Rail franchising to face the axe in 2020

Arctic Troll said:

That boils down to the perennial issue of TOCs not employing enough drivers to cover for sickness absence, and the reasons why.

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Aka the trade off between efficiency (everyone doing something productive and nobody sat spare) and resilience (plenty of spare capacity for when things go wrong).

But for your original delay attribution point, it was only an example to illustrate that it's not always a Network Rail stitch up.

CC 72100 said:

But for your original delay attribution point, it was only an example to illustrate that it's not always a Network Rail stitch up.

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True enough, the whole delay attribution process encourages pass-the-parcel, with everyone piling their minutes on whichever hapless soul they can.

And yes, resilience costs money. And given that the only outgoings the TOCs can really control is staff expenditure, it's no wonder they cut back there to boost the old margin.

Arctic Troll said:

True enough, the whole delay attribution process encourages pass-the-parcel, with everyone piling their minutes on whichever hapless soul they can.

And yes, resilience costs money. And given that the only outgoings the TOCs can really control is staff expenditure, it's no wonder they cut back there to boost the old margin.

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But Delay Attribution also shows where spending some money might produce returns in improved performance

Arctic Troll said:

Unless you're a) telling me Beardy brought us £600m efficiency savings that the Intercity managers he hired wouldn't have otherwise given us, or b) that he pulled this money out of his bum, it's a fair bet that the £600m would have existed had we kept British Rail.

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Except under British Rail, those Intercity managers wouldn’t have been allowed an original thought between them.

Back then the ‘rail’ way was the only way, and that meant maintaining the status quo. We were still using military discipline methods regardless of how effective they were, simply because it had always been that way. Station Managers still had a bowler hat and if you applied for a promotion it was yours if you were the senior applicant (regardless of ability).

The demise of BR finally allowed Managers to do more than blindly follow the traditions of the past.

Lemmy99uk said:

Except under British Rail, those Intercity managers wouldn’t have been allowed an original thought between them.

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Exvept that doesn't tie in with the reality after the early-80s, where the sectors were increasingly innovative, especially in promoting leisure travel. In ticketing: Railcards, rail rovers, Apex, SuperSaver, even the Travelcard. In branding. In the overall product: new trains, refreshed stations.

It's highly likely that BR would have carried on with yield management and Value tickets as the technology let them. And we wouldn't have given Branson £300m to snaffle away to his tax haven before smugly lecture us on how doing the obvious and the bare minimum is "innovative efficiency".

ExRes said:

I for one have no confidence in any results from polling companies

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I bet you do when they agree with the position you're trying to take.

I'd say, anecdotally, that 50-65% of people wanting rid of the TOCs would be about right.

You might disagree, and think the public adores our glorious TOC leaders, but that doesn't mean the polling is wrong.

The big issue with YouGov is the reliance on online polling. Politically that has an effect- Leavers are, generally, older and less educated, and are less likely to be actively online- but talking about trains? I don't think that applies, especially older people are more likely to hark back to the days of proper steam trains.

hwl said:

But Delay Attribution also shows where spending some money might produce returns in improved performance

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Does it? Really? Delay attribution doesn't analyse why the delays happen, it merely pins the tail on the donkey.

It's rare that any delay has one single attributable blame factor, but the delay attribution business is about passing the financial buck on to someone else.

Arctic Troll said:

As I said, on what planet is 3pm "peak"?

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Maybe, the planet where where you're talking about long distance trains, a high proportion of whose customers are people going away for a couple of days, rather than daily commuters, and for which intensive passenger traffic and over-full trains therefore happens a bit earlier in the afternoon than you'd expect for short-distance commuters?

DynamicSpirit said:

Maybe, the planet where where you're talking about long distance trains, a high proportion of whose customers are people going away for a couple of days, rather than daily commuters

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As @Bletchleyite rightly says, peak =/= busy. If it was, 4pm on a Sunday afternoon would be ultra-uber-mega-peak.

So again, on what planet is 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon "peak time"?

Arctic Troll said:

Does it? Really? Delay attribution doesn't analyse why the delays happen, it merely pins the tail on the donkey.

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It won't as it isn't meant to, the people that get the minutes and the cost certainly analyse it though.

