Arriva Rail North DOO

[OxtedSignaller]

Problem is prolonged Industrial action within any company or industry is counter productive, it will not stop DOO. Granted at the moment they have not got the new trains nor infrastructure to operate full DOO as of yet but once they have they can turn DOO tomorrow as seen on Southern. If anything in some ways I think it makes them more eager to change working practices to try and eliminate the strike threat.

 

[Bantamzen]

The point is *on the train*. DOO does not dictate in any way what staff are elsewhere - indeed, if anything I suppose it encourages platform staff for reasons of disabled accessibility. FWIW, London Northwestern south WCML guards barely ever do revenue.

But Metrolink has "nobody on the train, nobody on the station and few roving inspectors" and seems to manage.

I'm just going to leave this here:

Ticket inspectors fined an average of almost 150 people a day on the tram in just one month during a major crackdown on fare dodgers.

Metrolink issued 4,510 fines (standard fares) across the network in August of this year, 114 percent more than over the same period in 2017, and a monthly high from the last three years.

With fines in July also more than doubling from the year before, this summer showed substantially more ticket cheats being caught - one for every 258 tickets bought.

Daniel Vaughan, TfGM’s Head of Metrolink, said: “Fare evasion is something we take very seriously. Our dedicated teams of Customer Service Representatives and TravelSafe Officers patrol the network every day to ensure anyone travelling without a valid ticket is caught and issued a standard fare.

“The message is clear: travel without a ticket and risk paying £100 for your journey, or prosecution if you don’t pay within 21 days. The number of fares issued makes it clear that it is simply not worth taking the risk for the sake of a few pounds.

“Metrolink receives no public subsidy, all the money we raise from fares is reinvested into the network for the benefit of all our passengers. That is why we won’t let people get away with stealing a free ride.”

With almost 40 million tickets purchased since January 2016, these figures from TfGM suggest that one in around 500 passengers was fined overall.

The city’s Christmas markets have brought in up to nine million people in past years and last December saw a three-year high of 1.3 million tram tickets bought.

In contrast, this month saw the lowest amount of fines issued, with just 596 in the month - an average of 19 per day, comprising a tiny fraction (0.05%) of tickets purchased.

Some Metrolink passengers who have received these hefty fines feel hard done by, particularly when problems out of their control at are fault.

Mollie Morgan, 21, was ordered to pay £170 after being unable to buy a ticket from a broken machine but was eventually able to overturn it after a four-month appeal.

She said: “The inspectors are very disrespectful, always rude even when I have a ticket, I’ve watched them fine mothers alone with 3 kids struggling and showing no remorse for them.

“They are power crazy, control freaks that just need to calm down and stop fining people for the sake of it.”

If paid within 14 days, each of these fines would cost the person responsible £50 and would total over £3.7 million in fines since January 2016.

If this year’s statistics up to August continue, 2018 is on track to bring in at least £1.4 million in fines before the year’s end.

Failure to pay a fine within two weeks increases each standard fare to £100 and doubles the potential money that operator KeolisAmey could bring in.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...ews/more-4500-metrolink-fare-dodgers-15368015

It does make you wonder just how many people are getting away with it if fine rates are up by over 100%.

 

[Robertj21a]

No different to the nonsense half the posters on this thread put on here. This thread is far from an ‘informed discussion’.

It would be more of an 'informed discussion' if people were to keep to facts and not just use the forum as a means of trying to promote a personal agenda.

 

[Ken H]

Problem is prolonged Industrial action within any company or industry is counter productive, it will not stop DOO. Granted at the moment they have not got the new trains nor infrastructure to operate full DOO as of yet but once they have they can turn DOO tomorrow as seen on Southern. If anything in some ways I think it makes them more eager to change working practices to try and eliminate the strike threat.

The DfT civil servants have stated they want to break the stranglehold of RMT on the industry. DfT Director of Passenger Services (a civil servant who is supposed to be impartial) said in 2016 that the rail unions opposition 'had to be broken' Edit. quote from Alan Williams column in Dec 2018 Modern Railways

This is nothing to do with Northern. this is the DfT. Though Northern should not have signed up to a franchise commitment without sorting out the industrial relations first. The gov blame Northern for this, and let the press join in so ministers dont get letters about every problem on Northern.

