Potential Bidders for the next Greater Western franchise

jonmorris0844 said:

Surely First didn't set the franchise conditions? They simply agreed to abide by them.

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Agreed - I think that *any* TOC in the circumstances would have turned down the three year extension.

So, what, are people hating First for being too good at negotiations?

From BBC Cornwall website. Cornwall Unitary Council warned off running the counties rail services.

Requeststop said:

From BBC Cornwall website. Cornwall Unitary Council warned off running the counties rail services.

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Thankfully. Running a railway is not like playing with a trainset, it is way beyond the scope of a local authority. Even just 'setting times and prices' is something which needs to be done from a wider, network-conscious point of view, not from the local civic offices. Bristol's Severn Beach line is a case in point, financially propped up by the local council after much fierce lobbying by its own dedicated support group, but ultimately running a service which is not entirely justified at prices which are recklessly cheap, and totally unable to stand up as a profitable operation in it's current form. Bristol's ratepayers are effectively funding the small minority who live close to the line, which incidentally includes several very affluent areas. Meanwhile the other side of the city gets the raw deal and pays more for a lesser service.

As much as it is nice when locals can get together and look after their station or lobby for better service, the intricacies of running the operational railway will always be best left to the professionals. There is too often a lack of understanding of just what it involves and how complex even the paperwork side of things is, and an apparent mentality that if the locals can look after the station garden then surely they can run the whole railway as well, and sadly it just isn't that simple. Things are fragmented enough as it is, do we really want every different branch line up and down the country being run by a different council with their own way of doing things? Many TOCs have done a very good job listening to their local passenger groups and such like, and it's that approach which we need to keep taking, rather than trying to complicate and fragment things even further. What we need is integration, not local empire building.

BestWestern said:

Bristol's Severn Beach line is a case in point, financially propped up by the local council after much fierce lobbying by its own dedicated support group, but ultimately running a service which is not entirely justified at prices which are recklessly cheap, and totally unable to stand up as a profitable operation in it's current form. Bristol's ratepayers are effectively funding the small minority who live close to the line, which incidentally includes several very affluent areas. Meanwhile the other side of the city gets the raw deal and pays more for a lesser service.

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It's only fair to point out that the subsidy for the Severn Beach Line paid by Bristol City Council was halved in April 2011 from £400,000 to £200,000. All parties agreed that the increased patronage and fare revenue was sufficient to see the subsidy reduced without need to reduce the service back to the minimum specified in the franchise Service Level Commitment. If FGW were not happy with the revenue generated on the Severn Beach Line following this subsidy decrease, you can bet they wouldn't have continued running the 40 minute frequency and would've reverted to the hourly frequency which is all they are obliged to provide.

Evidence of the increased patronage on this line is the fact that FGW have recently strengthened peak AM services from two carriages to three.

Come along to Bristol Temple Meads at 1803 and tell me that the current service on the Severn Beach Line isn't justified.

BestWestern, you do a great disservice to SVB Line users by suggesting the line only serves a small minority and/or affluent areas. Redland and Clifton are, I'll concede, relatively affluent, but a large proportion of passengers from those areas are non car owning students. Redland and Clifton also see large numbers of schoolchildren using the services, as well as leisure travellers forsaking their cars. The rest of the line covers less affluent areas and sees a healthy flow of commuters, either into the city or out to the industrial areas around Avonmouth.

I don't doubt that 'the other side of the city' is less well served. I can only presume you are referring to Bedminster and Parson Street. I agree, those stations should have better than an hourly service, but not at the expense of the hard fought for, and in light of the ridership figures, totally justified 2008 increase in Severn Beach Line services.

I think I'm qualified to point all this out. I've just spent the past two weeks surveying passengers on the Severn Beach Line on behalf of the Severnside Community Rail Partnership.

BestWestern said:

Thankfully. Running a railway is not like playing with a trainset, it is way beyond the scope of a local authority. Even just 'setting times and prices' is something which needs to be done from a wider, network-conscious point of view, not from the local civic offices.

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You mean the current system of fares is rational and sensible?

Schnellzug said:

You mean the current system of fares is rational and sensible?

