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

[RT4038]

The whole point about properly run voluntary severance schemes is that the business reserves the right to decide which applications it accepts. The star performers you describe should properly be rejected.

In my experience that is fine in theory. If you are dealing with specialists who do different jobs, no matter how small the differences are, this may be possible without turning those who applied into disgruntled employees. However, if you are dealing with a homogenous group such as drivers, you are less likely to be able to refuse 'star performers' over others.

Yes that's true, though you often turn a highly skilled, motivated ambitious employee into a resentful employee who no longer wants to work for you, and then leaves within a year anyway to work for one of the companies that offered him/her a position conditional upon taking redundancy. I have seen what voluntary schemes do outside the rail industry, but respected commentators like Nigel Harris, Alan Williams and Ian Walmsley are saying exactly the same thing regarding Network Rail.

But those people will probably leave anyway, possibly with the company offering the position providing a 'golden hello' rather than a redundancy payment from the current employer. Of course everyone wants some bunce, but that is hard luck.

 

[squizzler]

Funny that you say that but we were told, before plans for back to the office were put on hold because of Omicron, that we had to be in two days a week. We were also told point blank that everyone wishing to go in during Tue-Thu would be unacceptable. Friends have heard the same from their employers. If management are looking to reduce desk space there is no way that they will let everyone go in on the same days.

If the intention is to spread out staff attendance to reduce office space required (with the happy benefit to the railways of spreading the travel through the week) there could be currency in making Saturday just another office day, with midweek workers to choose whether they wanted their "weekend" to encompass Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday and Monday. I still believe in keeping Sunday as a day of rest by default, whilst faith may not be as important to many people as before, it is convenient to have one day that clubs can organise their fixtures, etc.

This also works with @Bletchleyite proposal to address lack of all-week commuting by making every day effectively a Saturday timetable, with the exception of Sunday.

 

[Wolfie]

500 station staff posts cut by London Underground. The shape of things to come for National Rail l fear....

 

[Gems]

The railway needs to re-invent itself. It is no good treating commuters as cash cows any longer, we need a bigger focus on leisure travel. Sadly this will mean reductions in peak time and evening services that are little used. My main points of contention are thus.

1) The unions will not be happy. However the unions are partly responsible for the rank inefficiency that plagues the industry. I stand aghast at some union decisions and thinking. If they think strikes will save the day, they are badly mistaken this time.

2) I have been stunned at how rail TOC's this past few years have continued piling on more managers whilst the essential staff they need to make the service work has been neglected. They have gorged themselves on management roles whilst they can't employ train cleaners for love nor money. It is very strange how at the peak of lockdowns when managers were nowhere to be seen the railway still ran. Even now many are still shirking from home. Try contacting many departments by phone and you are met with silence.

3) There are some evening services that should never run. They are woefully underused. There is the saying that if you don't provide it people can't use it. But some services have been provided, and they haven't been used. This reasoning cannot be used to justify running empty trains any longer.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Manchester badly needs its 3rd tph restored as well.

It's supposed to be back in December. But are the existing two overcrowded?

500 station staff posts cut by London Underground. The shape of things to come for National Rail l fear....

Certainly the way to do it without substantially affecting the service. Absolutely better than closing stuff.

 

[yorksrob]

Voluntary severance schemes are a disaster for every business that has undertaken them, as all the most highly rated, able and mobile staff head gleefully for the exit and another job with a big cheque in their pocket and pension top ups to boot. WHen the dust settles and the disgruntled awkward ageing time servers are left behind the truth dawns too late. The Rail Unions wouldn't have it any other way and would strike at the mention of compulsory redundancies. Still in the most recent case, Network Rail's loss will be the Contractor's and consultancy's gain (many of them overseas civil engineering competitors which adds a brain drain into to this awful mix).

Early retirement can remove some of those who'd rather not be there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If the intention is to spread out staff attendance to reduce office space required (with the happy benefit to the railways of spreading the travel through the week) there could be currency in making Saturday just another office day, with midweek workers to choose whether they wanted their "weekend" to encompass Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday and Monday. I still believe in keeping Sunday as a day of rest by default, whilst faith may not be as important to many people as before, it is convenient to have one day that clubs can organise their fixtures, etc.

This also works with @Bletchleyite proposal to address lack of all-week commuting by making every day effectively a Saturday timetable, with the exception of Sunday.

That's an interesting idea - and I don't doubt that some would choose not to have one long "weekend" but rather to have say Sunday and Wednesday, with two short working weeks of two and three days respectively.

