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Rail firms should not be paid when trains run late, says Grant Shapps
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Having a clue about transport has rarely been a qualification to be Transport Secretary - and in the case of Mr Shapps, one might wonder whether he has a clue who he is either...
From 2012
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/sep/30/grant-shapps-alter-ego
Swiss railways publish the percentage of passengers who make all their connections and arrive less than three minutes late.
Adrian1980uk
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I don't have an issue with trains running late... that's life, but cancelled trains annoy me, why is there a need other than not enough drivers or trains, all controlled by the toc.
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Indeed
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Indeed and that is the logical conclusion if this is taken all the way. Operators will merely pad the timetable which will result in fewer trains and more passengers standing - or similar. IIRC the DfT specified trains for use on one Man Picc corridor which did not have the doors in the right position (I forget the exact details) so resulting in slower egress of passengers. The SoS and DfT clearly know very little about running trains.
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I am a little confused by the thread title. "Rail firms". Is the OP referring to Train Operating Company (TOC) or to Network Rail (NR). Why should a TOC be penalised, financially or otherwise, because of an infrastructure failure or a human/animal fatality, both of which are totally beyond his control. When will people acquire the common sense to realise that delays are sometimes inevitable whether on the road, on the rails or in the air, and the operator is logically providing the very best service he can. Network Rail's predecessors displayed an alarming lack of foresight closing potential diversionary routes and ripping up sidings that could have been used to reverse trains thereby reducing the length of route affected by disruption. Passengers seem to think only of themselves with no thought for train crew who might be based in and living in London being stuck up in Yorkshire or even further north late at night unable to get home to their families and have their legally required period of rest.
The OP isn't referrring to anything, it's the title of the article which was quoted in the OP. Ask Grant Shapps what on earth he is talking about.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tra...ains-run-late-says-grant-shapps-a4241131.html
Class 170101
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But how is that possible to be accurate?
For example
Edinburgh to Norwich via Peterborough might have a ten minute connection at Peterborough that is made. However how does the system know that I might have left the station at Peterborough gone to meet a friend for a period of time and then returned to find my 'connection' cancelled - delayed etc?
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
I reckon politicians who pretend to be a multi-millionaire web developer called Michael Green in order to sell pyramid schemes to unwitting investors, and then lie about it, shouldn't be given any taxpayer money.
Grant, what do you think?
Grant, what do you think?
Not sure, maybe they survey a sample of passengers? I'll ask my Swiss colleague at work tomorrow who is knowledgeable about the SBB.
60 seconds does seem an unreasonably tight measure by which to be judging punctuality. We do not make similar demands of other forms of travel - it'd make interesting reading to put these measures alongside an average punctuality measure for our motorway network based on average speeds between junctions...
Maybe 10 minutes was a bit lax due to the impact that small delays can have but there does need to be a more reasonable expectation: 3-5 minutes seems fairer. 60 seconds is mere politics.
Yes, I agree with this and would add the growth of services terminating short. All of these issues are the result of 'infrastructure stretching', with TOCs attempting to run more services than their stock, capacity and staffing structure can handle.
Maybe 10 minutes was a bit lax due to the impact that small delays can have but there does need to be a more reasonable expectation: 3-5 minutes seems fairer. 60 seconds is mere politics.
Yes, I agree with this and would add the growth of services terminating short. All of these issues are the result of 'infrastructure stretching', with TOCs attempting to run more services than their stock, capacity and staffing structure can handle.
F Great Eastern
Established Member
At the end of the day this is a Tory government.
The Tories are masters at ensuring that certain public services are structured in a way that allows them to take the praise when things go right but the public will blame someone else when there are problems.
Shapps is taking advantage of the belief that everything is down to the TOCs here, by playing the populist card that he will punish them for their delays, despite the fact he full well knows that many of them are outside the control of a TOC and down to his parties underfunding of Network Rail.
