Thameslink Services/Timetable from May 20th 2018

[bramling]

So run the service without any recovery whatsoever ? That will just delay multiple services and thousands more passengers. How late should they run a service ? if you already believe that running it 21 minutes late is acceptable then what about 40 ? 50 ?

What about making additional stops ? Is that allowed or should they only run to the booked pattern ? That is what you are suggesting.



Stopping additionally will inconvenience those already on the train. Those people who may be on a platform due to other circumstances will benefit from another service being asked to stop and pick them up.



How do you plan for a 21minute delay ? Again the TOC cannot win here. There will be an accusation of "padding" if time is added for dwell times and recovery time. There will be complaints about longer journeys for no reason, it will destroy any increase in #tph capacity and that generates complaints. How long should a turnaround time be ? 30 minutes ? If you need to plan for a 21 minute delay you need to build that in somewhere. Longer paths and terminals with units sitting there doing nothing "just in case" There has to be a red line drawn somewhere. I fully agree that the timetable is broken and everything is way too tight but building in huge slack for delay recovery just becomes detrimental.

There are a couple of planners on the forum. Maybe you could offer up some suggestions.

In the case of Peterborough, ideally I’d break up the service into 1tph through the core, and 1tph either side. That would offer resilience in that people would only be running the risk of having one service in a row disrupted thanks to Thameslink delays.

Otherwise the other obvious thing to do is to put extra trains (and drivers) in the circuit so that there’s an extra half hour added to every turnaround. I’m not entirely sure if the respective termini are able to readily support this, nor if there’s sufficient trains readily available (although if longer turnarounds could be combined with the 1tph option then there’s 365s sitting in store which could make up the shortfall), however these sorts of things should have been thought about *before* go-live.

If we’re accepting that delays will always happen then the plan should have been more resilient. It wasn’t, and passengers are now paying the price for that failure to plan.

One way or other something has to give. The GN side is not working with not even 3tph through the core, so it’s only going to get worse with 8tph. And lest we remember that the Peterborough service is the most resilient of those on the GN side - it has the slow lines largely to itself north of Hitchin. The Cambridge and Welwyn services are a different ball-game in that respect

 

[Silver Cobra]

And according to Twitter, for added incompetence it was announced the train would call Huntington but after leaving Hitchin they changed it to go non stop to Peterborough.

Reminds me of when a late-running service I boarded at Stevenage back in June, which was advertised as a normal all-stations stopper to Peterborough on the platforms, was changed to run non-stop to Huntingdon a minute or two after departing Stevenage. Cue a lot of angry passengers being overcarried a long distance (I posted about it in this thread at the time). At least we weren't overcarried all the way to Peterborough, like as happened to the service referenced in your post.

 

[Hadders]

Hold on.

Wasn't there a cancelled service last night followed by the next train (30 minutes later) skip stopping missing places like Arlesey? If so that's very poor and GTR deserve a shoeing from passengers wanting to go to places like Arlesey.

 

[bramling]

Hold on.

Wasn't there a cancelled service last night followed by the next train (30 minutes later) skip stopping missing places like Arlesey? If so that's very poor and GTR deserve a shoeing from passengers wanting to go to places like Arlesey.

I think the poor station staff at Hitchin are taking that shoeing you speak of.

A couple of weeks back I saw this first-hand when there had been some tinkering and a train load of unhappy people for the Cambridge branch were dumped at Hitchin late in the evening. In that instance ISTR they were “lucky” and extra stops were inserted on a 387 service, but still with a hefty delay incurred.

 

[grid56126]

Hold on.

Wasn't there a cancelled service last night followed by the next train (30 minutes later) skip stopping missing places like Arlesey? If so that's very poor and GTR deserve a shoeing from passengers wanting to go to places like Arlesey.

One train was 23" late and run fast from Hitchin with the passengers transferred to the one behind it 7" later. By running fast the next train back from Peterborough was right time.

We could debate for ever whether the people delayed an extra 7" by being turfed off at Hitchin deserved a worse service than those travelling for the entire journey of the return working. Railway principles suggest getting the return working right time is less likely to have any further impact on other trains, but people metrics are a more intricate art.

