McNulty: Train services should be axed to bring down cost of railways

[pemma]

And the problem with all of that stock being needed to run the peak service then sitting idle all day is totally true.

I don't know if it's just the age of the rolling stock but when I asked Northern why the stock used at peak time couldn't be used to strengthen overcrowded off-peak services in school and college holidays their response was they would fall behind with maintenance schedules if they did that.

 

[BestWestern]

One of the many scandals of our railway today is the way in which ticket revenue is considered by many TOC's to be of no relevance, since their whole operation is underwritten by the taxpayer. What other industry can afford to operate in this manner?! Train companies need to be forced to make far better efforts to collect money owed to them by the travelling public, and the DFT desperately needs to be less willing to throw public money at private firms who cannot be bothered to pay people a wage to bring in their revenue. The fact that the revenue protection teams are the first to go when money is tight really does tell a very sorry tale. I firmly believe that the official stats for ticketless travel are massively understated, and what is urgently needed is a revue of how money is collected. McNulty bright idea to scrap as many staff as humanly possible and go DOO is clearly not going to help.

A question which is rarely asked but surely should be, is why do we have one team of people selling tickets on trains and another team dealing with those who refuse to buy them? Why not combine the roles of Guards and RPI's instead of having such wasteful duplication of similar roles? Yes there would be training needed, legal matters to attend to and cover of staff being released to attend Court and suchlike, but I see no reason why it can't be done, at least to some degree.

Then we have the scandal of train leasing companies, charging TOCs obscene amounts of (public) money to lease often ancient trains which are not only life expired but used to belong the railways! Why not re-acquire these pivotal assets, have one state-owned ROSCO and drastically reduce the industry's costs in this vital area?

And as for basic maintenance tasks costing three figure sums, how about we scrap this whole rotten system and let TOCs get on with doing things without the mountains of red tape?! How can it be justified in anyone's book to charge £75 just for phoning up to log a fault, which you have no choice but to do? It's not just small jobs either. I had a chat with a bloke once who worked for one of the major building firms undertaking station renovation works. I was a little surprised when he mentioned that his firm employed no front line on-site labour staff. They don't need them he said, since all his firm actually did was bid for the work and then sub-contract it to someone else. So how much extra does NR pay to pass all of it's not inconsiderable amount of station building work through a 'middle man' and on to a third party before anybody picks up a paintbrush?!

It really is utterly shocking just how much taxpayer's money goes into the railway and flows straight back out the other side, into somebody's pocket. Privatisation has created a rotten, corrupt system used by private business to reap guaranteed rewards at the public's expense. And in spite of all this, it's the staff we're going to chuck on the scrapheap! Welcome to Britain...

 

[pemma]

TOCs need their own properly trained teams of revenue inspectors, not to do like Northern and give the work to a security firm who give basic training on valid tickets, when ticketing is a complex area.

 

[ivanhoe]

The number of off-peak Manchester Airport express services is very high compared to European countries but on the whole off-peak services in the North are low compared to European countries. Also European countries don't tend to use trains as small as 142s and 153s except on very high frequency services.
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Really? There was me thinking that when the Coalition got in they looked at how many extra carriages the previous government had proposed, laughed and immediately reduced them.

In comparison to other publically funded services, the railways have been largely immune.As for the carriages, hardly a cut, if they had not been ordered. Play on words there , but I will let you off!

 

[pemma]

In comparison to other publically funded services, the railways have been largely immune.As for the carriages, hardly a cut, if they had not been ordered. Play on words there , but I will let you off!

If the budget was allocated and then withdrawn then I see it as a cut even if an order using the allocated budget had not been placed.

 

[jon0844]

That would be the sensible solution although TOCs would lose a portion of revenue from the Anytime service.

Yes they would, but if the Government wanted to help solve the problem (and solve many other problems relating to congestion) then it would deem this worthwhile and introduce the changes.

If I was still working in town, I'd still have an annual season ticket. Being able to wake up late and travel off-peak is worthwhile to me, and I actually did already travel after 0930 many times in my last job - but never felt like I was being ripped off.

Smart ticketing in the future can address some of those issues, including offering flexible season ticket pricing based on usage - so great for people who work part time too.