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Oh no, most definitely not! But it would become a darn sight more unfathomable if it were left up to each local authority to tell TOCs what to charge!
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bnm said:

It's only fair to point out that the subsidy for the Severn Beach Line paid by Bristol City Council was halved in April 2011 from £400,000 to £200,000...

...I think I'm qualified to point all this out. I've just spent the past two weeks surveying passengers on the Severn Beach Line on behalf of the Severnside Community Rail Partnership.

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You make some very valid points, and I don't doubt your level of knowledge or experience with the line. I accept your views on Redland and Clifton being student areas as well as having some very affluent residents. However, the issue which I'm afraid I fail to get my head around is if the line is so very busy and well used, which we know that it is during the peak hours, why keep the subsidy?! The fares charged are artificially cheap whatever view you take of the operation. You can travel far further for far less on the SVB line than anywhere else around Bristol, why? £1.50 for a single into Temple Meads from Clifton is stupidly cheap, and that fare could easily be raised. It is the preferred method of getting into town for commuters and has little practical competition from buses or private cars as they take far longer and cost more, so why the insistence on charging peanuts? Similarly, why offer a 50% discount for Railcard holders instead of the usual 1/3, when the fares are so cheap already? How many other daily peak time commuters can buy their weekly season tickets for a measly £6 or £9? Again, why?!

If I were a Bristol ratepayer and didn't have the luxury of living near a station on the SVB line, I'm afraid I would have serious issues with my hard earned wegde being used to needlessly subsidise a large number of people who could and should be paying more for their journeys. If the fares charged went up by 50p per passenger, it would still represent good value for money and the subsidy could be substantially reduced if not withdrawn. We know that the line is used to capacity during rush hours, and there is no way those particular trains should need subsidising by anybody. The Friends group have persuaded the council to prop up a lightly used service during the rest of the day, whilst continuing to charge peppercorn fares even on the busiest trains, and frankly that really makes little sense. Whilst they doubtless have made great progress for their cause, they need to start being realistic about the situation, and understand that a railway cannot be run with large quantities of public money just so that nobody has to pay a proper fare for their journey. The Severn Beach is perhaps one of the relatively few lines in the country which, if given an appropriate service level to match actual demand, could potentially pay for itself. By all means keep the service as best it can be justified, but for goodness sake at least charge something sensible for a start!

I think that the argument that ratepayers in other parts of the city are needlessly supporting the SVB Line service is rather spurious. All Council Tax payers pay for services they do not use. I don't complain about paying for Children, Youth or Elderly services, despite having, at present, no need for any of them. I don't regularly use all the various subsidised buses across the city. Should I be unhappy that other parts of the city get better subsidised bus services than my area? No, because I may occasionally wish or need to to use them.

And just because someone across the city doesn't commute on the Severn Beach Line, doesn't mean they don't use it all.

£200,000 is but a drop in the ocean out of the entire Council's 2011 budget of £367.5M. That £200,000 represents just £0.12 per month for each household liable for Council tax. Or little more than 0.01% of the tax due for a Band D property.

As regard your assertion that the fares are artificially cheap, you forget that much of the revenue generated by the line is for services beyond Bristol Temple Meads.

The policies put in place in 2008 have seen passengers numbers rise by over 90%. The subsidy was reduced as a consequence of those policies bearing fruit and may well be cut again or removed when the next budget is set on 28th February 2012. We'll wait and see. If the line can now stand on it's own two feet without local subsidy then that's fine. However I don't want to see a subsidy cut that would affect the current service provision, giving FGW an excuse to cut back to the minimum they are obliged to provide in the franchise agreement Service Level Commitment.

I also want to see the current 3tp2h BRI-AVN service provision made the baseline in the next franchise SLC, and not 1tph as it is currently.

bnm said:

I think that the argument that ratepayers in other parts of the city are needlessly supporting the SVB Line service is rather spurious. All Council Tax payers pay for services they do not use. I don't complain about paying for Children, Youth or Elderly services, despite having, at present, no need for any of them. I don't regularly use all the various subsidised buses across the city. Should I be unhappy that other parts of the city get better subsidised bus services than my area? No, because I may occasionally wish or need to to use them.

And just because someone across the city doesn't commute on the Severn Beach Line, doesn't mean they don't use it all.