The Planner said:

It won't as it isn't meant to, the people that get the minutes and the cost certainly analyse it though.

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There's an argument for "delay attribution incentivises people to fix delays", sure. It's not one I agree with, but I can see the argument.

But if 40% are NR mistakes, 40% are TOC/FOC mistakes, and 20% are just one of those things, it really does just end up being a merry-go-round. One that, ironically, causes more problems if there is a one-sided improvement; my understanding is GNER struggled financially as delay compensation to them was lower than expected as NR got their act together and started to fix the Railtrack mess.

Arctic Troll said:

There's an argument for "delay attribution incentivises people to fix delays", sure. It's not one I agree with, but I can see the argument.

But if 40% are NR mistakes, 40% are TOC/FOC mistakes, and 20% are just one of those things, it really does just end up being a merry-go-round. One that, ironically, causes more problems if there is a one-sided improvement; my understanding is GNER struggled financially as delay compensation to them was lower than expected as NR got their act together and started to fix the Railtrack mess.

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There is always going to be an element of unexplainable or ZZ delay, though that is now a hot potato and isnt allowed to be disregarded so i would expect that 20% to reduce over time.

As for GNER, they only have themselves to blame if they were forecasting Schedule 8 money into their revenue stream. I doubt anyone makes that same assumption now.

hwl said:

Where on the spectrum compared to Crossrail / LO (some what different) and the pseudo TSGN model?

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Good question. Hopefully not the latter, which is full of holes. Personally I think the TfL model works well, but we will probably see something new and different; after all, if it isn't then maybe people wouldn't need to be paid high salaries or fees...

It is always worth remembering that BR invented the current method of delay attribution and the TRUST computer system behind it. This was arguably the last great ‘corporate’ achievement (rather than sector-specific).

As someone who used to to try and ‘manage’ performance at area level in the days when clerks waded through guards’ reports, the control log, train registers and station chargehands’ tick-sheets delay attribution in quasi real time was only a dream. Our ‘alternative’ was to arrive on a Monday morning to three days worth of ‘data’, largely from staff who had now changed shifts or were on leave and start sending out ‘please explains’ to the most promising cases in the hope of learning some lessons.

Unbelievably inefficient and ineffective at improving performance quickly.

Sorry, nothing to do with franchising really.

Arctic Troll said:

That boils down to the perennial issue of TOCs not employing enough drivers to cover for sickness absence, and the reasons why.

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And that is largely caused by just how costly drivers are these days.

HH said:

And that is largely caused by just how costly drivers are these days.

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Ironically wage inflation is something that privatisation made worse, as TOCs and FOCs know all too well that bunging an existing driver at a different company an extra five grand is cheaper than training a new driver. Those TOCs which don't have top link work, like Northern, end up constantly having to train up replacements for departees.

Merging commuter and Intercity TOCs, as on GWR, certainly helps with that. But then, if you're not careful, you end up with an unwieldy behemoth like Central Trains.

Arctic Troll said:

Merging commuter and Intercity TOCs, as on GWR, certainly helps with that. But then, if you're not careful, you end up with an unwieldy behemoth like Central Trains.

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It also helps with revenue streams as well - the suggestions that GN help balance the books for LNER alluded to that. Separating the north west and the north east into northern and transpenine, while good for delivering targeted enhancements to the busiest flows and thus improving the DfT books, will have made the northern franchise less balancable in its own right.

When comparing BR to the fragmented system today, it must be remembered in its latter years it was forced to split up into sections ready for privatisation, the pre sectorised BR was more the "nationalised" model. Its plus points were:
1 A single obvious organisation responsible for Rail transport. Timetable, train crew, point failures, new trains old trains, etc, etc
2 Simple fare structure
3 National T&Cs and pay for staff (this has many plus points for management no staff poaching etc) and the unions are still national even if the companies are not anyway.
4 Minimum cost to the tax payer compared to the present structure NR has £50bn debt and massive subsidy for day to day operation on top of any revenue, transfer those costs onto TOCs and see what the fares would have to be, how many francises would selll then???
5 A simple (relative) structure top to bottom over a massive industry, with obvious accountabillity that could only dreamed of today, and i believe could never be recreated in the modern world.
The genie is out of the bottle now, and the Williams report can only play with the existing mess and ask for more money.

