West Midlands Mayor Wants WMT Franchise Stripped

gazzaa2 said:

They both over promise and under deliver.

DFT/cabinet office for electioneering (been general election every other year for a while, with trains a political football) and a TOC to win a bid.

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At least somebody gets it!

It’s the same mistakes over and over, which is what is so frustrating! National(ised) Express East Coast, anyone?

I blame Greta (for the mistakes being repeated)!

sprunt said:

Who signs up to run the franchise

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My understanding of the setup is:
A consortium* led by Abellio signed up that their subsidiary West Midlands Trains would deliver the contract.
DfT and Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) wrote the franchise spec and signed off the ITT.
They both also signed up to the operating contract with Abellio, but TfWM only provides an oversight function with no significant financial clout (or risk).
The contract terms will all be based on DfT standard franchise management policy.
Andy Street became responsible for TfWM when he was elected Metro Mayor.
This mirrors to some extent the pattern in the north of England, but the north has multiple metro mayors each covering part (and by no means all) of the Northern/TPE franchise area.
The north is possibly 1-2 years ahead of WM in terms of setting up a local management body for rail services (though they are still barely visible to the public).

In the case of the WMT franchise, Abellio is supposed to be working towards a formal separation of the WMR and LNWR operations, so that they can be let separately in the next franchise round.
The "WMR" part will then be let and managed by TfWM, while the "LNWR" part will not be under TfWM control and remain with DfT.

Note also that if franchise management is fully devolved to local government, significant risk will transfer with the powers which the local councils will not like.
It will impact the wider "Barnett formula" settlement between Whitehall and the regions, as it has in the rail settlements with Scotland and Wales.
That brings in another layer of politics and it is by no means a given that rail funding or priorities will be ring-fenced.

* Note that East Japan Railway and Mitsui are minority shareholders to Abellio in the West Midlands Trains company structure

Without anyone seeing what the Govia bid had planned to achieve the required DFT service spec, there seems to be nothing to compare the existing timetable to. Maybe Govia also planned to merge services as one through Birmingham and saw it as the only way? Maybe they didn't and planned on self contained workings perhaps with shorter turnarounds or only short dwell times through Birmingham? Pure guesswork that will never be known.

Was there another way to achieve the service spec without joining former separate services together? Would the DFT have been better specifying that all routes are pushed towards longer trains with no improvements to frequency due to constraints through Birmingham?

I have seen arrivals at Euston booked at xx33 booked to leave again on next service at xx46. And that's if the platform is available as it should be. The two platforms being out of use at Euston would make anyone's timetable far more difficult. If these short turnarounds are inevitable I just can't see an easy answer.

If he wanted to do something actually worthwhile that would help the problem, he’d provide funding for a pool of spare drivers and guards to be strategically placed around the WMT network. Very often disruption is prolonged because of displaced traincrew, made worse by units clogging up platforms unnecessarily.

pt_mad said:

The two platforms being out of use at Euston would make anyone's timetable far more difficult. If these short turnarounds are inevitable I just can't see an easy answer.

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Not as horrendous as you may think, less resilliance yes, but not unworkable.

LNW-GW Joint said:

David Brown (MD of Northern) was just on Radio 4 defending Northern's performance against demands for it to lose the franchise.
His argument is that 70% of the infrastructure promised by DfT for the franchise has not been delivered.
I'm not sure how he arrives at that figure, or what in detail those features were (eg P15/16 at Piccadilly).
But his gist was that the DfT/TfN spec for the franchise was unchanged so they had to attempt to deliver it.
He acknowledged the franchise would change in 2020, either with an OLR setup or Arriva running a different spec.
But he warned that none of the underlying issues for the railway in the north had been solved, and a change of operator wouldn't automatically fix everything.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool CR Mayor) weighed in with a demand for franchise removal, because the service under discussion was from Southport.
Northern's own issues over crazy training programmes, poor diagramming and badly performing new trains weren't mentioned.

Nobody mentioned TPE and its similar (or worse) performance level, though that was not significant in a debate about services at Southport.​

It looks like Andy Street has joined the Metro Mayor club to pressure DfT into action.
While Andy has the local WM railway operation in his electoral purview, I don't think it stretches to all of the LNWR operation (ie London, Liverpool).
DfT's problem is that it wants a solution that fits with the Williams review proposals (whatever they are).
It also doesn't want to lose control over major transport spend in a big chunk of England (impacting HS2/NPR policy, for instance).
I think we are heading towards a devolution battle royal in the new year...

