Worst Franchise?

[Transilien]

Now that franchising is basically in the history books, what was the worst franchise to ever exist?

 

[rf_ioliver]

Well there are many criteria that you could apply, but Arriva franchise in Wales was pretty terrible given how the contract was designed and written. Explicitly "no growth, no investment" which makes you wonder whether it was explicitly designed for managed decline.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Silverlink. There can’t even really be much dispute. They are objectively* the worst.

(*subjectively)

It’s a fight for second-worst between First Capital Connect, Northern Spirit/Arriva Trains Northern, and Serco Northern.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Any nominations for Connex South-Eastern and its next door neighbour Connex South-Central?

 

[Magdalia]

It’s a fight for second-worst between First Capital Connect

This is very wrong. I have been travelling between Cambridge and Kings Cross for more than half a century, and the First Capital Connect era was the best of the lot. Cambridge and Fen Line travellers would give a lot to have FCC back now.

 

[KevinTurvey]

Many of the early franchises were a bit ropey, at first. GNER and SWR seemed to get it about right, although as just mentioned above Connex used to come in for a great deal of criticism. I thought Northern (pre Arriva 2017 and post FNW/ATN was actually vastly better in between. Even Virgin struggled at first with reliability and punctuality.

 

[StephenHunter]

Any nominations for Connex South-Eastern and its next door neighbour Connex South-Central?

Southeastern too; it got its franchise yanked for basically criminal acts.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Any nominations for Connex South-Eastern and its next door neighbour Connex South-Central?

I’d completely blanked them from my memory.

Cambridge and Fen Line travellers would give a lot to have FCC back now.

The Thameslink side was absolutely awful, as were the GN inners.

 

[D1537]

I actually suffered from a bit of PTSD at the Wensleydale Railway at the weekend on viewing their newly-painted Northern Spirit Pacer.

But they weren't quite the worst; Silverlink are the one that has caused me the most pain and suffering while they existed.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

GNER, National Express and Virgin all failed on the East Coast through hubris. GNER in particular benefitted from the recent BR investment, but made little investment of its own and its parent company went under.

South West Trains had a ropey start - the busmen knew better and sacked drivers - but it did recover and became a good franchise.

 

[bramling]

Silverlink. There can’t even really be much dispute. They are objectively* the worst.

A little unfair IMO. The county operation was pretty decent, if somewhat “plain vanilla”. The metro services always struck me as trying to make the best of what was available. When TFL took over they had access to a lot more money.

It was unfortunate that the metro routes passed through what were at the time some very troubled parts of London, but Silverlink’s operation was no different to many other London franchises.

They might win the award for most garish branding though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Yesterday at 20:34 ==

This is very wrong. I have been travelling between Cambridge and Kings Cross for more than half a century, and the First Capital Connect era was the best of the lot. Cambridge and Fen Line travellers would give a lot to have FCC back now.

Wouldn’t disagree with that, however they were very unpopular on the Thameslink side.

 

[StephenHunter]

I have memories of riding on a slam door on Silverlink to Barking with most of my family because there wasn't space for us and our new computer in the car.

 

[thedbdiboy]

Southeastern too; it got its franchise yanked for basically criminal acts.

Connex were booted out of the South Eastern franchise by the SRA for financial irregularities; however the most recent Southeastern contract wasn't 'yanked', the only sanction on GoVia (apart from recovery of the sums due) was that they were not granted an extension when the contract term came to an end, the TOC instead reverting to public ownership.

 

[DH1Commuter]

Connex SE - they got kicked out at a time franchising was still the future.

That took some doing.

 

[Harpo]

WAGN always seemed to be chaotic. The slightest disruption seemed to turn the west side of Liverpool Street into a parking lot of trains abandoned by their crews.

I’m also aware of many who’d describe Wessex as a very odd TOC to work for too with a poor reputation on the maintenance side. I heard their units’ vinyls described as essential to hold the rust together - ouch!

 

[CyrusWuff]

The original Management Buyout team for LTS Rail, who had the franchise pulled the day before it was due to start for fiddling the books.

In short, LTS got caught bulk issuing Day Travelcards at Fenchurch Street and sending them to Upminster (and possibly Barking) to be sold there. The reason for this being they got a bigger cut of a Travelcard issued at Fenchurch Street than they did at either Barking or Upminster, as the latter were joint stations with London Underground.

How they thought this wouldn't be noticed, given the steps required to account for said Travelcards, I have no idea.

