Why has Northern performance improved so much since Christmas?

Staffordian · 9 Jan 2020

thejuggler said:
Journeys are varied, mainly around West Yorkshire.

I actually forgot that yesterday the service I planned to take was cancelled and the one I went for was late!

Thanks. It certainly looks as though West Yorkshire isn’t really sharing in any improvement. Northern as a whole has achieved over 80% ppm on all 9 days since 31 Dec, while ‘West and North Yorkshire inter-urban” has only exceeded even 75% three times during this time (again according to trains.im). Any idea why this group in particular has been so poor ? Ongoing problems with 195s on Chester, Blackpool, Nottingham and Lincoln services perhaps ?

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northernchris · 9 Jan 2020

Staffordian said:
Thanks. It certainly looks as though West Yorkshire isn’t really sharing in any improvement. Northern as a whole has achieved over 80% ppm on all 9 days since 31 Dec, while ‘West and North Yorkshire inter-urban” has only exceeded even 75% three times during this time (again according to trains.im). Any idea why this group in particular has been so poor ? Ongoing problems with 195s on Chester, Blackpool, Nottingham and Lincoln services perhaps ?

West & North Yorkshire Urban is often a poor performer, as far as I know the only routes included in this group are Leeds - Manchester Victoria / Chester, York - Blackpool, Harrogate line and Leeds - Lancaster / Morecambe / Carlisle. The Halifax - Hull may also be included. The Calder Valley has historically been a low performing route and I've noticed lately there's been a lot of delays due to trains being late from the depot

TUC · 10 Jan 2020

Remarkable how there are fewer sick days in January than December.

TUC · 10 Jan 2020

northernchris said:
West & North Yorkshire Urban is often a poor performer, as far as I know the only routes included in this group are Leeds - Manchester Victoria / Chester, York - Blackpool, Harrogate line and Leeds - Lancaster / Morecambe / Carlisle. The Halifax - Hull may also be included. The Calder Valley has historically been a low performing route and I've noticed lately there's been a lot of delays due to trains being late from the depot

Although why so many trains should be 'late from the depot' is something I've yet to see an explanation for.

Bald Rick · 10 Jan 2020

TUC said:
Although why so many trains should be 'late from the depot' is something I've yet to see an explanation for.

If you are short of drivers, then some of the shift starts uncovered may be doing train prep. in the depot before departure.

156420 · 10 Jan 2020

TUC said:
Remarkable how there are fewer sick days in January than December.

You can’t still be buying the sickness thing surely?! You’ve fell for what every press release has said.

Remember how there were widespread cancellations on the 24/27th December? Move forward to the 28th December (a Saturday) and there were very few cancellations.

You’re telling me everyone off sick decided to put themselves right on the same day? Yeah, right!

Staffordian · 10 Jan 2020

northernchris said:
West & North Yorkshire Urban is often a poor performer, as far as I know the only routes included in this group are Leeds - Manchester Victoria / Chester, York - Blackpool, Harrogate line and Leeds - Lancaster / Morecambe / Carlisle. The Halifax - Hull may also be included. The Calder Valley has historically been a low performing route and I've noticed lately there's been a lot of delays due to trains being late from the depot

I can see why this might be the case, as serving both Leeds and Manchester Vic, the Calder Valley will suffer a ‘double whammy’ whenever there are problems at either. Having said that, last July/August/September the ppm for this group was similar to Northern as a whole (in the low 80’s), while this month so far it is 12% lower (71% vv 83%), so something seems to have changed.
Going slightly OT, does anyone know if there is a list of which Northern Routes are in which Service Group. Not obvious for the likes of Leeds - Nottingham, Leeds - Lincoln etc.

Llama · 10 Jan 2020

What happened in October on the Calder Valley? 195s introduced. More trains being late from the depot will be at least partly due to the spurious faults the 195s throw up.

scrapy · 10 Jan 2020

Train crew sickness across was no higher than normal for December as a percentage with the exception of Sheffield depot which did see a large increase, many depots have had fewer off sick than previous years. As Sheffield depot don't sign any routes in the North West the poor performance there cannot really be attributed to sickness.

Of course as Northern have got more staff than previous years so even if the percentage off sick stays around the same the actual number off sick will have increased the same as the actual number not sick will have increased, so Northern are probably not incorrect in saying there are record numbers were sick around Christmas even if it's a bit misleading that it's not the actual reason for poor performance.

If you look at performance levels going back 5 years(and probably further) the railways as a wholes' performance always improves in January and will probably worsen as the year goes on.

Edders23 · 10 Jan 2020

Bald Rick said:
And your logistics contractors / in house planners will build in large amounts of contingency time into those store deliveries, much the same as airlines do.

Unfortunately, this isn’t possible on the railways.

