GWR daily cancellations

[sp503]

Here’s a suggestion. Network Rail needs more time to work on GWML after all the shambles last year / earlier this year; GWR doesn’t have enough drivers. Why not significantly axing Reading - Paddington services on Sundays and push passengers to SWR and Elizabeth Line instead? Despite their longer journeys, the delay might be less than GWR having to cancel so many services all over the place. (And if GWR advertises the cancellations early enough, they don’t even need to make delay repays despite passengers’ journeys effectively being delayed by over an hour…)

 

[GoneSouth]

No other role I’ve ever seen have shifts like train crew shifts. Shift work is one thing, our shift work is something else. Bear in mind pretty much all train crew come from other professions and haven’t always been train crew, so it’s not like we’re in a little bubble.

Bus drivers, and for half the money.

The fact that you say drivers come from other professions shows that despite shift work it’s still a very attractive place to work.

I’m speaking as someone who’s generally on the side of train crew in most of the recent disputes, but as a passenger it’s becoming much more difficult and expensive to do anything I need to do because of the way the railway is managed.

 

[JN114]

Simply, because the Elizabeth line does not have the capacity to absorb GWR’s passengers as well as its own; and Elizabeth line doesn’t have the resources to run additional services to cope with the demand that would ensue.

A weekend service to/from the West of England can have easily north of 900 passengers onboard at Paddington when there’s zero disruption.

***

There isn’t a palatable, quick solution to this.

Services at weekends are already bursting at the seams with overcrowding.

There aren’t the resources to run anywhere near the planned weekend service; let alone any extras to relieve that overcrowding.

Any exercise to bring Sunday into the working week properly will involve recruiting and training a significant headcount increase - and thus be years down the line.

With the level of overcrowding as it is, you can’t then reduce the service further to match crew levels.

You could (theoretically) make traincrew diagrams more efficient; but that efficiency comes at the expense of the flexibility that is used on the day to recover from disruption. Some would even argue we’ve already gone too far in this regard and we need a return to less efficient but more resilient diagramming to reflect the typical level of disruption encountered as opposed to planning a perfectly ontime railway

 

[Moderating team]

Until such times as a solution is found i.e. bringing Sundays into the working week nothing will change. As some posters have stated the ball is now in the Secretary of State's court. We will therefore draw this one to a close until such times as a solution to this issue is found.