£200,000 is but a drop in the ocean out of the entire Council's 2011 budget of £367.5M. That £200,000 represents just £0.12 per month for each household liable for Council tax. Or little more than 0.01% of the tax due for a Band D property.

As regard your assertion that the fares are artificially cheap, you forget that much of the revenue generated by the line is for services beyond Bristol Temple Meads.

The policies put in place in 2008 have seen passengers numbers rise by over 90%. The subsidy was reduced as a consequence of those policies bearing fruit and may well be cut again or removed when the next budget is set on 28th February 2012. We'll wait and see. If the line can now stand on it's own two feet without local subsidy then that's fine. However I don't want to see a subsidy cut that would affect the current service provision, giving FGW an excuse to cut back to the minimum they are obliged to provide in the franchise agreement Service Level Commitment.

I also want to see the current 3tp2h BRI-AVN service provision made the baseline in the next franchise SLC, and not 1tph as it is currently.

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Again, as always, some good points. I appreciate that the subsidy is not huge, but my frustration is that it exists at all, when it could clearly be removed if only the fares were set at a sensible rate! Yes there are many who travel beyond Bristol, but equally there are many more who don't, and the former doesn't really excuse the latter from paying for their journeys. The line may have needed some degree of promotion in the past to increase ridership, and the Partnership has clearly done a superb job of that. But, as with all promotions, it can't last forever, and the line is now clearly capable of standing alone. My concern is that there is perhaps a feeling that things should stay as they are now, permanently at that 'promotional' level where users are paying peanuts, and that just isn't on really. Rail travel is not dirt cheap, and those who wish to utilise it must expect to pay a fair sum in return for what is in this case a good service. I agree that the current service level ought to remain in place, just so long as it is being used to a justifiable degree. Let's remove the subsidy, charge something more in line with norm and see how it does.

Do remember that the fares on the line can only increase in line with 'protected fares' rules though. The price changes brought about in 2008 on the SVB Line were allowed by the DfT as a special case. The RPI+n% formula still applies though to the SDR, it just hasn't been used in January 2009/10/11/12.

Since the introduction of the 'zonal' fares on the SVB Beach Line in 2008, the fares have been held.

If they had increased by the RPI+n% formula, the fare from Severn Beach (currently £3.00 SDR. 2008 £3.70) would now be £4.40. The fare from Clifton Down (currently £2.00 SDR. 2008 £1.60) would now be £1.90.

The 'zonal' fares, when introduced, saw some winners but mostly losers. SDRs from Clifton Down/Redland to Bristol TM were £1.60 and a CDR was £1.50. Now the fares are £2.00 SDR with no CDR. From Severn Beach it was £3.70/£3.40. Now £3.00 SDR only. Undoubtedly Clifton Down has far more pax than Severn Beach, so farebox revenue increased considerably under the 'zonal' system from there. The 7DS increased by 50% from £4.00 to £6.00!

If the old fares had stayed in place and risen by RPI+n% yearly, pax from Clifton Down/Redland would still be paying less than they are today. Particularly if they buy 7DS. The SDR fares from closer in (Stapleton Road/Lawrence Hill) doubled under the new 'zonal' system. The busiest parts of the line saw increases with the new fare structure, way beyond the RPI+n%.

As these figures demonstrate, the subsidy was never really about fares, it was provided to increase service provision.

What has happened though is Clifton Down/Redland folk now pay more than they would've done under the old fares, whilst the far fewer pax out my way (Sea Mills - Severn Beach) pay less. So, arguably it's the passengers subsidising other passengers rather than the City Council directly subsidising fares. That seems to me to be a neat solution, the new structure reduced fares for far fewer people than it increased. But then I would say that. In real terms my fare from Shirehampton dropped, more so as I hold a railcard with allows 50% off on SVB Line fares!

As someone who a) lives right next to the Severn Beach Line, b) uses the line regularly, and c) is a student, I'm really pleased that the services have been improved. It's cheap and convenient. And often full. What's the problem? I do think fares should rise slightly (and provision of a proper ticket machine at Clifton Down would be nice too!) but I have no problem with the council subsidising the line. Don't they subsidise the buses too?