My wife has flexi time and it's great. When I worked for a council, I also had it. You hard core hours and couldn't go above or below a certain amount of hours in any given month, but even those rules were pretty flexible. Employees liked it and everyone worked around the core hours, so it didn't impact on being able to do the job because loads of people hadn't come in yet (or gone home).

Sure, some people did abuse it by coming in early and doing sod all simply to build up time for days off, but people can do that now in most jobs. I am sure many people take an hour or two to get fully up to speed in office jobs, for example!

 

[tbtc]

Given the billions spent on the current system, and the billions being cut elsewhere in the economy, we need a better response to this than just calling the Government representative “numpty” (much as I like use of a good Scots word).

Simply pretending that there are no acceptable cuts (even on branches where it’d be cheaper to put everyone in a taxi) is naive.

For example, with staffing costs (including the cost of paying for final salary pensions/ training/ insurance) going up and up for TOCs, plus track access costs etc, are there some lines where it’d be better all round to run fewer longer services? On some routes the lure of an ORCATS raid has seen more/shorter services, because that ensures you a bigger slice of the pie. Instead of the current plan of five fast Manchester – Leeds trains an hour in 2014 that are only three coaches long, would it be more efficient to use the fifteen coaches for over just three services an hour (but each one being five coaches)?

I remember an interview with someone at SWT in a rail magazine a couple of years ago where they said it was cheaper for “commuter” TOCs to run long (eight/ten/twelve) EMUs in service all day than it was to split them down to four/five coach operation off peak (due to the staffing costs of splitting trains up at a termini, the logistics of reattaching them in the afternoon without disrupting performance). Maybe that’s true, but there are a lot of lines where the off peak capacity seems completely disproportionate to the number of passengers.

This is an important statement by McNulty. Nobody wants to see cuts but the railways by and large have been immune from Government cuts. This is the opening salvo in what could be a defining period for the railways. The next round of franchises will tell us more of Government thinking. I do fear for significant parts of Northern Rail.

Agreed (sadly). We might look back and wish that the next Northern franchise had been let five years ago (when growth was on the agenda for both the economy and railway).

The number of off-peak Manchester Airport express services is very high compared to European countries but on the whole off-peak services in the North are low compared to European countries

I dunno - there are a lot of routes with four trains an hour or better)... Newcastle to York... York to Leeds... Leeds to Manchester... Manchester to Preston... Preston to Blackpool... that's a coast to coast route with a "turn up and go" frequency.

One of the many scandals of our railway today is the way in which ticket revenue is considered by many TOC's to be of no relevance, since their whole operation is underwritten by the taxpayer. What other industry can afford to operate in this manner?! Train companies need to be forced to make far better efforts to collect money owed to them by the travelling public, and the DFT desperately needs to be less willing to throw public money at private firms who cannot be bothered to pay people a wage to bring in their revenue. The fact that the revenue protection teams are the first to go when money is tight really does tell a very sorry tale. I firmly believe that the official stats for ticketless travel are massively understated, and what is urgently needed is a revue of how money is collected. McNulty bright idea to scrap as many staff as humanly possible and go DOO is clearly not going to help.

A question which is rarely asked but surely should be, is why do we have one team of people selling tickets on trains and another team dealing with those who refuse to buy them? Why not combine the roles of Guards and RPI's instead of having such wasteful duplication of similar roles? Yes there would be training needed, legal matters to attend to and cover of staff being released to attend Court and suchlike, but I see no reason why it can't be done, at least to some degree

Good points.

At the moment the attitude of most Guards is that their main two duties are managing the train (inc door operation etc) and passenger safety. Fair enough, that's the role. But that means that revenue colletion is often ignored (the design of Pacers mean that the Guard has no time to get from operating the door to the other end of the train and back again before they have to operate the door at the next station) - especially a problem on joined up units with no corridor connection.

Get everyone who travels to pay the right price travel (or sling their hook) and the revenue looks different. But when you are a company who gets millions of pounds in subsidy to operate then you probably won't break a sweat to collect a £3 fare (the average Northern ticket?) - the economics are the wrong way round.

