Railways lurching out of control?

[fandroid]

I just caught the end of a You and Yours phone in on BBC radio 4 this morning. It was all concerning horror stories for rail passengers. One an older person who found just buying a ticket to be too difficult and another a parent who drove from London to Preston to rescue students who'd been stranded on a journey south from Glasgow.
Then yesterday there was Tony Miles doing his best to defend the railway, but being very pessimistic about the driver shortage not getting worse long before it gets better and not seeing a solution presently in sight.


That GBR "guiding mind" is totally absent and the railway is adrift with just about everyone sticking to their own positions and no-one looking after the railway and the passengers as a whole. This forum's contributors are all well versed in how to negotiate the complexities, even in disrupted times, but Joe Public out there just sees a massive mess, and the railway needs its ticket buyers back, not put off by the mess they perceive.

Some operators are functioning a lot better than others, and we know who they are, but most people just see an overall system in chaos. How can we escape from this given the serious cash restraints we all live under now?

 

[greyman42]

Some operators are functioning a lot better than others, and we know who they are, but most people just see an overall system in chaos. How can we escape from this given the serious cash restraints we all live under now?

Not everyone is living under serious cash restraints. Judging by how busy trains are on a weekend, a lot of people are finding money from somewhere.

 

[HSTEd]

Ultimately it just reflects the wider malaise in public policy.

Noone wants to be blamed for making decisions if it turns out badly, so noone makes any decisions at all.

The current railway operating model, itself a botched attempt to fix the pre-coronavirus model, is not at all sustainable but noone wants to take politically costly decisions to fix it.

 

[gazzaa2]

Here is the full phone in: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001fmcx

 

[jfowkes]

Not everyone is living under serious cash restraints. Judging by how busy trains are on a weekend, a lot of people are finding money from somewhere.

The government is living under serious cash restraints and they're going to keep cutting budgets and pushing costs onto passengers, which will only make the problems described worse.

 

[class 9]

The feeling amongst staff is that the TOCs just don't care, since the NRCs came in they get payed no matter what, including strike days.
Morale is at rock bottom, it's so frustrating.

 

[43074]

The current railway operating model, itself a botched attempt to fix the pre-coronavirus model, is not at all sustainable but noone wants to take politically costly decisions to fix it.

Also that no one wants to risk financially costly decisions, so things like fares reform get kicked down the road indefinitely. Reforms that in some way reduces the DfTs control over the industry or risks the Treasury's income stream - albeit it's less than it was pre COVID anyway - isn't going to happen so we are stuck where we are.

 

[43066]

is not at all sustainable but noone wants to take politically costly decisions to fix it.

So is the NHS, the care sector etc.,
Both of which dwarf the railway in terms of costs. Ultimately it’s difficult not to conclude that the railway would be in a better place if the government had simply allowed the current model to continue rather than the current disastrous medalling, albeit with a higher level of subsidy, as passenger numbers continue to grow.

 

[BrianW]

Huw Merriman has been 'captured'- he's inside the tent now.
Mark Harper- maybe he uses the train on occasion from Chepstow via Newport or Gloucester or cancelled ...
I imagine the PM flies from home.
I see Jeremy Hunt at Haslemere station- https://www.jeremyhunt.org/ I imagine he may have focus on 'stockbroker' trains to Waterloo (back to busiest station!)

In short, what's in it for the current government to 'throw money' at the railways/ grasping unions/ cushy £60k drivers versus care workers.

 

[Skiddaw]

Not everyone is living under serious cash restraints. Judging by how busy trains are on a weekend, a lot of people are finding money from somewhere.

Not sure we have much choice really do we? It's either use the train for a journey or drive (personally, I'd rather use a train if one is available) and trains up here in the North West at least are frequently busy because of all the cancellations.

 

[43066]

In short, what's in it for the current government to 'throw money' at the railways/ grasping unions/ cushy £60k drivers versus care workers.

Ending a politically and economically damaging dispute that has cost the economy hundreds of millions of pounds, improving reliability thus allowing the railway’s finances to improve through encouraging passengers to return rather than driving them away...

