Missing a train due to a 'false' delay

[johntea]

An interesting situation earlier in the week where a 22:37 departure from Leeds was advertised as delayed and actually departing at 22:45 for at least an hour in advance of the departure (was still shown as 22:45 until around 22:30 when it suddenly decided it was on time again!). It actually ended up departing around 22:38!

It got me thinking, if you had missed the train due to timing your arrival at the platform based on the delay information rather than the scheduled departure time would you be entitled to anything? (This was the last train of the night too to certain stations!)

8 minutes is probably a less extreme example, but maybe some services in the past have shown a 20-30 minute delay only to get their foot down and only depart 5-10 minutes late?

 

[_toommm_]

Passengers have an obligation to get to the station for the booked departure time, and if common sense applies, a little before. Leaving it to the last minute like that would more than likely get no sympathy from station staff as you weren't there for the booked departure, and there's nothing the railway can do - that is, if you're starting your journey. Of course if you miss your train because of previous delays that's a whole new ball park...

 

[Bovverboy]

Passengers have an obligation to get to the station for the booked departure time, and if common sense applies, a little before. Leaving it to the last minute like that would more than likely get no sympathy from station staff as you weren't there for the booked departure, and there's nothing the railway can do - that is, if you're starting your journey. Of course if you miss your train because of previous delays that's a whole new ball park...

That makes a nonsense of showing estimated departure times - if they're not going to be accurate, why have them?

Going back to the OP, I presume the night in question would be last Thursday, and the train the 2237 Leeds - Sheffield. The incoming train, 2109 ex-Sheffield, left Sheffield ten minutes late and it would be that fact which predicted an eight-minute late departure for the 2237. The 2109 is actually due Leeds at 2227, but on Thursday (according to RTT) it arrived at 2237 and departed (on the 2237) at 2239.

The IT which predicts delays is capable of taking into account turnround/recovery times, but it doesn't always do so. About three years ago I came close to missing an EMT Liverpool train at Nottingham, in circumstances similar to the above. I didn't know about RTT at the time, and therefore wouldn't have known how to track a train's progress. Passengers shouldn't need to rely on RTT, though, the information they are presented with should be reasonably accurate.

Note that in both the above cases, it wasn't a case of a train making good progress and catching time up, that is usually quite difficult to do anyway due to present-day scheduling being based pretty well on the absolute limit of a train's capability.

A situation with obvious parallels occurs regularly at Manchester Victoria. Most arrivals ex-Liverpool (stopper) are scheduled to go up to the reversing siding for half an hour or so, until it's close enough to departure time. Sometimes the unit will instead remain in a platform at Victoria. When it becomes the time the unit should have been departing the reversing siding, but the system doesn't detect it doing so (for the obvious reason!) the train is predicted to depart for Liverpool one minute late. This becomes two minutes, then three minutes, then simply 'delay'. Almost at normal departure time the screens decide that the train is going to leave on time after all. I haven't witnessed anyone actually being left behind, but the practice doesn't inspire confidence. But then Manchester Victoria, for me, always appears disorganised anyway.

 

[185143]

How about if a passenger sees a delay-chooses to retire to the station pub and misses the train whilst still on station premises due to the train leaving ewrlier than advertised...?

 

[_toommm_]

That makes a nonsense of showing estimated departure times - if they're not going to be accurate, why have them?

Going back to the OP, I presume the night in question would be last Thursday, and the train the 2237 Leeds - Sheffield. The incoming train, 2109 ex-Sheffield, left Sheffield ten minutes late and it would be that fact which predicted an eight-minute late departure for the 2237. The 2109 is actually due Leeds at 2227, but on Thursday (according to RTT) it arrived at 2237 and departed 2239.

The IT which predicts delays is capable of taking into account turnround/recovery times, but it doesn't always do so. About three years ago I came close to missing an EMT Liverpool train at Nottingham, in circumstances similar to the above. I didn't know about RTT at the time, and therefore wouldn't have known how to track a train's progress. Passengers shouldn't need to rely on RTT, though, the information they are presented with should be reasonably accurate.