 

[Chris125]

Did David Higgins just announce electrification of the Paisley Canal line?
This was in the context of reducing electrification project costs by using neutral sections under bridges on a low speed line, rather than having to raise them.
"By December" was mentioned. Not sure what this means.

Im surprised this hasnt attracted more comment - i've seen it mentioned before that electrification was beeing looked at as a quick infill, but it had gone quiet. Now we hear it will be done by Christmas!

Chris

 

[jon0844]

I had a chat with a bloke once who worked for one of the major building firms undertaking station renovation works. I was a little surprised when he mentioned that his firm employed no front line on-site labour staff. They don't need them he said, since all his firm actually did was bid for the work and then sub-contract it to someone else. So how much extra does NR pay to pass all of it's not inconsiderable amount of station building work through a 'middle man' and on to a third party before anybody picks up a paintbrush?!

While I'm not sure how you could do it, I'd consider banning sub-contracting for all but emergencies.

It's how we've ended up with these massive companies winning contracts who sub-contract loads (most?) of the work and bid on the basis of being massive, but actually offering no protection to the company giving them the work. You end up with it being hard to apportion blame and taking ages to resolve things.

You also end up with these huge firms (Serco, Veolia etc) that are so big that they can easily fight any attempts to take action should they fail to do their job. They're totally unaccountable and almost untouchable, and usually a LOT smarter than their client - so regularly win when it comes to any legal challenges.
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If the average fares for Northern are £3, and the stops are very close together, it's all the more reason to consider introducing a smartcard ticketing system - with everyone getting a smartcard (who wouldn't get one, if they were widely promoted and worked on buses too perhaps?).

These are more positive ways to solve problems.

Improve the ticketing options, then come down hard on those who still don't pay. Sounds fair and logical to me.

 

[Oswyntail]

If the budget was allocated and then withdrawn then I see it as a cut even if an order using the allocated budget had not been placed.

Do remember that one of the favourite tricks of the Labour government was to announce several batches of "spending" using the same theoretical money, then waiting to see which seemed most popular before actually spending anything (if at all - another option was to announce spending, then forget it. But they still managed to spend more than they had!)

 

[142094]

TOCs need their own properly trained teams of revenue inspectors, not to do like Northern and give the work to a security firm who give basic training on valid tickets, when ticketing is a complex area.

Don't worry, from what I have heard more staff will be taken on in the coming months, and they will be Northern and not G4S.

I don't know if it's just the age of the rolling stock but when I asked Northern why the stock used at peak time couldn't be used to strengthen overcrowded off-peak services in school and college holidays their response was they would fall behind with maintenance schedules if they did that.

Realistically this could happen with any TOC, although it is probably compounded by the number of different types of rolling stock Northern have, their usage on random routes (apart from the 321s, 322s, 323s and 333s which all have basically the same routes), and the fact that only certain depots can handle certain classes of stock. So everything has to be factored in, which will probably mean that stock has to be in a certain place at a certain time, otherwise the maintenance regime goes to pot.

 

[kieron]

I would hate to see it close, but it's hard to justify the Blaenau Ffestiniog branch when there's a (commercial i.e. unsubsidised) bus service that is more frequent and quicker! It can't be the only example.

It's a tourist area, so you have to consider how much people who catch a train into the town spend in the area, and what they might do if the railway was closed. The buses could be a substitute in theory, but it's less obvious where they go and it's harder to find information about reliability or prices. And the people behind the Ffestiniog railway would certainly hate the idea.

I'm not exactly sure what counts as a commercial bus service now so many users have free bus passes.

For example, Arriva Trains Wales needs a subsidy of 26p per passenger per mile. Since some routes in the populated parts of Wales will be profitable/ break even, that suggests that some passengers on off peak services in rural parts of Wales are costing the taxpayer significantly more just to travel a mile.

Subsidy per passenger per mile across the franchise isn't a very useful statistic as different routes have different costs and opportunities. ATW's franchise includes a lot of rural services and few which are used by many commuters (who, even if they bump up the cost of trains and stations, also contribute a lot of passenger miles). Southwest Trains (say) also have heavily subsidised services, but they also have lots of passengers in southwest London to flatter their figures.

What needs to happen is we need to see a return of British Rail in some form or the complete selling off and let the companies manage the services, the stock and the track. That way companies may actually want to invest in something that is actually theirs.