 

[HSTEd]

Ending a politically and economically damaging dispute that has cost the economy hundreds of millions of pounds, improving reliability thus allowing the railway’s finances to improve through encouraging passengers to return rather than driving them away...

It is not at all clear that ending the industrial action would actually improve the railways finances, in the short term.

Striking staff don't have to be paid, staff that don't take rest day working don't have to be paid for it, trains that don't run don't burn fuel, etc, and given the size of the demanded pay increases......

A lot of the worst affected routes consume substantial subsidy at the best of time, let alone given the collapse in peak-travel ripping the heart out of the farebox.

 

[BPN2022]

Can’t see an end it sight to the current state of affairs. As people have mentioned, it could be saving the government money on not paying staff, not paying rest days, less mileage/fuel.

Damaging the economy, yes. But are the government interested? Not so sure.

Managed decline at the minute it seems. It’s absolutely sickening to see. I have never known the railway to be such a mess, so unreliable, weekends particularly Saturdays a disaster, long strike periods, reduction plans etc.

All it’s going to do is push people away, and then less revenue will be bought in. Coach and Bus companies must be lapping it up.

 

[43066]

It is not at all clear that ending the industrial action would actually improve the railways finances.

Striking staff don't have to be paid, staff that don't take rest day working don't have to be paid for it etc, and given the size of the demanded pay increases......

It’s pretty clear that unreliability is going to put passengers off using it more than the odd day of strike action. As for the “demanded pay increases”, we know what has been settled for by the same unions in wales and Scotland which is not at all unreasonable compared to what is being offered elsewhere… It’s also joke when the same government has found the money to give pensioners and benefits claimants a fat rise.

As for railway finances, the railway always requires subsidy so it seems a little more than a little irrational to peg what is deemed acceptable to an arbitrary pre Covid level.

It’s clear what the government needs to do. Unless you’re saying you’d rather just see the current mess continue…

 

[bramling]

I just caught the end of a You and Yours phone in on BBC radio 4 this morning. It was all concerning horror stories for rail passengers. One an older person who found just buying a ticket to be too difficult and another a parent who drove from London to Preston to rescue students who'd been stranded on a journey south from Glasgow.
Then yesterday there was Tony Miles doing his best to defend the railway, but being very pessimistic about the driver shortage not getting worse long before it gets better and not seeing a solution presently in sight.


That GBR "guiding mind" is totally absent and the railway is adrift with just about everyone sticking to their own positions and no-one looking after the railway and the passengers as a whole. This forum's contributors are all well versed in how to negotiate the complexities, even in disrupted times, but Joe Public out there just sees a massive mess, and the railway needs its ticket buyers back, not put off by the mess they perceive.

Some operators are functioning a lot better than others, and we know who they are, but most people just see an overall system in chaos. How can we escape from this given the serious cash restraints we all live under now?

In terms of lurching out of control, I suspect the railway simply is a reflection of this country as a whole at the moment. Even a friend of mine who is one of those people who is normally pretty nonchalant about everything is of the view that Britain is now in managed decline as a country thanks to having lived beyond our means over recent years.

In some ways the biggest risk for the railway is if commuter demand does recover just after the axe has been round all the TOCs in the form of slimming fleet sizes down.

 

[HSTEd]

It’s pretty clear that unreliability is going to put passengers off using it more than the odd day of strike action.

We are at rather more than the "odd" day of strike action. Even the RMT December strikes alone will shut down the railway for a significant portion of the entire year (8/365 - 2.2% of the year!).

It’s clear what the government needs to do. Unless you’re saying you’d rather just see the current mess continue…

We might agree that it is clear what should happen next, but I very much doubt we will agree on what that thing is!

And given the tendency of such discussions to get threads locked and posters receiving warnings from moderators, I'm not sure I really want to engage there!

 

[43066]

In some ways the biggest risk for the railway is if commuter demand does recover just after the axe has been round all the TOCs in the form of slimming fleet sizes down.

I’m currently on a full and standing 700. It could be 2019 on this train….

 

[class 9]

Striking staff don't have to be paid, staff that don't take rest day working don't have to be paid for it, trains that don't run don't burn fuel, etc, and given the size of the demanded pay increases......

