May Timetable Meltdown - The Inquisition

[LNW-GW Joint]

Despite the massive interest in this subject in various threads, I haven't seen any reference to the Transport Select Committee hearing on the subject yesterday.
It was one of the most interesting and informative sessions I've come across on rail issues.
It's 2.5 hours long, the first 1.5 hours is GTR and Northern managers, the last hour is the Network Rail System Operator (Jo Kaye) and 2 of the Route Directors most deeply involved (LNW and SE).
Well worth a watch.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/7939155a-a0a9-4e89-8d60-109b0e86ad3d

My main impression is of an industry working very hard to be collegiate and supportive, but possibly failing to see the big picture.
Nobody identified a single point of failure, despite the committee's best efforts to find one.
While NR accepts its share of the blame, it's clear the industry wants to stand united behind the "Network Code" for timetabling, which they however now recognise needs updating.

In both GTR and Northern cases the compressed timescales were impossible, but the real issues were only visible at the last minute when the driver diagrams and rosters were created and the shortfall of route knowledge (and therefore training) was exposed.
It was clear that the extra 3 weeks' closure of the Blackpool route caused severe problems for Northern as it invalidated all the driver route cards which had thereby exceeded the 6 months window.
There was no criticism at all about the need for driver route training, and they all supported the 6-month rule on safety grounds.
There was a committee call for an overall Project Manager for major timetable changes, and worries that the December change was at risk.
Northern promised the full May timetable by the end of July, GTR would introduce an improved interim timetable by mid-August.

I only caught one fib: Northern said they had all the stock they needed and that trains were not short-formed.
That doesn't match the daily evidence on their own web site about short-forms, or public experience.
Several times, the TOCs went out of their way to say they had full cooperation from the trade unions, and Northern said the lack of a Rest Day Working agreement had been only a minor part of the complications they faced.
The electrification delays, and the repeated slips, didn't really get a full examination.
The NR session tended to concentrate on the GTR issues rather than Northern.

Under the circumstances, the railway put up a professional show.
The committee tried hard, but didn't really get the victim it wanted (bar Charles Horton's prior resignation).
None of the NR representatives are expecting a performance bonus.
We await the ORR report from their more detailed investigation (September for an initial version).

 

[Senex]

Obviously they concentrated on GTR and Northern, where all the worst issues were. But it seems wrong that TPE apparently got off so lightly, despite the near-collapse of any regular and reliable Scarborough service and the cancellation of the last leg of significant numbers of the much-vaunted Manchester Airport services. As for the overall impression, you sum it up as the railway "put up a professional show", but I rather thought it was able to flannel sufficiently to avoid any blame being pinned down. But then there are always two functions in inquiries like this. The main one is clearly to find out what went wrong and introduce measures to prevent it from happening again. But the second, in a service industry which has so totally let down so many of its customers and which makes only the most general and insincere-sounding apologies, to identify who should carry the can. The single scapegoat in GTR appears to be Horton, but there is no-one yet from any of the other offenders. After quite such man-made chaos the public needs scalps.

 

[Bikeman78]

Despite the massive interest in this subject in various threads, I haven't seen any reference to the Transport Select Committee hearing on the subject yesterday.
It was one of the most interesting and informative sessions I've come across on rail issues.
It's 2.5 hours long, the first 1.5 hours is GTR and Northern managers, the last hour is the Network Rail System Operator (Jo Kaye) and 2 of the Route Directors most deeply involved (LNW and SE).
Well worth a watch.
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/7939155a-a0a9-4e89-8d60-109b0e86ad3d


In both GTR and Northern cases the compressed timescales were impossible, but the real issues were only visible at the last minute when the driver diagrams and rosters were created and the shortfall of route knowledge (and therefore training) was exposed.

In the case of GTR, I don't buy this at all. The timings of the Horsham to Peterborough trains are the same as the PDF that I downloaded last June. They must have known roughly how many drivers they would need to run the half hourly service. The problem is that nowhere near enough Horsham drivers have route knowledge to Peterborough and vice versa. They can't possibly claim that they didn't know this until three days before the timetable started. What they should be doing is splitting the route with trains terminating at London Bridge and King's Cross like they did before. But they don't. Instead they just cancel entire round trips leaving the likes of Littlehaven or Huntingdon with no train for hours. Meanwhile I guess the drivers are just sitting at Horsham or Peterborough for six hours.

