Great British Railways: how can money be saved?

[Bletchleyite]

Pushing electronic tickets as the primary ticket buying method is only going to lead to potentially unemployment from within the railway

I refer you to the thread title

whilst doing nothing to help the passenger and in fact making the procedure of buying tickets a lot more complicated for many. As said above, I can't see how an electronic method is an easier way to buy tickets than from an office; it is just cost cutting and nothing more.

No queue is a big one.

It is idealistic, but doesn't account for the times when either the ticket system or the railway come into problems/disruption. There would be chaos in these circumstances if we were relying on an electronic system both for tickets and for customer assistance.

Personally I find the best assistance comes from Twitter and Realtime Trains. On the ground staff rarely know any more than I do.

 

[deltic]

Reduce costs by

Closing all stations that generate less money than they cost to operate, including time costs of stopping there.
Close little used lines when they need substantial work on them - Conway Valley line must have had millions spent on it - money that could have been better spent on opening new stations where they are needed
Moving all trains to DOO where stations are gated and DCO where they are not freeing up in the latter case the on-board staff for revenue protection and customer service
Close all ticket offices and move to ticket machines, e-tickets etc with roaming staff at large stations
Remove the need for platform dispatch staff
Gate more stations for revenue protection - including when not-staffed with dedicated help lines provided
Remove early morning and late night trains when they are barely used increasing time available for track maintenance and thereby improving productivity
If commuters dont come back then move to a 7 day timetable again improving reliability and reducing compensation payments
Explore use of "route navigation" technology to reduce the need to maintain route knowledge and hence improve flexibility
Explore potential of using AI to speed up timetable production again improving technology
Explore potential for ATO on densely used lines to improve reliability
Maintaining assets properly - having spent a lot of lockdown walking the streets of south London shocked by the size and number of plants growing out of brickwork on Network Rail assets
Still probably lots of potential to further automate track maintenance

 

[CBlue]

Pushing electronic tickets as the primary ticket buying method is only going to lead to potentially unemployment from within the railway, whilst doing nothing to help the passenger and in fact making the procedure of buying tickets a lot more complicated for many. As said above, I can't see how an electronic method is an easier way to buy tickets than from an office; it is just cost cutting and nothing more.

It is idealistic, but doesn't account for the times when either the ticket system or the railway come into problems/disruption. There would be chaos in these circumstances if we were relying on an electronic system both for tickets and for customer assistance.

Naturally that is your view - you're ticket office staff as you mentioned before.


I've been using mobile tickets for years with Greater Anglia and never, ever had a problem.

 

[Philip]

I refer you to the thread title



No queue is a big one.



Personally I find the best assistance comes from Twitter and Realtime Trains. On the ground staff rarely know any more than I do.

Potentially a longer queue to get through barriers though, as people are more likely to encounter problems opening the gates with an m-ticket than with a paper ticket.

It sounds like you know what you're doing when it comes to tickets, planning and handling your rail journey, whatever the circumstances. However, that can't be said for many others, so you have to account for them too.

Naturally that is your view - you're ticket office staff as you mentioned before.


I've been using mobile tickets for years with Greater Anglia and never, ever had a problem.

Yes , just like a guard would argue the case against DOO; dispatch staff argue against self-dispatch trains; drivers against more DLR type trains being introduced! Again as I said above, you might not have had a problem, but we get many passengers coming to the window asking about or having some problem or other with their electronic ticket.

 

[The Planner]

Pushing electronic tickets as the primary ticket buying method is only going to lead to potentially unemployment from within the railway, whilst doing nothing to help the passenger and in fact making the procedure of buying tickets a lot more complicated for many. As said above, I can't see how an electronic method is an easier way to buy tickets than from an office; it is just cost cutting and nothing more.

It is idealistic, but doesn't account for the times when either the ticket system or the railway come into problems/disruption. There would be chaos in these circumstances if we were relying on an electronic system both for tickets and for customer assistance.

