Clearly Arriva must go. The Northern brand needs to go as well. What comes next is the question. Arriva have messed things up for the foreseeable future. Huge numbers of staff need to be recruited, there aren't enough trains available to replace the Pacers, they're stuck with CAF. There's a DOO-shaped hole in the books. Services can't be reduced to what can be operated reliable because it isn't acceptable for the Conservative Party to dismantle the rail network in the North. Shapps doesn't sound like he'd be keen on a raft of new road schemes to cover for cuts to rail.
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Northern Rail could be re-nationalised
- Thread starter Grumpy Git
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They won't last five years in the present condition. They'll have to either.
1) Get CAFF to get on top of the serious issues.
2) Start isolating certain software and introduce a more degraded form of working.
3) Slow down on the introduction until the problems are ironed out.
I sign these units, and they seriously scare me.
Just who do you think is breathing down the Northern managements back to introduce these units? As soon as they say Pacers may need to stay the DFT are on to it. They are being pressured into introducing unit after unit that are not ready to be introduced. Staff training is all over the place. Who's fault is this?
thenorthern
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If Northern was going to be brought into state ownership it would be an arms length public company with little input from HM Government in the running of services. Passengers would probably not notice much of a difference if this happened.
The Northern franchise isn't sustainable. The problems are multi-faceted though. Some are structural. Some are completely self-inflicted. People like Andy Burnham think the problems can just be fixed overnight when it's going to take a good 2-3 years - and that's assuming they do forward planning now in regards to re-casting the timetable so it's resilient.
1) Flawed timetable that is fundamentally unworkable - lack of harmonisation with TPE services and mitigating cross-flows that result in delays.
2) Government reneging on key promised infrastructure improvements when the franchise was let in 2015 - Oxford Road upgrade, Piccadilly platforms 13/14, Hope Valley line siding etc.
3) The recent ticket machine user interface debacle probably sums up Arriva's ability to shoot themselves in the foot with the Northern franchise.
4) Arriva has effectively given up running Sunday services on some lines due to unions / insufficient staff. Given the large subsidy the Northern franchise receives this is not in the taxpayers' interest to not be running specified services as where is this subsidy going and it will turn potential passengers away making the task of reducing the subsidy even more difficult.
5) Following on from 4) - difficult unions to contend with which the DfT and Northern have underestimated.
6) TfTN and other quangos muddying the water with contradictory objectives that actually damage the Northern franchise revenue forecasts due to its reliance on commuter flows - not business or leisure travellers between cities. If TfTN had their own way then you have fast TPE train services running between Leeds and Manchester Airport - clearly this would be detrimental to the Northern franchise as these use commuter routes which necessitate slower trains.
7) The May 2018 timetable change was disastrous. It's difficult to underestimate the impact this has had on peoples' perception of the railway in the North. Passenger numbers are still down.
Government (DfT), Network Rail, Northern and TfTN are all to blame for the failure of the franchise. For all to be incompetent is a big problem. Those who think 're-nationalistion' will be a magic pill are clearly idiots as there are too many idiots in the system messing up the franchise in the first place. You can't change that overnight.
1) Flawed timetable that is fundamentally unworkable - lack of harmonisation with TPE services and mitigating cross-flows that result in delays.
2) Government reneging on key promised infrastructure improvements when the franchise was let in 2015 - Oxford Road upgrade, Piccadilly platforms 13/14, Hope Valley line siding etc.
3) The recent ticket machine user interface debacle probably sums up Arriva's ability to shoot themselves in the foot with the Northern franchise.
4) Arriva has effectively given up running Sunday services on some lines due to unions / insufficient staff. Given the large subsidy the Northern franchise receives this is not in the taxpayers' interest to not be running specified services as where is this subsidy going and it will turn potential passengers away making the task of reducing the subsidy even more difficult.
5) Following on from 4) - difficult unions to contend with which the DfT and Northern have underestimated.
6) TfTN and other quangos muddying the water with contradictory objectives that actually damage the Northern franchise revenue forecasts due to its reliance on commuter flows - not business or leisure travellers between cities. If TfTN had their own way then you have fast TPE train services running between Leeds and Manchester Airport - clearly this would be detrimental to the Northern franchise as these use commuter routes which necessitate slower trains.
7) The May 2018 timetable change was disastrous. It's difficult to underestimate the impact this has had on peoples' perception of the railway in the North. Passenger numbers are still down.
Government (DfT), Network Rail, Northern and TfTN are all to blame for the failure of the franchise. For all to be incompetent is a big problem. Those who think 're-nationalistion' will be a magic pill are clearly idiots as there are too many idiots in the system messing up the franchise in the first place. You can't change that overnight.