 

[Minstral25]

I agree. I don't understand why it has been so bad as they obviously planned the number of Driver's needed well in advance but they did not train them properly.

I also don't understand why they didn't start to divert the Bedford to Brighton and Bedford to Gatwick services via London Bridge until virtually late April. If they had started them off in January with pilots through the 4 months from Jan to April, they would have had a load of Driver's better trained for the core and the new London Bridge route (plus they had emergency diversions through Tulse Hill if needed without affecting other routes)

Additionally they had enough spare Class 700 stock to put in store, so why didn't they use them to replace many Horsham to London Bridge services with Class 700's from December to train the transferring Horsham staff on the new stock (Same I guess for Peterborough to Kings Cross on the other side). Yes I know there was one or two diagrams converted early but why not more?

Seems GTR either wasn't organised or willing to really put in an effort to train staff in advance.

 

[swt_passenger]

Despite the massive interest in this subject in various threads, I haven't seen any reference to the Transport Select Committee hearing on the subject yesterday...

There’s a report here from a poster who attended:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ble-from-may-20th.164547/page-82#post-3513563
...and quite a number of other posts in that thread discuss the hearing.

 

[JonathanH]

Additionally they had enough spare Class 700 stock to put in store, so why didn't they use them to replace many Horsham to London Bridge services with Class 700's from December to train the transferring Horsham staff on the new stock (Same I guess for Peterborough to Kings Cross on the other side). Yes I know there was one or two diagrams converted early but why not more?

Too many of the Horsham workings in the pre-May timetable involved splits at Redhill - it would be really interesting to find out what the original plan was - very surprising that there weren't more 700s on the Southern services.

In retrospect maybe the pain of losing some through services to Reigate and Tonbridge may have been better than not having any service to London Bridge now.

If you look at the delivery schedule it seems obvious that the big batch of 8-cars up to 700046 were intended for the original Thaneslink network but the 30 12-cars 700116-700145 must have been intended to convert many more Southern services than actually happened.

Presumably questions for GTR's Head of Strategic Planning - I hope he writes some memoirs one day on all of this.

 

[js1000]

Doesn't the government and DfT have to take some of the blame?

Northern screwed up. But the DfT are equally culpable. Grayling and his cronies seem to get away with murder down there. How he's still in his job I do not know because he is quite clearly incompetent. I'm the opposite of a Corbynista but even I can see they've screwed up big time.

- The bi-mode 769s the DfT pushed Northern into ordering due to canned electrification have yet to enter service
- TOCs were only informed weeks before the May 2018 timetable what routes were available. In hindsight, everything should have been deferred until December when there was necessary to do due diligence on timing optimisation, driver allocation etc.
- The franchise agreement requires that 50% of services are DCO operated. Even if Northern wanted to run services as they to end the sporadic strikes they cannot due to franchise agreement restrictions.
- Some of the routes the DfT specified in the TSR requirements were daft and fraught with operational risk. The extension of the Crewe to Manchester Airport then onto Liverpool Lime Street has not been a great success. The recent pick-up can be attributed to some of these services reverting back to airport shuttle services from Airport due to the Lime Street blockade.

And it's all Northern's fault apparently. Me thinks that's quite a simplistic view that does not completely reflect the reality. It's a shame TOCs feel under pressure to speak out against the DfT due to future reprisals / affect on other franchise bids even when it's obvious they are part of creating the problems in the first place.

It only entrenches my opinion that the current franchise system is broken - it is a halfway house that allows TOCs and DfT to defect blame. The only ones who suffers are the passengers and staff.

Someone needs to make a bold call and "renationalise" the whole thing (run services in-house as opposed to outsourcing to TOCs) or sell it off and let private companies run it, allow them to make long term rolling stock investments and suit timetables to where the demand is.

Personally, I would prefer local transport bodies to run different areas of the network together. The government wouldn't get the blame but revenue from the services can be reinvested into the network as opposed to private companies pocketing it as profit.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Personally, I would prefer local transport bodies to run different areas of the network together. The government wouldn't get the blame but revenue from the services can be reinvested into the network as opposed to private companies pocketing it as profit.

I think that's a recipe for rubbish services near the regional borders.
PTEs want frequent all-stations services in their area and aren't interested in the next door region.
Trans-Pennine would be a nightmare if Merseytravel, TfGW and WYPTE were in charge of specifying Liverpool-York services.
DfT franchises at least ensure decent cross-regional services (Liverpool-Norwich being a good example, or Manchester Airport-Scotland).

