Gatwick Airport: Rail Replacement Bus disruption (06/05)

[philthetube]

It wasn’t possible to plan trains to run via Horsham-Dorking because it was closed for an engineering possession (yes, that happened again...). That route reopened at about 1530 when Network Rail and their contractors were fortunately able to lift the possession once they had cleared the work being undertaken. (Obviously that could potentially make that route more vulnerable to suspension in future, suffering as it does with ongoing embankment issues, electrical faults and suchlike.)

The Gatwick Airport - Three Bridges bus was timetabled to run every 5 minutes, with many more buses on standby. Eventually a total of 55ish extra buses were deployed/resourced in the middle of the day - quite an impressive feat for a Bank Holiday Sunday lunchtime. Unsurprisingly, this cleared the queues in an impressive time.

Unfortunately the type of buses being used - and standing passengers - meant the buses were forbidden from the motorway and as such each circuit took longer. The 12 per hour bus frequency also did not quite seem to account for the combination of air travellers and the sheer volume emerging from the trains from London. The Gatwick emergency queuing system, however, is a method which has been planned and practiced for many years, and was fully implemented for one of its first times in anger - hence various references on Twitter to being redirected via long detours on the ramps. It can swallow one hell of a lot of people, so this meant the service could still run, just flowing poorly until extra buses arrived.

Nothing I have seen indicates the problem can realistically be able to be deemed as severe for people returning from the South Coast in the evening, as although everywhere was crowded, additional trains and buses (kept on duty from earlier, or resourced later) did seem to pick up people promptly.

as discussed in another thread, neither bus type nor standing passengers prevents motorway use. Possibly open toppers might though I don't think so.

 

[Antman]

There are only a finite number of vehicles and drivers available for Rail Replacement work...unless you fancy decimating their normal duties the day before and after, with the resulting PR disaster that would cause!

And NR should take that into account and not schedule so much work on the same day, we're rather going round in circles here but surely it was obvious that on a May bank holiday a lot of people are going to be travelling between London and Brighton especially if we get some nice weather?

 

[broadgage]

Who books a holiday without researching how they're going to get home from the airport?

A reasonable person would observe that there is a station at the airport, and would also check the published timetable, but gain little thereby since many airline tickets and/or holidays have to be booked far in advance, long before knowing "if the trains will be running" on the day in question.

We should really be encouraging rail travel for environmental reasons, not putting passengers off by telling them that it is their fault for not checking again and making alternative plans.
The real message to come out of this is "do not count on the railway, best to drive instead"

And of course not everyone was going to/from the airport ! what about last minute day trips to the seaside ? to be encouraged perhaps ? well in fact the advice was to avoid travel to Brighton.

What a message that sends out about UK railways, firstly do not make any plans involving trains to or from the airport because AFTER you have booked your flight, it might be announced that that there wont be any trains.
Secondly, do not think about last minute leisure travel, at least not during fine weather or at holiday weekends.

Of course engineering work has to be done, but alternatives need to be put in place, preferably frequent FULL LENGTH trains via a diversionary route, or as a last resort ENOUGH BUSES to handle the numbers even if the weather turns warm.

 

[yorksrob]

It wasn’t possible to plan trains to run via Horsham-Dorking because it was closed for an engineering possession (yes, that happened again...).

Same old mistakes again.

 

[Antman]

Same old mistakes again.

Exactly it beggars belief that the Dorking route was closed at the same time. Would it have been possible to run trains between London and Brighton reversing at Horsham and at Three Bridges?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Err? Perhaaps because none of the bus companies wanted to do the job?

Which is yet another reason why a bank holiday is the wrong time to do it.

 

[yorksrob]

Exactly it beggars belief that the Dorking route was closed at the same time. Would it have been possible to run trains between London and Brighton reversing at Horsham and at Three Bridges?

Yes. The platforms at Horsham are definitely reversible, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one at Three Bridges with access to the Horsham line.

 

[markymark2000]

as discussed in another thread, neither bus type nor standing passengers prevents motorway use. Possibly open toppers might though I don't think so.