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Howardh
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I understand Sunday cancellations are because they haven't enough staff - or they have the staff but they won't/can't work for any reason. Northern need sacking - but if taken over by the government, how would that solve the staffing issues? Can someone with far more knowledge fill me in?
I pointed out that this was likely to happen several months ago, but unfortunately many people didn't take that seriously. Sadly it has proven correct. The Secretary of State himself now accepts that the franchise cannot continue in its current form.
The huge pay rise BTW was about 3%, so in line with inflation rather than "huge," and I imagine contractual. May not be a well-thought-out contract but that's another matter.
Their contract will broadly indemnify them against failures of the government such as these. They would not be cutting the contract short, in my view, were it not for their own massive failures in things they control directly, especially customer service, pricing and onboard quality. All of these things have been done poorly, more so than at other companies, and with the effect that they have lost revenue significantly. I could go into exactly why Northern are so different, but there isn't really time or space to here. I will summarise by saying that it really should not surprise any regular users that the financial position of the franchise is unsustainable, and there should be no doubt that the responsibility for that lies principally with Northern management, and by extension DfT and not with Network Rail or train builders and leasing companies as they might prefer you to think.
So are we saying £311,000 is a fair salary for performance?
LeylandLen
Member
ITV Granada here in the N/W illustrated part of the story with TPE 185s (they did include Pacers in some shots )
One thing I've never really understood is this: the need to train a particular number of staff has been known about from the time of the bid. Certainly this plan should have been ready by the time the company took over. The number of staff who need to be trained hasn't particularly changed, has it? So why exactly has the progress of the training been so poor? There have been four years. Sounds like enough time to train many hundreds of members of staff to me?
One employee, who doesn’t even work for Northern. So you don’t have any evidence then?
I would argue that those aren't really the worst problems from a customer perspective. They have also been mostly relieved now and only affected one area of the business. Instead I think that the reasons people don't travel as much with the company are price rises simultaneously with service degradation, contempt in place of good customer service, and cheap, unpleasant onboard experiences. The May 2018 disaster and the rolling stock shortages were just ways to express those failings, large and headline-grabbing as they were. The strikes probably damaged the financial position more than anything else too.
It's worth noting that the person in question (Chris Burchell) isn't in charge of day to day running at Northern… he's the MD of the UK Trains business at Arriva (e.g. the 'parent' of Northern, XC, Chiltern, the concessionaire of London Overground etc); therefore, measuring solely on Northern's performance is a bit of a fallacy.
For context, the latest accounts for Northern itself show that the highest paid director there received renumeration of £172,000 in the year ending 31/3/18. The question as to whether or not that's fair is perhaps a different matter!
I don't one single issue is solely responsible. The flawed timetable, infrastructure not delivered, staffing issues and politics have collectively downed the Northern franchise. The crux of it is that we have got a franchise run by idiots (Arriva) with idiotic actors backing them up (the DfT, Network Rail & TfTN) only to be potentially replaced by a party who is possibly half competent but still in charge of, mostly, idiots. The idea of 're-nationalisation' as an overnight panacea for all of Northern's problems is nonsense.
I agree.
LOL The Irony
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One of the listed issues was the lack of Sunday services due to staff shortages. IIRC this is something left over from BR where drivers could take Sundays off with a weeks notice and Arriva are currently trying to get rid of this.
td97
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There won't be many who have read the original 2015 bid documents from Arriva, Abellio and Govia, but the thing that stood out about Arriva's was that it actual had a human touch and sounded like it really wanted to sort out the franchise.
It was affectionate, almost concerned, about the loss of guard grade and was real about the low morale and high turnover at Serco-Abellio. They knew customers expected more and in my opinion were right to be chosen as the franchise operator, based on the offering.
Their words on paper haven't held well after 4 years, but believe me, the Abellio bid was absolutely abhorrent to read about the proposed loss of guard grade. At least ARN started out with the right mindset.
It seems to me that one of the biggest issues affecting the franchise right now is a huge training backlog - whether that be for the new CAFs (and upcoming 769s) or route learning for trainee traincrew. This must be the biggest issue affecting staff availability, and hence cancelled train services (and the cycle of staff shortages leading to late or curtailed services). Quite how changing the operator from ARN to DfT could mitigate this is a fantasy story.
Although branded incompetent, the Arriva parent group must bring experience in dealing with huge amounts of training, including recent experience from the 710 training on GOBLIN. Experience not possessed by the DfT, TfN, Arup, or whoever else would become involved in nationalisation. And before the suggestion that LNER completed their 800 training seamlessly arises, it was at the expense of cancelling passenger train services. TPE too.