 

[Senex]

I think that's a recipe for rubbish services near the regional borders.
PTEs want frequent all-stations services in their area and aren't interested in the next door region.
Trans-Pennine would be a nightmare if Merseytravel, TfGW and WYPTE were in charge of specifying Liverpool-York services.
DfT franchises at least ensure decent cross-regional services (Liverpool-Norwich being a good example, or Manchester Airport-Scotland).

That's why we need something analogous to the German set-up, with long-distance inter-city stuff, into which TPE Liverpool-Manchester-Huddersfield-Leeds-York-Newcastle and TPE to Scotland would fit, run by a national inter-city operation and the equivalent of the Verkehrsverbünde like Merseytravel etc dealing with local and semi-fast (RE-type) services.

 

[Minstral25]

Too many of the Horsham workings in the pre-May timetable involved splits at Redhill - it would be really interesting to find out what the original plan was - very surprising that there weren't more 700s on the Southern services.

In retrospect maybe the pain of losing some through services to Reigate and Tonbridge may have been better than not having any service to London Bridge now.

If you look at the delivery schedule it seems obvious that the big batch of 8-cars up to 700046 were intended for the original Thaneslink network but the 30 12-cars 700116-700145 must have been intended to convert many more Southern services than actually happened.

Presumably questions for GTR's Head of Strategic Planning - I hope he writes some memoirs one day on all of this.

To convert Horsham to London Bridge would have meant a rewrite of some of the timetable but to use 700's to train drivers in hindsight would have been very good. Perhaps a slight reworking of the timetable could have meant a few 377's to cover the few services for splitting at Redhill or even better to add splits to the Victoria trains to take all the LBG - Horsham route out. It would be better than the problems faced today

More importantly was not diverting the Brighton/Three Bridges to Bedford services through the core in January - that opportunity requires no timetable changes but was hardly used.

 

[daikilo]

I have listened to the submission to the Govt committee and one message I did NOT hear was that the track and signalling are a NR constraint (excepting the electrification projects). When we get to capacity operation which cannot stand even a 2 minute delay, RTT needs to be met. As I understand, maybe Japan and possibly e.g. VWCR have resolved that.

 

[PHILIPE]

There were three bodies involved in the Timetable farce:-

DFT
Network Rail
TOC

Guess which one is blameless according to Grayling

 

[geoffk]

A recent change which seems to have gone largely un-noticed is the reduction in the number of trains calling at Deansgate - a useful interchange with Metrolink, of course. Off-peak there are just three trains an hour to Piccadilly plus two to Oxford Road, the three to Piccadilly being bunched into an 18 minute period, then a 42 minute gap! Going westwards, there are two Liverpools (one on each route), one Preston and one Blackpool, with nothing to Wigan. And the same service does not always call in both directions. That's based on the full May timetable, not the amended one.

 

[geoffk]

There were three bodies involved in the Timetable farce:-
DFT
Network Rail
TOC
Guess which one is blameless according to Grayling

Plus the ORR, I guess. Each of those is pursuing its own objectives, some of which are in conflict. Each TOC seeks to maximise its own patronage and revenue, the ORR is obsessed with the detail of the performance regime and with promoting on-rail competition, while the DfT seeks to micromanage an industry of which it has a poor understanding. Network Rail is short of timetable planners as presumably the TOCs pay better.

 

[The Planner]

I wouldn't say we were short on numbers, it is experience that is lacking.

 

[swt_passenger]

I wouldn't say we were short on numbers, it is experience that is lacking.

If only your bosses had offered the jobs to the experts who post here with solutions to every possible timetabling issue...

 

[bramling]

If only your bosses had offered the jobs to the experts who post here with solutions to every possible timetabling issue...

Well many on here did smell a shambles coming, unlike institutions like the DFT and GTR to name but two, so perhaps your suggestion does actually have some serious merit!

I have rather more sympathy for Northern than the two above-named!

 

[PeterC]

Well many on here did smell a shambles coming, unlike institutions like the DFT and GTR to name but two, so perhaps your suggestion does actually have some serious merit!

I have rather more sympathy for Northern than the two above-named!

In any large organisation the last thing that you do is put your head above the parapet when you know that things are going wrong in your area.

 

[Class 170101]

I wouldn't say we were short on numbers, it is experience that is lacking.

From bitter experience I agree with your remarks, but who is going to train the current staff that need support never mind the new staff to get them upto scratch?