Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

[Starmill]

Totally agree but the armchair experts always know better.

The difficulty is that busy is always relative.

Some people might call a train "busy" when almost every seat is taken. Others might only call it busy when appropriately twice that number of people are onboard. Others might call a train busy when there are still as many as a quarter of seats vacant.

And a view of one train or one time of day means very little. A profile across whole days and across whole periods is needed.

Here is a thought experiment: a two car class 195 has 108 seats, excluding the fold down seats which are almost always last choice. So let's say that almost every seat is taken and that means about 100 people are on the train. Now, the unit can quite easily accommodate twice that number of people. So at what point is the train "busy"? When the first person has to stand because they can no longer get a seat? When there are a small number of only very undesirable seats left e.g. a window seat boxed in by, a group of three people travelling together, a seat that someone has put their case on, or a tip up seat by the toilet? At 200 people the train won't be at the point of people being unable to board, but some people might still choose to let the train go because it looks uncomfortable.

 

[quantinghome]

The trend for the last three months is important here. It is flat.

It was also flat between June and August. Why is the past three months trend more important than the past year?

It may well be that the recent few months are seeing growth constrained due to less frequent services - hourly services will see fewer passengers than half-hourly.

 

[O L Leigh]

Problem is revenue just walking away - huge numbers of passengers at New St yesterday due to the Christmas Markets and whatever else but barriers left wide open. I had stop orders in both directions for Tamworth/Burton due to passengers being left behind on previous services and we were full and standing in both directions despite both services being double voyagers.
The government thinks nobody is travelling, no wonder if people are travelling for free

Completely agree. And that’s why I said that the level of demand needs to be understood and in order to inform how to deliver the savings that the Treasury seems to want.

The difficulty is that busy is always relative.

Indeed. But that is an entirely different thing to ”many services… carrying fresh air”.

 

[Moonshot]

Clearly the armchair experts know better than traincrew. But referring back to the original post, clearly those whose opinion actually matter are aiming for cost reductions. Taxpayers money is a finite resource and cannot carry on being poured into a bottomless pit.

 

[Goldfish62]

Problem is revenue just walking away - huge numbers of passengers at New St yesterday due to the Christmas Markets and whatever else but barriers left wide open. I had stop orders in both directions for Tamworth/Burton due to passengers being left behind on previous services and we were full and standing in both directions despite both services being double voyagers.
The government thinks nobody is travelling, no wonder if people are travelling for free

I used eight trains over the weekend. Had my ticket check once, only once. And as you say the barriers at New Street were wide open.

I'm no fan of the Treasury, but I can see their point if the railways are haemorrhaging revenue and don't appear to want to do anything about it.

 

[Starmill]

Another point that is often missed is that there are several areas where frequency of service has been traded for improved reliability instead, following particularly poor performance.

This may well be absolutely the right thing to do for the long term, but once again there is a flip side which is that cutting frequency (or withdrawal of direct trains) inhibits demand immediately, while the improvement in reliability brings up reputation much more slowly over time.

The most obvious examples of this are some of the missing CrossCountry services and the various routes to Manchester that have been cut.

 

[O L Leigh]

Clearly the armchair experts know better than traincrew. But referring back to the original post, clearly those whose opinion actually matter are aiming for cost reductions. Taxpayers money is a finite resource and cannot carry on being poured into a bottomless pit.

Indeed. But to come back to my original point, this is not news and has been coming for a long long time. I have said for a long time that the industry needs to be doing a much better job of securing revenue, and part of that must come from the DfT by removing some of the support they are given and/or set targets for revenue collection.

 

[Bald Rick]

Sure, peak hours trains aren't quite as rammed as they used to be, but there are plenty of people travelling by train.

Yes, about 65-70% of the number from two years ago!

 

[WelshBluebird]

Yes, about 65-70% of the number from two years ago!

That doesn't really give the true picture though. Given peak commuter services are likely to be below 70% compared to what they were 2 years ago, it stands to reason other services are above 70%! Certainly that matches what I've seen travelling over the last few months. Yes some services are quieter, but many are busier!