If you believe there won't be job cuts in some form or other over the next few years from all sides of the railway to cut costs, you are very much mistaken.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

I wouldn’t have a clue how to buy a ticket except from a ticket office. No idea how you get it on your phone. Wouldn’t want to have to rely on that in any case.

Large numbers of people have the same attitude. I'm astonished that any rail enthusiast would be willing to lose so many potential customers.

Maintaining assets properly - having spent a lot of lockdown walking the streets of south London shocked by the size and number of plants growing out of brickwork on Network Rail assets

You are not alone in being shocked. Many people are appalled by the vegetation sprouting up and out all over the railway; and it's very much a post British Railways thing. I don't recall anything like this before John Major's pseudo-privatisation.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Large numbers of people have the same attitude. I'm astonished that any rail enthusiast would be willing to lose so many potential customers.

Depends if you'd lose them, and if providing for them is economic.

You are not alone in being shocked. Many people are appalled by the vegetation sprouting up and out all over the railway; and it's very much a post British Railways thing. I don't recall anything like this before John Major's pseudo-privatisation.

I don't know, plenty of branch lines had summer flower gardens.

 

[dm1]

A couple of Swiss suggestions.

Firstly, have an all-in-one app with a journey planner and full support for e-tickets. To solve the "my phone died" problem, instead of issuing a straight penalty fare, you can require the passenger to either visit a ticket office with the valid ticket, or upload evidence of the ticket to a portal for this purpose. This still allows purchasing tickets anonymously. For those with an account, ticket inspectors should be able to retrieve the ticket from the account.

Secondly, introduce more longer-term tickets and make them worth buying. If people have to buy a ticket less often, then firstly you need fewer ticketing facilities, secondly you encourage people to use the railways as they've already paid. Things like automatic monthly billing make this less of an upfront cost for passengers as well.

Thirdly, in Switzerland most passengers have a so-called SwissPass that stores these longer term tickets. These cards have several barcodes on them as well as two chips (an NFC chip for rail tickets and other services, as well as a second chip allowing it to be used as a ski-pass, it being Switzerland). These allow tickets to be checked easily and quickly. They also allow access to various other services such as bike hire. There is a digital version of this that can be opened in the app in case you forget the card, though this can't be used for skiing.

Basically a ticketing system that is as simple and accessible as possible, while still being quite modern and relatively. cheap to run.

 

[Philip]

If you believe there won't be job cuts in some form or other over the next few years from all sides of the railway to cut costs, you are very much mistaken.

In your opinion, but you are no more informed than any of the rest of us at this point.

 

[Bletchleyite]

In your opinion, but you are no more informed than any of the rest of us at this point.

It makes sense if they want to cut costs, which they have I believe openly stated.

Personally I would be astonished if there wasn't another national push for DOO.

 

[Annetts key]

No queue is a big one.

You don’t get a queue when an electronic or computer system looses power or crashes...

Personally I find the best assistance comes from Twitter and Realtime Trains. On the ground staff rarely know any more than I do.

Depends on who you talk to, who you are, and what the problem is. The information on the public web sites and similar is often completely misleading. Especially the time estimates of when disruption is expected to end. Some teams that attend train delaying incidents have a good laugh at the rubbish that is put up, while they travel to the location of the incident (well, apart from the driver who has to ask what the team are laughing at). It’s ludicrous that they publish a time estimate on restoring normal running when the team can’t physically arrive on site before that time, let alone time to investigate and fix the problem.

Reduce costs by
Closing all stations that generate less money than they cost to operate, including time costs of stopping there.
Close little used lines when they need substantial work on them - Conway Valley line must have had millions spent on it - money that could have been better spent on opening new stations where they are needed
Moving all trains to DOO where stations are gated and DCO where they are not freeing up in the latter case the on-board staff for revenue protection and customer service
Close all ticket offices and move to ticket machines, e-tickets etc with roaming staff at large stations
Remove the need for platform dispatch staff
Gate more stations for revenue protection - including when not-staffed with dedicated help lines provided
Remove early morning and late night trains when they are barely used increasing time available for track maintenance and thereby improving productivity
If commuters dont come back then move to a 7 day timetable again improving reliability and reducing compensation payments
Explore use of "route navigation" technology to reduce the need to maintain route knowledge and hence improve flexibility
Explore potential of using AI to speed up timetable production again improving technology
Explore potential for ATO on densely used lines to improve reliability
Maintaining assets properly - having spent a lot of lockdown walking the streets of south London shocked by the size and number of plants growing out of brickwork on Network Rail assets
Still probably lots of potential to further automate track maintenance