Note that in both the above cases, it wasn't a case of a train making good progress and catching time up, that is usually quite difficult to do anyway due to present-day scheduling being based pretty well on the absolute limit of a train's capability.

A situation with obvious parallels occurs regularly at Manchester Victoria. Most arrivals ex-Liverpool (stopper) are scheduled to go up to the reversing siding for half an hour or so, until it's close enough to departure time. Sometimes the unit will instead remain in a platform at Victoria. When it becomes the time the unit should have been departing the reversing siding, but the system doesn't detect it doing so (for the obvious reason!) the train is predicted to depart for Liverpool one minute late. This becomes two minutes, then three minutes, then simply 'delay'. Almost at normal departure time the screens decide that the train is going to leave on time after all. I haven't witnessed anyone actually being left behind, but the practice doesn't inspire confidence. But then Manchester Victoria, for me, always appears disorganised anyway.

You've part answered your own question in the opening paragraph of your reply by using the word 'estimate' - the computer can only know where the train is vs. where it should be based on the train going over certain points of the network (as I'm sure you know), so without reliable GPS technology it's impossible to know where the train is every minute of its journey. The computer has to predict, look if there's any flexibility built into the timetable then build a delay curve to say 'oh yes, it should make up 2 minutes by x station, 5 minutes by y station'.

The computer is only as good as itself. And as we know, modern technology isn't perfect, but the original point is still valid. You should aim to get to your departure station within time. Unless the train is definitively cancelled, only then can you wander off until the next departure. Common sense really.

 

[_toommm_]

How about if a passenger sees a delay-chooses to retire to the station pub and misses the train whilst still on station premises due to the train leaving ewrlier than advertised...?

That's purely theoretical, as is quite a bit of the forum... lots of 'What if xyz?' but no definitive 'This is abc!'

'Sorry I missed the train! I was in the pub! Silly TOC!'

 

[AlterEgo]

The estimated time is just an estimate. It doesn’t change the passenger’s obligation, and the good common sense, to be at the station in good time for the timetabled, not estimated departure time.

The reason estimated times are shown is simply to set an expectation, not to provide certainty.

 

[Y Ddraig Coch]

How about if a passenger sees a delay-chooses to retire to the station pub and misses the train whilst still on station premises due to the train leaving ewrlier than advertised...?

This situation actually happened to me and a friend heading home form football last year.

Last train from Chester to Llandudno Junction due to depart 00.38 , comes up as DELAYED , we seek advice, told broken down, new crew needed , new train to be found etc etc, will be at least 3 hours, this is the last train of the evening. it then cam up on the PIS as 03.30 expected.

Was a cold night, waiting room full, I went and put a sober voice on and convinced the hotel up the road to open the bar for me and my friend.

After approx 90 mins , bar man says, I really cant stay any longer, we say ok and head back to the station, still, over an hour ahead of the delay which was still showing the same time on NRE on my phone.

Get to the station , all is quiet, train had left, only about 30 mins late, spoke to the guy in the office, he said it was our fault for leaving, I disagreed and said that NRE was still showing 03.30 . he said nothing he could do, I said call and arrange a taxi, he said control wouldn't do that, I said, you wont know without asking , he said they wont do it, I said ask...... long argument short, control agreed and we got a taxi from Chester home to Llandudno

Right or wrong that is what happened .

 

[philthetube]

The estimated time is just an estimate. It doesn’t change the passenger’s obligation, and the good common sense, to be at the station in good time for the timetabled, not estimated departure time.

The reason estimated times are shown is simply to set an expectation, not to provide certainty.

As a passenger if I see a time displayed on an official looking board in a station I assume that someone knows what they are doing and that it will be correct, there are no indications that they are estimated times, if a train is shown 10 late I am not going to arrive 9 late, but I am not going to worry about a couple of mins. If estimates they should be clearly shown as such.