Northern have a £282m defecit. one wonders how long the germans will sink money into Northern, or whether they will just hand back the keys.

 

[northwichcat]

This is nothing to do with Northern. this is the DfT. Though Northern should not have signed up to a franchise commitment without sorting out the industrial relations first. The gov blame Northern for this, and let the press join in so ministers dont get letters about every problem on Northern.

All the transport operators would love to get a franchise like West Coast or South Western but they know competition is fierce, so they need to impress DfT with how well they run a less competitive franchise to try and get shortlisted for the big ones. Then doing well in DfT's view isn't about making passengers go 'wow' it's about the meeting all but one of the franchise targets and exceeding the other one - the one which results in the franchise either returning part of the subsidy or paying a higher premium, which is why the Conservatives kept awarding extensions to the old Northern franchise, despite the fact they criticised Labour for the 'no growth' terms.

 

[Robertj21a]

The DfT civil servants have stated they want to break the stranglehold of RMT on the industry. DfT Director of Passenger Services (a civil servant who is supposed to be impartial) said in 2016 that the rail unions opposition 'had to be broken' Edit. quote from Alan Williams column in Dec 2018 Modern Railways

This is nothing to do with Northern. this is the DfT. Though Northern should not have signed up to a franchise commitment without sorting out the industrial relations first. The gov blame Northern for this, and let the press join in so ministers dont get letters about every problem on Northern.

Northern have a £282m defecit. one wonders how long the germans will sink money into Northern, or whether they will just hand back the keys.

Of course you can equally argue that the key problem is the RMT 'stranglehold', not the DfT at all.......

Perhaps if a proper, professional, modern, union was representing the guards then you wouldn't have had a crowd of dinosaurs conning their members into believing the dispute was ever much more than a means to keep membership numbers up.

 

[furnessvale]

Northern have a £282m defecit. one wonders how long the germans will sink money into Northern, or whether they will just hand back the keys.

Don't tell Mick Cash. He's convinced the money is flowing in the opposite direction.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

It would be more of an 'informed discussion' if people were to keep to facts and not just use the forum as a means of trying to promote a personal agenda.

Is this your first time on an internet forum?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm just going to leave this here:

https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...ews/more-4500-metrolink-fare-dodgers-15368015

It does make you wonder just how many people are getting away with it if fine rates are up by over 100%.

True, though knowing some of the parts of Manchester served by Metrolink I suspect a fair proportion of those aren't just "pay when challenged", they're the kind who would give a lone Sheffield-style revenue conductor short shrift (or worse) if they were asked to pay.

In this sort of context I do sort of favour the idea of setting the PF and inspection frequency such that there is no likely loss from fare dodging (i.e. out of the group of persistent fare dodgers, enough PFs are charged that it covers what they would have paid had they all bought the most appropriate ticket for their journey) and to stop worrying about it.

 

[Muttley]

Problem is prolonged Industrial action within any company or industry is counter productive, it will not stop DOO. Granted at the moment they have not got the new trains nor infrastructure to operate full DOO as of yet but once they have they can turn DOO tomorrow as seen on Southern. If anything in some ways I think it makes them more eager to change working practices to try and eliminate the strike threat.

Fantasy land.

 

[Dave1987]

It would be more of an 'informed discussion' if people were to keep to facts and not just use the forum as a means of trying to promote a personal agenda.

Maybe you might want to practice what you preach?

 

[185143]

The point is *on the train*. DOO does not dictate in any way what staff are elsewhere - indeed, if anything I suppose it encourages platform staff for reasons of disabled accessibility. FWIW, London Northwestern south WCML guards barely ever do revenue.

But Metrolink has "nobody on the train, nobody on the station and few roving inspectors" and seems to manage.