Yeah, right. Where exactly does customer and staff safety feature in your plans and ideas outlined above? Or indeed good customer service?
As I’ve posted before, what kind of society do you want? As it becomes possible to automate more and more jobs, what are people actually going to do to earn money?
And do you think that the passengers really want to have a railway system where there are hardly any or no staff whatsoever to help them?
And although there may be a case for closing a small number of stations, where the village or town can be better served by busses. That clearly is not the answer to the wider problem. We NEED to have a public transport system that attracts travellers away from using their cars as much as possible. Heavy rail is part of the answer (but not the only method).

I do however agree that the maintenance of stations and bridges is poor. Most of the stations are the responsibility of the relevant TOC. You know, the private companies...

There are some very good ways to save large amounts of money. And these do not necessarily mean that jobs need to be lost. Inside the railway, out of the view of the public, some of the planning is very poor. This leads to inefficient running, maintenance and project work. Work that should take one day can take a week. Poor maintenance and poor choices made by people designing systems and their actual installation adds to this. Not considering how to maintain equipment or the user interface (to the staff) also means work takes longer. Replacing equipment rather than having a proper maintenance and repair system. Poor logistics and stock holding (too little, too much, spares for equipment that no longer is in use). Duplication where it’s not needed. Centralisation where it’s not needed. Unnecessary forms and paperwork (or it’s computer or electronic equivalent).

I mean, does anyone here know of the amount of time and effort that is consumed by the inter-company communications and discussions that take place between the various different companies?

BR had an aim to try to reduce unnecessary forms and paperwork. But since privatisation, the amount of extra forms and paperwork went absolutely mad.

So the government should stop beating about the bush, restore the railways back to being owned and operated by one singe company.

To tackle many of the other problems, mandate that the management should encourage staff suggestions on how things could be done better. The unions should also be involved.

The experts in how to do a job better and more efficiently are the trained and competent staff that are doing the job. Not someone in an office, that is often far away.

 

[The Planner]

In your opinion, but you are no more informed than any of the rest of us at this point.

Depends on how you interpret the various messaging you get to hear. I would be surprised if I am wrong.

 

[geordieblue]

It makes sense if they want to cut costs, which they have I believe openly stated.

Personally I would be astonished if there wasn't another national push for DOO.

I guess the thing with this is the cost of implementing barriers etc. Will this government spend money to save it in the future? I can't see that being particularly likely.

 

[Philip]

It makes sense if they want to cut costs, which they have I believe openly stated.

Personally I would be astonished if there wasn't another national push for DOO.

We know exactly the kind of chaos that would cause though (strikes, disruption etc); not to mention the safety aspect. As well as potentially putting people rail staff out of jobs, both DOO and a drive to close ticket offices will just make rail travel more complicated and less safe for passengers.

 

[Annetts key]

It makes sense if they want to cut costs, which they have I believe openly stated.

Personally I would be astonished if there wasn't another national push for DOO.

And how exactly does that save money if you need a ticket examiner on the train anyway? You waste any savings made on having to provide all the equipment on the train and on the platform, and to employ staff to maintain said equipment. In fact, it’s possible this would cost more money.

 

[Bletchleyite]

And how exactly does that save money if you need a ticket examiner on the train anyway?

NOTE: To avoid a full DOO debate I am answering solely in the context of the thread, i.e. saving money.

Ticket examiners can be cheaper than guards as they are not safety critical, and you could accept that it's cheaper on some quiet trains to have a few fare dodgers than bother checking.

