Are timetables over-padded to avoid Delay Repay?

[Bantamzen]

This sort of thing really isn't some nasty conspiracy to get out of Delay Repay, its not even a UK thing, look at intercity services in Europe, they do it all the time by sitting at stations for 2/3 minutes at all stations and sometime 5/10 at large ones.

Indeed, padding in any timetables is about being realistic, not some scam to do passengers out of any kind of compensation. And quite honestly if anything we don't do it enough in the UK, there are timings across the network that could do with more padding and not less.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's a very interestingly British attitude to regard the slightest amount of leeway or slack as a potential scam (or in other circumstances laziness or waste etc)!

If it was intended to keep the train on time it'd be distributed through the schedule, not just whacked at the end.

 

[Spartacus]

If it was intended to keep the train on time it'd be distributed through the schedule, not just whacked at the end.

If there's any significant amount that you distribute throughout the timetable you run a very big risk of it eliminating white space and the possibility of running other services, or they'd have to run late, etc etc etc. At the end is the safest place for big lumps as there's very little chance of any kind of knock on like that, but what performance time there is tends to be quite minimal, an Edinburgh - KX (and vice versa) will typically only have a total of 3 minutes, and that's usually distributed in 1 minute allowances in three totally different places anyway.

 

[The Planner]

If it was intended to keep the train on time it'd be distributed through the schedule, not just whacked at the end.

Unless there are request stops. You only tend to use fiddle/ diamond/performance time on approach to congested areas and even then its normally a TOC request. I will copy and paste the stock answer most planners on here will use "we only care about the WTT"

If there's any significant amount that you distribute throughout the timetable you run a very big risk of it eliminating white space and the possibility of running other services, or they'd have to run late, etc etc etc. At the end is the safest place for big lumps as there's very little chance of any kind of knock on like that, but what performance time there is tends to be quite minimal, an Edinburgh - KX (and vice versa) will typically only have a total of 3 minutes, and that's usually distributed in 1 minute allowances in three totally different places anyway.

Is that performance time or engineering allowance? As box time is not padding.

 

[Spartacus]

Is that performance time or engineering allowance? As box time is not padding.

Performance. On a northbound normally 1 approaching Stevenage, 1 approaching Darlington and 1 approaching Drem, similar southbound. Those would have 7 minutes engineering in total. Pathing and adjustments would be more variable depending on the individual service.

 

[tbtc]

Complete agreement with @TheEdge here

We don’t want a railway where things only work if everything is run at full line speed between each pair of stations and has only a minute to dwell at intermediate stops, things would fall apart instantly.

Passengers happen, slippery tracks happen, engineering happens!

It feels that there’s a contrast between people who want lots of “resilience” when it comes to maintaining/reopening barely used secondary routes that might be handy for diversionary capabilities a couple of weekends a year… and want plenty of resilience in fleet sizes (so we have enough trains to meet all demand, all year round)… but yet get agitated with a timetable that allows an extra minute here and there to ensure that passengers can enjoy some resilience in their everyday journeys

As someone who’s been on my share of delayed XC services, sometimes it only takes one thing to go wrong for your train to hit a delay that it’ll never bounce back from

I think that most members of the public would prefer a service that was reliable and they could plan lifts/ connections around the arrival time of, even if that means often being sat in the station throat for two minutes or sometimes arriving earlier than the timetable had suggested

But there seems to be a trend of persecution complex on here, people seem very quick to assume that others are trying to upset them

We see threads where people suggest that ticket machines are deliberately made too complicated for people to use, or that seats are designed to be uncomfortable or that services at a busy station like Leeds are cunningly scheduled to ensure that certain connections between blockade services are not possible without 59m waits.

Ticket Office staff are part of the conspiracy too, since they only seem to be trained on 99.9% off ticket sales and not the obscure exceessing of PRIVs or whatever niche ticket someone on here wants to buy.

See also the increasing use of claiming that other parties “can’t be bothered”, as if the only reason why services were cancelled during periods of huge staff absences were because someone at the TOC shrugged their shoulders and absent mindedly removed random diagrams, or that Network Rail didn’t build in significantly more capacity that a line/ junction will need in the medium term just because of apathy

It just feels like people used to accept/understand that, in a world of cost/ benefit analysis and audits and finite subsidies, sometimes it’s not possible to satisfy everyone all of the time.

Now though, people are looking for things to be offended by, like a centre forward running at the legs of defenders so they can fall over and claim a penalty.