 

[AlterEgo]

As a passenger if I see a time displayed on an official looking board in a station I assume that someone knows what they are doing and that it will be correct, there are no indications that they are estimated times, if a train is shown 10 late I am not going to arrive 9 late, but I am not going to worry about a couple of mins. If estimates they should be clearly shown as such.

It still doesn’t change your obligation to be at the station for the original departure time, or common sense.

The system does know what it’s doing but occasionally a train will be diverted via a shorter route, expressed to skip stops or a unit rolled over at a major station to ensure the train keeps time.

It’s not a good idea to leave the station when a delay is announced.

 

[_toommm_]

As a passenger if I see a time displayed on an official looking board in a station I assume that someone knows what they are doing and that it will be correct, there are no indications that they are estimated times, if a train is shown 10 late I am not going to arrive 9 late, but I am not going to worry about a couple of mins. If estimates they should be clearly shown as such.

But the screen says 'Expected' - the semantics of the very same piece of lexis is that it means thst is when it should come, just like 'the doctors expected me to give birth early August' isn't 100% set in stone

 

[xfield]

How about if a passenger sees a delay-chooses to retire to the station pub and misses the train whilst still on station premises due to the train leaving ewrlier than advertised...?

I've been in exactly that position - arrived to find my train had been delayed 30 mins, so me and a colleague went to the bar, and thankfully sat in eyeline of a departure board. The board updated and our platform had changed from 1 to 10, and we were departing in five minutes. I guess they'd decided two services perhaps delayed by 15 minutes each was better than the one by 30 minutes (for example - I've no idea what service our replacement train came from).

 

[LowLevel]

So if a train is half an hour late off an inward working with a short turnaround and the TOC has a unit come good off maintenance 10 minutes before the original scheduled departure and a crew to operate it, they should never bother with service recovery?

You can guarantee whenever a train is heavily delayed there will be some folk beavering around trying to come up with ways to correct it.

I always advise people not to go far in these sort of situations because if something changes and we can get going, we will do.

 

[Tomnick]

I do think that this is, to a certain extent at least, a consequence of the information systems becoming too clever for their own good. They do seem to routinely predict a delay on an originating service based on the delay to the previous working (at our place, possibly since resignalling and the introduction of ARS meant that the two services had to be correctly associated in the timetable file?), which is all well and good until a set swap is arranged to recover things. I don’t know how easy it is to override - if anyone even thinks to override it - but I’ve seen enough services shown with a hefty delay contradicted by a manually inserted line of text (“this train will depart on time”) below to think that it’s not easy.

Better to be wrongly told that it’s on time and have to hang around for a bit than to be wrongly told that it’s late and end up missing it?

 

[EM2]

That makes a nonsense of showing estimated departure times - if they're not going to be accurate, why have them?

Can you see the contradiction here?

 

[SaveECRewards]

I almost missed a flight due to a similar situation. I think the answer to this is the same for the train as it was for the plane. This was in Schiphol, flight shown as 2 hour delay but as I was flying KLM and it's their home base they managed to get a replacement aircraft and remove the delay. I got the famous automated announcement "X and Y travelling to London on flight KLxxxx you are delaying the flight, please proceed now to gate D6 or we'll proceed to offload your luggage"

Unless a member of staff specifically tells you that the service will be definitely delayed so it's OK to head to the pub then it's your responsibility to keep up to date in case information changes. These days it's easier regardless of whether it's a train or a plane as you can keep checking for updates on your smartphone.

 

[northwichcat]

I once saw a CIS say at around 16:30 something like

16:45 ON TIME
17:15 ON TIME
17:45 CANCELLED
18:15 ON TIME

Later on the TOC (Northern) decided to do a swap so that the 17:15 was cancelled and the 17:45 ran.