Striking staffs wages won't save any money for the government, most TOCs are run by private companies(who pays the wages) and under the terms of the NRCs the TOCs still receive their fees.

 

[43066]

We are at rather more than the "odd" day of strike action. Even the RMT December strikes will shut down the railway for a significant period of the entire year (8/365 - 2.2% of the year!).

Well let’s hope a sensible offer is tendered. If not, the government are squarely to blame.

We might agree that it is clear what should happen next, but I very much doubt we will agree on what that thing is!

Your predictable solution will be simplistic hot air along the lines of smashing the awful unions and that’ll make all the railway’s problems go away (newsflash: It won’t).

 

[HSTEd]

Striking staffs wages won't save any money for the government, most TOCs are run by private companies(who pays the wages) and under the terms of the NRCs the TOCs still receive their fees.

The NRCs mean that the government covers the wage bill, the fixed management fee is a fee for management.

EDIT: Unless you think all the drivers on SWR can be paid with £3.3m per year!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Nov 2022 ==

Your predictable solution will be simplistic hot air along the lines of smashing the awful unions and that’ll make all the railway’s problems go away (newsflash: It won’t).

You forget, I'm the one obsessed with hypertech, steel and concrete.

My 'simplistic' option is to engineer most of the unions out of existance by slashing railway staff requirements, obviously.

 

[43066]

You forget, I'm the one obsessed with hypertech, steel and concrete.

My 'simplistic' option is to engineer most of the unions out of existance by slashing railway staff requirements, obviously.

Oh yes of course!

Well the Elon Musk style solution will no doubt happen eventually. As with everything else on the railway it’ll likely take rather longer, and cost a great deal more, than you might expect…

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

So is the NHS, the care sector etc.,
Both of which dwarf the railway in terms of costs. Ultimately it’s difficult not to conclude that the railway would be in a better place if the government had simply allowed the current model to continue rather than the current disastrous medalling, albeit with a higher level of subsidy, as passenger numbers continue to grow.

100% scrapping the franchise model will be seen by historians as an inflexion point of when the decline started. Whats farcical is it was the Torys that did it all they had to do was cover the operators cost during covid and suspend franchise principles then renegotiate. Of course what happened probably is consultants spotted an opportunity to make a load of fees coming up with something new. Merriman knows the score and he should be advocating that only bold action can now avert a spiral of decline that will leave the HMT even further out of pocket in direct costs let alone the indirect economic impact.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The problem is that there is nobody in charge of the country. The government have effectively given up, whether deliberately or otherwise they're content to let everything burn.

Industrial action is also a symptom, not the cause, of the malaise within the industry.

There was an article in The Guardian this week pointing out that a train cancelled at 21.59 the night before doesn't count as a cancellation in statistics. TPE's official cancellation rate is about 8%, but in reality Manchester Airport point out that 25% of all trains to the Airport have been cancelled since September. That's not about strike action, that's about ingrained incompetence and failure being rewarded.

Revealed: north of England train line vastly under-reports cancellations

TransPennine Express uses ‘outrageous’ loophole in which services cancelled a day ahead do not appear in statistics

amp.theguardian.com

About 25% of all TPE trains to and from the airport have been cancelled since 7 September, according to airport management. Rail travel to the terminals had already nosedived over the summer as cancellations became more routine, with a 25% drop in people arriving by public transport between May and August.

“Despite having taken steps to improve the reliability of services to Manchester airport, dozens of trains are still being cancelled, or terminating prior to the airport, at short notice every day. This causes significant cost and inconvenience for passengers, at a time when they need it least,” said Chris Woodroofe, Manchester airport’s managing director.

 

[gazzaa2]

The thing is the demand is there from the public, trains are often packed to the rafters, it's the service that's lacking.

It's not a problem of a lack of demand.

 

[Tetchytyke]

100% scrapping the franchise model will be seen by historians as an inflexion point of when the decline started.

No chance, the franchise model has been an expensive failure ever since it was launched in 1994. Pigs at the trough during the boom years, nowhere to be seen during the lean years. Privatised profit and nationalised losses. Profits entirely from subsidy- there is no TOC which, after track access subsidy, has ever returned a profit to the taxpayer.