Give me a railway I can trust to get me to my destination at the promised time, rather than one With no scope to cope with any problems

 

[Wilts Wanderer]

Complete agreement with @TheEdge here

We don’t want a railway where things only work if everything is run at full line speed between each pair of stations and has only a minute to dwell at intermediate stops, things would fall apart instantly.

Passengers happen, slippery tracks happen, engineering happens!

It feels that there’s a contrast between people who want lots of “resilience” when it comes to maintaining/reopening barely used secondary routes that might be handy for diversionary capabilities a couple of weekends a year… and want plenty of resilience in fleet sizes (so we have enough trains to meet all demand, all year round)… but yet get agitated with a timetable that allows an extra minute here and there to ensure that passengers can enjoy some resilience in their everyday journeys

As someone who’s been on my share of delayed XC services, sometimes it only takes one thing to go wrong for your train to hit a delay that it’ll never bounce back from

I think that most members of the public would prefer a service that was reliable and they could plan lifts/ connections around the arrival time of, even if that means often being sat in the station throat for two minutes or sometimes arriving earlier than the timetable had suggested

But there seems to be a trend of persecution complex on here, people seem very quick to assume that others are trying to upset them

We see threads where people suggest that ticket machines are deliberately made too complicated for people to use, or that seats are designed to be uncomfortable or that services at a busy station like Leeds are cunningly scheduled to ensure that certain connections between blockade services are not possible without 59m waits.

Ticket Office staff are part of the conspiracy too, since they only seem to be trained on 99.9% off ticket sales and not the obscure exceessing of PRIVs or whatever niche ticket someone on here wants to buy.

See also the increasing use of claiming that other parties “can’t be bothered”, as if the only reason why services were cancelled during periods of huge staff absences were because someone at the TOC shrugged their shoulders and absent mindedly removed random diagrams, or that Network Rail didn’t build in significantly more capacity that a line/ junction will need in the medium term just because of apathy

It just feels like people used to accept/understand that, in a world of cost/ benefit analysis and audits and finite subsidies, sometimes it’s not possible to satisfy everyone all of the time.

Now though, people are looking for things to be offended by, like a centre forward running at the legs of defenders so they can fall over and claim a penalty.

Give me a railway I can trust to get me to my destination at the promised time, rather than one With no scope to cope with any problems

It’s part of a wider societal move (backwards) towards conspiracy theories.

In an increasingly leisure-driven rail market, we will see journey times lengthen as the risk/reward payoff between attempting tight journey times vs reliable performance swings in favour of performance, as it is business / commuter travel that is journey time sensitive and these are the markets that have evaporated since Covid changed society’s approach to office working. Leisure travel is predominantly interested in price and reliability.

As a further observation on the topic of padding, it is nothing new - indeed, one only needs to look at an early-mid 1990s BR timetable to see the extent it was used in some places. The most extreme example I could think of can be seen in Table 65 between Preston and Lancaster.
My Summer 1994 GBTT shows that the normal northbound running time between these locations was between 17-22 mins depending on the type of service - a mix of 110mph WCML intercity, 100mph CrossCountry and 75mph Sprinters on the Barrow/Windermere workings.
Southbound before approx 1000hrs, the intercity services in particular were publicly advertised to take 25-30 mins SX, 35-40 mins SO, whereas the (slower) Regional services 25-30 mins. I can only imagine that in WTT terms, at weekends there was either <20> or [20] or a combination of both, coming into Preston, to act as a blunt instrument to protect performance into Manchester and down the WCML. In reality this will have translated as very long waits at/outside Preston!

Some examples:
0538 SX Carlisle-Euston (Lancashire Pullman); Penrith 0555, Oxenholme 0621, Lancaster 0645, Preston 0714-15.
0720 SX Glasgow-Euston; Carlisle 0842-44, Oxenholme 0921, Lancaster 0948, Preston 1017-20.
0605 SO Glasgow-Paignton; Carlisle 0722-23, Oxenholme 0800, Lancaster 0817, Preston 0855-0902.
0720 SO Glasgow-Euston; Carlisle 0842-44, Oxenholme 0921, Lancaster 0940, Preston 1017-20.

The bizarre result is that the adjacent RR services appear to be noticeably quicker. Perhaps it was a ploy by BR to push the Anglo-Scottish traffic towards the ECML.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

Something weird is going on with RTT there - the train cannot have left Henley at 2001, reached the lakes 2002, reached Earleswood at 2004 and then reversed to Wood End for 2006 followed by another change of direction to Wythall at 2007

It cant do it in that time, but due to how the signalling is there, timing are often incorrect. The timing points on the up are at Henley and then at The Lakes so in-between doesn't give any timings. If you look at Traksy you will see the very long section. So the only correct timings are likely to be Henley and then Whythal/Whitlock's End

 

[RT4038]

If it was intended to keep the train on time it'd be distributed through the schedule, not just whacked at the end.