Last time I had a revenue block on the East Didsbury line, they got that many people off the tram that the inspector turned to me and a few others after removing the ticketless passengers and said 'you can take a seat now gents'

 

[scrapy]

The DfT civil servants have stated they want to break the stranglehold of RMT on the industry. DfT Director of Passenger Services (a civil servant who is supposed to be impartial) said in 2016 that the rail unions opposition 'had to be broken' Edit. quote from Alan Williams column in Dec 2018 Modern Railways

This is nothing to do with Northern. this is the DfT. Though Northern should not have signed up to a franchise commitment without sorting out the industrial relations first. The gov blame Northern for this, and let the press join in so ministers dont get letters about every problem on Northern.

Northern have a £282m defecit. one wonders how long the germans will sink money into Northern, or whether they will just hand back the keys.

When you say they have a 282m defecit, is that a 282m loss or 282m less profit than they intended to make?

 

[Ken H]

Don't tell Mick Cash. He's convinced the money is flowing in the opposite direction.

yeah. the myth that northern passengers are subsidising german rail passengers should be on the myths thread!

 

[Starmill]

When you say they have a 282m defecit, is that a 282m loss or 282m less profit than they intended to make?

£281.8 million is the year 2 (2017/18) actual subsidy.

The figure from the franchise agreement is £276 million (so £262 million in real terms). So the subsidy is higher, but not much.

 

[northwichcat]

When you say they have a 282m defecit, is that a 282m loss or 282m less profit than they intended to make?

Northern received a £283m subsidy in 17/18, they were supposed to get £276m, so they got £7m 'revenue support.'

The finances for the latest year of the company aren't available yet but for the first full year of the franchise Arriva Rail North made £16.8m profit, old Northern made £13.5m profit in the final year of the old franchise. (Arriva Rail North made a small loss in the part year inbetween.)

 

[northwichcat]

£281.8 million is the year 2 (2017/18) actual subsidy.

The figure from the franchise agreement is £262 million. So the subsidy is higher, but not much.

£262m is actually the subsidy in 'real 2015/2016 prices': https://www.parliament.uk/business/...ts/written-question/Commons/2016-01-05/21124/

The 'real 2015/2016 prices' is important because under those the subsidy goes down every year but under the actual prices (including inflation) year 3 subsidy is higher than year 2.

 

[Ken H]

£281.8 million is the year 2 (2017/18) actual subsidy.

The figure from the franchise agreement is £276 million (so £262 million in real terms). So the subsidy is higher, but not much.

I believe thats from their P&L.

 

[superkev]

Good feature from Alan Williams in this months Modern Railways. He briefly mentions efficiency of other non uk railways.
Do other developed contries railways have, conductors on the trains; guards working the doors or train despatchers at big stations.
K

 

[Carlisle]

Do other developed contries railways have, conductors on the trains; guards working the doors or train despatchers at big stations.
K

I was on the Munich S Bahn last month, and as far as I could tell trains were all DOO and I saw almost no platform/ Dispatch staff either .

 

[LowLevel]

It depends where you go. More have guards than dispatch staff. All Belgian trains and all NS Dutch trains have guards.

Some French lines are DOO and some have guards.

 

[B&I]

I see the barrister for the defence has suddenly made a plea of mitigation for their client's mistake and has chosen to make aspersions against the prosecution team...

No, the defence pointed out that you were nit picking, rather than actually contributing anything to the topic. The prosecution has a very very very long list of previous in this regard

 

[B&I]

The surveys were purely to discover if the RMT's claim of whether passengers supported the dispute in that they want a guard (not an OBS) on every service with no ifs and no buts is infact true. The survey wording did not specifically mention that all guards have guaranteed employment on their existing pay grade with annual pay reviews until at least 2026 - perhaps if it had done there would been even less passenger support for the strikes. The fact that the strikes have occurred and have caused significant inconvenience to the public means that passengers aren't thinking the most likely reason for there not being a second member is the operator not employing enough staff but that the staff have walked out in an industrial dispute.

Given Abellio's Northern bid reportedly had a commuter network around the main cities on the Northern network where the driver would be the only person on the train but with the benefit of more new trains than Arriva proposed, while Govia's bid reportedly included just as much DOO but not as many new trains are you sure replacing Northern with someone else will have the effect you want?