 

[northwichcat]

I almost missed a flight due to a similar situation. I think the answer to this is the same for the train as it was for the plane. This was in Schiphol, flight shown as 2 hour delay but as I was flying KLM and it's their home base they managed to get a replacement aircraft and remove the delay. I got the famous automated announcement "X and Y travelling to London on flight KLxxxx you are delaying the flight, please proceed now to gate D6 or we'll proceed to offload your luggage"

That just reminded I flew the day airspace reopened following a volcanic ash cloud, nothing was running to time due to planes being out-of-position. On check in I was told "Your flight will be late" or similar, without any further information which at the time I thought was a bit vague but then I realised it was a sensible approach in the circumstances.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That just reminded I flew the day airspace reopened following a volcanic ash cloud, nothing was running to time due to planes being out-of-position. On check in I was told "Your flight will be late" or similar, without any further information which at the time I thought was a bit vague but then I realised it was a sensible approach in the circumstances.

To counter all this, I have had easyJet text me and say "your flight is going to be 8 hours late, don't go to the airport for a while yet" (paraphrased). I thought it was an excellent thing to do, and went back to sleep for a few hours.

 

[3141]

My phone isn't a smartphone, and most passengers waiting at a station for a train are likely to rely on the information displayed there and won't be aware of sites like RTT.

I'm not arguing against my responsibility to be at the station before a train's official departure time. If the board is saying it's expected 15 minutes later I wouldn't assume I've got 14 minutes to do something else. But if it's "expected" to be 28 minutes late then I might think I've got 14 minutes for a drink. Passengers cannot reasonably be expected to know that the computers behind the information being given to them suffer from limitations and cannot be relied on, and if the information isn't reliable there ought to be a scrolling notice advising them that the situation may substantially change and they should remain on the platform, and/or keep a regular eye on the information screens. This could be supplemented by verbal announcements to the same effect.

I had an interesting experience at Basingstoke last summer, waiting for a Cross Country service to Birmingham, It was expected to be 16 minutes late. This gradually increased to 25. Then it arrived just over ten minutes late. I wondered whether a freight train in front of it had been held in Wallers Ash loop to give it a straight run from Winchester. The incident certainly showed that "expected" isn't a time you should rely on, and that occasionally things get better rather than worse.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

The estimated time is just an estimate. It doesn’t change the passenger’s obligation, and the good common sense, to be at the station in good time for the timetabled, not estimated departure time.

The TOC's may consider it the passenger's obligation, but it certainly doesn't look like common sense to me. Common sense tells me that if a train is showing as - say - 30 minutes late, then rushing down to the station so I can spend 30 minutes standing on what might be a freezing cold platform for half an hour when I could have spent the time somewhere much more comfortable, or somewhere where I can be more productive, is a silly thing to do. And I imagine most members of the public will think likewise.

In practice, before I leave home to get a train, I invariably check live departures first, if I see that my train is delayed. If it is, I'll normally do is click through on the National Rail Live Departure Boards to see what has happened to that train on its journey so far, and where the train is right now, to verify that it really has been running as late as claimed. And than plan my arrival at the station on the assumption that the train may make up some time (so for example, if it's advertised as 10 minutes late, I might make sure I'm on the platform no later than 5 minutes before the estimated departure). To be fair, I can normally walk to my local station in 10 minutes, or run in 7 minutes, so at the point I'm checking, it's fairly close to the departure time anyway, so there's not a lot of time for estimates to change much. I can see that strategy could potentially be riskier if I'm starting at the origin station for that train, but it's not caught me out yet.

The main issue I've had is at Charing Cross, where trains that get delayed are sometimes put back nearer to on time by starting them back at London Bridge. Unfortunately the departure boards at Charing Cross don't tell you that, they just say the train is cancelled, so unless you actually check that train on Live Departure Boards or RTT, you won't realise that you can actually get the train by just taking the first available departure from Charing Cross and changing at London Bridge. After being caught out with that a couple of times, I've learned to be more careful with late trains at Charing Cross

 

[Llanigraham]

The TOC's may consider it the passenger's obligation, but it certainly doesn't look like common sense to me. Common sense tells me that if a train is showing as - say - 30 minutes late, then rushing down to the station so I can spend 30 minutes standing on what might be a freezing cold platform for half an hour when I could have spent the time somewhere much more comfortable, or somewhere where I can be more productive, is a silly thing to do. And I imagine most members of the public will think likewise.