 

[Hadders]

One train was 23" late and run fast from Hitchin with the passengers transferred to the one behind it 7" later. By running fast the next train back from Peterborough was right time.

We could debate for ever whether the people delayed an extra 7" by being turfed off at Hitchin deserved a worse service than those travelling for the entire journey of the return working. Railway principles suggest getting the return working right time is less likely to have any further impact on other trains, but people metrics are a more intricate art.

I understand why skip stopping is sometimes appropriate

BUT

the passengers were already 30 minutes late due to a cancelled train, a further delay of 23 minutes then being turfed out at Hitchin to catch the train behind an add a further 7 minutes delay is adding insult to injury.

Perhaps a spare unit could do the return working (if there is such a spare - there ought to be given the complexity of the timetable) or alternatively skip some stops on the return working.

 

[Taunton]

Perhaps a spare unit could do the return working (if there is such a spare - there ought to be given the complexity of the timetable) or alternatively skip some stops on the return working.

When the Edinburgh-Glasgow push-pull started in 1971, it was every 30 minutes with a 45 minute journey time. Four trains could provide the service.

However there was a fifth, which after an early morning commuter run stood outside Glasgow all day, crewed, such that if there was a delay it could be inserted into the service, the delayed inbound then becoming the standby. It got used quite regularly and there were no long knock-on delays.

 

[grid56126]

On the night of the 22nd 9J62 ran as booked, a few mins late and 9J64 was run fast. Are you referring to another night? So no one hour gaps. The post, after midnight stated last night.

I have not looked at the previous evening.

 

[sefton]

If that delays future services then so be it,

So run the service without any recovery whatsoever ?

Yes. The train company has delayed these customers and it should not inconvenience them any further.

That will just delay multiple services and thousands more passengers. How late should they run a service ? if you already believe that running it 21 minutes late is acceptable then what about 40 ? 50 ?

Nonsense. Proper planning and stopping doing things like giving delayed trains (who have already failed targets) a lower priority would achieve a better result for the customer.

What about making additional stops ? Is that allowed or should they only run to the booked pattern ? That is what you are suggesting.

Stopping additionally will inconvenience those already on the train.

Those people who may be on a platform due to other circumstances will benefit from another service being asked to stop and pick them up.

Additional stops can be equally disruptive, so again customer service should be considered but the priority should be to avoid punishing customers who you have already delayed.

I would have thought whoever was in charge of designing the timetable would have had the intelligence to consider that in their planning.

How do you plan for a 21minute delay ? Again the TOC cannot win here. There will be an accusation of "padding" if time is added for dwell times and recovery time. There will be complaints about longer journeys for no reason, it will destroy any increase in #tph capacity and that generates complaints. How long should a turnaround time be ? 30 minutes ? If you need to plan for a 21 minute delay you need to build that in somewhere. Longer paths and terminals with units sitting there doing nothing "just in case" There has to be a red line drawn somewhere. I fully agree that the timetable is broken and everything is way too tight but building in huge slack for delay recovery just becomes detrimental.

There are a couple of planners on the forum. Maybe you could offer up some suggestions.

How do you plan.

Well first up the planners engage their brains to understand that running a train from Horsham to Peterborough is likely to pick up delays into London from the south on a frequent basis so establish what you need to do to avoid skipping stations and looking incompetent. That is something you have to do at the beginning when you start to work out how many trains, drivers, etc you need and how to build a timetable around that. It is not something you do on the back of an envelope when it has all gone wrong, again and again.

Taking the example RJ64 if it hadn't skipped stops would have arrived late into Peterborough at 10 pm last night and that would have meant it would have set off late. Well how sad, never mind. In the balance it would have been better not to have further inconvenienced the customers on RJ64 and delayed those very few people who were on whatever service the train was going to be used next for southbound.

 

[bramling]

One train was 23" late and run fast from Hitchin with the passengers transferred to the one behind it 7" later. By running fast the next train back from Peterborough was right time.