Generally operators will not use motorways if there are standing passengers due to safety. Many operators tend to beef up services which run on the motorway to avoid the likelihood of them having anyone standing.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Generally operators will not use motorways if there are standing passengers due to safety.

There is some irony to this given that motorways are statistically much safer than 70mph dual carriageways or 60mph single carriageways.

 

[The Planner]

And NR should take that into account and not schedule so much work on the same day, we're rather going round in circles here but surely it was obvious that on a May bank holiday a lot of people are going to be travelling between London and Brighton especially if we get some nice weather?

Like I have said before, the operators expect us to put the work into Bank Holidays, they do NOT have to accept our proposals.

 

[radamfi]

Unfortunately the type of buses being used - and standing passengers - meant the buses were forbidden from the motorway and as such each circuit took longer.

They are using the M23 this morning and they using BYD electric buses which have very few seats and are specifically designed so that most people stand.

 

[OxtedSignaller]

Like I have said before, the operators expect us to put the work into Bank Holidays, they do NOT have to accept our proposals.

Exactly. The alternative is a months weekend closures or I suppose they could always do it tomorrow morning when everyone is trying to get to work.

Problem with the Brighton Mainline is it’s such a busy line you are never going to be able to replicate the train capacity using buses. There is a never a quiet period you have Gatwick Airport for starters along with Brighton and the other large coastal settlements. I think what you’ll find is they’ve put off so much work in the past it’s all catching up now they are undertaking a big programme on the BML which hopefully once complete will mean less closures for a while.

 

[Skymonster]

For what it's worth, there are going to be week long closures of the BML in October of this year and February next year (2019), during the school half-term holidays, as part of Network Rail's Brighton Main Line Improvement Project, see:
http://brightonmainline.co.uk/

There will be no direct trains between Three Bridges and Brighton, or between Three Bridges and Lewes, and no trains at intermediate stations. There will be a service between Brighton and London, but these will run via Littlehampton and Horsham (so a direct indirect service, as it were!).

Trains between London and Gatwick will still run, as this is north of the blockade.

The dates are as follows:
Sat 20 to Sun 28 October 2018
Sat 16 to Sun 24 February 2019

I wonder if this will entail rail replacement bus pandemonium? I'd stay well clear if at all possible!

So all this engineering work is planned months - if not years - in advance, and yet the morons who are involved in planning it (NR, TOCs) cannot issue a timetable for October 2018 or February 2019 at this stage. Quite a lot of people will be booking holidays for October already. Lacking any meaningful information in the obvious places like the major journey planners, it is entirely reasonable that people book trips in the expectation that trains will be running and not even think about it again until shortly before they travel. If the engineering is planned so far in advance, the timetable / alternative arrangements should be available to the public that far in advance on the main journey planners like nationalrail. WHy would non-experienced travellers even think there would be another obscure website available when the usual planning tools give no indication disruption is planned so far in advance? Yet again it's a case of the railway being organised and run for the convenience of the railway, not the travelling public.

 

[Robertj21a]

Generally operators will not use motorways if there are standing passengers due to safety. Many operators tend to beef up services which run on the motorway to avoid the likelihood of them having anyone standing.

I'm not at all sure that's a general approach by operators. Buses, with standing, can and do regularly use parts of the motorway network.

 

[Antman]

The irony is that roadworks are often suspended over bank holiday weekends in complete contrast to railway thinking. Some engineering works today probably aren't a major problem but completely closing the Brighton mainline????

 

[diffident]

Has anything been put in place to stop the same chaos re-occurring today??

 

[theironroad]

Has anything been put in place to stop the same chaos re-occurring today??

Southern's Twitter feed last night said more buses had been sourced for today, so hopefully should be ok. Some people might avoid I'm guessing if they saw yesterday's news coverage of the delays.

 

[markymark2000]

I find it absolutely amazing that HTR didn't learn from their past mistakes. They seem to forget, if they get in 60 buses but only use 40, that is cheaper than getting 40 buses but needing 60. All the compensation and the cost for emergency rail replacements (which is significantly more costly than getting buses well in advance) and then it looks like BTP and extra staff were drafted in to assist. All of that added up must cost more than ordering extra buses in the first place?