If you consider Merseyrail, the system is barriers in central Liverpool, random checks with PFs and accept the rest (the guards don't do revenue), and give or take the PFs which are more recent this is how it's been for about 25 years. It's not far fetched that it might work this way elsewhere.

You waste any savings made on having to provide all the equipment on the train and on the platform, and to employ staff to maintain said equipment. In fact, it’s possible this would cost more money.

Unlikely. There would be no DOO anywhere if it was.

 

[cle]

Is the stated goal to just save money, by GBR? Or just by the OP? Or could it be about making the network/organization better?

If just saving money, then maintenance on unused assets, stations etc would naturally be looked at.

If it's about growth (and increasing revenue in time) then it's more about transformational switches from cars to rail, modernizing/changing perceptions of rail in lesser used areas, enabling more affordable commuting and yes, longer trains/platforms where paths are maxed out - which seems to be the case around most main junctions/termini/hubs.

Free wifi across the whole network.
Simplify ticketing/buying/showing per the Swiss approach. Standardize advance tickets and Ryanair style nonsense by differentiating >14 / >7 / less than 7 days, and peak/off peak times, for all routes over X miles. Say 50. That's it in terms of variation. And class - same ratios between fares, and 50% more.

Plus alternate revenue sources - massive TODs with GBR as landowner (like Tesco began), residential and office commercial as well as retail.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The origin of the thread is that another thread suggested the Government had asked the new organisation to look at cost savings of between 10 and 20%. The thread is therefore about how this could be done without too much damage.

There's a separate thread on fares.

 

[Purple Orange]

Other then people costs, what are the biggest cost drivers in the rail industry?

 

[Annetts key]

Other then people costs, what are the biggest cost drivers in the rail industry?

Depends on which bit of the industry you are interested in.
Currently, the train operators have to pay Network Rail a track access charge, plus pay the rolling stock company as they lease the trains. They also have to pay the gas, electricity and water charges for it’s offices, depots and stations. Pay the rent for offices it does not own. Pay for spare parts etc. For the private companies, pre-COVID19, they also may have had to pay the government to actually run the franchise.

Network Rail in addition to the wages costs of its own staff, it has to pay all the various contract companies, pay the gas, electricity and water charges for it’s offices, depots and stations. Pay the rent for offices it does not own. And pay suppliers for all the various tools, plant, spares/spare parts and new materials (ballast, sleepers, signals, point machines) including logistics.

 

[Trainer2]

Network Rail are the biggest cost to the tax payer, that’s is where cost saving will start and end

 

[Annetts key]

Network Rail are the biggest cost to the tax payer, that’s is where cost saving will start and end

At the moment, both bits of what you say are debatable...

 

[Purple Orange]

Depends on which bit of the industry you are interested in.
Currently, the train operators have to pay Network Rail a track access charge, plus pay the rolling stock company as they lease the trains. They also have to pay the gas, electricity and water charges for it’s offices, depots and stations. Pay the rent for offices it does not own. Pay for spare parts etc. For the private companies, pre-COVID19, they also may have had to pay the government to actually run the franchise.

Network Rail in addition to the wages costs of its own staff, it has to pay all the various contract companies, pay the gas, electricity and water charges for it’s offices, depots and stations. Pay the rent for offices it does not own. And pay suppliers for all the various tools, plant, spares/spare parts and new materials (ballast, sleepers, signals, point machines) including logistics.

By which parts of the industry, I’m interested in those operating cost drivers where cash leaves the industry. People costs, electricity, diesel, maintenance etc are examples of that. Whereas track access charges I’m less interested in because the transaction starts and ends within the industry - the cash is either in the hands of the TOC or Network Rail. Capital infrastructure spend, like electrification, building HS2 or re-opening a new line is not as relevant because that cash is creating an asset with a lifespan of many generations.

 

[Bald Rick]

Capital infrastructure spend, like electrification, building HS2 or re-opening a new line is not as relevant because that cash is creating an asset with a lifespan of many generations.