We could debate for ever whether the people delayed an extra 7" by being turfed off at Hitchin deserved a worse service than those travelling for the entire journey of the return working. Railway principles suggest getting the return working right time is less likely to have any further impact on other trains, but people metrics are a more intricate art.

Most reasonable people will accept that things will occasionally go wrong and recovery measures will be necessary.

The problem is that this particular service, notwithstanding the May-July total meltdown, is going wrong on a very regular basis for one reason or another - and to add to that due to the fragility there’s a more pressing need than elsewhere to try to get it back as otherwise it becomes a vicious cycle.

I don’t think it’s acceptable to take the view that this situation is acceptable, especially bearing in mind that pre-May the service was pretty dependable.

The Thameslink service has been bad enough on the Midland side for many years, but at least they’re never on less than a 4tph service (the current planned cancellations aside). Measures which are painful on a 4tph service become intolerable on a 2tph one.

 

[The Box Photter]

Don't forget that at the weekends it's only a 2tph service on the Midland lines too. The obvious solution (which will cost more money) is to operate with a small spare link of drivers at either end of the service and have at least two spare units available at each end of the service, which can be "stepped-up" to fill the gap caused by a late-running incoming service. That's the most passenger-friendly way of dealing with this perennial problem and should have been incorporated into the management contract from the start.

As we're still not "enjoying" the full 20 May timetable yet, there must be units available that aren't being used.

 

[Aictos]

It was running 17 minutes late which was annoying to the customers on the train.

To then double that delay for those customers by kicking them off the train is not acceptable.

If the timetable is so fragile then it needs to be fixed.

It was running 17 minutes late upon arrival at Hitchin but to claim GTR then doubled the delay is rather fictional because to have that claim as being substantial, GTR would running that train 34 mins late which they weren't.

The fact is that there was a alternative train just 10 minutes behind the late running service that was more or less running to time and is acceptable.

If you had over a hour to wait at Hitchin then maybe your argument would hold water but it doesn't.

So you simultaneously:

-Complain the timetable is too fragile, but also
-Complain that the timetable has time for trains to recover late running?

The origin of the delays is not the timetable itself, but things happening to the timetable elsewhere on the network.

Looks like the timetable is capable of recovering delay fairly well. But a delay south of the river is always going to propagate north and vice-versa. It's how it recovers after *that* which is key (which the timetable does pretty well - late arrivals at Cambridge ex-Brighton are often recovered for the return)

My point exactly.

As we've all seen since May, the regular decimation of northbound trains on the Bedford route because of delays in 3rd rail land are now being inflicted on GN passengers too.

Time to scrap Thameslink altogether and turn Blackfriars into a terminus. That way the 3rd rail delay contagion can be kept south of the river (well almost south of the river).

Yet Thameslink has coped for nearly 20 years and only now are people trying to get rid of the much needed capacity by scrapping Thameslink,

I guess that will make everyone happy losing direct cross London links and of course there's plenty of space at the London Terminals which is why more trains use the TL Core...

GTR have just done it again with RJ64 tonight - http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64338/2018/11/22/advanced

And according to Twitter, for added incompetence it was announced the train would call Huntington but after leaving Hitchin they changed it to go non stop to Peterborough.

I wonder if GTR are trying to provoke their customers into pulling the cord.

While there was another train just 30 minutes later which isn't ideal, it is still a service - some places only have a hourly service so if one is cancelled results in a 2 hour wait which is far more worse then your example.

However that comes across as bad communications because one hand has a idea on the service recovery while the other is simply presuming what will happen without actually confirming with the other hand and we all should know what Assume really means....

I doubt anyone deliberately delayed the train, but if I was in that situation and the incompetent GTR was going to double the delay to my journey then I wouldn't rush.

Some would have deliberately delayed the train by holding the doors or slowly getting off as to your repeated claim that they have doubled your journey again by doubling it would mean the train running 34 minutes late which it wasn't and again there was a second train calling at these same stops just 10 minutes away.

17 + 17 = 34

23L to 9L Kinda shows how skip stopping can recover the service.

Indeed, if used correctly which it was.

Hold on.

Wasn't there a cancelled service last night followed by the next train (30 minutes later) skip stopping missing places like Arlesey? If so that's very poor and GTR deserve a shoeing from passengers wanting to go to places like Arlesey.

