12LDA28C
Established Member
Seems quite clear that the overtime ban this week means less drivers available with cancellations as a result.
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Multiple trains one after the other cancelled due to 'staff shortages'
- Thread starter hypercolius
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Seems quite clear that the overtime ban this week means less drivers available with cancellations as a result.
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dk1
Veteran Member
I don’t know anyone that I work with (and there are hundreds of them)that do a second job if that’s what you mean. It’s never been something that occurs on the railway really.
It's like how Royal Mail keeps making stamps more expensive.
Just reduce the size of the stamps! Half the size, half the paper and printing costs!
Plenty.
If staff are unavailable the facility is unavailable.
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dk1
Veteran Member
How very true. It’s just far more noticeable with traincrew and a cancellation rather than just queuing or waiting longer in other industries.
"We apologise we are experiencing unusually large call volumes"...
Call volumes that seem to be as unusual as Avanti overcrowding.
The Puddock
Member
We tried to take the kids swimming at the weekend but when we got to the pool it was shut, apparently because there weren’t enough lifeguards on duty. Maybe I should have kicked off that it’s “all internal operational trivia” and demanded they just let us drown.
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Yep, its just the railway that treats its customers so badly
dk1
Veteran Member
If a
As a daily swimmer & train driver, this has so amused me this evening. Thank you for that.
As a daily swimmer & train driver, this has so amused me this evening. Thank you for that.
trainophile
Established Member
You forgot my béte noire, the ubiquitous "Out of Order". This could be Great Britain's logo.
They've got a heck of a lot to fix, and not just with the railways. Will probably take a few decades if it's even possible.
Always easier to destroy than build.
They ( all, as far as I know ) keep spare crew at airports in case someone goes sick - and that can be as simple as someone thinking they're not fit to fly because they didn't get enough sleep. From the amount of moaning I've experienced over the years from some aquaintances that's not a popular turn...
A generation or two growing up with unionism being treated as a disease will do that. Thanks, 80s. I guess thanks unreasonable 1970s union leaders too.
I was travelling from Ireland (I think that it was Knock) to Birmingham some years ago. A stewardess had been taken ill on the outbound journey so a call went out offering volunteers a few hundred in cash to spend a night in a hotel, so that they could continue to meet the crew-passenger ratio.
It's certainly not just the railway that can't always make things work.
mike57
Established Member
Reading this thread, and ignoring OP solution to the problem, there is a lot that could be done:
Timetables need to be realistic, TPE went through a similar phase where random on the day cancellations were occuring with huge gaps in service. Timetable may be less frequent than is desirable, but there should be no timetables 'created' that cannot be delivered with currently available resources including a margin for normal sickness and annual leave. If there are problems which are known in advance then a temporary timetable should be published and run.
Ticket acceptance and rerouting needs to be an automatic right if your service is cancelled. Apart from OA operators every other TOC is now government funded one way or another as far as I can see, so no excuse for all the complications around routes and operators in the event of disruption/cancellation. You can travel via the next available service that will get you to your destination.
Each route should have a published emergency timetable which is introduced in the event of significant disruption.
None of the above needs any major expenditure, and would go a long way to addressing the the problems. Cancellations should only happen where there are sudden issues which cannot be foreseen.
Timetables need to be realistic, TPE went through a similar phase where random on the day cancellations were occuring with huge gaps in service. Timetable may be less frequent than is desirable, but there should be no timetables 'created' that cannot be delivered with currently available resources including a margin for normal sickness and annual leave. If there are problems which are known in advance then a temporary timetable should be published and run.
Ticket acceptance and rerouting needs to be an automatic right if your service is cancelled. Apart from OA operators every other TOC is now government funded one way or another as far as I can see, so no excuse for all the complications around routes and operators in the event of disruption/cancellation. You can travel via the next available service that will get you to your destination.
Each route should have a published emergency timetable which is introduced in the event of significant disruption.