Early retirement can remove some of those who'd rather not be there.

It can, but there are younger people who hate their job too.

 

[DarloRich]

Even now many are still shirking from home

Working form home isn't working. Is that it? I have bene doing it for nearly two years. I have done more work and more hours than ever and had a period of with illness caused by stress.

Don't you dare say people are shirking at home but yeah, sack all the lazy managers.

 

[yorksrob]

The railway needs to re-invent itself. It is no good treating commuters as cash cows any longer, we need a bigger focus on leisure travel. Sadly this will mean reductions in peak time and evening services that are little used. My main points of contention are thus.

1) The unions will not be happy. However the unions are partly responsible for the rank inefficiency that plagues the industry. I stand aghast at some union decisions and thinking. If they think strikes will save the day, they are badly mistaken this time.

2) I have been stunned at how rail TOC's this past few years have continued piling on more managers whilst the essential staff they need to make the service work has been neglected. They have gorged themselves on management roles whilst they can't employ train cleaners for love nor money. It is very strange how at the peak of lockdowns when managers were nowhere to be seen the railway still ran. Even now many are still shirking from home. Try contacting many departments by phone and you are met with silence.

3) There are some evening services that should never run. They are woefully underused. There is the saying that if you don't provide it people can't use it. But some services have been provided, and they haven't been used. This reasoning cannot be used to justify running empty trains any longer.

If as the railway, you're reinventing yourself for leisure travel, the absolutely last thing you want to do is reduce evening\night time services as you restrict the leisure day and kill off most of the market.

 

[Gems]

Working form home isn't working. Is that it? I have bene doing it for nearly two years. I have done more work and more hours than ever and had a period of with illness caused by stress.

Don't you dare say people are shirking at home but yeah, sack all the lazy managers.

Working from home isn't working when you cannot provide the level of service that either needs to be provided or was provided pre pandemic.
Congratulations if you can provided that level of service. Sadly many can't. But it will all come out in the wash.

 

[DarloRich]

Working from home isn't working when you cannot provide the level of service that either needs to be provided or was provided pre pandemic.
Congratulations if you can provided that level of service. Sadly many can't. But it will all come out in the wash.

I am sure you know best.

 

[Gems]

If as the railway, you're reinventing yourself for leisure travel, the absolutely last thing you want to do is reduce evening\night time services as you restrict the leisure day and kill off most of the market.

I hear you, and it is a fine line to walk. However there are some routes that will never create a justified case for the service provided.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Working from home isn't working when you cannot provide the level of service that either needs to be provided or was provided pre pandemic.
Congratulations if you can provided that level of service. Sadly many can't. But it will all come out in the wash.

WFH requires a different approach to performance monitoring than working from an office. From an office it's about seeing people at desks without Facebook on the screen. From home, it's about what you actually deliver. Agreed individual "service level agreements" are a better way.

If you're writing code it doesn't matter if you do it at 9am or midnight, for example, as long as you do do it.

If you're replying to customer emails it doesn't matter if you do it at 3am.

If you're taking telephone calls (the telephone? how quaint) you do need to do it at the specified times, but WFH allows for flexibility like split shifts.

I hear you, and it is a fine line to walk. However there are some routes that will never create a justified case for the service provided.

Some perhaps won't. But remember the adage of "if it isn't there I won't use the earlier one for the risk of being stuck"*, and also note that late night trains are often very busy particularly on a Saturday. On a Saturday evening pre COVID there is a procession of 12-car sets out of Euston between about 9 and midnight, with the 0010 an 8-car, and most of them are full and standing.

* That's where the idea of timetabled shared taxis come in, and we'd do well to do that on some lines. Stick them in the system as compulsory reservation buses, and if you want to use one, book it say an hour before to give a chance to get it in from the local taxi firm, if it's not booked it doesn't need to run.

 

[DarloRich]

It is very strange how at the peak of lockdowns when managers were nowhere to be seen the railway still ran.

PS - how do you think that happened? It wasn't magic..................

( I know people working on trains is all this board cares about but the railway kept going because people on the front line kept turning up for work in spite of everything and people in the background worked out entirely new ways of working in about 5 minutes to make sure things kept going. There wasn't a plan for any of this )

 

[yorksrob]

I hear you, and it is a fine line to walk. However there are some routes that will never create a justified case for the service provided.

If you have a very frequent commuter route, you can probably justify thinning out evening services to something like half hourly. However chopping last trains is counter-productive.