Never happened as there was no cancellations at all on the 22nd Nov and the only cancellation on the 21st Nov was a Peterborough to Horsham service which the following service ran as booked.

So whatever you've been told, it's total fiction.

As we're still not "enjoying" the full 20 May timetable yet, there must be units available that aren't being used.

That's assuming all the driver training is complete as you have not only the traction knowledge to ensure is up to date but you also need to ensure their route knowledge is up to date especially as you have depots having routes that pre 2018 they would never have encountered such as Peterborough drivers learning the route from Finsbury Park to Horsham etc...

There's no point in saying there must be units available sitting around if you haven't got the train crew resources to use them now!

 

[sefton]

It was running 17 minutes late upon arrival at Hitchin but to claim GTR then doubled the delay is rather fictional because to have that claim as being substantial, GTR would running that train 34 mins late which they weren't.

Yes, RJ58 was 17 minutes late into Hitchin (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64332/2018/11/20/advanced) but the customers who were kicked off then had to get onto another train, 9J60 (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64334/2018/11/20/advanced) and so would have arrived at their stations 34 minutes late (as that train was also delayed).

My maths makes twice 17 to be 34, so yes these customers did have their delay doubled by GTR incompetence.

Focus on the customer not the train.

 

[BRX]

Yes, RJ58 was 17 minutes late into Hitchin (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64332/2018/11/20/advanced) but the customers who were kicked off then had to get onto another train, 9J60 (http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W64334/2018/11/20/advanced) and so would have arrived at their stations 34 minutes late (as that train was also delayed).

My maths makes twice 17 to be 34, so yes these customers did have their delay doubled by GTR incompetence.

Focus on the customer not the train.

It did however leave Hitchin 21 minutes late, so presumably if it had then included the skipped stops, passengers getting off at them would have been at least 21 minutes late. By shifting them to the following train they were made 34 minutes late instead. It's an additional 13 minutes delay. Frustrating but not exactly catastrophic.

 

[bramling]

It was running 17 minutes late upon arrival at Hitchin but to claim GTR then doubled the delay is rather fictional because to have that claim as being substantial, GTR would running that train 34 mins late which they weren't.

The fact is that there was a alternative train just 10 minutes behind the late running service that was more or less running to time and is acceptable.

If you had over a hour to wait at Hitchin then maybe your argument would hold water but it doesn't.

Two trains on the bounce cancelled is an hour's delay to people. The significance of the 17 minutes is that providing the train didn't lose any more time, a half decent turnround should have had it heading south from Peterborough roughly, perhaps not exactly, right time.

Never happened as there was no cancellations at all on the 22nd Nov and the only cancellation on the 21st Nov was a Peterborough to Horsham service which the following service ran as booked.
So whatever you've been told, it's total fiction.

There seems to be wired getting crossed here.

On 20th November:

9J54 (1655 Horsham - Peterborough) booked to depart Hitchin at 1850 was cancelled.
9J56 (1725 Horsham - Peterborough) booked to depart Hitchin at 1920 cancelled as part of the interim timetable.
9J58 (1755 Horsham - Peterborough) booked to depart Hitchin at 1950 was 17 late arriving at Hitchin, which was then amended to omit Arlesey, Biggleswade, Sandy and St Neots
9J60 (1825 Horsham - Peterborough) booked to depart Hitchin at 2020 departed at 2021.

So, you're quite right, people weren't delayed by an hour. They were actually delayed by an hour and a half!

 

[bramling]

It did however leave Hitchin 21 minutes late, so presumably if it had then included the skipped stops, passengers getting off at them would have been at least 21 minutes late. By shifting them to the following train they were made 34 minutes late instead. It's an additional 13 minutes delay. Frustrating but not exactly catastrophic.

Not sure how you work that out. For someone arriving at Hitchin to take the 18:50 to Arlesey, booked to arrive at 18:55, they would eventually have arrived at 20:27. I make that a delay of 92 minutes. Had the stops not been removed they would have arrived at 20:12, so the recovery measure contributed to 15 minutes of that and extended what would have been a delay of 77 minutes to 92 minutes.