After looking at some of the videos, I think it could have been managed a lot better as well at Gatwick. The Sun video was the best and showed the 'boarding area' properly. Why didn't they make it into 2 stands? Use crowd control between the two. You can get the click counter things cheap. Get the capacity of the bus, let people through upto the capacity of the bus, open lane 2 and do the same. By the time both bus 1 is loaded and heading off, the next bus can pull in and then you start on lane 1. It can be a bit of a mess if buses don't park straight (or as straight as possible obviously). Yes, it is a tiny bit of messing around and you need staff at each stand but it allows 2 buses to be loaded at the same time. If you are loading one bus at a time, it is going to take longer and queues will back up. There are probably buses at the back of the queue which could have been there and back in the time they are shuffling up to be boarded (slight exaggeration).

Crowd control is simple. If you mess around though, people do get agitated and will eventually fight and scuffle for a bus. It seems to be the slowest crowd control combined with a lack of buses. Is it any wonder it turned into chaos. This is why the MegaFranchise should never have happened. Too many works happen at the same time so the few planners they have have to create too many plans etc. Smaller franchises know their lines better and you are likely to employ someone who lives along the line (better knowledge again). Also with smaller franchises ran by different operators, it helps get more buses in (different operators advertise for buses in different places. Most bus companies don't sign up to loads of different companies for quotes. They sign up for one or two or they get spammed with emails). Also some operators refuse to work for certain companies (for example some operators won't do anything for Arriva as they apparently underpay, late pay or just don't pay at all sometimes).

I'm not at all sure that's a general approach by operators. Buses, with standing, can and do regularly use parts of the motorway network.

It is a general approach among bigger operators. If they can avoid standing passengers on the motorway, they will do it. Yes, sometimes it can and will happen unexpected rises in demand and things like that but then they have spare buses ready. to intercept if the next bus is the same. A driver in my local area was telling me Stagecoach have a thing about standing on motorways. hence the deckers on the motorway route (even though the passenger numbers rarely go above a single decker. When there is an unexpected rise in demand, the buses are there. The rises in demand are generally just fully seating a decker so nothing major but it stops people standing on the bus while it uses the motorway). Also Portsmouth Park and Ride website says in the FAQs people can't stand due to safety reasons so though not general approach, it isn't unheard of for operators to not allow or rule out any possibility of passengers standing on the bus while on the motorway.

 

[yorksrob]

If I were visiting Eastbourne, I think I'd go via Tunbridge Wells Central.

 

[Robertj21a]

As others have suggested this shouldn't have happened. No lessons from Redhill appear to have been taken into account and the use of such small buses is fairly crazy.
At the very least they should have planned way in advance to contract in extra buses, even if only for contingency.

 

[tsr]

as discussed in another thread, neither bus type nor standing passengers prevents motorway use. Possibly open toppers might though I don't think so.

They are using the M23 this morning and they using BYD electric buses which have very few seats and are specifically designed so that most people stand.

I'm not at all sure that's a general approach by operators. Buses, with standing, can and do regularly use parts of the motorway network.

Sussex Police explicitly banned the RRBs from operating on the motorway yesterday due to standing passengers, and buses loaded with standing passengers will divert away from the motorway today. This is the plan being adhered to by GTR / NwR / Gatwick Airport Ltd.

I do agree this may not bear any resemblance to the statistical analysis of road accidents, certainly comparing the risk of a longer drive around the local A and B roads, but it is most definitely the plan insisted upon by the Roads Policing unit of the local police.

 

[Llanigraham]

Which is yet another reason why a bank holiday is the wrong time to do it.

So when do you expect NR to arrange for it to be done?
As far as I can see whatever day will upset someone, and doing it on a Bank Holiday is better than never.

 

[Llanigraham]

Exactly. The alternative is a months weekend closures or I suppose they could always do it tomorrow morning when everyone is trying to get to work.

Problem with the Brighton Mainline is it’s such a busy line you are never going to be able to replicate the train capacity using buses. There is a never a quiet period you have Gatwick Airport for starters along with Brighton and the other large coastal settlements. I think what you’ll find is they’ve put off so much work in the past it’s all catching up now they are undertaking a big programme on the BML which hopefully once complete will mean less closures for a while.