For the railway to succeed in the leisure market, it needs to be all day. In quieter areas it can be hourly or even less, but first and last train timings really are crucial.

 

[Gems]

Some perhaps won't. But remember the adage of "if it isn't there I won't use the earlier one for the risk of being stuck"*, and also note that late night trains are often very busy particularly on a Saturday. On a Saturday evening pre COVID there is a procession of 12-car sets out of Euston between about 9 and midnight, with the 0010 an 8-car, and most of them are full and standing.

It is a very fine line isn't it. And there will have to be a lot of honesty in what is needed.

PS - how do you think that happened? It wasn't magic..................

( I know people working on trains is all this board cares about but the railway kept going because people on the front line kept turning up for work in spite of everything and people in the background worked out entirely new ways of working in about 5 minutes to make sure things kept going. There wasn't a plan for any of this )

Those of us who work trains have seen a marked reduction in the service we need to operate. Communication has really suffered because of all this. I find myself these days working out what is going on through 'Open Train Times' because it is impossible to get any information through the proper channels.
Quite frankly it is not good enough. It is not forward thinking, it is sliding backwards. But ultimately at times of disruption it has taken far longer to get services up and running again because of all this and poor management.

 

[PupCuff]

2) I have been stunned at how rail TOC's this past few years have continued piling on more managers whilst the essential staff they need to make the service work has been neglected. They have gorged themselves on management roles whilst they can't employ train cleaners for love nor money. It is very strange how at the peak of lockdowns when managers were nowhere to be seen the railway still ran. Even now many are still shirking from home. Try contacting many departments by phone and you are met with silence.

I'd challenge this by saying, are they taking on new managers or just replacing ones who've left? I've seen quite an impressive shift in the past couple of years with experienced managers seeing their businesses through lockdown and the work that needed putting in place for covid, then retiring. As a result there's been internal promotions, transfers between TOCs, opportunities taken to cut down some departments and bolster others etc.

Managers weren't anywhere to be seen because most of us were working from home (as per the rest of the country) - it makes no odds really where I am, as long as I have my laptop and an Internet connection. The payroll will still get run whether the payroll manager's in the office or at home, the fleet maintenance requirements will still be managed whether the fleet engineer is in the office or at home, the safety compliance work will still get done whether the safety officer is in the office or at home. The modern way isn't offices full of pens and filing cabinets, it's a laptop, and OneDrives in the cloud.

In the same vein, I think the comment about not being able to reach people by phone is a bit of a red herring to be honest. It's 2021, our place doesn't even have desk phones any more, we use email or MS Teams.

 

[Bald Rick]

The one day that might as well be Sunday is Friday. That's why binning Friday ticket restrictions makes so much sense.

Friday is, however, the busiest day of the week overall. Just not on Friday mornings.

It's supposed to be back in December. But are the existing two overcrowded?

From next week, and in my experience they are fully reserved (or nearly so) Monday / Thursday / Friday.

 

[DarloRich]

Quite frankly it is not good enough. It is not forward thinking, it is sliding backwards. But ultimately at times of disruption it has taken far longer to get services up and running again because of all this and poor management.

that's not the same argument you made earlier! That isn't related to working shirking from home.

 

[Bletchleyite]

From next week, and in my experience they are fully reserved (or nearly so) Monday / Thursday / Friday.

All day, or just a need for peak extras at certain times?

 

[Starmill]

All day, or just a need for peak extras at certain times?

It tends to be from about 1100 or so, the times when people are setting off for weekends away all throughout the afternoon, as well as going home if they've been out that morning, or going for a night out that night.

 

[infobleep]

If you have a very frequent commuter route, you can probably justify thinning out evening services to something like half hourly. However chopping last trains is counter-productive.

For the railway to succeed in the leisure market, it needs to be all day. In quieter areas it can be hourly or even less, but first and last train timings really are crucial.

Well in some cases they haven't fully chopped the last service, most brought it forward. For example, there is a 23:30 Waterloo to Portsmouth service Monday to Friday, whereas pre-pandemic it was 23:45. So that is 15 minutes less time one has to return from whatever they have attended.

 

[yorksrob]

Well in some cases they haven't fully chopped the last service, most brought it forward. For example, there is a 23:30 Waterloo to Portsmouth service Monday to Friday, whereas pre-pandemic it was 23:45. So that is 15 minutes less time one has to return from whatever they have attended.