A poor showing from start to finish really, but a good example of the inadequacy of the current service.

 

[BRX]

Not sure how you work that out. For someone arriving at Hitchin to take the 18:50 to Arlesey, booked to arrive at 18:55, they would eventually have arrived at 20:27. I make that a delay of 92 minutes. Had the stops not been removed they would have arrived at 20:12, so the recovery measure contributed to 15 minutes of that and extended what would have been a delay of 77 minutes to 92 minutes.

A poor showing from start to finish really, but a good example of the inadequacy of the current service.

They would have arrived at 2015 or after as that's when the skip-stopping service passed Arlesey. So, an extra delay of 13 minutes as I said.

The more significant issue seems to be the cancellation of the previous service.

 

[notverydeep]

There are a couple of planners on the forum. Maybe you could offer up some suggestions.

Being a planner of passenger rail services, but not these particular services, here is my attempt...

What is service recovery trying to do? In theory, it should be trying to minimise the “excess” journey time over and above the schedule, for the passengers travelling at that time as far as is possible given the resources (trains and drivers) available at the time. The least delay for the greatest number of people. In practice of course, what gets measured gets done; signallers and controllers try to minimise the degree to which the performance metrics are missed. Here in lies a problem. To illustrate this, I have contrived an artificial example (hopefully the maths is right):

Say a train is 15 minutes late from the ‘big station’ and the planned headway is 30 minutes, so next train will be 15 minutes after. The train would normally carry 500 passengers on its outbound working (in the peak direction) and 100 people on its next inbound working (in the counter peak direction). It is planned to serve 5 stations at which 200 will get off at the first, 150 at the second, where another 100 will board. 50 passengers will alight at each of the third and fourth stops with 150 people travelling to the terminus (of whom half are from the second stop). It has a 80% chance of catching up three minutes at each station omitted. The layover at the terminus is 10 minutes, but cannot be less than 4 minutes (giving 6 minutes of recovery). The 100 people on the inbound working will be divided in the same proportion as the outbound working, which will serve the same stops and again the next train is 30 minutes behind.

If the outbound train skips all four intermediate stops, it will recover an average of 9.6 minutes and arrive at the terminus 5.4 minutes late. The return working will be able to depart on time. However, all but 75 passengers will be 15 minutes late and those 75 will be 5.4 minutes, the remaining 525 each have a total of 30 minutes of delay (to the next service). The outbound passengers will accrue 15,750 minutes of excess time between them, but none of the inbound passengers are delayed. An alternative strategy would be to omit the two least demand stations on both outbound and inbound workings. In this case the 350 people travelling to the first two stops are still 15 minutes late, but the 150 travelling to the terminus are still 10.2 minutes late. The 100 people travelling to stations three and four are 30 minutes late, giving the outbound passengers a total excess time of 6,780 minutes.

So far, so much better than the first scenario. Now though, the next inbound working cannot leave on time. This train will depart 4.2 minutes late after the minimum layover, but will have recovered to time by the time it gets to stop number two, having skipped the smaller four and three. In this simplified example, 15 of the 30 people boarding at the terminus are going to the ‘big station’ and are on time by the end of their journey, as are the 70 people who board at stations two and one, however the 35 people travelling to or from the skipped stations four and three have a 30 minute delay, adding another 1,050 passenger minutes of excess time, giving a total of 7,830 minutes, slightly less than half the delay caused by the first strategy.

The problem is that National Rail performance measures do not ‘weight’ individual stops and / or trains by passenger numbers. In PPM, the quiet inbound train counts as much as the busy outbound train. At 15 minutes late, the outbound journey has already failed and can be written off in terms of the performance measures. This is why, once you get late, your train is rarely a priority for speeding up, unless it helps get to the next working in time to avoid that journey failing the measure too.