The LTS franchise eventually passed to Prism Rail almost four months later.

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

Well there are many criteria that you could apply, but Arriva franchise in Wales was pretty terrible given how the contract was designed and written. Explicitly "no growth, no investment" which makes you wonder whether it was explicitly designed for managed decline.

Quite possibly. The original Northern (Serco/Abellio) franchise was let on a managed decline basis; the DfT expected passenger numbers to decline and specified no investment in additional stock, whether new or secondhand.
When passenger numbers kept increasing Northern had to fight hard to get additional units.

 

[Tetchytyke]

When passenger numbers kept increasing Northern had to fight hard to get additional units.

Serco didn’t “fight hard” for anything. They even refused to bring the 142s that had been stored due to the closure of the Oldham Loop back into service. Despite their significant profits, they weren’t going to do anything unless someone paid them to do it.

What happened is that the three PTEs (West Yorkshire using funding from Yorkshire Forward) paid for the extra units that arrived. Merseyside paid for some 158s which allowed extra 156s to move west, GMPTE paid for the stored 142s to come back into service, and Yorkshire Forward paid for the rest.

“Managed decline” was Serco’s excuse to cream off massive profits whilst doing the square root of naff all to better the franchise. Look how long it even took them to decide to come up with a livery, and when they did it looked like it had been designed by a toddler on an etch-a-sketch.

 

[yorksrob]

Connex were booted out of the South Eastern franchise by the SRA for financial irregularities; however the most recent Southeastern contract wasn't 'yanked', the only sanction on GoVia (apart from recovery of the sums due) was that they were not granted an extension when the contract term came to an end, the TOC instead reverting to public ownership.

Connex must have the award for not washing their trains (or at least painting them in a livery that always looked dirty).

 

[Tetchytyke]

They might win the award for most garish branding though.

Tough competition from ONE on that, though I actually always liked the ONE rainbow livery.

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

Serco didn’t “fight hard” for anything. They even refused to bring the 142s that had been stored due to the closure of the Oldham Loop back into service. Despite their significant profits, they weren’t going to do anything unless someone paid them to do it.

What happened is that the three PTEs (West Yorkshire using funding from Yorkshire Forward) paid for the extra units that arrived. Merseyside paid for some 158s which allowed extra 156s to move west, GMPTE paid for the stored 142s to come back into service, and Yorkshire Forward paid for the rest.

“Managed decline” was Serco’s excuse to cream off massive profits whilst doing the square root of naff all to better the franchise. Look how long it even took them to decide to come up with a livery, and when they did it looked like it had been designed by a toddler on an etch-a-sketch.

Sorry but this is not correct.

Northern approached the DfT, explained that the trains were full and they needed more units, and were told they couldn't have any.
So they went into talks with Metro, Yorkshire Forward and other interested parties and eventually brokered a deal where Yorkshire Forward would fund eight 158s.

They took the proposed deal to the DfT who were miffed that Northern hadn't just accepted the "no" verdict and told them they could have the 8 YF-funded 158s but only if they withdrew an equivalent number of 142s. Their "logic" was the 158s were bigger, so it was still an increase in seats(!)
At the DfT's behest the 142s were placed in "warm storage" (stored serviceable in old money) and were advertised as available to other TOCs, with the DfT sure there would be great interest in them.

I know it's hard to believe but Chiltern, Cross Country etc. didn't actually want 8 ancient Pacers, so eventually the DfT begrudgingly agreed they could re-enter traffic with Northern.

When the DfT had finished sulking they acknowledged Northern's tenacity and it became slightly easier to procure extra units, which materialised as more 158s, the ex-LM 150s and the 322s, although many of these appeared after Serco had left the business.

 

[sprinterguy]

Any nominations for Connex South-Eastern and its next door neighbour Connex South-Central?

That was certainly my immediate thought when I saw the thread title. Still appalling by remembered reputation quarter of a century later.

