Given the number of reports of trains running without an OBS on board when one ought to be present then it quite possibly is not a fair summary! Especially when that number is massively higher than GTR suggested would be likely.
As I've posted on these forums before, there may be lots of OBSs running around the network, but as trains won't wait for them, they often get held up in the wrong places in disruption (or even in the event of sporadic cancellations such as you will almost always get from time to time on a network with so many trains). This means you can have twice the number of OBSs, but it's no use if the depots are in slightly silly places (Barnham and Peckham Rye are not sensible base locations for OBSs getting to some of their newly-rostered routes, for example), or if the service is unreliable, as they'll all bunch up in certain places without making it anywhere near to where they are required to be.
My position stops me from posting much here, but my tuppence worth:
If the OBS are here to stay and there are going to be more of them, the simple solution to increase their presence is quite simple "Crew working".
Every driver who books on and covers any diagram that requires an OBS on board (newly appointed DOO routes) should have an OBS book on at the same time and have exactly the same work content - EXACTLY.
I agree. This usually results in better clarity and indeed teamwork on the occasions it does happen already on the Southern network - for example, on some duties where the same conductor works all of a driver's diagrammed passenger services on the Uckfield line.
Thus a driver books on at Brighton, brings a set of stock out of Lovers Walk and then goes to Victoria before working a Metro service or two prior to an Eastbourne down and then back to Brighton on a 313 (I know I am pushing it here but bear with me).
To be honest, for certain links at certain depots, that's not especially far-fetched.
Get the OBS to walk to Lovers with the driver and board the ECS there. That way if it's late out and starts somewhere else instead of dropping into the station the OBS is there.
Get the OBS to stay on the Metro workings with the driver. They can do tickets.
Get the OBS to stay on the 313 with the conductor, they can do more tickets.
Those are pretty sensible suggestions for a number of reasons, though what I would say is that a 313 (for example, or equally a 171 / 455) is not currently a safe working environment for an OBS as they have no knowledge of emergency equipment, where to take refuge and what they can/can't do. I also can't say too much, but this kind of stuff has already been causing problems with OBS working.
I can see no other definitive way of keeping an OBS with a driver. The splits and joins ate Haywards Heath / Horsham are not conducive to separate Driver / OBS work content, just as the Driver / Conductors were not - and is one of the reasons the OBS was so attractive for running a train in disruption.
Some of those Horsham services, in particular, have been known to have fearsomely complex crew diagramming - even the ones which don't divide en-route. It would make more sense to tie OBSs in with driver diagrams where these have been painstakingly worked out, at least where they are reasonably stable.
My ideal would be for a number of "outposts" at key locations where OBSs would be rostered to travel to, and then spend "x" hours on cover duties. They could man gatelines and provide revenue support until any such time as a train turns up without an OBS, at which point they could make their way to the train and work it until a relief for the original OBS can be found. This could happen at busier stations without OBS depots but with a number of crew movements and passenger service interchanges, such as Sutton, London Bridge, Haywards Heath, Oxted, Three Bridges etc.
The fatal flaw in my plan is going to be OBS PTS ability and of course numbers. I am not privy to depot numbers, but you would of course need to have the same amount of OBS at each depot to marry up driver duties with any "New DOO" work content in a diagram.
** If ** there are enough, I am at a loss as to why this method of working could not be adopted.
Should there be a will to do it, I am sure there would be a way to do it...
My train this morning was held at Redhill for what I guessed was a passenger alarm activation (based on the on-train checking actions that followed). It was DOO and so the driver had to decamp and check the train. I happened to be by his cab when he re-boarded and overheard him say to the platform staff - "this is what happens when there's no guard!" (paraphrased). As it was only a five car train and not anywhere near full, the delay was only about five minutes. Extrapolated out to a 12 car train at a station with one or no platform staff and...
Quite. It was actually a smoke alarm activation, so potentially more of a specific hazard warning than might be relayed by the activation of a passcom, and one in which a guard/conductor could be extremely useful.
I think it was SWT that had a spate of passengers detraining themselves around the same time as the Kentish Town incident.
SouthEastern did too. There was an incident at London Bridge which turned from a brief outage into a several hours delay because all the juice had to be turned off repeatedly due to passengers detraining themselves.
Didn't great western have a few around Bristol too at the exact same time. Maybe the media made it worse by giving people the idea? During the recent issues at Woking I saw people on twitter threaten to do the same.
The point I've highlighted in bold, as well as rumours and suggestions which spread around social media (mainly Twitter) in such events, are generally some of the current key drivers of these egress incidents, in my experience.
However, these incidents are usually only driven forward after a lack of positive crowd control and information, so...
Possibly. But that SWT and other guarded trains had passenger egress incidents also proves that the presence of a guard doesn't prevent this from happening.
...the presence of a guard is only any good if they are trained to manage crowded trains and deal decisively with anyone who disobeys instructions (which, with decent crowd control, can be surprisingly rare).
My suggestion would be for better crowd control training for all guards operating trains in certain urban areas, principally within the London Zones, and emphasis on effective PA announcements as being of equal importance to face-to-face customer care, if not more so when dealing with hundreds of people at once. I would go so far as to say that PA announcements and monitoring passenger behaviour on stranded trains should have significant prominence in the Rule Book. I would also point out that I've yet to hear of any situation when a guard/conductor has worsened the condition of stranded passengers, and there were incidents such as the Wandsworth Common shoegear loss incident (on a 12 car Southern 377) where there was a lot of praise for the co-ordination and information from the conductor. A driver operating a train on their own, or with an OBS with minimal training, is never going to have as much potential to prevent difficult uncontrolled evacuation and egress situations.