 

[Goldfish62]

Yes, about 65-70% of the number from two years ago!

*Hits head against brick wall*

We're just going around in circles . That reduction is NOT, repeat NOT uniform. The impact of the downturn in commuting in the SE skews everything due to the sheer volume of passenger journeys involved.

LNER claims that leisure travel is back to 94% of pre-pandemic journeys.
GWR claims that the Cornwall railway network had its busiest Summer ever.

Again - the reduction in commuting in the SE has skewed everything.

 

[quantinghome]

Taxpayers money is a finite resource and cannot carry on being poured into a bottomless pit.

Which can be used as an argument for cutting any public service that is not self-financing - NHS, Schools, Libraries, Roads, Defence, mental health, social care, etc etc etc. Why is public transport considered unworthy of such support? Most other advanced countries recognise the social benefits of good transport and apply support accordingly.

 

[Goldfish62]

Which can be used as an argument for cutting any public service that is not self-financing - NHS, Schools, Libraries, Roads, Defence, mental health, social care, etc etc etc. Why is public transport considered unworthy of such support? Most other advanced countries recognise the social benefits of good transport and apply support accordingly.

Because people in this country want good public services but are not prepared to pay them through taxation so they vote accordingly.

 

[Bald Rick]

Why is the past three months trend more important than the past year?

Put simply, because all the research showed that people who had been largely working from home but intending to start commuting again were going to do so from September onwards. Clearly there are exceptions. But the level of demand matches closely with what the research forecast.

That doesn't really give the true picture though. Given peak commuter services are likely to be below 70% compared to what they were 2 years ago, it stands to reason other services are above 70%! Certainly that matches what I've seen travelling over the last few months. Yes some services are quieter, but many are busier!

*Hits head against brick wall*

We're just going around in circles . That reduction is NOT, repeat NOT uniform. The impact of the downturn in commuting in the SE skews everything due to the sheer volume of passenger journeys involved.

LNER claims that leisure travel is back to 94% of pre-pandemic journeys.
GWR claims that the Cornwall railway network had its busiest Summer ever.

Again - the reduction in commuting in the SE has skewed everything.

I agree the reduction is not uniform, and I didnt suggest it was. The downturn in commuting is not just in the SE incidentally.

However in aggregate that is the national picture, and therefore the national effect on revenue. There’s a £4bn a year hole that needs filling.

 

[quantinghome]

Because people in this country want good public services but are not prepared to pay them through taxation so they vote accordingly.

To an extent, but it's not quite that simple. People ARE prepared to pay for things that are very obviously a public good and a benefit to them, like the NHS, or things that are less obviously beneficial but which politicians have built up support for, like Defense spending (not saying there isn't a case for it, just that it requires more of a political argument). The problem with transport is that it's not an immediately obvious benefit and we've never really had a consistent push by politicians to champion high quality transport infrastructure. So we do the bare minimum.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Dec 2021 ==

However in aggregate that is the national picture, and therefore the national effect on revenue. There’s a £4bn a year hole that needs filling.

The passenger railways have always had a multi-billion pound hole to fill. Imagining that it can ever be filled is a fantasy. Truly profitable passenger railways are very rare. It's high time the government finally understood the lessons of Beeching and Serpell.

It's the same old deficits argument again. Do you reduce the deficit by cutting or by growing? The failure of the government's overall economic strategy since 2010 should be a lesson to us.

 

[Wolfie]

This isn't really how they work. The Treasury civil service will inform the Department for Transport what their budget is. Ministers can then try to have this changed but invariably they are told no by the Treasury Ministers. The civil service in the relevant department then works out how to make the cuts. It's not only transport which will be affected of course.

Not quite. Departments bid to HMT. There are discussions etc and a final budget is set for the Department (in the latest Spending Review for the next three years). Within the overall budget HMT may have earmarked or ring-fenced certain items. Other than those items the Department then makes its own priority calls. Given that inevitably it gets less than it asked for, some things will be dropped completely, others salami-sliced, others have timescales extended... The so-called allocations process. At the end of that external stakeholders are advised of the result.