Or you could have the government pay part of the cost for major investments to reflect the value the investment will add to the franchise when it comes up for renewal. Very long franchises aren't so good, as a single bad decision can mess up your successors for many years to come.

 

[pemma]

I dunno - there are a lot of routes with four trains an hour or better)... Newcastle to York... York to Leeds... Leeds to Manchester... Manchester to Preston... Preston to Blackpool... that's a coast to coast route with a "turn up and go" frequency.

Manchester-Manchester Piccadilly express is 6tph: Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Barrow/Scotland, Cleethorpes, Liverpool and Southport. OK the Southport isn't express after Piccadilly but it's a fast service between the Airport and Piccadilly. There's also proposals for additional Leeds via Bradford and Chester services - these proposals are probably the only part of the Northern Hub plans where the extra services proposed don't seem to be related to current demand but to better connections in the hope of finding the extra demand through a more attractive service.

 

[HH]

If the average fares for Northern are £3, and the stops are very close together, it's all the more reason to consider introducing a smartcard ticketing system - with everyone getting a smartcard (who wouldn't get one, if they were widely promoted and worked on buses too perhaps?).

These are more positive ways to solve problems.

Improve the ticketing options, then come down hard on those who still don't pay. Sounds fair and logical to me.

I feel sure that this is what (most) bidders for Northern will suggest.

Regarding services - it has been established that regular/frequent running patterns boosts usage, however there have to be sufficient people to carry for this to work. So, great for "metro" services, but not for routes serving rural areas. Of course, as is now generally recognised within rail, some lines are key feeders to more profitable routes. The key is working out the sweet spot for such routes - very difficult for TOCs to do as generally DfT specification leaves little room for manouvre (based on ICWC the much heralded new timetable freedom is just smoke and mirrors).

 

[tbtc]

It's a tourist area, so you have to consider how much people who catch a train into the town spend in the area, and what they might do if the railway was closed

Is that the railways "problem" though?

 

[telstarbox]

As Operation Princess demonstrated, a better service pattern = more attractive service = more custom. This concept also holds true for branchlines, as shown by the Truro-Falmouth branch 2 tph scheme. BR tried removing services to save money on rural lines, and ended up killing a lot of their business.

And if you kill off a rural branch line, you also lose the passengers who connect onto the mainline, as they'll just do the whole journey in the car instead.

 

[Zoe]

And if you kill off a rural branch line, you also lose the passengers who connect onto the mainline, as they'll just do the whole journey in the car instead.

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable so I think some people that would have switched to car ten years ago will still use the train even if they have to travel by bus to the main line station.
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based on ICWC the much heralded new timetable freedom is just smoke and mirrors

The DfT have specified a minimum number of station calls each day. I can't find anything in the ITT that says that the bidders will not be allowed to make any additional calls and when asked about Nuneaton, Philip Hammond even said this when asked about additional calls at Nuneaton:

We will not mandate the new franchisee to do what he describes, but we will make it possible by relaxing the rigid timetabling and specification imposed in the past. We will also give operators an incentive to do so.

 

[pemma]

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable so I think some people that would have switched to car ten years ago will still use the train even if they have to travel by bus to the main line station.

An added bus journey will stop making advance fares and timings unattractive.

Let's look at Lostock Gralam (Cheshire) to London:

An advance single via Chester starts at £13.50, in comparison to the £8.20 fare for a Lostock Gralam to Chester single, so very good value for money. The journey time is around 3 hours.

Now let's imagine you have to go to Crewe by bus first. The bus journey involves using 2 operators out of Warrington Borough Transport, GHA and Arriva North West - so a day ticket for both services is not available and would probably come to around £5 single. The Virgin advances from Crewe start at £8 but if your bus is late or cancelled you'd have to buy a new ticket at £66.40 (an added risk which doesn't apply for a connecting train.) A 7:20 departure from Lostock Gralam on the bus would get you to Crewe for 8:55, which would allow you to get the 09:29 London train arriving at 11:49 taking you 1.5 hours longer.

 

[Zoe]

But if you can't afford a car, what else can you do other than get the bus to the main line station?