None of the above needs any major expenditure, and would go a long way to addressing the the problems. Cancellations should only happen where there are sudden issues which cannot be foreseen.
Getting a temporary timetable into play, updating journey planners and information systems is a 24+ hr job, and more realistically 2 days in advance. Given the current industrial relations situation, it may not be clear whether that is going to be made. Who makes that call? What is the threshold? You’d then have to shift all the driver diagrams around in a very short notice period, which will make nobody happy.
Selective cancellations are a better option here, to spread the “pain” across different routes if you can.
I disagree. In some situations this may be suitable, but if your next train is in 30 minutes in many cases it is easier to wait then faff around trying to get to your alternative route. In some places, even an hour wait might be preferable as the alternatives are limited. There are agreed industry standards for activating ticket acceptance which can be “enhanced” if needed and all operators will know what they are. There’s huge variety here so what might be acceptable in one part of the country is completely unacceptable elsewhere so it’s very location dependent, so please note that caveat. Where it gets practically difficult is if the alternative also has disruption or is very busy and you end up turning certain routes and stations into a scrum.
As I said above, implementing an emergency timetable within 24-48 hours is quite difficult; it wouldn’t be done by train planners but instead controllers who - with the best will in the world - aren’t going to be able to do it as effectively considering all the fleet and crew diagrams that need to be remade / replanned / amended and ensuring all the information systems are 100% up to date. Errors will slip through & things will be missed.
During significant disruption there are also contingency plans for all routes which dictate a level of service but this is mainly utilised for infrastructure issues and other on-the-day signifiant incidents.
mike57
Established Member
I was thinking of longer term changes, where resources are spread too thin on an ongoing basis, resulting in cancellations where there is no other disruption or industrial action. Eventually TPE eventually had to introduce a reduced timetable after 4 years of dreadful service. The same happened at Avanti.
trainophile
Established Member
The phrase "a short notice change to the timetable" should be banned.
Oh yes, long-term much better. Which is what TPE and Avanti did eventually get around too. Much better to give certainty rather than random ad-hoc cancellations on a daily basis
Except where there is a genuine planning error, or a system anomaly, agreed!
Why would you want to ban a phrase ? That's very Orwellian of you. Surely we should be working on the route causes and aim to prevent those.
Another issue is that even where there's resource and willingness, training takes time and needs resources.
And before anyone blames the industry for being "too onerous" with training, please realise that Train Driver training requirements are mandated in law..... which came from EU..... and the legislation is highly prescriptive.
Even with a "talent pool" not everyone who starts makes the grade.
Nor is comparison with road transport clever, as bus drivers and HGV drivers are something of a shortage too.
Maybe when the staff who do such valuable work are properly respected and appreciated in society, and hence enough of them, the issue will be resolved......
TPO
And before anyone blames the industry for being "too onerous" with training, please realise that Train Driver training requirements are mandated in law..... which came from EU..... and the legislation is highly prescriptive.
Even with a "talent pool" not everyone who starts makes the grade.
Nor is comparison with road transport clever, as bus drivers and HGV drivers are something of a shortage too.
Maybe when the staff who do such valuable work are properly respected and appreciated in society, and hence enough of them, the issue will be resolved......
TPO
No, but it defines the syllabus content and level of skills expected. It also requires that training and examination of everything bar specific route knowledge be done by a training centre approved by ORR...... who in turn ensure than the prospective approved centre have suitable training/examination programmes (and resources available to deliver them). ORR also produces guidance on this, as does Rail Delivery Group.
This is all additional to the ROGs competence requirements for safety critical work.
TPO
So Driver training requirements aren't mandated by law. I wasn't aware that it defines the syllabus either. Do you have a source for that please ?
If everything is "Guidance" could the TOC still just do whatever they want ? Who takes president ? ORR/RDG or RSSB (whom you haven't mentioned)
OK. It's the Train Driver Licensing and Certification Regulations (TDLCR). That is law, Regulations made under HSW Act to implement an EU Directive. The content of training and role of Approved Centres is defined in the TDLCR (and in the EU Directive). The TDLCR is about more than just training, and also contains some other interesting detail such as the maximum allowable time for a non refreshed/used traction competence before it needs retraining.