If you distribute it all through the journey, that runs the risk of unnecessarily waiting for time at the beginning of the run, having a delay somewhere in the middle and then arriving late at the end.

Complete agreement with @TheEdge here

We don’t want a railway where things only work if everything is run at full line speed between each pair of stations and has only a minute to dwell at intermediate stops, things would fall apart instantly.

Passengers happen, slippery tracks happen, engineering happens!

It feels that there’s a contrast between people who want lots of “resilience” when it comes to maintaining/reopening barely used secondary routes that might be handy for diversionary capabilities a couple of weekends a year… and want plenty of resilience in fleet sizes (so we have enough trains to meet all demand, all year round)… but yet get agitated with a timetable that allows an extra minute here and there to ensure that passengers can enjoy some resilience in their everyday journeys

As someone who’s been on my share of delayed XC services, sometimes it only takes one thing to go wrong for your train to hit a delay that it’ll never bounce back from

I think that most members of the public would prefer a service that was reliable and they could plan lifts/ connections around the arrival time of, even if that means often being sat in the station throat for two minutes or sometimes arriving earlier than the timetable had suggested

But there seems to be a trend of persecution complex on here, people seem very quick to assume that others are trying to upset them

We see threads where people suggest that ticket machines are deliberately made too complicated for people to use, or that seats are designed to be uncomfortable or that services at a busy station like Leeds are cunningly scheduled to ensure that certain connections between blockade services are not possible without 59m waits.

Ticket Office staff are part of the conspiracy too, since they only seem to be trained on 99.9% off ticket sales and not the obscure exceessing of PRIVs or whatever niche ticket someone on here wants to buy.

See also the increasing use of claiming that other parties “can’t be bothered”, as if the only reason why services were cancelled during periods of huge staff absences were because someone at the TOC shrugged their shoulders and absent mindedly removed random diagrams, or that Network Rail didn’t build in significantly more capacity that a line/ junction will need in the medium term just because of apathy

It just feels like people used to accept/understand that, in a world of cost/ benefit analysis and audits and finite subsidies, sometimes it’s not possible to satisfy everyone all of the time.

Now though, people are looking for things to be offended by, like a centre forward running at the legs of defenders so they can fall over and claim a penalty.

Give me a railway I can trust to get me to my destination at the promised time, rather than one With no scope to cope with any problems

Fully agree with you. If people complain about every delay, demand compensation, then the inevitable result is to increase the journey times to mitigate against the delays which can't be avoided by any more economic methods.

 

[nw1]

Incidentally how did things compare, in, say the early or mid 80s?

How were allowances then?

I ask as some short most-or-all-stops journeys (Victoria to Selhurst is one, it's come up on another thread) were up to 8 mins faster then, and with already-old EPB stock too. Plus, some routes, the fast line out of Waterloo being a good example, seemed able to cram many more services into the peak than has been the case in recent years. A two-minute headway was standard with just a few gaps, and furthermore you'd have a Surbiton-stopper being followed just two minutes later by an express.

On the other hand, more time allowance seemed to be made for some journeys, e.g. standard Waterloo-Woking non-stop in the early-mid 80s (whether by EMU or by 50+coaches on an Exeter service; 33+coaches was a couple of mins slower) was 26 mins, as opposed to about 24 today. (The 24 came about sometime in the late-80s, perhaps as a result of the Greyhound stock).

XC seemed to be slower too as they appeared to have the lowest priority and seemed to be added in after everything else, so you'd have Reading-Birmingham as just over two hours as standard, making the same stops as today.

 

[RT4038]

Incidentally how did things compare, in, say the early or mid 80s?

How were allowances then?

I ask as some journeys (Victoria to Selhurst is one, it's come up on another thread) were up to 8 mins faster then, and with already-old EPB stock too. Plus, some routes, the fast line out of Waterloo being a good example, seemed able to cram many more services into the peak than has been the case in recent years. A two-minute headway was standard with just a few gaps, and furthermore you'd have a Surbiton-stopper being followed just two minutes later by an express.

On the other hand, more actual time allowance seemed to be made for some journeys. e.g. standard Waterloo-Woking non-stop in the early-mid 80s (whether by EMU or by 50+coaches; 33+coaches was a couple of mins slower) was 26 mins as opposed to about 24 today. (The 24 came about sometime in the late-80s, perhaps as a result of the Greyhound stock).