EH !!! I was always led to believe that many franchise operators do just that to make it easier to make their targets

SuperNova · 10 Jan 2020

Edders23 said:
EH !!! I was always led to believe that many franchise operators do just that to make it easier to make their targets

One or two minutes here or there for a TOC is completely different to Ryanair budgeting an hour for a 30 minute flight. Especially given load times at stations, line speed restrictions etc etc

TUC · 10 Jan 2020

SuperNova said:
One or two minutes here or there for a TOC is completely different to Ryanair budgeting an hour for a 30 minute flight. Especially given load times at stations, line speed restrictions etc etc

It's not one or two minutes though. It's well known that a number of long distance services have far more padding of time than 20 years ago.

Bertie the bus · 10 Jan 2020

scrapy said:
Train crew sickness across was no higher than normal for December as a percentage with the exception of Sheffield depot which did see a large increase, many depots have had fewer off sick than previous years. As Sheffield depot don't sign any routes in the North West the poor performance there cannot really be attributed to sickness.

Thanks for that. I suspect most people didn’t believe it anyway as they don’t believe anything Northern says. There are two ways of looking at statements a company like Northern put out. All their previous statements have been untrue so this one probably is as well or all their previous statements have been untrue so the law of averages says at least one must be true, therefore perhaps it is this one. For most it will be the former. Of course there are a small minority who believe everything they are told.

SteveM70 · 10 Jan 2020

Bertie the bus said:
Thanks for that. I suspect most people didn’t believe it anyway as they don’t believe anything Northern says. There are two ways of looking at statements a company like Northern put out. All their previous statements have been untrue so this one probably is as well or all their previous statements have been untrue so the law of averages says at least one must be true, therefore perhaps it is this one. For most it will be the former. Of course there are a small minority who believe everything they are told.

My own view of Northern’s PR is that they frequently look for statements which are factually correct but misrepresent reality; the point made upthread about staff numbers meaning record sickness could be true even if the proportion sick wasn’t higher than in the past is an example.

Similarly we’ve had:

“every service on the Calder Valley will be 3 carriages minimum” which misses out the key words “planned for”

“we employ enough drivers to deliver the new timetable” which omits “as long as they volunteer to work Sundays and nobody is ill or in need of training”

“at seat power throughout every new and refurbished train” which fails to point out that in the 195s (at least) there’s one plug for each pair of seats and if you only have a USB cable you’re screwed

I could go on but it’s soul destroying.

Staffordian · 10 Jan 2020

SteveM70 said:
My own view of Northern’s PR is that they frequently look for statements which are factually correct but misrepresent reality; the point made upthread about staff numbers meaning record sickness could be true even if the proportion sick wasn’t higher than in the past is an example.

Similarly we’ve had:

“every service on the Calder Valley will be 3 carriages minimum” which misses out the key words “planned for”

“we employ enough drivers to deliver the new timetable” which omits “as long as they volunteer to work Sundays and nobody is ill or in need of training”

“at seat power throughout every new and refurbished train” which fails to point out that in the 195s (at least) there’s one plug for each pair of seats and if you only have a USB cable you’re screwed

I could go on but it’s soul destroying.

Sadly, I think most PR statements from most organisations are based on the same philosophy.
But, trying to be positive, which TOC’s do you think put out meaningful PR messages which Northern should try to emulate as good practice ?

SteveM70 · 10 Jan 2020

Staffordian said:
Sadly, I think most PR statements from most organisations are based on the same philosophy.
But, trying to be positive, which TOC’s do you think put out meaningful PR messages which Northern should try to emulate as good practice ?

I’m afraid that given 99% of my travel is with Northern I’m not really qualified to answer that because I don’t know enough of the reality to compare against the PR

northernchris · 10 Jan 2020

Staffordian said:
Going slightly OT, does anyone know if there is a list of which Northern Routes are in which Service Group. Not obvious for the likes of Leeds - Nottingham, Leeds - Lincoln etc.

Not seen the list in a while. but Leeds - Nottingham used to come under South & Yorkshire Local as did all services through Barnsley

Llama said:
What happened in October on the Calder Valley? 195s introduced. More trains being late from the depot will be at least partly due to the spurious faults the 195s throw up.

I did wonder if under the new timetable more units went on to depot on a night than previously, which was stretching depot resources

Llama · 10 Jan 2020

Storage of 142s and the delay to the CAF shed on Newton Heath had reduced capacity somewhat but delays of units leaving the depot are not really related to those.

Bald Rick · 11 Jan 2020

TUC said:
It's not one or two minutes though. It's well known that a number of long distance services have far more padding of time than 20 years ago.

Really? I’m not sure that’s true.

Timetabled running times are based on what is typically achievable, with small amounts of timetable allowances to accommodate planned speed restrictions following engineering work, small scale delay to allow for ‘normal’ variation in operation (eg a longer dwell time due to a disabled passenger boarding), and finally pathing allowances to make an increasingly congested timetable fit together. Finally some operators advertise the arrival time at some stations, usually the destination, a little later than the working timetable; that is the only ‘padding’.