Ironically, the only genuine competition it created was in the labour market, TOCs and FOCs poaching each other's drivers and leading to huge wage inflation.

 

[Taunton]

It does make one realise how unreliable the supposed "green option" is, compared to our cars. And before long the politicians are going to tire of it and consider railway investment is money down the drain. I wouldn't be surprised to see it given as a reason to cancel HS2.

 

[MikeWM]

It isn't just the strikes though, they're just the cherry on top of what has been an annus horribilis for the railways.

There's the never-ending serious problems on multiple TOCs, Northern, TPE, Avanti... and longer-running issues that never get fixed, like the 8+ year old driver shortage issue on Great Northern most Saturdays.

There's the new 'timetable of the day' nonsense that means you're never sure if your train will run the next day, or whether you can claim delay repay if it doesn't. There's the total lack of care about making sure the last service of the day runs, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

There's the fact that multiple times a year everything is stopped due to a storm, or heat, or snow. On the occasions that these events do turn out to be serious, service recovery is dreadful and often takes days.

There was the few weeks in the summer where I was 30+ minutes late for work almost every day, for weeks, for all manner of different problems, seemimgly a new one every day. Something that had never happened before.

It would take a lot to make me fall out of love with the railway and seriously consider other options for transport, but I feel only another straw or two away at this point.

 

[class 9]

The NRCs mean that the government covers the wage bill, the fixed management fee is a fee for management.

So why are staff costs still shown in company accounts?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

No chance, the franchise model has been an expensive failure ever since it was launched in 1994. Pigs at the trough during the boom years, nowhere to be seen during the lean years. Privatised profit and nationalised losses. Profits entirely from subsidy- there is no TOC which, after track access subsidy, has ever returned a profit to the taxpayer.

Ironically, the only genuine competition it created was in the labour market, TOCs and FOCs poaching each other's drivers and leading to huge wage inflation.

Yup that's fair assessment and i should clarify that just scrapping the franchise model in 2020 without a fall back has bought us to this current situation. Yes the pigs in the trough milked the system but Labour did absolutely nothing to make it any better but the reality was we never had strikes on this scale since the 80's. The franchises would have realised there were more severe financial consequences from not running the services so the majority would have come to an agreement with unions. Now we have the DfT who have absolutely no idea how to run the railway and you have give Harper credit he at least acknowledges that unlike Shapps thought he was the Fat Controller. What i also find poor is the fact that pretty well none of the current big hitters in the industry will stand up and be counted because they all on fat salaries and are keeping there mouths shut.

This will end badly for the industry be in no doubt that services will be savaged as there are no other options to cover the cost gap. This can still be rescued by someone in the industry with bold leadership to persuade the unions and the DfT that there is a way forward if with some give and take on both sides but not sure we will see anyone coming forward but all i can hope is they are bending Harper and Lynchs ear in private.

 

[Solent&Wessex]

The thing is the demand is there from the public, trains are often packed to the rafters, it's the service that's lacking.

It's not a problem of a lack of demand.

The problem is that in general terms the demand is a) not consistent country wide and b) not the same type of demand as was there before covid.

The most recent update from my TOC indicated that commuting and business travel was around 80% of pre-Covid levels whilst Off Peak and leisure, especially on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays was around 120% of pre-Covid levels.

But they don't balance out income wise as leisure travellers are using a range of cheaper tickets such Off Peak, Group tickets, concessionary passes, railcards etc and many don't pay at all because they are not regular travellers and with barriers often open at weekends it is easy not to pay if boarding at one of the many unstaffed stations.

The industry is still very much focused on mid-week commuters.

So my TOC will quite happily run a Double Set at midweek "commuting" times, and on some days still have empty seats, or people standing for only very short distances (15 mins or so), but will still run a Single Set at weekends which will be crush loaded for an hour or more and leave people behind. A situation often made worse by the current high level of cancellations and the fact that engineering work and line closures take place at weekends, forcing displaced passengers on to alternative routes which have no spare or additional capacity to cope with them.

The industry as a whole needs to readjust the way it works to successfully capture this increase in demand whilst also adapting to falling demand at the traditionally core busy times.