You are not comparing apples with apples as far as rolling stock, safety standards, traffic densities (no of trains and no of passengers) , punctuality measurement and compensation regimes. The 1980s are a different world to now.

 

[nw1]

You are not comparing apples with apples as far as rolling stock, safety standards, traffic densities (no of trains and no of passengers) , punctuality measurement and compensation regimes. The 1980s are a different world to now.

Partly true though if we take traffic densities, these seemed to be actually higher on many Southern Region commuter lines in the 80s, certainly in the peak.

 

[AlterEgo]

I always assumed the padding was there to avoid penalty payments for late running (to the Department, not passengers)

Schedule 8 payments, yes. Delay repay is neither here nor there. Most don't claim, and the amount is a pittance compared to Schedule 8.

It's a very interestingly British attitude to regard the slightest amount of leeway or slack as a potential scam (or in other circumstances laziness or waste etc)!

Agreed! It’s like asking people how long it takes them to get ready in the morning. For me its usually 20 minutes, but I wouldn’t ever say “it’ll definitely be 20 minutes” if I got fined for being late! I think 25 minutes would be a bit safer if there were repercussions for being late.

 

[krus_aragon]

Has the service that did the Wrexham shuttle today ran late all day according to RTT ?

I find that very believable: Given the minimal turnaround timings on the current Wrexham-Bidston service (negative turnarounds per GBTT), any delay incurred early in the day is hard to recoup, and tends to last until the end of service.

The fairly long signal sections mean that both units on the line remain relatively spaced out, so the whole timetable just rotates around the clock.

 

[Annetts key]

One important point: the displayed times on web sites like RTT and various others, all take their data from Network Rail’s systems. These in turn get their data on the position of a train mainly from the Train Describer systems.

The Train Describer systems only update their position of each train when each train passes a signal (or very occasionally in other circumstances). Signals are not positioned in relation to stations on plain line sections unless it’s a large station with multiple platforms and hence junctions/points.

Further, when a train is moving, the train description is normally ahead of where the train is.

So if there are three signals between two stations, called 1, 2 and 3, if the train has just passed signal 1, the train describer will show the train approaching signal 2.

The times shown for stations are often extrapolated based on how long a train should take and the times available for the last signal that the train passed. The times may be updated further when the train describer next updates the trains position as the train passes the next signal. It is also possible for some trains to have their position manually updated in the train describer by the signaller.

And control may be able to update the trains position on their systems.

 

[grid56126]

With driver, OBS, Conductor and in some cases stock diagrams being worked so tightly, adding minutes to ensure delay repay is protected would be lost instantly to less reconomical diagrammimg.

This one is as fabled as running trains fast to avoid PPM failures, when one missed stop or start short / terminate short was a failure anyway. The world moves on and PPM is no longer this weeks favourite measure and still service recovery takes the same firm, because that's what it has always been, recovery.

How effective /passenger friendly it is, is a whole new thread.

 

[RichardAsh1981]

Whilst I can see that there has to be time in timetables to cope with service disruption, some timetables seem to be designed to produce Passenger Charter / PPM compliance, rather than a reliable service for passengers. This isn't the same thing precisely, but it often leads to a perception that the timetable has been "padded".

Take Merseyrail as an example. The first phenomenon is Chester - Liverpool services being timetabled as Chester - Chester services. This means that a late arrival to Liverpool (where a lot of passengers are going) is not measured, only whether the train as back on time at Chester. A remarkable number of services seem to get more on time once they are well on their way back to Chester. This is little consolation if those 5 minutes cost you a connection at Hamilton Square or in Liverpool.
Also, not that many passengers travel end to end on a service like this, but unless there are actual skip-stops, it's only the the line end time which is measured. If you travel to somewhere in between, your trains can be significantly late on a regular basis, but no season ticket refund available because that is based on the PMM for a station you never reach.

 

[Annetts key]

Yeah, the timetables are padded more than a wonderbra, that’s why there’s no padding left to use in the train seats…

Oh, if the timetables were as padded as some here say, then there would be hardly any late trains, would there? If a service often runs twenty minutes late, why not pad the timetable by twenty minutes. There, sorted

 

[iainbhx]

So does this mean anyone wanting to board in between was left to wonder when the next train was? Not what one would expect of a railway service.

I've had the unfortunate experience of WMT cancelling 3 consecutive (hourly) trains on this section on an afternoon. Great if you're expecting to catch the 2:xx PM train and the next one is 5:xx PM... NOT a good user experience.

P.S. Add to that the bus replacement service sailed right through the mandated stop ignoring any frantic hand signals...