It is also quite likely that, while staff involved in service control will of course have a general idea about which stations are busy and which directions are busiest in each peak, they won’t have access to detailed information about which stations (away from London) are the most significant traffic objectives and which of these generate significant two way flows (such as Stevenage which has both many commuters to London and many commuters arriving from elsewhere). This means that at present it would be hard to make the calculation outlined in the example, or even estimate which strategy would be best for passengers. The relocation of control to ROCs, all well away from London compounds this effect, where often new staff are making decisions about trains serving markets that are remote from their home and daily experience.

In summary, service controllers may well lack understanding of the traffic flows on particular trains and on top of this are directly incentivised by the performance measure to disregard any understanding that they do have. No timetable or service control team could ever avoid all delay, but Service recovery could be improved for the majority of passengers, by changing the performance regime and measuring waiting times and journey times more directly across the population of those travelling and ‘weighting’ trains or station to station pairs by the number of passengers expected at a given time. This isn’t impossible and it is already form the basic principle of performance measurement for the largest UK operator of rail services (by passengers carried)…

 

[700007]

My two cents on this if I was GTR Control:

9J64 running 21L, run fast from Hitchin to Huntingdon on the basis that the train in front was not cancelled AND the train behind is roughly 9 minutes behind.

If these conditions can't be met, then it is better to not skip stop the service here and get them to just continue the late running for the convenience of passengers. If the train is struggling to make up time, then implement a stop order to skip stations on part of the line where there is a reasonable alternative within a few minutes stopping at many of the stations the Horsham train would stop at. For example, running fast from East Croydon to Gatwick Airport perhaps, with passengers getting a Reigate or Gatwick Airport service instead which *should* not be too far behind.

To me it makes sense to do the above but I am no expert.

Placing stop orders can be a smart and efficient way to recover the service but make sure communication between different members of staff, and between staff and customers is consistent and on point. But don't exploit it and make sure passengers have a reasonable alternative to reach their destination.

 

[bramling]

They would have arrived at 2015 or after as that's when the skip-stopping service passed Arlesey. So, an extra delay of 13 minutes as I said.

Not if, as seems possible, the extended dwell at Hitchin was due to faffing around over the missing stops.

I can't see any other obvious reason for the train being in the platform for four minutes. The only other potentially conflicting move that I can see was 1T58, which seems to have been signalled afterwards anyway - there's no other obvious reason for the train to have been held on a red signal. As far as I can tell it doesn't look like it was put on the fast line.

 

[ComUtoR]

Thanks for the details reply notverydeep. It would be interesting to see what would happen if no time was recovered and everything left to run late. Especially the impact on regulation and pathways.

Of course there are many other factors to consider for recovery too. If the inbound service Driver is booked for a PNB then their PNB will run late. This affects the next service they are needed to drive and the next etc etc. Hence continued knock on effects. It also means that the platform is now occupied by a service that should have left. The inbound Driver may have other Drivers traveling pass, themselves connecting to another service which will need to be held and again potentially blocks that platform.

Service recovery is important because the overall impact to the service is minimalism and ultimately the majority of passengers will benefit. YOu see numerous complaints about why a delay in the morning continues to be felt in the afternoon/evening peak. So for a small inconvenience in the morning you get a service that's on-time in the evening.

 

[sefton]

It did however leave Hitchin 21 minutes late, so presumably if it had then included the skipped stops, passengers getting off at them would have been at least 21 minutes late. By shifting them to the following train they were made 34 minutes late instead. It's an additional 13 minutes delay. Frustrating but not exactly catastrophic.

It only picked up the extra 6 minutes delay because GTR were trying (and failing) to be clever by kicking its customers off the train to delay them further. Had it just carried on with the service that wouldn't have happened.

 

[sefton]

Being a planner of passenger rail services, but not these particular services, here is my attempt...

A good detailed post, however...

The problem is that National Rail performance measures do not ‘weight’ individual stops and / or trains by passenger numbers. In PPM, the quiet inbound train counts as much as the busy outbound train. At 15 minutes late, the outbound journey has already failed and can be written off in terms of the performance measures. This is why, once you get late, your train is rarely a priority for speeding up, unless it helps get to the next working in time to avoid that journey failing the measure too.

This is what is comes down to - performance figures and not customer service.

As I have repeatedly said, train companies seem to treat their services like toy train sets and are more concerned about the trains and timetables and how it 'looks', but don't actually consider the impact of their actions on their customers on their trains.