 

[tbtc]

I think we need to separate the TOCs that failed to deliver the contractually agreed levels of service etc with the ones that did deliver (but the problem people have is with the terms the Government)

Arriva (Trains Wales) and Serco/Ned (Northern) were generally fine in terms of meeting the level of service that the Government were paying them to deliver. They didn't have the contacts terminated early, unlike a few elsewhere

Arriva Trains Wales was let for a fifteen year contract and it lasted that long (meeting the five yearly benchmarks in the meantime). Serco/Ned signed a six year contract for Northern that ended up being extended until it was twelve years in total

I would argue that both franchises must have been satisfactory enough in the eyes of the Governments who signed/monitored them, so not "failures". What neither did was to speculatively invest above and beyond that, but this is a separate metric

It's funny, when defending certain quiet lines people will quickly make the point that "Public Transport is an essential public service, you shouldn't expect it to make a profit, it's no problem that we continue to maintain heavily loss making lines" (etc). And those are good arguments. But if we take the starting point that "the costs of providing a minor route will understandably lose money hand over first" then I don't think we can feign surprise that private companies don't choose to throw additional trains down such lines, over and above the level of service that they have agreed to in the contract that you awarded them. If you agree the terms for Arriva/Serco etc to run a contract for many years, and they do those things (within KPIs etc) then any blame should be attached to Governments, not the private companies

(Things would have been even tougher for Northern to speculate on because the Government chose to only give the franchise the B-list routes - the lines that had any prospect of growth to justify investment were split to the new TPE, leaving Northern to try to fill in the gaps with it's second choice paths)

Instead, I'd suggest Valley Lines for the definition of this thread. It was always going to be a minor one, low average fare revenue etc, but at least a relatively simple/ self contained set of routes. Whilst I'm sure it met the service required, it must have been frustrating for passengers to see their Sprinters swapped with Arriva Trains Northern with Pacers heading south... As far as I can remember it was just to save PRISM money - happy to be corrected though

The original Mersey Travel Northern Spirit probably deserve a mention for their inability to meet the basic timetable for months on end, with existing staff "poached" by InterCity TOCs and no replacements (until Arriva took over and steadied the ship)

First North Western always seemed to have a much bigger focus on introducing/running their London services then they ever did with the "day job" of long standing services in North West England/ North Wales, but they be my hazy memory, maybe the contract required them to? Unsure

Lastly, GNER deserve a mention for the way they happily ignored long running local train services so they could encourage passengers to use coach services to places like Hull, presumably they kept more of the revenue that way. Nice if you were in First Class between Waverley and Kings Cross, sure, but not exactly a good relation to other TOCs

 

[LowLevel]

Central Trains were horrendous at one point outside the West Midlands with an unwieldy network of joined up services that were unreliable and totally random as to which units would turn up - single 153s on peak time commuter trains into big cities, single 2 car 158s working from Liverpool to Stansted via Birmingham etc.

However the influx of class 170s and 350s, as well as the ex TPE 158s including the very useful 3 car sets into the equation transformed things and I think between 2005 and 2007, outside of the rural Lincolnshire area which was still being run by about 6 class 153s they'd finally more or less cracked it and ran well specified trains with a decent fleet which was reliable.

The Government then trashed it by splitting the fleets up in an inefficient manner and separated the East Midlands from the major maintenance depot at Tyseley which I don't think it has ever recovered from.

 

[nr758123]

First North Western always seemed to have a much bigger focus on introducing/running their London services then they ever did with the "day job" of long standing services in North West England/ North Wales, but they be my hazy memory, maybe the contract required them to? Unsure

First North Western were my unpleasant introduction to the idea of "cancelled due to staff shortages".

 

[Pyewipecarshed]

I think we need to separate the TOCs that failed to deliver the contractually agreed levels of service etc with the ones that did deliver (but the problem people have is with the terms the Government)

Arriva (Trains Wales) and Serco/Ned (Northern) were generally fine in terms of meeting the level of service that the Government were paying them to deliver. They didn't have the contacts terminated early, unlike a few elsewhere

Arriva Trains Wales was let for a fifteen year contract and it lasted that long (meeting the five yearly benchmarks in the meantime). Serco/Ned signed a six year contract for Northern that ended up being extended until it was twelve years in total

I would argue that both franchises must have been satisfactory enough in the eyes of the Governments who signed/monitored them, so not "failures". What neither did was to speculatively invest above and beyond that, but this is a separate metric

It's funny, when defending certain quiet lines people will quickly make the point that "Public Transport is an essential public service, you shouldn't expect it to make a profit, it's no problem that we continue to maintain heavily loss making lines" (etc). And those are good arguments. But if we take the starting point that "the costs of providing a minor route will understandably lose money hand over first" then I don't think we can feign surprise that private companies don't choose to throw additional trains down such lines, over and above the level of service that they have agreed to in the contract that you awarded them. If you agree the terms for Arriva/Serco etc to run a contract for many years, and they do those things (within KPIs etc) then any blame should be attached to Governments, not the private companies