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Devolution hasn't solved anything though! Transport for the North involvement with rail in the North over the past 2 years or so has been an unmitigated disaster.

They have actively encouraged more 'through' routes to destinations (Manchester Airport is one example) that has jeopardised the punctuality and resilience of the entire timetable, as well as intercity services which has damaged local connections from commuter stations.

The Williams Review had one sensible remark: keep politicians out of making decisions relating to the railways - that includes the Department for Transport and Transport for the North which mayors such as Andy Burnham form part of.

Network Rail even released a 'congestion' report on the Castlefield Corridor which was basically "government and politicians in the north want us to run 14 services but we only have the capacity to run 12 reliably and they are not willing to put the money in to resolve it or reduce the amount of services operating through Castlefield. What do you want us to do about it?

WMT are suffering the same short-sightedness that is afflicting other franchises and whicho keep Andy Street away as well. Just as with Andy Burnham, I would keep Andy Street as far away as possible.

Ferret said:

Then why does he want to bring it under his control? The pitch there is he is suggesting he can fix it. Like any politician, he’ll be in for a rude awakening when he tries.

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I want the government or local authority to take franchises such as Northern in public hands. They may be able to staff it slightly better but the fundamentals will remain the same - a broken timetable and declining punctuality. There will be no bogeyman and it'll quickly become apparent that the DfT and local transport bodies are to blame.

Wilts Wanderer said:

If he wanted to do something actually worthwhile that would help the problem, he’d provide funding for a pool of spare drivers and guards to be strategically placed around the WMT network. Very often disruption is prolonged because of displaced traincrew, made worse by units clogging up platforms unnecessarily.

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WMT are on a huge recruitment drive at present, for drivers especially! While there is legit criticism due, let us not pretend they are sitting on their hands watching it go to hell in a handcart.

Ferret said:

A remarkable coincidence, isn’t it?! Of course, this is lost on some of the posters here, who haven’t spotted that Street (and Burnham) are just playing politics for their own gain. They don’t actually give a toss, any more than they have workable solutions.

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Campion has been sticking his oar in trying to annex full control of the Fire Service down here as well.

Obviously he still has delusions of grandeur of adding to his local oligarchy or getting a cosy safe Tory seat in the future.

His skeletons in the closet concerning a certain number plate he was instrumental in “helping acquire” would automatically have disqualified anyone from getting anywhere near public office a few years ago - sadly not these days

Ferret said:

-End the cutting out of stops during late running. Ummm, how does he expect service recovery to happen? Would he prefer a late service at 1000 to still be causing knock on delays at 1730 and beyond?

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The same issue that plagues most bus networks these days - lose a few minutes in the morning peak there is nowhere to makeup the time bar dropping a trip or running 'drop off only' if the bus behind is chasing. 10 years ago the buses had a 10minute recovery time between each journey, of course to save costs and cut back as much as possible this is now often less than 5 minutes if any at all. This means it can take hours just to recover 5,10,15 mins as just as a few mins are made up theyre lost again because the running times are tight - again to reduce cost!

The best solution to recover time is to add in extra time between journeys but of course this would probably mean an extra train or 2 in the mix and extra staff, plus the companies dont like paying staff to do nothing if theyre running to time so get to sit off for the full recovery layover period - It would definitely cost more and involve an extra train which they dont have, but that's probably the only option to recover delays without skipping various stations en route.

Skipping stations seems to be a regular Abellio trick, they regularly do it on Merseyrail for trains which arn't that late - often just 5mins or so. I'm sure somebody said a while ago they do it on small delays as it keeps their punctuality figures looking better or something along those lines, even though its skipped half the stations out.

L401CJF said:

The same issue that plagues most bus networks these days - lose a few minutes in the morning peak there is nowhere to makeup the time bar dropping a trip or running 'drop off only' if the bus behind is chasing. 10 years ago the buses had a 10minute recovery time between each journey, of course to save costs and cut back as much as possible this is now often less than 5 minutes if any at all. This means it can take hours just to recover 5,10,15 mins as just as a few mins are made up theyre lost again because the running times are tight - again to reduce cost!

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Yes, this. In general I would suggest 10 minutes in the hour of layover is going to be about right.

L401CJF said:

Skipping stations seems to be a regular Abellio trick, they regularly do it on Merseyrail for trains which arn't that late - often just 5mins or so. I'm sure somebody said a while ago they do it on small delays as it keeps their punctuality figures looking better or something along those lines, even though its skipped half the stations out.

