Avanti West Coast cancellations

[jfollows]

Just to ask, anyone know what was the industrial relations like when the service was under Virgin, i can't remember it ever being as bad as now?

I'm only guessing, others will have more concrete information, but I felt that Virgin ended up offering an OK service, was well regarded by its customers, and had reasonably contented staff in the main. I actually think the customer perception was better than it deserved to be, but the service was OK.
Now the way Avanti have run the franchise has fed through, I don't think the First Class offering is anything other than much worse than it used to be, and the staff won't be happy having to work with unhappy passengers, and they probably knew well what the ramification of the changes were going to be, some of them probably told "the management" this but were ignored - I'm guessing.
The current industrial bad relations are many orders of magnitude worse than they were under Virgin, it does appear. Mind you, many of the people "in charge" are the same, aren't they, so what else is different?

 

[Horizon22]

They don't have a franchise to takeaway they are operating under an ERMA at the beck and call to the DfT I suppose the DfT could refuse them an interim National Rail Contract.

Which would solve what exactly - whichever new operator was put in would have exactly the same constraints the DfT are currently imposing.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Which would solve what exactly - whichever new operator was put in would have exactly the same constraints the DfT are currently imposing.

It would stop the government privatising the blame for starters - which is exactly why they’ll avoid doing it until absolutely necessary.

 

[Bald Rick]

Time something was done , DFT need to sanction staffing increases , this is ridiculous.

AIUI the Avanti training programme is full with trainees. They could not train any more than they are doing.

You have to ask the question as to why TOCs like LNER are not having similar issues.

LNER increased their traincrew establishment for extra services to run following the ECML recast - which hasn’t happened.

Well after their tweet on Sunday, I would imagine they’ll have even less people volunteering to do OT to cover for people on annual leave.

it seems very likely that that tweet has not helped the situation.

I think the problems are deeper. Avanti need to ask, why do people not want to work for them compared to other toc's.

is there any evidence that people don’t want to work for Avanti? Whenever they recruit traincrew they turn down hundreds of applicants.

It would stop the government privatising the blame for starters - which is exactly why they’ll avoid doing it until absolutely necessary.

The Government aren’t ‘privatising’ the blame at all.

 

[Agent_Squash]

The Government aren’t ‘privatising’ the blame at all.

It’s the DfT who are blocking an emergency timetable and blocking a solution to the current industrial disputes. Unless I’ve been severely misinformed by these forums…

Avanti is somewhat incompetent, but it can’t be denied that hands are being tied by the government - whilst publicly it’s a TOC issue. Sounds like privatising the blame to me.

 

[the sniper]

The Government aren’t ‘privatising’ the blame at all.

No, they're blaming the staff. Would that be considered socialising the blame?

 

[LowLevel]

AIUI the Avanti training programme is full with trainees. They could not train any more than they are doing.



LNER increased their traincrew establishment for extra services to run following the ECML recast - which hasn’t happened.



it seems very likely that that tweet has not helped the situation.



is there any evidence that people don’t want to work for Avanti? Whenever they recruit traincrew they turn down hundreds of applicants.



The Government aren’t ‘privatising’ the blame at all.

To be fair they seem to be in dispute after dispute about bad housekeeping issues like imposing rosters and working practices. They don't seem to have done much to endear themselves to the staff, especially when they will inevitably be compared to Virgin.

 

[Bald Rick]

To be fair they seem to be in dispute after dispute about bad housekeeping issues like imposing rosters and working practices. They don't seem to have done much to endear themselves to the staff, especially when they will inevitably be compared to Virgin.

I didn’t know about that.
although I do know some of the working practices are absolutely crazy, and need changing!

 

[Bletchleyite]

To be fair they seem to be in dispute after dispute about bad housekeeping issues like imposing rosters and working practices. They don't seem to have done much to endear themselves to the staff, especially when they will inevitably be compared to Virgin.

I think there was an element of "wow, we work for Virgin, that's like the big planes, we'll put up with it". Working for a third-rate Scottish bus company doesn't have quite the same cachet.

 

[Efini92]

I didn’t know about that.
although I do know some of the working practices are absolutely crazy, and need changing!

Like what?

 

[Bald Rick]

Like what?

Like not driving the same route twice in a day, for example.

 

[Clarence Yard]

It’s the fault of both Avanti and the DfT.

The result is not enough trained staff available to run the reduced service without having to resort to RDW and O/T.

The solution isn’t immediate and removing the operator won’t change much but the current management seem to have “lost the dressing room”, to use football parlance.

The first step is to reduce the service to something that can be resourced (and not by over optimising diagrams either) and then the current management or their replacements need to have a heart to heart with the unions to make it work.

Cancelling services off on the day or just a few days before is a sign of management failure. It needs to stop.

As for Avanti, they will be the DfT’s fall guys as, unless something changes fast, it will become politically impossible for the DfT to grant them an NRC and this autumn it will become an OLR operation.

 

[LowLevel]

Like not driving the same route twice in a day, for example.

That is my favourite bonkers one! But generally speaking things seem to have been rather fractious for a while. A shame consider they're meant to be one of the top premium train operators.

 

[Efini92]

Like not driving the same route twice in a day, for example.

It’s rather ambiguous how it’s worded in the first place. There’s not much that could be double tripped anyway as it it would go over 10 hours.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Like not driving the same route twice in a day, for example.

That one is utterly bonkers, especially given that the best way to get good resilience is to avoid interworking of crews and units between routes, so you WANT most crews to work the same route repeatedly.