P.S.2: This thread is not meant to lambast WMT, just an (unfortunate) railway experience.

It's the Stratford Line, WMT really don't care about it, its an hourly service by that time in the evening, so the next train will have been an hour later.

A few weeks ago there was a Monday when there was a three hour gap in any train going through Whitlocks End, but the Dorridge/Leamington service only had two cancelled in that period. I got the bus (and had to pay) back to Spring Road. This is absolutely normal during disruption.

 

[dk1]

During a timetable change in the early 90s Intercity added much padding to services. Between Norwich & Diss trains where scheduled to take 17mins yet in the opposite direction 27 was allowed. Obviously delay repay wasn’t a thing then.

 

[Bald Rick]

Of course it’s not just the railways. I fly Luton to Geneva, regularly. It’s a 500 mile flight, and I have once done it in an hour (Take off to touch down). Allowing 5 minutes either end for taxiing, why do easyJet say it takes 1h40 minimum?

(I’m not expecting a answer, I post this to help others think it through!)

 

[zwk500]

If timetables were over-padded, trains would be arriving early all over the place. When was the last time somebody can remember their train being more than 3 minutes early?

 

[Bald Rick]

If timetables were over-padded, trains would be arriving early all over the place. When was the last time somebody can remember their train being more than 3 minutes early?

My train on Thursday

 

[dk1]

If timetables were over-padded, trains would be arriving early all over the place. When was the last time somebody can remember their train being more than 3 minutes early?

It’s something I achieve on a regular basis.

 

[Mojo]

To answer the question in the OP, I would suspect that what is being suggested as “excess padding” at the end of journeys does not really relate to the payment of delay compensation, but the directors of Tocs and Network Rail are most likely to be more concerned with meeting their performance targets.

Prior to 1st April 2019 the primary measure of railway performance was PPM, under which a train would have met the target if it was up to 5 min late for local services or 10 min late for inter-city Tocs. This was only measured at the final destination of the train. Since 2019 this is no longer the standard metric, but is still recorded.

 

[Megafuss]

Some of the most egregious are the LNER late night terminators. For example they give 29 to 31 minutes between Durham and Newcastle, they also have some extended layovers at Doncaster of 4 mins when everything else during the day has 2.

Given how pants the reliability can be on the ECML, I can partially understand it....

 

[Bald Rick]

Some of the most egregious are the LNER late night terminators. For example they give 29 to 31 minutes between Durham and Newcastle, they also have some extended layovers at Doncaster of 4 mins when everything else during the day has 2.

Given how pants the reliability can be on the ECML, I can partially understand it....

“Egregious” = 15 minutes engineering allowance to permit single line working as and when required.

 

[GoneSouth]

Its not a conspiracy, its sensible timetabling. We could timetable everything to run to the exact minute that is theoretically possible. But as soon as you get an old lady taking more than the allowed 30 seconds to get on, or a driver not getting the line speed quick enough or braking too early the entire thing will fall apart very fast. Padding allows for those small times losses that happen hundreds of times a day across the network but still mean most trains will arrive at conflict points at the right time and not cause a real delay.

A prolonged stop at Reading means if it picks up time between London and Reading it still hits Reading itself and the junctions there at the right time. Same at Swindon to cross onto the Golden Valley line, and the same result hitting the triangle at Gloucester.

This sort of thing really isn't some nasty conspiracy to get out of Delay Repay, its not even a UK thing, look at intercity services in Europe, they do it all the time by sitting at stations for 2/3 minutes at all stations and sometime 5/10 at large ones.

There’s also a good reason for a longer stop in Swindow… nobody wanted to pay for electrification to Gloucester and Cheltenham so every train has to stop for a couple of minutes to switch from/to diesel by lifting/dropping the pantograph. The end to end service is still a couple of minutes quicker than it was in the HST days so no complaints here.

 

[Jimini]

There’s also a good reason for a longer stop in Swindow… nobody wanted to pay for electrification to Gloucester and Cheltenham so every train has to stop for a couple of minutes to switch from/to diesel by lifting/dropping the pantograph. The end to end service is still a couple of minutes quicker than it was in the HST days so no complaints here.

In my experience at Swindon, it takes the TM longer to do platform duties than it does the driver to change traction mode. 99% of the time the pan's down and the diesel engines are revving away before I've even made it to the "when using the stairs, please use the handrail, and take care" subway

 

[Megafuss]

“Egregious” = 15 minutes engineering allowance to permit single line working as and when required.

Oh sorry, I am just a punter looking at the timetable wondering why it takes twice as long when the Moon is up.....