(Things would have been even tougher for Northern to speculate on because the Government chose to only give the franchise the B-list routes - the lines that had any prospect of growth to justify investment were split to the new TPE, leaving Northern to try to fill in the gaps with it's second choice paths)

Instead, I'd suggest Valley Lines for the definition of this thread. It was always going to be a minor one, low average fare revenue etc, but at least a relatively simple/ self contained set of routes. Whilst I'm sure it met the service required, it must have been frustrating for passengers to see their Sprinters swapped with Arriva Trains Northern with Pacers heading south... As far as I can remember it was just to save PRISM money - happy to be corrected though

The original Mersey Travel Northern Spirit probably deserve a mention for their inability to meet the basic timetable for months on end, with existing staff "poached" by InterCity TOCs and no replacements (until Arriva took over and steadied the ship)

First North Western always seemed to have a much bigger focus on introducing/running their London services then they ever did with the "day job" of long standing services in North West England/ North Wales, but they be my hazy memory, maybe the contract required them to? Unsure

Lastly, GNER deserve a mention for the way they happily ignored long running local train services so they could encourage passengers to use coach services to places like Hull, presumably they kept more of the revenue that way. Nice if you were in First Class between Waverley and Kings Cross, sure, but not exactly a good relation to other TOCs

Very well put indeed.

Just a couple of points though, firstly most if not all franchises were let with the trains to be used specified in the franchise document. So for example the original Northern were told which units they would be using- not just x number of 150s, but the actual unit numbers allocated. The next bit stated whether any new or additional secondhand units were to be acquired. In the case of Northern and ATW the answer was no.
The expected service provision on each line was also specified in terms of first train/last train/minimum frequency. So whilst franchisees were free to operate additional services if they saw fit they were expected to do it using only their permitted units. If they wanted any extras they had to obtain permission from the DfT.

Northern Spirit didn't just have drivers poached. When MTL took over they offered a generous redundancy package to the drivers, because IIRC the MTL management believed there were too many. There were more applications for the package than expected and all were accepted. Allegedly this was because MTL didn't realise it takes a year or so to train a driver and believed they would be able to recruit and train a load of new ones in a few weeks.
The resulting shortage of staff led to temporary timetables being introduced and the Northern Spirit name becoming mud amongst commuters. When Arriva bought MTL they did a pretty good job of turning the Northern Spirit business around.

Central Trains were horrendous at one point outside the West Midlands with an unwieldy network of joined up services that were unreliable and totally random as to which units would turn up - single 153s on peak time commuter trains into big cities, single 2 car 158s working from Liverpool to Stansted via Birmingham etc.

However the influx of class 170s and 350s, as well as the ex TPE 158s including the very useful 3 car sets into the equation transformed things and I think between 2005 and 2007, outside of the rural Lincolnshire area which was still being run by about 6 class 153s they'd finally more or less cracked it and ran well specified trains with a decent fleet which was reliable.

The Government then trashed it by splitting the fleets up in an inefficient manner and separated the East Midlands from the major maintenance depot at Tyseley which I don't think it has ever recovered from.

I was going to suggest Central from memories of travelling on a variety of their decrepit Sprinters in the 1990s.
However I held back because as you say they did eventually improve massively.
I agree that much of the problem was the bizarre joined up services which were pretty much unworkable.

 

[Strathclyder]

As far as ScotRail is concerned, First weren't actually the worst of the 3 franchise holders (shock horror with those with painful memories of FGW/GWR, FCC, SWR etc). If I had the choose, I think Abellio comes last with National Express sat squarely in the middle. This isn't to say First's iteration of ScotRail was perfect - of course it wasn't - but in terms of actual, tangible improvements to the Strathclyde/Glasgow network between 1996 and 2022, a not-insignificant chunk of them became reality when First had the keys and thus that is a major reason why I continue to look back on that era as positively as I do.

Just to name a few of these from the aforementioned part of the network: Maryhill-Anniesland, Larkhall & Airdrie-Bathgate all reopened, Cumbernauld (both from Springburn & Motherwell directions), Paisley Canal, Whifflet all fully electrified, Class 380s ordered and built, Partick station completely refurbished to something resembling a station fit for the 21st century (same to Dalmarnock) and the long-standing Shields Junction - Paisley Gilmour St bottleneck all but eliminated.