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Skipping stops is done in an attempt to get it to destination in order to form the return working on time instead of running late all day. It generally helps the majority of passengers if it works.
It is not to fiddle punctuality/ reliability stats as once ANY stop is missed it counts as a PPM failure although it will hopefully result in later trains being on time.

45107 said:

Skipping stops is done in an attempt to get it to destination in order to form the return working on time instead of running late all day. It generally helps the majority of passengers if it works.
It is not to fiddle punctuality/ reliability stats as once ANY stop is missed it counts as a PPM failure although it will hopefully result in later trains being on time.

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IF its declared. Seen plenty where its not, hardly in TOCs interest to point it out if NR don't input it to TRUST.

45107 said:

Skipping stops is done in an attempt to get it to destination in order to form the return working on time instead of running late all day. It generally helps the majority of passengers if it works.
It is not to fiddle punctuality/ reliability stats as once ANY stop is missed it counts as a PPM failure although it will hopefully result in later trains being on time.

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But is often done during the evening peak on the Snow Hill lines. 18:10 Cancelled, 18:31 express to Shirley, 18:39 Cancelled has happened several times. Around a ⅓ of the passengers on that route use the five stops frequently skipped.

L401CJF said:

The same issue that plagues most bus networks these days - lose a few minutes in the morning peak there is nowhere to makeup the time bar dropping a trip or running 'drop off only' if the bus behind is chasing. 10 years ago the buses had a 10minute recovery time between each journey, of course to save costs and cut back as much as possible this is now often less than 5 minutes if any at all. This means it can take hours just to recover 5,10,15 mins as just as a few mins are made up theyre lost again because the running times are tight - again to reduce cost!

The best solution to recover time is to add in extra time between journeys but of course this would probably mean an extra train or 2 in the mix and extra staff, plus the companies dont like paying staff to do nothing if theyre running to time so get to sit off for the full recovery layover period - It would definitely cost more and involve an extra train which they dont have, but that's probably the only option to recover delays without skipping various stations en route.

Skipping stations seems to be a regular Abellio trick, they regularly do it on Merseyrail for trains which arn't that late - often just 5mins or so. I'm sure somebody said a while ago they do it on small delays as it keeps their punctuality figures looking better or something along those lines, even though its skipped half the stations out.

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AIUI, skipping a single station on any given train means it fails PPM, regardless of whether in the end it arrives RT at destination or not. I’m assuming this is correct? The benefit to doing it is that it gets the service back together for later on in the day. Something lost on Andy Street, clearly.

mrcheek said:

Do elected Mayors actually do anything other than call for TOCs to be stripped of their franchise? Seems to be a major part of their job.....

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Drawing national attention to local issues is a big part of their job yes.

yorkie said:

As mentioned three times previously, just another reminder that blind people are not able to read text that is contained within images; if you are to make it fully accessible, please use plain text. Thank you

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Advice very much noted and will be used accordingly.

87015 said:

IF its declared. Seen plenty where its not, hardly in TOCs interest to point it out if NR don't input it to TRUST.

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In many cases there is no human involvement in TRUST input.
And in manual signal boxes if you don't do it you will soon be questioned why you failed to do so.

Thats funny. Considering privatised rail wasnt as bigger issue pre 2010.

Making remarks like this at labour is unhelpful when its the conservatives who brought in privatisation and are not doing alot of good to improve it

Its been long overdue in my opinion for WMT to be stripped of the franchise at least until LNR can be merged with Avanti if that is still the plan of course??

Ferret said:

WMT are on a huge recruitment drive at present, for drivers especially! While there is legit criticism due, let us not pretend they are sitting on their hands watching it go to hell in a handcart.

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Did this start as a result pf the mayoral intervention ?

I don't understand Andy Street's plea for "Restoring a reliable service - like we had before May"

Was the service reliable before May? Issues in the West Midlands have been going on for years.

The Planner said:

Not as horrendous as you may think, less resilliance yes, but not unworkable.

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Unfortunately with the WCML, along with it’s headway’s, dwell times, stock shortages and running times, as I’m sure you know, workable soon becomes unworkable.

WMT are on a hiding to nothing.

The issue itself is probably worthy of its own thread, but this thread is full of nothing but gibberish, therefore closed.

Anyone still strongly wishing to discuss things related to the twitter announcement feel free to open a new thread but it would also help if you could please state clearly what specific issues you want to discuss. That would allow the thread to have a clear steer and direction.