 

[CdBrux]

A lot of forum members are assuming that the changes in demand since covid are permanent. Given we're now back at 70% of pre-covid passenger levels this conclusion would seem somewhat premature. And that's before we consider the need to encourage substantial modal shift away from cars.

A lot of forum members work for companies who have openly said they will not ask their staff to come to the city centre offices anything like as much in the future. This can either be a cost save or as much making them a more attractive employer to work for. Equally many forum members will be working for companies who are having to make rapid adjustments to the new situation and a global raw materials inflation requiring cost controls

 

[paul1609]

Wolmar lost any credibility with me when he started arguing against HS2 using the tired old argument of gaining 5 minutes and disregarding the south WCML.

If you mean the supposed WCML capacity issues he's probably right try comparing the seats per hour with the Brighton Line! You could extend the platforms on the Southern WCML to 12 cars and increase the slow lines linespeed to 90/100 mph for a hell of a lot less than HS2

 

[Starmill]

If you mean the supposed WCML capacity issues he's probably right try comparing the seats per hour with the Brighton Line! You could extend the platforms on the Southern WCML to 12 cars and increase the slow lines linespeed to 90/100 mph for a hell of a lot less than HS2

They've been using twelve cars for years. And the slow lines already have a permissible speed of 90 miles / hour or more for most of the way.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you mean the supposed WCML capacity issues he's probably right try comparing the seats per hour with the Brighton Line! You could extend the platforms on the Southern WCML to 12 cars and incr10ease the slow lines linespeed to 90/100 mph for a hell of a lot less than HS2

Have you ever even been on the south WCML? It would seem not.

It isn't seats per hour, it is paths. The Brighton Mainline is not comparable because it has no 125mph services. The platforms are all already 12 car. The slow line linespeed is already 90/100mph in most places.

You need to, umm, build HS2, to make the south WCML even vaguely comparable to the BML in terms of services using it. In essence the BML just has the services equivalent to those operated by WMT, not Avanti.

If you want to make it equivalent, try and path 9 125mph InterCity services in addition to what's already there. No, didn't think so.

 

[tbtc]

I don't think that anyone ever claimed that changes in passenger numbers were uniform - it'd be weird if they were uniform - of course there are variances (just like, when passengers numbers were rising each year, they weren't rising by exactly the same percentage nationwide)

I'd also point out that... it's December 2021 now... a number of people were assuming that numbers would bounce back after the first lockdown, or the second lockdown, or maybe after the 2021 summer holidays ended... but things haven't bounced back yet... I keep hearing that people working from home "would like to be back in the office at least two days a week" and all that but... it's getting close to two years since the first restrictions happened ... so if not now then when? If you're excusing the current figures as a "blip" then when will people be back on trains and in offices? January 2022? Next summer? I could buy into the argument that things would be back to "normal" come September 2021, once the restrictions were ended and summer was over

Passenger numbers are down 30%. But if you can get them back up, it doesn't matter if they are leisure travellers or commuters, as both pay about the same. Commuters are a solid income but they aren't a goldmine

It matters a great deal

1. Commuters are predictable. You'll have slightly fewer on a Friday on some lines and slightly fewer in August, but generally it'll be fairly stable. Whilst there's variation, if the trains have sufficient seats for a typical winter Wednesday then they'll have enough for pretty much every service of the year

2. Leisure traffic is not predictable. How many people will want to go to Edale/ Whitby/ Windermere will vary significantly week to week, be heavily weather dependent, be hard to predict when planning stock availability/staffing rosters? And the stock (and platform lengths etc) required to meet the peaks demand on a handful of warm/dry Bank Holidays will be over the top for over 90% of the year. You might get some large groups (sometimes a one way journey as part of a walking trip) who'll overload your train

3. As pointed out by others, the costs of providing a leisure journey is significantly higher than a typical commuter. For example, a commuter may buy their season ticket once a year and never use a booking office for twelve months. A twelve coach EMU can carry several hundred commuters with only a driver and possibly a second member of staff (but not necessarily one on a "safety critical" wage). Spread those hundreds of passengers over a dozen different branch lines and you've got much higher costs (leisure passengers are more likely to use booking offices for each journey, branch lines obviously have a much higher "cost per seat" than a commuter EMU