TOCs are used as a shield to take all of the blame for government policy and unpopular decisions, since to the majority of public it looks like they are to blame for all the issues. This kind of shield is also used in education where academy trusts are now blamed for failings in government education funding and policy
As a local politician quite honestly said once before, if you can convince people to blame someone else for you unpopular decisions, so they're not blaming you, you shall go far in politics and that very much applies here.
The Tories are masters at ensuring that certain public services are structured in a way that allows them to take the praise when things go right but the public will blame someone else when there are problems.
Shapps is taking advantage of the belief that everything is down to the TOCs here, by playing the populist card that he will punish them for their delays, despite the fact he full well knows that many of them are outside the control of a TOC and down to his parties underfunding of Network Rail.
TOCs are used as a shield to take all of the blame for government policy and unpopular decisions, since to the majority of public it looks like they are to blame for all the issues. This kind of shield is also used in education where academy trusts are now blamed for failings in government education funding and policy
As a local politician quite honestly said once before, if you can convince people to blame someone else for you unpopular decisions, so they're not blaming you, you shall go far in politics and that very much applies here.
Would any TOC enter into a franchise on that basis?
F Great Eastern
Established Member
Network Rail is an arms length body of the Department of Transport, which is part of the Government.
Implying that Network Rail are to blame and the Department of Transport are to blame for rail issues in this country implies that the government are to blame for problems in the industry.
Therefore the government has to work hard to create an industry and make relevant soundbites, quotes and statements that make the public blame other people, else people might figure out what is really going on and start blaming the government.
The alternative is the government actually taking responsibility for their actions, owning up to the lack of funding for Network Rail, saying they've forced TOCs to make unpopular decisions, blocked rolling stock orders and forced TOCs to make those changes nobody likes. That will never happen since they'd spent the last god knows how long creating a situation where they can easily blame someone else who the public will blame for their decisions.
They'll continue to structure the industry in a way that allows them to nationalise the praise and privatise the blame, like they have done for the last decade or more.
I catch a train, the 09:03 Castleford to Leeds on a number of weekdays and I estimate 85% of the time it ends up departing Castleford 3-5 minutes late, which doesn't sound a lot but is huge in terms of catching a 09:29 connection at Leeds (unofficial in terms of 'minimum connection times' of course but my legs can do it assuming we're in Leeds by the advertised 09:24 arrival time!)
The weird thing is, this service has had the same short delay present for the past several years...
The weird thing is, this service has had the same short delay present for the past several years...
That is the way I have interpreted the suggestion - some of the noise out of the William's Review around devolution would also make this more likely in my opinion...
moggie
Member
I never thought it possible that another Tory could ably demonstrate the ability to be even more intellectually challenged when it comes to rail than Grayling, but Shapps is doing a fine job of showing he's as unfit for the role as his predecessor. It must be in the job description.
The facts are that with such a complex system and at the mercy of mankind both as operators and users delay is inevitable. That's before I mention the impact from those who don't use rail but are attracted to it for mischievous reasons, flora, fauna and weather.
Sucking finance out of the system at such a level will lead to perverse incentives to limit the costs to the operator at the expense of users. 10 mins late now will soon translate into a 10+ x.min increase in timetabled journey time. Platform dwell duration will increase which in turn reduces line capacity without extra infrastructure and consequently fewer services. When all that fails because bright eyed Shapps thinks he knows what they're up to they'll just throw in the towel, impossible to make money. Do folk really think Shapps is agitating for a nationalised network? I doubt it.
Once again Rail is being made to suffer under the Tory fixation with myopic virtue signalling and is being sacrificed on the altar of a distorted level playing field where such performance parameters are absent from its main competition and damaging to the long term ability of the industry to finance the way to solutions while the competition is allowed to do what it wants.
The facts are that with such a complex system and at the mercy of mankind both as operators and users delay is inevitable. That's before I mention the impact from those who don't use rail but are attracted to it for mischievous reasons, flora, fauna and weather.