Or the DfT and its tame monkeys could stop pushing the whole de-staffing programme. Were customers informed of that option ? The survey strikes me as rather meaningless otherwise

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do other developed contries railways have, conductors on the trains; guards working the doors or train despatchers at big stations.

The UK generally is a bit higher staffed than DB, but the concepts are broadly similar - often DOO on regional services and S-Bahnen (though a 12-car set had a guard on the Stuttgart S-Bahn when I used it ages ago), crews on IC.

SBB is *very* low-staff - all mainline local services (R/RE/S) are DOO, InterCity etc have 2 guards (this was changed for their personal safety when they started doing Penalty Fares) but they do dispatch themselves. No platform staff at all. Ticketing mostly by TVM though larger stations have ticket offices. A very different approach to the UK there in terms of H&S - dispatch is mostly done using the interlock, with a folding mirror for a last quick check. It is assumed passengers won't be stupid.

Belgium has guards on all trains, as do the Netherlands, but normally no platform staff.

 

[B&I]

I'm just going to leave this here:



https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...ews/more-4500-metrolink-fare-dodgers-15368015

It does make you wonder just how many people are getting away with it if fine rates are up by over 100%.

It is truly comic how, while some on here argue (credibly) that guards could be better deployed on revenue duties than doing the doors, others seem.determined to cut staffing costs at all (ahem) costs, whilst blithely unconcerned about the direct effect this will have on revenue collection (and the indirect effect it will have on the attractiveness of rail travel to other passengers).

If the RMT want to win hearts and minds on this issue, I'd suggest shutting down their own counterproductive PR team, and instead publicising some of the arguments that certain posters use on here for getting rid if the guards.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It is truly comic how, while some on here argue (credibly) that guards could be better deployed on revenue duties than doing the doors, others seem.determined to cut staffing costs at all (ahem) costs, whilst blithely unconcerned about the direct effect this will have on revenue collection (and the indirect effect it will have on the attractiveness of rail travel to other passengers).

It would be ridiculous in the extreme not to consider Metrolink's operating model when considering how Manchester's urban "S-Bahn" services should be staffed (e.g. things like the Hadfields).

Remind me, which operation requires an operating subsidy again?

 

[Bantamzen]

It is truly comic how, while some on here argue (credibly) that guards could be better deployed on revenue duties than doing the doors, others seem.determined to cut staffing costs at all (ahem) costs, whilst blithely unconcerned about the direct effect this will have on revenue collection (and the indirect effect it will have on the attractiveness of rail travel to other passengers).

If the RMT want to win hearts and minds on this issue, I'd suggest shutting down their own counterproductive PR team, and instead publicising some of the arguments that certain posters use on here for getting rid if the guards.

Speaking as someone who used to be a union rep, looking in from a distance the RMT look like some hangover from the 1970s. There are ways and means to negotiating good deals for your members whilst letting management save face. "Everybody out" doesn't always cut it, especially when a third party (the government) could be cynically using the dispute for their own agenda.

 

[Eccles1983]

I have lived in Germany, and whilst what you say is correct they do not have the same levels of anti social behaviour and outright criminality on the network as we have here.

If you want doo then fine - good for you. But don't even think of throwing hissyfits when the levels of violence and alike rocket. Because I will say this - my priority is the train and it's safe operation. What happens on the cushions is not my concern until the train stops.

Then I will ring the police and wait until they arrive. I'm too good looking and long in the tooth to go sorting out the mess in the saloon.

 

[B&I]

It would be more of an 'informed discussion' if people were to keep to facts and not just use the forum as a means of trying to promote a personal agenda.

Quite

 

[B&I]

Speaking as someone who used to be a union rep, looking in from a distance the RMT look like some hangover from the 1970s. There are ways and means to negotiating good deals for your members whilst letting management save face. "Everybody out" doesn't always cut it, especially when a third party (the government) could be cynically using the dispute for their own agenda.

I'd agree that the RMT its frequently its own worst enemy. That doesn't however excuse the shear dearth of logic applied by some on here. I've ended up far more sympathetic to the guards than I previously was, after seeing the sort of arguments being put forward for getting rid of them.