The Enforcing Authority for the TDLCR is ORR (HMRI) as for other railway safety regulations.
ORR as the National Safety Authority (as was in the EU Directive) also approve the Approved Centres. There is a list of these Approved Centres on ORRs website.
Approved Centre status is needed to Train and Examine, but not to maintain competence through ongoing Assessment.
To assist railway Dutyholders comply with all parts of TDLCR, ORR produce some extra Guidance (like they do for other safety regulations), it is several parts, each dealing with a particular part of the TDLCR.
In addition, there is some RGD guidance. RSSB doesn't really get involved, although content of some RIS's (e.g.good practice in route learning) is relevant.
The law, as ever, takes priority. If the TOC applies the law wrongly they can be held to account in an appropriate way by ORR (HMRI).
Hope this explains somewhat; the TDLCR, the EU Directive and the ORR Guidance are all publicly available on the Internet.
TPO
That I would like to see please. I literally looked at those regulations today and couldn't find them. Any help here would be appreciated.
Awesome and thank you.
Not sure here and some clarity needed here please. Most of the documents I search for are all RSSB. For me, the RDG do tickets and bugger all else. (apologies to the RDG for any mis-understanding)
This is really bugging me. What content are they specifying other than general guidance ?
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But it should be up to the customer to decide what alternative train they want to take; the train company shouldn't limit them to whichever option is most operationally convenient. The current industry arrangements for ticket acceptance are nowhere near good enough and in situations like GC cancellations, passengers are routinely left stranded, or at worst inconvenienced, despite trains with the "wrong" livery departing with spare seats left.
There can be no justification as to why, if someone is travelling from (say) Swindon to Bristol, they can take any train they like if their booked train is cancelled - yet if they're travelling from Cheltenham to Bristol and they're on an Advance, they need to make sure they get on the right "colour" of train. It's the kind of approach that gives the industry its deservedly poor reputation.
This "reason" is worse than saying nothing. It's disingenuous - "the timetable has changed because it's changed", almost gaslighting the customer as if the train was never planned to run. And at the end of the day, if the train company is so desperate not to admit the real reason for the change, it's better if they just keep quiet than giving a pathetic non-explanation.
Falcon1200
Established Member
Agree.
Because it is meaningless! Every train cancellation is a 'short notice change to the timetable', there has to be a reason behind the change.
It sounds as though you want to take choice away from “the customer”. Ultimately if I’ve bought a cheap ticket with GC and they’re cancelled, I’ve paid less for it than for an LNER ticket, so I accept that I’ve taken that risk of choosing a smaller operator with fewer services. I’d suggest most people are perfectly comfortable with the concept of operator specific tickets, which can be found in various other modes of transport, and the alternative will almost certainly be fewer ticket choices, all of which cost more.
The other important point you always seem to ignore is that it’s necessary for operators to be able to manage demand for safety reasons, and refusing ticket acceptance due to strikes or cancellations, or restricting how they can be used, is an important part of this. I strongly doubt any of that will change once the operators have all been nationalised.
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Worse is the situation between Manchester Airport and the city centre. Three colours of trains with their own tickets, two of which offer APoD. All for a 15 minute journey with a combined service frequency which ought to offer the convenience of turn-up-and-go. Throw in clueless foreign tourists, not to mention clueless British holidaymakers (many airport journeys will be people whose only experience of the railway will be that annual journey to the airport and back again) and you have a recipe for chaos.
And as I explicitly said, this will be very case dependent. On GC where there’s a train every few hours an individual cancellation might well be enough.
There are agreed procedures for ticket acceptance during the activation of CSL2 (customer service level 2) which would mean a significant level of disruption. This is of course very dependent on the advertised train frequency to actual running frequency. TOCs should know their passengers, although I won’t argue it’s perfect.
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