In practice, before I leave home to get a train, I invariably check live departures first, if I see that my train is delayed. If it is, I'll normally do is click through on the National Rail Live Departure Boards to see what has happened to that train on its journey so far, and where the train is right now, to verify that it really has been running as late as claimed. And than plan my arrival at the station on the assumption that the train may make up some time (so for example, if it's advertised as 10 minutes late, I might make sure I'm on the platform no later than 5 minutes before the estimated departure). To be fair, I can normally walk to my local station in 10 minutes, or run in 7 minutes, so at the point I'm checking, it's fairly close to the departure time anyway, so there's not a lot of time for estimates to change much. I can see that strategy could potentially be riskier if I'm starting at the origin station for that train, but it's not caught me out yet.

The main issue I've had is at Charing Cross, where trains that get delayed are sometimes put back nearer to on time by starting them back at London Bridge. Unfortunately the departure boards at Charing Cross don't tell you that, they just say the train is cancelled, so unless you actually check that train on Live Departure Boards or RTT, you won't realise that you can actually get the train by just taking the first available departure from Charing Cross and changing at London Bridge. After being caught out with that a couple of times, I've learned to be more careful with late trains at Charing Cross

Will they?
I think you will find that most of the public haven't a clue about an internet site that gives running timings and can't be bothered to find it. Certainly before I came onto here I had never heard of it, and I worked on the railway.
And I still don't look at one; can't see the point.

And I suggest some members need to look up the dictionary definitions for "expected" and "estimated".

 

[306024]

Any information is simply a snapshot in time. The railway is constantly moving (usually), things can change. Common sense is to realise that, not to try to be clever and then blame the TOC when they have managed to return the service to normal sooner than initially expected.

 

[causton]

Unfortunately what is the solution? Do we just say "Not quite sure when this train will turn up" for all trains - even on time ones as that could be inaccurate too!

Trains can be delayed and also make that delay up, and things like set swaps, running fast and diversions can sometimes happen with little notice. Should the TOCs just go "Well that train should have left the station 5 minutes ago but we can't reduce that delay in case someone saw the delay and went to the pub?"

A lot of people think in the railway we have time machines and can read into the future, and also go into the past and tell people things before we know about them ourselves!

 

[moose2001]

It's just poor programming of an algorithm. All it would take is an extra few lines of code built into the system to make this problem history.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I don't think there's any algorithm in existence that can cope with vagaries of human staff working out what they can do for each individual delay and, if they can, implementing some alternative ad hoc arrangement - because no algorithm can predict what decisions those human staff would actually make. So it certainly won't be a case of just adding a few lines of code.

Having said that, I would hope that Network Rail would have a team permanently looking into ways to make the estimated running times more accurate (And I see no reason to doubt that they probably do).

 

[moose2001]

There isn't an algorithm yet... but it can certainly be done. Humans are extremely predictable so all it would take is data from the last few thousand times this problem has happened. Assuming you could get the data easily it would only take a couple of days to do the coding.

 

[al78]

There isn't an algorithm yet... but it can certainly be done. Humans are extremely predictable so all it would take is data from the last few thousand times this problem has happened. Assuming you could get the data easily it would only take a couple of days to do the coding.

I don't see how it could be done with certainty. I've been on trains which have come to a halt somewhere and after a few minutes the driver apologises for the delay explaining we're being held at a red signal, reason unknown, but should be underway soon. How do you calculate the delay for the passengers at stations further down the line? If there is any uncertainty in a delay situation (and there frequently is), no amount of coding will be able to produce a delay time with 100% accuracy.

 

[EM2]

Unfortunately what is the solution? Do we just say "Not quite sure when this train will turn up" for all trains - even on time ones as that could be inaccurate too!

I seem to remember that about thirty-odd years ago, BR timetables used have a disclaimer along the lines of 'Trains are not guaranteed to run at these times, or at all'.

 

[TUC]

Where I do have sympathy is where, as in too many cases, waiting rooms don't have a PA system in them and a passenger waiting in there for a delayed train has not noticed the arrival time has moved back and so misses it.