Quite!!
But as usual some people cannot see that and carry on moaning.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

The irony is that roadworks are often suspended over bank holiday weekends in complete contrast to railway thinking. Some engineering works today probably aren't a major problem but completely closing the Brighton mainline????

And yesterday the Dorking - Horsham line - about the least used bit of electrified 2 track railway in the UK , but critical for a diversionary route (were one even considered - it clearly was not - about the only railway you could take a block on , provided the main line was open for service , with truly minimal local passenger impact) - the old adage of the many millions wasted on the "7 day Railway" intiative around 2010 ,where there is always one route open at all times to the Sussex Coast was clearly either ignored, or more likely forgotten. Senior planning staff retirements at the TOC may have been a factor.

Bus costs clearly ultra excessive (even more so now with 40 or so called in at last minute) ,some prudent planning would have allowed say 12 car through working , keeping people on trains and reducing the bus element considerably. Even the DfT would have allowed SN a derogation to thin normal services elsewhere to resource this operation , knowing full well it takes extra driver resources.

Reputational risk to the railway - economic damage to the Sussex coast.

 

[RJ]

There are only a finite number of vehicles and drivers available for Rail Replacement work...unless you fancy decimating their normal duties the day before and after, with the resulting PR disaster that would cause!

There are quite a few of us that do rail replacement on weekends but don't drive during the week!

GTR's failure to plan adequate replacement transport (inc. possible buses and diverted trains via Dorking) is symptomatic of their apparent inability to learn from previous mistakes, or simply their unwillingness to do so, putting the cost of adequate alternative transport as too high compared with possible compensation payments. I don't really know which to believe, but my years of experience at the hands of GTR would point me to utter incompetence as the cause.

Not quite sure how the planning of alternative transport works in this part of the world, but repeatedly having this kind of chaos which attracts attention from the national press suggests that something is not quite right with the process.

 

[London Trains]

Dorking to Horsham being shut is simply a shambles. It can shut ANY other Sunday in the year as it has no service! But they choose to shut it when it could help thousands of passengers on the BML!

 

[RJ]

Unfortunately the type of buses being used - and standing passengers - meant the buses were forbidden from the motorway and as such each circuit took longer.

Forbidding the buses from using the motorway was unnecessary. I was driving a red London bus on rail replacement on the Paddington to Maidenhead line over the weekend. Some standees, bus limited to 65mph, the M4 was part of the route between Hayes and Slough.

 

[Robertj21a]

Sussex Police explicitly banned the RRBs from operating on the motorway yesterday due to standing passengers, and buses loaded with standing passengers will divert away from the motorway today. This is the plan being adhered to by GTR / NwR / Gatwick Airport Ltd.

I do agree this may not bear any resemblance to the statistical analysis of road accidents, certainly comparing the risk of a longer drive around the local A and B roads, but it is most definitely the plan insisted upon by the Roads Policing unit of the local police.

I'm really very surprised if the police insisted on them not using the motorway. It suggests they aren't aware of all the facts. It's also unusual for the police to get involved in such matters. Better communication, by all parties, appears to be needed, urgently.

 

[EM2]

A reasonable person would observe that there is a station at the airport, and would also check the published timetable, but gain little thereby since many airline tickets and/or holidays have to be booked far in advance, long before knowing "if the trains will be running" on the day in question.

Maybe I'm just the sort of person who plans to the nth degree. I have a plan, a backup plan, and a backup backup plan. I went to Frankfurt recently, and asked a friend who had much better German than me to check the DB website and confirm that there were no problems on the trains, as soon as the plane had landed.

And of course not everyone was going to/from the airport ! what about last minute day trips to the seaside ? to be encouraged perhaps ? well in fact the advice was to avoid travel to Brighton.

If I'd thought of going to Brighton, and saw there were RRBs running, I would have gone somewhere else.

 

[Joe Paxton]

...
If I'd thought of going to Brighton, and saw there were RRBs running, I would have gone somewhere else.

That I agree with (for pax doing a day trip from London), especially on a nice sunny day.

Alas for many, I think checking the travel situation / train times only happens once the decision has been made.