 

[BRX]

A good detailed post, however...



This is what is comes down to - performance figures and not customer service.

As I have repeatedly said, train companies seem to treat their services like toy train sets and are more concerned about the trains and timetables and how it 'looks', but don't actually consider the impact of their actions on their customers on their trains.

They run them as businesses, which is what they are.

It seems that it's the performance measures that need to be reviewed, rather than hoping businesses will do things that aren't in their commercial interest.

 

[sefton]

They run them as businesses, which is what they are.

Businesses are there to serve customers.

 

[717001]

Businesses are there to serve customers.

Having talked to a range of people working within the rail industry, I find that they are mainly genuinely wanting to do their best for passengers but, at the end of the day, isn’t the DfT really their primary “customer”.

 

[bramling]

Thanks for the details reply notverydeep. It would be interesting to see what would happen if no time was recovered and everything left to run late. Especially the impact on regulation and pathways.

Of course there are many other factors to consider for recovery too. If the inbound service Driver is booked for a PNB then their PNB will run late. This affects the next service they are needed to drive and the next etc etc. Hence continued knock on effects. It also means that the platform is now occupied by a service that should have left. The inbound Driver may have other Drivers traveling pass, themselves connecting to another service which will need to be held and again potentially blocks that platform.

Service recovery is important because the overall impact to the service is minimalism and ultimately the majority of passengers will benefit. YOu see numerous complaints about why a delay in the morning continues to be felt in the afternoon/evening peak. So for a small inconvenience in the morning you get a service that's on-time in the evening.

I don’t think anyone wants the delays to continue and propagate through the day.

The issue is that this is a self-inflicted own goal by the industry. The Peterborough route used to be reasonably reliable. Since May, reliability has collapsed to the point where the service is a lottery to use at times. If people on here could see a mile off that this was going to happen then so should the industry, be they DFT, GTR or NR.

They didn’t have to implement the service this way, they chose to. If the service can’t be made to work given the constraints within which it runs (infrastructure, staffing or financial) then they need to, at least partially, revert to the reliable service which ran before. It’s as simple as that. It would also be nice to see those responsible for the flawed decisions be held accountable for their poor performance too.

 

[Deety]

Businesses are there to serve customers.

No, businesses are in business to make money.

Of course, a good way to do this is to serve your customers well. Particularly if they can easily switch to one of your competitors. Errr...

 

[sefton]

Having talked to a range of people working within the rail industry, I find that they are mainly genuinely wanting to do their best for passengers but, at the end of the day, isn’t the DfT really their primary “customer”.

So the DfT want to run around empty on time trains whilst taxpayers get delayed.

No, even government is not that stupid.

 

[stut]

They run them as businesses, which is what they are.

It seems that it's the performance measures that need to be reviewed, rather than hoping businesses will do things that aren't in their commercial interest.

Heh, this is a problem that affects so many companies I've worked for and consulted for. I know someone who's literally written a book on this phenomenon.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) drive behaviour. They are generally designed with a particular behaviour in mind, but the Law Of Unintended Consequences kicks in rather rapidly (particularly if they're very blunt measures, badly thought through, or dogmatically applied).

So, you have a desired behaviour: minimise delays. The measure? How much your trains are delayed by. Makes sense. People working for the railway have delay minutes in mind.

But then you're looking at the trains and how their performance can be optimised. Skip stops to make up time? OK. Ignore a delayed connecting service to avoid a delay (paths pending). OK.

What would the alternative be? What would happen if you measured passenger delay minutes instead of train delay minutes. Hardly beyond the capability of railway IT to have a reasonable estimate of passengers flows, and model the total delay minutes by taking one course of action over another. More passenger friendly? Sure.

But that has unintended consequences, too. What are the knock-on delays down the line? On a congested network, what are you snarling up? Where to driver hours come into all of this?

No simple answer, really. I've no doubt NR have some data scientists looking into this, who know far more about the topic than I do. But that's what KPIs do: drive unintended behaviour. The art is balancing them, and reacting appropriately to the negative consequences.