4. I'd wager that an amount of the leisure passengers we've had over the past eighteen months have been because of international travel restrictions - i.e. people heading to Blackpool who'd normally have headed to Benidorm - working from home will be "the normal" for a lot of people a lot of the time in future years but I'm not convinced that the demand for trips to the British seaside will be so bouyant once people are able to fly to the Mediterranean instead (I knew a few people who've taken trips to "new" UK destinations in the past year or so who'd normally have flown far away for their holidays - no guarantee that this will be the case if there are no restrictions on international travel)

5. Like it or not (and I don't particularly like it), commuters into London are very "visible" to Government - MPs and senior Civil Servants use those trains themselves - it's hard to suggest cuts to those services. People heading to the seaside are a lot less "visible" in that regard - so it's a lot harder to demand generous settlements from the Treasury, especially when the railway is seen as less economically necessary to the UK economy

Which can be used as an argument for cutting any public service that is not self-financing - NHS, Schools, Libraries, Roads, Defence, mental health, social care, etc etc etc. Why is public transport considered unworthy of such support? Most other advanced countries recognise the social benefits of good transport and apply support accordingly.

...because we see a need to provide kids with education or to provide people with a certain level of healthcare

Whilst we want to provide public transport, if insufficient people are using heavy rail then it's no longer cost effective (so we look at either reducing it or providing public transport by other means)

Providing heavy rail is a means to an end, rather than a goal in itself

Society requires every to be educated to a decent level and taken care of when ill -society doesn't require every village in the UK to have a branchline

There's a huge difference between "we should focus resources on where best appropriate" and "we must pare the railway network back to only a profitable core" - I don't think that anyone is arguing for the railway to be profitable - it's just that different people have different thresholds of where heavy rail is appropriate or a sledgehammer to crack a nut

 

[Goldfish62]

I agree the reduction is not uniform, and I didnt suggest it was. The downturn in commuting is not just in the SE incidentally.

However in aggregate that is the national picture, and therefore the national effect on revenue. There’s a £4bn a year hole that needs filling.

Indeed. But the point is that a 50 reduction in commuting in the South East is actually a far larger proportion of total passenger journeys than the the same percentage reduction in. eg the North West.

 

[tspaul26]

A lot of forum members work for companies who have openly said they will not ask their staff to come to the city centre offices anything like as much in the future. This can either be a cost save or as much making them a more attractive employer to work for. Equally many forum members will be working for companies who are having to make rapid adjustments to the new situation and a global raw materials inflation requiring cost controls

My employer has not yet actively started to try to bring people back into the office, but the new policy (when they come to enforce it) will be an average of three days a week in the office as a minimum.

This policy is not popular with some sections of the business, but it’s going to be added to our performance management metrics so it seems likely that certain colleagues may, shall we say, go in a different direction to the firm.

Home working is not really a sustainable option for us due to our regulatory, training and supervision obligations.

 

[Goldfish62]

I'd also point out that... it's December 2021 now... a number of people were assuming that numbers would bounce back after the first lockdown, or the second lockdown, or maybe after the 2021 summer holidays ended... but things haven't bounced back yet... I keep hearing that people working from home "would like to be back in the office at least two days a week" and all that but... it's getting close to two years since the first restrictions happened ... so if not now then when? If you're excusing the current figures as a "blip" then when will people be back on trains and in offices? January 2022? Next summer? I could buy into the argument that things would be back to "normal" come September 2021, once the restrictions were ended and summer was over

Very valid point that numbers haven't bounced back as predicted yet, but the pandemic is hanging around for a lot longer than predicted when those predictions on the bounce back in passenger numbers were first made. However, of all those people I personally know who were working 100% of the time at home at the height of the pandemic, every single one of them now goes to the office a minimum of twice a week.

 

[Horizon22]

All it needs to increase revenue, is for the chancers to know there is a good chance there will be a check. When you can travel from Liverpool to Euston and back with no checks it really is taking the pee.