Railman said:

When comparing BR to the fragmented system today, it must be remembered in its latter years it was forced to split up into sections ready for privatisation, the pre sectorised BR was more the "nationalised" model.

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Sectorisation was nothing to do with privatisation. Sectorisation was about reorganising the railway along functional lines - the principle being to set up business units based on what they moved rather than where they moved it. Something the size of BR was always going to need subdividing, and it makes more sense to do so along those lines than along the old geographical lines. Moving Yorkshiremen is the same as moving Scotsmen or Welshmen, and fairly similar to moving Londoners, but has nothing at all in common with moving coal or containers. There's always going to be some duplication of functions, but functional grouping reduces that duplication. It also makes the cost structure more transparent, so that investment and cost-saving measures can be targeted more effectively.

It's how most businesses organise themselves, and therefore made British Rail make more sense as a business. That will have helped with privatisation. But that wasn't the primary reason for doing it.

Railman said:

When comparing BR to the fragmented system today, it must be remembered in its latter years it was forced to split up into sections ready for privatisation, the pre sectorised BR was more the "nationalised" model. Its plus points were:
1 A single obvious organisation responsible for Rail transport. Timetable, train crew, point failures, new trains old trains, etc, etc
2 Simple fare structure
3 National T&Cs and pay for staff (this has many plus points for management no staff poaching etc) and the unions are still national even if the companies are not anyway.
4 Minimum cost to the tax payer compared to the present structure NR has £50bn debt and massive subsidy for day to day operation on top of any revenue, transfer those costs onto TOCs and see what the fares would have to be, how many francises would selll then???
5 A simple (relative) structure top to bottom over a massive industry, with obvious accountabillity that could only dreamed of today, and i believe could never be recreated in the modern world.
The genie is out of the bottle now, and the Williams report can only play with the existing mess and ask for more money.

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1. Politicians get involved in everything these days; there's no chance that BR would have been allowed to continue as it was.
2. A simpler fare structure means less options. Plus BR used price crudely to manage demand, i.e. where the trains were getting full they increased the price. In the current climate that wouldn't wash at all.
3. I'll grant you that there are advantages to national T&Cs, but it was not as homogeneous as you make out. For instance Thameslink's "Circadian" rostering system, which is different to the rest of the network, was introduced under BR.
4. The woeful under-investment in infrastructure has been a source of problems since; given the reversal in the trend of ever-falling passenger numbers it couldn't continue.
1 & 5 are the same point!

Railman said:

massive subsidy for day to day operation on top of any revenue

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Do you know what the day to day operations cost?

Although I don't, I can have a fairly good guys from the data available.

Surrender on HS2 isn't day to day costs so that's removed, likewise any spending on Enhancements.

The gross government spending on railways is circa £15bn, the net figure is about £6bn, deduct the above (HS2 is about £2bn and Enhancements are about £4bn) and that leaves a total of just a bit less than £200 million.

If we were to compare that to:
The gross amount spent on railways it's less than 1.5%
The budget of the DfT it's less than 1%
The budget of the country it's less than 0.03%

To put that into figures that people may be able to relate to more easily, if the spending of each was £20,000 then it would be the following:
£226 for the gross spending on railways
£160 for the budget of the DfT
£6 for national government spending

It is certainly not a massive amount.

Unless you (or anyone else who holds this view) can explain how it is.

HH said:

3. I'll grant you that there are advantages to national T&Cs, but it was not as homogeneous as you make out. For instance Thameslink's "Circadian" rostering system, which is different to the rest of the network, was introduced under BR.
!

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Yes but presumably Thameslink staff were still on the BR national pay rates until privatisation?

Isn’t the argument for hugely differing pay levels for what amount to essentially identical roles across multiple TOCs rather weak anyway ? given a nationally agreed standard of entry exam & training course are generally required with the specific local requirements usually occupying only a small part of the overall process , although I appreciate all of the above doesn’t apply to very specialist operators like Eurostar

Moderator note: We will consider unlocking this thread when there are further developments; in the meantime please feel free to discuss any suggestions for reforming the franchise system here: https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...d-replace-the-rail-franchising-system.193532/