Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent | Louis Goddard
February 4 2019, 9:00am, The Times
The number of trains cancelled because of staff shortages has risen almost fivefold in six years amid claims that companies are running the network on the cheap.
Analysis by
The Times shows that 35,030 services were cancelled in the past year because of a lack of available train crew, often leaving passengers stranded at stations. The figure increased by more than a third in a year and represents a fivefold rise from just 7,188 six years earlier.
Cancellations caused by crew shortages — usually the unavailability of drivers — accounted for more than one in five trains that failed to run last year. It was about twice the number of cancellations blamed on bad weather or signal failures.
Critics have accused operators of skimping by employing drivers on four-day weeks and relying on them working overtime to run a full timetable.
The overtime system, which stretches back to the days of British Rail, creates a high risk of cancellations because of sudden sick leave or last-minute roster changes. It also leaves rail lines vulnerable to industrial action. Two years ago thousands of Southern Rail trains were cancelled when the drivers’ union Aslef imposed an overtime ban after a row over driver-only operated trains
Research last year found that drivers on 18 out of the 20 largest operators were on a four-day week, supplementing their income by up to £340 to work at least one of their rest days.
Anthony Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus, the passenger watchdog, said: “These arrangements are hugely outdated and leave the railway more fragile than it needs to be. There is nothing more infuriating than when you learn that the train is there, the tracks are working, the passengers are waiting but the train cannot run because there isn’t a driver.”
The Times analysed cancellation data from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). It showed that 157,917 passenger trains were cancelled on the network in the year to October 2018. Of these, 35,030 were caused by staff shortages.
Train companies insisted that the figures reflected ambitious new timetables introduced in May, which stretched operators in the north and southeast of England to breaking point. The ORR figures show that Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) — the country’s biggest operator which was hit by the chaos — had the most cancellations with 18,197, up by 7 per cent in 12 months. Cancellations on Northern Rail rose by 261 per cent to 5,609.
However, staff-related cancellations increased last year for 17 out of 23 companies, including those not heavily implicated in the timetable fiasco. The number was up by 222 per cent on TransPennine Express, 141 per cent on Great Western and 137 per cent on London Overground.
Crew cancellations have increased in five out of the past six years and almost fivefold over this period. This has far outstripped the rise in overall cancellations, which have doubled, in part because of a big rise in the number of trains running on the network.
The Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies, said: “We know how important it is for our customers that their train arrives on time and we’re sorry when it doesn’t. Repeated industrial action . . . is a significant factor, as are major events like the Beast from the East and the May 2018 timetable change, when hundreds of extra services were introduced.”
A GTR spokesman said: “As is standard across the industry, we rely on drivers working on rest days to cover high levels of absence for annual leave, short-term sickness and training. Unfortunately, in the extremely rare event that all these occur at once, there might not be enough drivers available at very short notice to cover every service.”
Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, added: “These figures show just how bad some of the services, would have been if Aslef members hadn’t gone above and beyond by working the overtime.”