 

[LowLevel]

It’s the fault of both Avanti and the DfT.

The result is not enough trained staff available to run the reduced service without having to resort to RDW and O/T.

The solution isn’t immediate and removing the operator won’t change much but the current management seem to have “lost the dressing room”, to use football parlance.

The first step is to reduce the service to something that can be resourced (and not by over optimising diagrams either) and then the current management or their replacements need to have a heart to heart with the unions to make it work.

Cancelling services off on the day or just a few days before is a sign of management failure. It needs to stop.

As for Avanti, they will be the DfT’s fall guys as, unless something changes fast, it will become politically impossible for the DfT to grant them an NRC and this autumn it will become an OLR operation.

If you're saying that from your position in the world then that is some serious food for thought. It sounds horrific there at present.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It’s rather ambiguous how it’s worded in the first place. There’s not much that could be double tripped anyway as it it would go over 10 hours.

You could on the Brums I guess. You're right that anything else would be too long for two trips.

Cancelling services off on the day or just a few days before is a sign of management failure. It needs to stop.

This is my main point on it all. They need to do an honest appraisal of what they can reliably deliver (say punctuality and reliability of 95% or higher being a reasonable target) and put that in as an emergency timetable. If that's* a morning, lunchtime and evening train to Liverpool and back only, a 2 hourly Manchester, one a day to Glasgow and back and no Birminghams (as they've got LNR and Chiltern), so be it. The service is utterly useless if you can't plan around it.

TPE too, they're as bad at the moment.

* Random example of a very low level of service; obviously they should cut their cloth - honestly and transparently - to what they confidently can staff. It may be more than this, it could even be less the way today seems to have gone.

 

[bramling]

The Government aren’t ‘privatising’ the blame at all.

It is rather convenient that the current setup allows the government to hide behind the TOC brands, though.

Round here people are starting to kick up over the September cuts on GTR (and the fact that this comes on top of significant cuts over what existed in Dec 19). Thus far this angst is being directed at the TOC.

Then there’s the TfL situation where Khan, much as I dislike him and the mayoralty in general, is being used as the public-facing fall-guy there.

Meanwhile, how many bounce-back Covid loans are never going to be repaid?

 

[Bald Rick]

The result is not enough trained staff available to run the reduced service without having to resort to RDW and O/T.

whilst this is true, Avanti are far from being the only operator who use RDW and overtime to run the base timetable, and it seems unfair to single them out as being at fault for doing so. Something else is happening, as o think we all know.

The first step is to reduce the service to something that can be resourced (and not by over optimising diagrams either) and then the current management or their replacements need to have a heart to heart with the unions to make it work.

I would be very surprised if the first step isn’t in place within a week or so. It has to be.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I would be very surprised if the first step isn’t in place within a week or so. It has to be.

They've already done an emergency timetable, but as predicted on here it's hopelessly optimistic. They are going to need to cut to almost a strike level of service to stabilise this - I don't think my quite swingeing suggestion above is likely to be all that wide of the mark.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

They've already done an emergency timetable, but as predicted on here it's hopelessly optimistic. They are going to need to cut to almost a strike level of service to stabilise this - I don't think my quite swingeing suggestion above is likely to be all that wide of the mark.

The summer is clearly a write-off now, they may as well plan for September given staffing levels will likely to return to a more normal level.

 

[davidknibb]

But a quick glance at RTT shows a 0907,10.07,1107,1207 are running to Liverpool today.. nothing at xx47 as per the theme of this thread. If the xx07s were cancelled - wouldn't they be showing up on RTT by now ?

 

[LIMA66]

Well after their tweet on Sunday, I would imagine they’ll have even less people volunteering to do OT to cover for people on annual leave.

This!

 

[krus_aragon]

The north wales shuttle also seems to be badly affected tomorrow.

I hope they don't get as badly affected as on Monday: only two trains ran to/from London, most terminated/started at Crewe. Even then, six trains (of 14) were cancelled throughout.

 

[rjames87]

The 5.50, 6.50 and 7.50 Birmingham to Euston services all cancelled this morning. Have to ask how much longer the farce can continue without somebody in management losing their job on the basis is capability! They clearly have no idea the damage they are doing to the industry.

 

[davidknibb]

Well the 0750 should have come from Shrewsbury - but is showing as starting at Wolverhampton. So it is running - sort of.

 

[Foxcover]

It looks like the 1147 from Liverpool is now running but we’ve lost the 1247 instead.
Noticed on RTT that the remaining 0747 and 1147 are booked only 9 car, yet 11 car assigned to the 0700 non-stop which is hardly a high loader, so doesn't seem to be much effort to mitigate today‘s problem, set-wise.

 

[ScottGallagher]

9.30 Glasgow starting from Preston, im on the 10.30 so that will.be rammed.

 

[43096]

It’s the DfT who are blocking an emergency timetable and blocking a solution to the current industrial disputes. Unless I’ve been severely misinformed by these forums…

Avanti is somewhat incompetent, but it can’t be denied that hands are being tied by the government - whilst publicly it’s a TOC issue. Sounds like privatising the blame to me.

DfT have allowed Avanti to implement a 5tph emergency timetable. The fact Avanti still can’t resource the emergency timetable is down to Avanti’s gross incompetence: you don’t propose an emergency timetable you then can’t deliver.

 

[irish_rail]

I think the problems are deeper. Avanti need to ask, why do people not want to work for them compared to other toc's.

And with rumours that "double tripping" is imminent, depots like a Liverpool, Wolverhampton and Manchester will seem even less desirable.