Yes, that's arguably a bit measly for a main line.

 

[Bald Rick]

All day, or just a need for peak extras at certain times?

Not early morning, but then few long distance routes are busy then now, unfortunately.

So you could just build up the service from aroun 0800, but then we are into the issue of getting stock to the right place. There’s 3 Birminghams / hour up to Euston in the morning peak now, not because of the demand, but because Wembley runs out of trains to send to Euston for the down departures after 0730, and Oxley is the next nearest dept to send the extra trains from.

 

[DarloRich]

The bottom line is that the government have pumped money into the railway during the pandemic and cant do that indefinitely. They want something back. The hole to fill is an additional c£4bn on top of what they already spend and that can only be repaid via job cuts, service reductions, reduced maintenance regimes, vastly reduced investment and the deferment or cancellation of enhancements.

 

[Sniffingmoose]

Prehaps its time for the decision makers to visit Swiss Railways. On my last visit to Filisur station which is a small station high up in the Alps. At the station there was a shop, Cafe, Bar and Tourist information all run by station staff. No problem buying tickets 7 days a week. It made the station such an attractive place to wait for your train.

Not sure how station dispatch is done though.

Could this be a way of keeping station staff? https://www.schmalspurbahn.ch/filisur/webcam/

The Rhaetian Railway made a profit before the pandemic. https://www.rhb.ch/en/company/key-figures/financial

Maybe someone can tell me why it cant be done in the UK

 

[43066]

I find myself these days working out what is going on through 'Open Train Times' because it is impossible to get any information through the proper channels.
Quite frankly it is not good enough. It is not forward thinking, it is sliding backwards. But ultimately at times of disruption it has taken far longer to get services up and running again because of all this and poor management.

I can’t say Ive necessarily found operational managers any harder to get hold of since covid kicked off. As drivers our managers tend to do office hours, with someone on call 24/7, and almost all communication when out and about would be by phone anyway. Communication on the railway is pretty poor generally - but that was the case before covid.

It’s a shame more frontline staff, especially TMs, don’t seem to be aware of websites like real-time trains which can be extremely useful and make the job easier! When stopped at reds it’s frustrating to often hear guards making exactly the same announcements as I used to when I was a DOO driver ie “we are being held at a red signal” and nothing further. Unlike me in the driving cab they’re in the position of being able to use a mobile device and simply checking RTT would usually show why we are being held and provide some proper insight to the situation. Waiting for me to do that via the signaller and pass on will take much longer, especially if there’s been a major incident involving many trains.

Equally when waiting to relieve a train I’ve several times been able to use it to realise when the train is going to be brought into a different platform than advertised and start to make my way over there before it is officially announced. Why more don’t do this (and some will still use things like national rail enquiries to find where their train is) is beyond me!

 

[infobleep]

Not early morning, but then few long distance routes are busy then now, unfortunately.

So you could just build up the service from aroun 0800, but then we are into the issue of getting stock to the right place. There’s 3 Birminghams / hour up to Euston in the morning peak now, not because of the demand, but because Wembley runs out of trains to send to Euston for the down departures after 0730, and Oxley is the next nearest dept to send the extra trains from.

If only there was more siding space or is it simply trains elsewhere from the previous day?

Would varying the timetable on different days help?

So more trains run on busy days and fewer trains on others. In this case, Friday would have fewer services on some lines compared to say Tuesday.

Obviously, this would be on a line by line basis. This way you have fewer empty trains running.

Of course, people might expect a clock face timetable Monday to Friday.

 

[Peterthegreat]

Not early morning, but then few long distance routes are busy then now, unfortunately.

So you could just build up the service from aroun 0800, but then we are into the issue of getting stock to the right place. There’s 3 Birminghams / hour up to Euston in the morning peak now, not because of the demand, but because Wembley runs out of trains to send to Euston for the down departures after 0730, and Oxley is the next nearest dept to send the extra trains from.

Then cut some early morning trains out of Euston. Why do we need a 05.27 to Liverpool and a 05.31 to Glasgow both via the Trent Valley? Or a 06.43 to Edinburgh via Birmingham and a 06.59 to New St?

 

[infobleep]

Then cut some early morning trains out of Euston. Why do we need a 05.27 to Liverpool and a 05.31 to Glasgow both via the Trent Valley? Or a 06.43 to Edinburgh via Birmingham and a 06.59 to New St?

Are those two services exceptionally quiet?

Personally I might phrase the question do we need to run x rather than why do we need to run x?