There are also fewer and fewer Pacers passing my window, with more 150s and 153s (I've even seen a 158 a couple of times!)

supervc-10 said:

As someone who a) lives right next to the Severn Beach Line, b) uses the line regularly, and c) is a student, I'm really pleased that the services have been improved. It's cheap and convenient. And often full. What's the problem? I do think fares should rise slightly (and provision of a proper ticket machine at Clifton Down would be nice too!) but I have no problem with the council subsidising the line. Don't they subsidise the buses too?

There are also fewer and fewer Pacers passing my window, with more 150s and 153s (I've even seen a 158 a couple of times!)

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The class 143's are now supposed to only operate services around Exeter with the class 150's brought in to work the Severn Beach line providing extra seats.

Should all be 150s now, with a 153 added for a peak train in to Bristol in the morning.

That would explain things then!

There was a "Meet the Bidders" meeting down here in Plymouth a week or so ago. There is a video within the link. That maybe of use to some.


http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/update/2012-04-18/companies-bid-to-run-rail-franchise/


National Express are getting the best "positive media repsonse". Which may mean something. After the diaster they had with East Anglia i am bit worried!

charlee said:

There was a "Meet the Bidders" meeting down here in Plymouth a week or so ago. There is a video within the link. That maybe of use to some.


http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/update/2012-04-18/companies-bid-to-run-rail-franchise/


National Express are getting the best "positive media repsonse". Which may mean something. After the diaster they had with East Anglia i am bit worried!

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Which i would find ironic considering National Express were the only bidders not to turn up - NX Declined any invitation and didnt want to comment...Which i think says it all coming from NX!

To coin an old expression...If it aint broke...

fgwrich said:

Which i would find ironic considering National Express were the only bidders not to turn up - NX Declined any invitation and didnt want to comment...Which i think says it all coming from NX!

To coin an old expression...If it aint broke...

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Hmmm interesting! Maybe they only care about the Bristol services! And will let the Wessex areas delcine. I was unaware they didnt turn up, quite pathetic really for a company wanting to invest in regional infrastructure. Hope they dont get it.

This article from the Bristol area is quite postive for them;

http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Crowding-timing-rail-priorities/story-15874765-detail/story.html

SO! they turn up to bristol and decline Plymouth. What a bunch of morons. Probaly "too far". This highlights why they would be so damaging for the far south west. They would prob stop Paddington services at Exeter.

The real winner in this franchise race is the DFT they will rake in the money and not do anything for it.The operators should set the timetables,rolling stock rostas not a bunch of civil servsnts.Hope First retain it they are a good operator and their staff are excellent.

Have held back from commenting till now. As a long time passenger from Bath to almost everywhere but mainly to London for past 15 years IF I was asked even a few years ago whether First should retain the franchise I would have sacrificed my forst born (no pun intended) to ensure that NO was the answer from everyone.

Have to say that for a long time now, and certainly after they went some of the way to sorting a bit of the capacity issues down to Portsmouth, I am very comfortable with First Great Western. So here is one passenger happy with both the service and the staff (big time). My only issue is the Reading Commuter Brigade - though I have no idea how that issue will ever be sorted out. The vicious circle of loads of fast trains heading west with 1st stop at Reading offering a 25 minute hop must be such a draw that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of a great selling point for housing in the Reading area and so it builds.

On the other bidders I shudder at the thought of Arriva getting their hands on the GW route. I seem to remember a sort of promise when XC took over the VXC franchise that they would reinstate 5 coaches (correct me if I am mistaken but I remember praising the issue when I read through the XC proposal). I have to use XC but try to limit it whenever I can and that includes a nodding understanding of the difficulties of operating the UK's longest series of commuter routes!

Don't lnow too much about the resy but surely NX disqualify themselves?

So for the sake of having got used t the livery and the levels of service, a genuinely (in my case at least) efficient and reliable service, even a decent bacon baguette from the on-board HST buffet - FGW will do for me. (I am going to lie down now as I never thought the day would arrive for me to wave the first flag!!!).


C

charlee said:

SO! they turn up to bristol and decline Plymouth. What a bunch of morons. Probaly "too far". This highlights why they would be so damaging for the far south west. They would prob stop Paddington services at Exeter.

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I'd like to see them get that past the DfT!