I know of a few rural services on single lines with tight margins where it could be useful too if you need to get to a crossing point on time. Even worse is an urban service on a single line such as the Blackpool South branch.
Revenue should never take precedence over door control and train dispatch. I am well aware there are TOCs, or local areas within them, which have turned a blind eye to this (Northern and ATW having been two) but it’s by no means the case everywhere. Some guards would be shocked by the requirements for station timekeeping in regions other than their own. Prompt door release, in particular, is critical to ensure egresses are not pulled, which is an entirely possible scenario if people are in a hurry or have tight connections. It does not mean guards shouldn’t release doors (it’s especially valuable at those companies where guards have to perform an independent visual check to ensure the full train is accommodated in the platform, which is a good safeguard against drivers releasing doors after overshooting or stopping short, on the basis of muscle memory). But what it does mean is that priorities should be improved.
As I have posted before, GTR Southern have been involved in the most vicious dispute over DOO in recent times, but the irony is that their conductors were always trained from day 1 that revenue should never take precedence (unless assault or serious crime was accompanying some sort of fare evasion). Combined with reasonable crew availability up to winter 2015 / early 2016 ish, it meant the company had pretty much nothing to lose, from a reliability perspective, by always requiring a conductor on the train. Yet this was the TOC the DfT chose for mandatory rollout of DOO... which was madness!
It depends what you mean by DCO. Moving control of doors and dispatch to the driver would be a huge benefit in assisting the guard to do the passenger care and assistance and revenue parts of their job more effectively. But I can't really see a case for removing the guard completely or making them optional on rural branch lines.
I don't see any role at all on the network for non-revenue guards, though. All guards should be revenue guards, even if all they do is check rather than sell tickets because a given route is fully barriered.
Any possibility of a passenger needing accessibility assistance from the guard will mean that said guard will need to either be requested to the platform by the driver, or they will need to keep their own lookout at each station. Either way, this will involve fairly frequent visits to the doors (and, by extension, the platform). The only way round this is to guarantee some form of staff at every station, which probably isn’t going to happen at any operator from now on.
In turn, this need to be within easy reach of the doors is naturally going to lead to the question of what that member of crew could do to enhance productivity whilst they are in that position. Dispatching the train might perhaps be a sensible suggestion! If you remove the need to dispatch, the guard, or similar, will often be doing very little around the time of station calls. This is what has happened to Southern OBS staff.
You also miss the point that stepping onto the platform gets the guard involved with the station at which they stop. It allows them to effectively become a member of roving control room staff - they can observe and report hazardous platform conditions such as black ice, or people loitering, or overcrowding, or lights which aren’t working, and so on. Without this, there are many inherent risks. A driver cannot possibly concentrate on signals, stopping safely and then all of these other things at once.
As for making everyone competent to do revenue, I do agree this would be useful in many places, but checking tickets can sometimes detract from the good that a member of onboard crew can bring to a service. For example, it slows down train patrols and security checks, and means that people with travel queries usually have to wait longer for someone to walk past. A ticket check is literally the lowest priority for a guard - any other safety and customer care duties always should come first, including things like doing patrols of late-night drunk tanks.
DCO itself varies, so on Voyagers the driver does control the doors but only closes them when signaled by the guard. It's introduction network wide will depend on what else it is being packaged with. The RMT's big beef has been with the proposed removal of a 2nd safety critical member of staff, for inter-urban and rural service this should be an essential requirement as an incident can take place miles from civilisation.
Voyagers are effectively Train Manager “Controlled” Operation, in that the TM is telling the driver what to do. There’s no decision from the driver unless it’s blindingly obvious it’s not safe, such as if the signal is at danger.
Southern Metro has been DOO since BR times.
GWR Thames Valley stopping services (ex Thames Trains) is DOO
Both Southern and GWR have retained oddities, though. Southern have long had some conductor-worked Metro services (and had more up to May this year). And GWR have to have conductors between Reading and Redhill, though not necessarily always Redhill-Gatwick. It’s all very nuanced.
No.
Unstaffed stations exist. A conductor is required to sell tickets, otherwise evasion will balloon.
Request stops exist. A conductor is required to allow people to get off there.
From a common sense point of view, you’re absolutely right. As you can now see, however, some people will try to argue that revenue is better done on a roving basis (I can tell you it definitely isn’t always!) and will find a way to suggest some electrical devices solve everything.
There are many occasions when, for example, it is likely that a class of train will rock up which has to suddenly work on a request stop service, but which it has virtually never done before. Would our other posters care to comment on the investment required so that all the most unlikely permutations of stock have a fully approved, ergonomic, reliable and failsafe request stop system? And are you also going to reeducate the passengers, and tell them that they cannot get any assistance at a minor halt, because the guard doesn’t exist or isn’t required to know what station stops are being made?
What is the difference in dwell times between a train with doors operated by driver and doors operated by guard?
Minimal, when comparing competent staff and similar routes/passenger loadings. A driver typically has no way to get people to board more quickly by managing station duties, and often has to wait before they are satisfied that cameras are showing a good enough image of clear doors.
The two rural unstaffed stations between Aylesbury & Princes Risborough have no ticket buying faculties (Little Kimble has an out of order Permit to Travel machine, Monks Risborough had nothing as far as I could tell). Now the 121s have gone the only services are DOO, so unless the passenger who boards is travelling to a station with barriers they mostly get a free ride.
Even with means to pay for tickets, some folk will only pay when challenged, the ones who tend to aim for the front of a service where the guard is required to be at the rear to dispatch.
As a point of order, Monks Risborough has a TVM (working on my last visit) and a PERTIS permit machine.
The Chiltern model is better than many DOO operators in that they have Customer Service Inspectors who regularly work as RPIs but are also competent as guards (so far as I know, they retain this). This means they understand train working principles from both points of view, and can assist with targeted revenue matters and operational issues as required.