But it is where the money goes, so is very relevant.

Ultimately, most of the industry’s spend goes on staff costs or interest payments one way or another. When NR let a contract to a supplier, much of the value is going on the contractor’s staff costs, or their sub contractors’ staff costs. When you hire plant, you are paying for the staff costs of those who supply, maintain and shift it around the country, and th interest payments that owner is making on the loan for buying the kit.

 

[A0]

As the population ages, and people typically live longer, we NEED better company and private pension schemes so that in future, the current tax payers are not having to pay increasing amounts of tax to pay the current state pension to those who have retired.
The only realistic way to do this is to kick the private sector to offer much better pensions. Not to phase out good pension systems, like defined benefit pensions.
Otherwise the pension black hole will just keep getting bigger.

Sorry - but 'defined benefit' schemes in the private sector are now unviable - this was caused in part by Robert Maxwell pillaging the MGN scheme for his own ends, which led to legislative changes that meant companies could no longer run a deficit on their pension scheme (even for a short time). The costs of eliminating such deficits would have financially crippled some large companies, hence the decision to de-risk and move to DC schemes.

The final nail in the coffin on such schemes was Gordon Brown's tax raid on pensions, particularly iniquitous that because people are *encouraged* to save into pensions by doing so on their pre-tax income, on the grounds the state gets back their tax take when people use it as their income and therefore pay income tax on it. It was doubly iniquitous, because it only affected the private sector - state sector pensions of course being underwritten by the government have no such concerns.

It would be far better if all DB schemes in the public sector were stopped - many are very generous for the amount that needs to be contributed and many (such as the police) can be claimed remarkably early. I fail to see why private sector taxpayers should be feather-bedding the pensions of public sector workers.

 

[Purple Orange]

But it is where the money goes, so is very relevant.

Ultimately, most of the industry’s spend goes on staff costs or interest payments one way or another. When NR let a contract to a supplier, much of the value is going on the contractor’s staff costs, or their sub contractors’ staff costs. When you hire plant, you are paying for the staff costs of those who supply, maintain and shift it around the country, and th interest payments that owner is making on the loan for buying the kit.

That’s interesting about the interest payments. Ultimately though it appears that it still boils down to people costs. Regarding capital infrastructure spend, that is less of a concern as it is not apart of the cost required to operate the railways. The DfT could choose to not build any new lines or stations and the cost goes away. However capital infrastructure spend to replace existing infrastructure is more of a concern, depending upon how frequently it is required.

 

[Iskra]

I'd save money by having a single centralised shared service centre for all TOC admin functions, such as Delay Repay, HR, IT, ticket admin, twitter, customer services, delay attribution, train planning etc to remove layers of unnecessary duplication on functions that are basically the same network wide. It would be slimmer, more efficient and more cost-effective this way. TOC's would just be fairly small teams of experts who direct at the strategic level for their route.

 

[The Planner]

I'd save money by having a single centralised shared service centre for all TOC admin functions, such as Delay Repay, HR, IT, ticket admin, twitter, customer services, delay attribution, train planning etc to remove layers of unnecessary duplication on functions that are basically the same network wide. It would be slimmer, more efficient and more cost-effective this way. TOC's would just be fairly small teams of experts who direct at the strategic level for their route.

Train planning is admin?!?

 

[Purple Orange]

Train planning is admin?!?

Administrative functions perhaps - not just ‘admin’. IT and HR are administrative functions that support the operational side of a business, but they are certainly not ‘admin’, which implies more of a box ticking & paper work & formality exercise. I’m not going to pretend I know how people work in Train Planning, but just like IT, HR, Finance are not ‘admin’, I would expect that there is a large degree of centralisation that could happen to achieve better cost synergies.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Train planning is admin?!?

I don't think I'd get hung up on that per-se, but I would agree that a potential saving is to "centralise"* all business functions and contracts that are applicable to all TOCs, and timetabling is certainly one of them.

* In structural and funding terms; where people physically sit is increasingly unimportant.