Yes, while most if not all of these were Transport Scotland/Network Rail/SPT-funded initiatives & projects and First merely reaped the good publicity they brought, the majority of the travelling public couldn't have given two hoots which body was actually responsible for funding them and getting spades into the ground (so to speak) so long as the trains were clean and/or ran on time the majority of the time

Additionally, punctuality, reliabilty and service recovery in the event of something actually going pear-shaped was overall quite good and didn't seem to decline year-on-year as it did under Abellio's watch, to say nothing of rolling stock presentation/cleanliness also taking a nosedive after March/April 2015. As one example, while the 314s were at end-of-life and due for retirement by the time Abellio took over, there was little excuse for them getting into such a shabby state by 2019. The SWT slammers are perhaps the best example of end-of-life rolling stock I can think of that remained clean and presentable right to the very end, not like rolling Booths escapees.

 

[bramling]

Central Trains were horrendous at one point outside the West Midlands with an unwieldy network of joined up services that were unreliable and totally random as to which units would turn up - single 153s on peak time commuter trains into big cities, single 2 car 158s working from Liverpool to Stansted via Birmingham etc.

However the influx of class 170s and 350s, as well as the ex TPE 158s including the very useful 3 car sets into the equation transformed things and I think between 2005 and 2007, outside of the rural Lincolnshire area which was still being run by about 6 class 153s they'd finally more or less cracked it and ran well specified trains with a decent fleet which was reliable.

The Government then trashed it by splitting the fleets up in an inefficient manner and separated the East Midlands from the major maintenance depot at Tyseley which I don't think it has ever recovered from.

This is exactly my memory of CT. I remember having some quite decent journeys with them, for example it was quite good if you managed to end up on one of their 170s. The East Midlands has only recently got these back.

The topic has come up before, however the original WAGN franchise wasn’t great. They had the benefit of the 365s, albeit not procured by them, however they were always a franchise that clung on to 4-car services where they could, which even in those days caused overcrowding. There was then the odd situation where they refurbished 24 317/2s (which to be fair was done very well), but didn’t touch the remaining 317/1s bar a few done up for Stansted Express. As the franchise went on they increasingly seemed to suffer driver shortages, which was left to National Express to sort. Performance overall wasn’t great, and despite all this there was the distraction of wanting to run north of Peterborough, which thankfully never happened.

National Express sorted a lot of this, which left a good foundation for First Capital Connect. Both these two periods were a good time for GN, it then went down again under Govia.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Silverlink. There can’t even really be much dispute. They are objectively* the worst.

Didn't think they were that bad on the WCML to be honest. They were at least managed locally.

Silverlink Metro was dire though.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 minutes ago ==

Lastly, GNER deserve a mention for the way they happily ignored long running local train services so they could encourage passengers to use coach services to places like Hull, presumably they kept more of the revenue that way. Nice if you were in First Class between Waverley and Kings Cross, sure, but not exactly a good relation to other TOCs

I don't get the love for GNER. They did little bar paint the trains blue. It was just BR in a different colour, but adding an irritating insularity as you say. When they did refurbish, they installed seats with single piece cushions that sloped the wrong way, a terrible piece of design only fixed some years later by Virgin/Stagecoach.

I'd venture the original First TransPennine Express. They started by sticking ugly blue F-in-circle stickers on the Northern Spirit livery and went on to order a totally inadequate fleet in the 185s (yes, they're nice, but they were overcrowded from day one, and a cheaper fleet of e.g. 170s could have meant a larger one, the same error that happened with XC) and all that pervaded from top to bottom by an arrogant "We're Intercity don't you know" snootiness while their service was barely adequate in capacity terms to be a short distance commuter one. Absolutely awful from start to finish. At the time I avoided them at any cost, just as I avoid XC now.

 

[dosxuk]

GNER, National Express and Virgin all failed on the East Coast through hubris. GNER in particular benefitted from the recent BR investment, but made little investment of its own and its parent company went under.

In GNER's defence, it wasn't that their operation was unprofitable or that they were struggling to pay their agreed franchise payments (as affected the latter two), it was that their parent company was struggling so much they decided to just give up and refocus on their core business.

GNER were affected quite badly for a while by the poor reliability of the BR investments - organising the rebuild of the Class 91's while getting 90's, 373's and the 89 in as cover / expansion. The mallard refurbishment of the coaching stock was also a significant improvement on what went before, so I think it's a bit unfair to call them a failure.