Admittedly their stock maintenance seems poor, especially at Allerton, with 319 and 195 failures common. Perhaps any LNWR users can comment on 319 failures on their services for comparison?
It was affectionate, almost concerned, about the loss of guard grade and was real about the low morale and high turnover at Serco-Abellio. They knew customers expected more and in my opinion were right to be chosen as the franchise operator, based on the offering.
Their words on paper haven't held well after 4 years, but believe me, the Abellio bid was absolutely abhorrent to read about the proposed loss of guard grade. At least ARN started out with the right mindset.
It seems to me that one of the biggest issues affecting the franchise right now is a huge training backlog - whether that be for the new CAFs (and upcoming 769s) or route learning for trainee traincrew. This must be the biggest issue affecting staff availability, and hence cancelled train services (and the cycle of staff shortages leading to late or curtailed services). Quite how changing the operator from ARN to DfT could mitigate this is a fantasy story.
Although branded incompetent, the Arriva parent group must bring experience in dealing with huge amounts of training, including recent experience from the 710 training on GOBLIN. Experience not possessed by the DfT, TfN, Arup, or whoever else would become involved in nationalisation. And before the suggestion that LNER completed their 800 training seamlessly arises, it was at the expense of cancelling passenger train services. TPE too.
Admittedly their stock maintenance seems poor, especially at Allerton, with 319 and 195 failures common. Perhaps any LNWR users can comment on 319 failures on their services for comparison?
Arrivas' job is to manage the franchise; that they are doing within the straight jacket they are finding themselves in
The big issue is that we seem determined to buy rolling stock from countries with very different operating conditions and expect it to work in the UK straight out of the box. I think this was a very naive thing to do perhaps updated turbostars which are based on a tried and trusted formula might have been better.
Now what is needed is to remove the pressure by giving Northern a Hiatus period when they can't be fined or punished for timetable failures of say 18 months and use that time to sort out stock reliability , training and recruitment issues. If at the end of that period the issues aren't sorted then it should be adios Arriva
Stripping them of the franchise now and then trying to put new management and governance in place would only add to the passengers woes
The big issue is that we seem determined to buy rolling stock from countries with very different operating conditions and expect it to work in the UK straight out of the box. I think this was a very naive thing to do perhaps updated turbostars which are based on a tried and trusted formula might have been better.
Now what is needed is to remove the pressure by giving Northern a Hiatus period when they can't be fined or punished for timetable failures of say 18 months and use that time to sort out stock reliability , training and recruitment issues. If at the end of that period the issues aren't sorted then it should be adios Arriva
Stripping them of the franchise now and then trying to put new management and governance in place would only add to the passengers woes
Grumpy Git
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In my limited experience, if the number of digits at the bottom of the quote / invoice are less than all the others bidding, it's got to be the right kit for the job............ Where do we sign?
Mikey C
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Pretty sure CAF was the only option in town for DMUs at the time, Bombardier have stopped making Turbostars, and weren't interested in a DMU version of the Aventra.
Mikey C
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VTEC was an easy franchise for the OLR to take over, a franchise that was basically fine except that Stagecoach and Virgin had bid too much.
Northern is such a difference scenario, there's no quick and easy solution to the issues here. The government has to do something or at least be SEEN to do something though, with a General Election likely to be imminent and many key seats where Northern Rail will be an issue...
Northern is such a difference scenario, there's no quick and easy solution to the issues here. The government has to do something or at least be SEEN to do something though, with a General Election likely to be imminent and many key seats where Northern Rail will be an issue...
Grumpy Git
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I work for myself, (I can't hack the corporate bullcarp). If someone asks me to quote for a job and I'm "too dear", I walk away. I have plenty of customers who have asked me back to rip-out inferior stuff (where I lost-out originally), to install the "expensive" gear in that I quoted year(s) earlier.
I don't have any trouble sleeping at night either.
We seem to have become a vehemently Anti Diesel nation all of a sudden so maybe that also played it's part in that descision
RealTrains07
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Northern is improving though. The new trains are better over the pacers plus i thought the timetable was getting sorted?
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
Stadler were possibly an option (I don't know if they bid for the Northern contract).
But they are not having it easy over at GA either with 745/755 (not an Arriva operation).
CAF had the benefit of the Caledonian Sleeper order and some past experience from the 332/333 EMU projects and the NI DMUs.
TPE have also been caught out with over-optimistic bids from CAF.
We'll soon see if First Trenitalia order any CAF stuff for the WCML.
Dr Hoo
Established Member
So the highest paid Northern director gets less than half what several (public sector) Network Rail directors do, for example those responsible for Infrastructure Projects and Route Services, i.e. including North west electrification and the 2018 timetable? Right...
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