trying to assess this.

For instance is your immediate issue related to a wider issue? As an example, could the issue with "late running" be because the train has been delayed by 60+ minutes due to severe flooding? And have the train crew gone over their hours accordingly which could be "an issue" with train crew? Different companies and even different individuals will interpret this differently.

WHAT ARE THE RAILWAYS GOING TO DO TO SOLVE THIS ALL TO COMMON ISSUE?

I'm not even sure I know that that means? Could you elaborate? Delays are never going to be "solved". They can certainly be reduced of course and trust me there are swathes of people working in performance teams at TOCs and Network Rail looking at this as part of their day-jobs. Delays and cancellations are linked but are not the same thing. As you stated earlier, ongoing industrial action, restrictive practices on staffing - caused by certain tensions with the Department for Transport - and funding crises are no doubt feeding into this. You ask a big question for which there are no doubt a huge range of opinions!

 

[ainsworth74]

This has cropped up across multiple threads in various guises so we're not going keep going here now that @Horizon22 has given such a comprehensive reply.