Sucking finance out of the system at such a level will lead to perverse incentives to limit the costs to the operator at the expense of users. 10 mins late now will soon translate into a 10+ x.min increase in timetabled journey time. Platform dwell duration will increase which in turn reduces line capacity without extra infrastructure and consequently fewer services. When all that fails because bright eyed Shapps thinks he knows what they're up to they'll just throw in the towel, impossible to make money. Do folk really think Shapps is agitating for a nationalised network? I doubt it.
Once again Rail is being made to suffer under the Tory fixation with myopic virtue signalling and is being sacrificed on the altar of a distorted level playing field where such performance parameters are absent from its main competition and damaging to the long term ability of the industry to finance the way to solutions while the competition is allowed to do what it wants.
I doubt there are many on the opposite side of the Commons who disagree with Grant Shapps on this.
Mitchell Hurd
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The percentage of trains on time shown isn't great but there have been some circumstances where trains have no option but to run late (and I don't mean train breakdowns) - like the fatality between Doncaster and York last night. I wasn't on the trains yesterday.
It's sad that MP's (or most of them) just worry about the amount of trains running late rather than the reasons why they're late - there are reasons for late and cancelled trains that are outside of a train companies control!
It's sad that MP's (or most of them) just worry about the amount of trains running late rather than the reasons why they're late - there are reasons for late and cancelled trains that are outside of a train companies control!
It wouldn't necessarily be added to the timetable depending on how the contract is written and how much NR are allowed to push back. Would certainly be priced into the bid though and I agree any mitigations are unlikely to be beneficial to the passenger.
underbank
Established Member
"Something needs to be done to stop operators like Virgin playing games with delays to reduce their exposure to compensation."
I remember being at Preston once, but can't remember the details. There was a Virgin Voyager at the platform, on time, but a Pendolino was arriving about 10 minutes late. As soon as it arrived, there was a mini stampede across the footbridge with maybe 20/30 people rushing to change to the Voyager. The guard/platform staff could see them coming, but despatched the voyager anyway, on time. Cue, lots of angry passengers on the platform watching it leave. Then a minute later, they got even more angry when they could see the Voyager had been stopped at a right light just outside the station, allowing the Pendolino to overtake it. There was absolutely no reason why the Voyager couldn't have been held in the station and the passengers allowed to board and then set off after the Peno, to exactly the same end result. But presumably Virgin Ops decided compo to a smaller number of people on the Voyager was better than paying delay compensation for a full train load on the Pendo. It's that kind of nonsense that annoys passengers.
I remember being at Preston once, but can't remember the details. There was a Virgin Voyager at the platform, on time, but a Pendolino was arriving about 10 minutes late. As soon as it arrived, there was a mini stampede across the footbridge with maybe 20/30 people rushing to change to the Voyager. The guard/platform staff could see them coming, but despatched the voyager anyway, on time. Cue, lots of angry passengers on the platform watching it leave. Then a minute later, they got even more angry when they could see the Voyager had been stopped at a right light just outside the station, allowing the Pendolino to overtake it. There was absolutely no reason why the Voyager couldn't have been held in the station and the passengers allowed to board and then set off after the Peno, to exactly the same end result. But presumably Virgin Ops decided compo to a smaller number of people on the Voyager was better than paying delay compensation for a full train load on the Pendo. It's that kind of nonsense that annoys passengers.
underbank
Established Member
Every passenger has different circumstances. 3 minutes to someone who usually arrives at work 15 minutes ahead of their start time is irrelevant. 3 minutes to someone who only has a 5 minute change time at an intermediate station risks missing their connecting train, or at the very least, a mad rush across the bridge risking falling and injuring themselves. If the service is regular, say 5/10 minutes between trains, getting an earlier train "in case" of a small delay is no big deal. If it's a 1 or 2 hourly service, then obviously, it's impractical to get an earlier service "just in case" and end up 1 or 2 hours early if it's on time. Personally, I'd much rather have slightly slower, more frequent services, which makes slight delays almost irrelevant.
matt_world2004
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MtR crossrail Arriva rail London and GTR have
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