Avanti or LNWR? I can partly understand this if the only stations with stops have a staffed gateline but even then a good walk through the train is good customer service regardless.

 

[HSTEd]

It's hardly administrative when you would need to bung the FOC a load of compensation to get them to give up their newfound competitive edge.

So... don't give them faster paths?

Just because the paths potentially exist does not require the railway to give them up.

Frieght operators have far more paths than trains they operate - why should passenger operators be any different?

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The funny thing is, the opposite of this is what is currently happening in many parts.
For example, in a week's time Leeds to Knaresborough trains at 1tph are being extended to York, service from Severn Beach is being increased to 1tph and a second from Avonmouth towards Bristol, and
I'm not trying to be disparaging of Severn Beach trains beyond Avonmouth, or the aspiration to go up to 2tph between Harrogate and York, but the new services certainly not going to be very busy from the get go, especially not in current circumstances.

There's another view here.
The government is paying for 100% of the pre-covid resources, but has been getting a lot less than 100% in terms of delivery from the rail industry.
Any beady-eyed Treasury wonk can see that they are not getting value for money from the rail industry.
The only costs that seem to have been saved so far are maybe those linked to train mileage (access charges, fuel/power, maintenance etc).
Some of that might even rebound on Network Rail whose TOC income might have reduced, but they still have the same operational costs.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Home working is not really a sustainable option for us due to our regulatory, training and supervision obligations.

I won't name exactly who, but I have done some Governmental type work in the past, and almost all of it was from home (indeed home was the only place I had a fast enough Internet connection to do the big data download and upload it required - I have home fibre - our office and even their office wasn't fast enough). The only requirement was that we used their laptop and always used the VPN to connect (and indeed the laptops were locked down such that you couldn't access the Internet until the VPN was connected).

Clearly there will be some things that absolutely can't be done from home (I'm thinking stuff that requires Developed Vetting or DV+ to be allowed to access it), but that is a tiny proportion of work even within Government agencies.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Dec 2021 ==

Avanti or LNWR? I can partly understand this if the only stations with stops have a staffed gateline but even then a good walk through the train is good customer service regardless.

I suspect long distance fare evasion is actually quite low, as the consequences of being kicked off the train miles from home even if you're not made to pay an Anytime fare or prosecuted are pretty hefty. I don't, however, entirely get why Avanti only do boarding checks and not arrival checks like every other TOC does, even at the gated platforms at Euston.

 

[Watershed]

So... don't give them faster paths?

Just because the paths potentially exist does not require the railway to give them up.

Except the Network Code does require them to be given the paths if no-one else is using them. And whilst the Code will undoubtedly be changed as part of the transition to GBR, it won't all be favourable to TOCs - and more importantly, that's how it stands now.

Frieght operators have far more paths than trains they operate - why should passenger operators be any different?

That's certainly something which some TOCs have been doing better than others! But if you don't use a path at all for a prolonged period of time - whether it's a passenger or freight path - you're liable to lose it. I would be seriously concerned about the possibility of some TOCs being unable to regain pre-Covid paths as a result.

 

[Starmill]

Clearly there will be some things that absolutely can't be done from home (I'm thinking stuff that requires Developed Vetting or DV+ to be allowed to access it), but that is a tiny proportion of work even within Government agencies.

Law enforcement related or legal work may be strictly restricted enough, but as you say the numbers of staff involved are pretty trivial.

 

[172007]

All the talk of passenger numbers down to 60% / 70% pre covid and arguments that its not uniform around the country well. I have always moaned about was Centro, then Nerwork Westmildands and now West Midlands Combined authority (thinks that's what they are now) for their absolute obsession with passenger counts at individual stations and also walking through trains not checking tickets but asking if the passengers have a ticket and probably getting some quite honest answers. This data is still being collected d to be honest I am very glad if their are de decisions made in the West Midlands that their should be an extremely good data set behind them. TFL with their card bed ticketing systems should also be just as good.

Are their any other parts of the country where passenger numbers etc are on the face of it actually very accurate?