Take a typical Manchester - Euston service, 1A18 this morning, just leaving Picadilly as I write. With no allowances, on an empty railway, that service could do the trip with its booked calls and dwell times in 1h59 minutes. It has 10 minutes of allowances: 6 minutes for engineering and 4 minutes pathing spread throughout the trip, and is thus booked 2h 9 minutes. Hardly a load of ‘padding’.

Now take the flight I’m doing to Geneva later in the year. I’ve done it, door closed to door open in 1h15. My flight is booked 1h45. 30 minutes contingency for a 500 mile flight. That’s padding.

S&CLER · 11 Jan 2020

I travelled on the 08.17 SOP-ALD and 14:48 ALD-SOP today. Both were 4 cars, both formed of refurbished 150s, clean internally and on time. How was this allowed to happen?

TUC · 13 Jan 2020

156420 said:
You can’t still be buying the sickness thing surely?! You’ve fell for what every press release has said.

Remember how there were widespread cancellations on the 24/27th December? Move forward to the 28th December (a Saturday) and there were very few cancellations.

You’re telling me everyone off sick decided to put themselves right on the same day? Yeah, right!

That's exactly my point. I think my sarcasm was lost...

TUC · 13 Jan 2020

Yet again tonight, one of the rules of life in northern England, if your train has suddenly got delayed from running slowly, it's almost certainly because of some plodding late-running Northern service in front of it.

thejuggler · 15 Jan 2020

Looks like they are now trying too hard.

6.58am from Todmorden to Leeds left 3m early this morning!

TUC · 17 Jan 2020

Yet again we have a service (This time the 0656 Wigan NW to Leeds) cancelled due to 'the planned train being swopped with a slower train (Code MS). As had bern noted before, it is inherently unlikely on Northern services that a swop of train set would be a cause of cancellation, yet this code keeps on being used. What I haven't seen an explanation of is what use of this code is actually likely to mean. It's repeated use seems to make it less likely it is an error, so I presume it is being used to actually mean something, but what?

Whisky Papa · 17 Jan 2020

thejuggler said:
Looks like they are now trying too hard.

6.58am from Todmorden to Leeds left 3m early this morning!

I'm not saying you're wrong, but RTT shows a minute early (still bad of course!), having passed Littleborough a minute late.

Grannyjoans · 17 Jan 2020

The cancellations in 2018/2019 have been to due to a shortage of train crew.
Since the start of 2020 there has been more Drivers available. Fewer taking annual leave, fewer on training courses and more volunteering for overtime than usual.

Grannyjoans · 17 Jan 2020

(As a comparison, I work for one of the big supermarkets and we regularly achieve 96% on time deliveries to our stores despite all the vagaries of travelling on congested roads)

Yes but timings for deliveries include lots of recovery time so that if any time is lost in delays it can be made up.

Much in the way that a freight train can sometimes get delayed and catch up time.

Passenger trains are timed much more intensively, as they can't run early and can't have long waits either. The timings often are timed on a completely clear run with nothing going wrong at all. If Deliveries were timed like that I'd bet they'd not even make 30% never mind 90%!
There is very little recovery time in passenger trains. The timetables mean they have to be at every station at a certain time, not just the destination. Some journeys have 20+ stops. Your lucky to even get a few minutes of recovery time anywhere. So as soon as something happens the train is late and will never catch up.
More comparable to a Bus than Deliveries.

Llama · 17 Jan 2020

Grannyjoans said:
The problems in 2018/2019 have been to due to a shortage of train crew.
Since the start of 2020 there has been more Drivers available. Fewer taking annual leave, fewer on training courses and more volunteering for overtime than usual.

There were only fewer training because training was paused.

northernchris · 17 Jan 2020

TUC said:
Yet again we have a service (This time the 0656 Wigan NW to Leeds) cancelled due to 'the planned train being swopped with a slower train (Code MS). As had bern noted before, it is inherently unlikely on Northern services that a swop of train set would be a cause of cancellation, yet this code keeps on being used. What I haven't seen an explanation of is what use of this code is actually likely to mean. It's repeated use seems to make it less likely it is an error, so I presume it is being used to actually mean something, but what?

According to JourneyCheck it was cancelled due to more trains than usual needing repairs. As the diagram uses an east side unit it's hardly surprising, since the 142s went en masse at the timetable change I don't think West Yorkshire has managed a single weekday where there's been enough units for services to not be cancelled

TUC · 20 Jan 2020

Amidst all the criticisms, can I give praise to the guard on this morning's 0758 Sowerby Bridge-Leeds for her helpful attitude. Rather than just rely on the automated announcements, she gave her own such as advising passengers that if they found the train too crowded there was a service starting from Halifax at 0817 which they could change onto and, alongside the usual announcements on not putting bags on seats added 'there are passengers standing who are too polite to ask you to move them, so it's my job to say it for them'.

A great example of how good customer service doesn't have to be anything complicated-just showing a concern for those travelling. Well done.

Why has Northern performance improved so much since Christmas?

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