 

[pemma]

But if you can't afford a car, what else can you do other than get the bus to the main line station?

Most advance fares are sold to leisure travellers so I'd expect Intercity travellers to fall significantly and National Express services to increase in popularity, with National Express serving more destinations.

 

[Zoe]

Most advance fares are sold to leisure travellers so I'd expect Intercity travellers to fall significantly and National Express services to increase in popularity, with National Express serving more destinations.

Assuming these stay affordable, the cost of fuel is likely to increase for all road users. In the future it's possuble that rail will be the only form of transport the average person will be able to afford for intercity journeys.

As for people abandoning the railways due to missing connections from bus to rail, wouldn't it be possible to set up an integrated transport system where a bus could be included as part of an advance fares so you would be covered if there were delays on the bus?

 

[pemma]

the cost of fuel is likely to increase for all road users.

Electricity and diesel prices are likely to increase as well and if bus ticket prices become unaffordable as you suggest then how will people afford to get to an Intercity station by bus?

As for people abandoning the railways due to missing connections from bus to rail, wouldn't it be possible to set up an integrated transport system where a bus could be included as part of an advance fares so you would be covered if there were delays on the bus?

Too many people would have to cross council/regional boundaries to reach their nearest Intercity station. These have been a barrier to through ticketing back to when there were first generation trams and trolley buses.

 

[Zoe]

Electricity and diesel prices are likely to increase as well and if bus ticket prices become unaffordable as you suggest then how will people afford to get to an Intercity station by bus?

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.
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Too many people would have to cross council/regional boundaries to reach their nearest Intercity station. These have been a barrier to through ticketing back to when there were first generation trams and trolley buses.

There is very little interest in sorting it out right now but in the future with people likely to use public transport a lot more than they do now this may well change.

 

[yorksrob]

Simply pretending that there are no acceptable cuts (even on branches where it’d be cheaper to put everyone in a taxi) is naive.

I wouldn't say there are no acceptable cuts. Rather that there are no acceptable cuts to the network (with the exception, perhaps of stations like Newhaven Marine which don't really serve any purpose)

I'd be interested to know which branches have so few passengers they could fit their passengers into a taxi. Aside from ones which have been deliberately run down to be of very little use to the area (such as the Brigg line) all of the branches I've used have been very well patronised. Yet I just get the feeling this will mean nothing to McNulty and his ilk.

 

[jon0844]

That may well have been the case previously but these days the car is getting to be unaffordable

Let's not start that again. Yes, cars may one day become unaffordable - even modern electric vehicles - but for now, you can easily afford to use a car. I know you don't drive, but many other people do - and will for a long time. I can still afford to run my gas guzzler (just paid £270 to renew the VED this week) and I'm sure the insurance renewal coming through in the next few weeks will have gone up, but it's not yet unaffordable that I'm forced to ditch it and only use public transport.

There are many cars that are cheap to buy, insure, with various service packages and if you pick the right engine you might get 50-90mpg. Electric cars will soon be cheaper and more viable, with longer ranges and faster charging times.

People might need to accept that the high performance cars are going to be out of their reach, but that has always been the case. In many cases, car prices are artificially high to protect a brand. There's scope for these car makers to cut their margins a little if they have to.

As a result, if rail travel gets more awkward or expensive, I do believe they will still take to the car. The Government should be trying to make sure that doesn't happen.

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.

Actually, while weight would be an issue, a coach could hold considerably more batteries than a car - and potentially have a much larger range.

But we're a little way off that happening yet as battery technology isn't quite there (power to weight, and charge times). It will get there.

 

[pemma]

A short trip to the station isn't going to use fuel on the same scale as a National Express coach travelling hundreds of miles. Local buses could also run on electricity rather than diesel, something that isn't an option for intercity National Express coaches as I doubt people would put up with stopping every hundred miles to charge up the coach.

What about Hydrogen fuelled coaches? Yes that's a number of years off but so are all Intercity services running on electric power. In the short term we've still got Intercity 125s in operation for the foreseeable future.
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I'd be interested to know which branches have so few passengers they could fit their passengers into a taxi.

I think even the weekly Stockport-Stalybridge would over-fill a normal sized taxi but an Optare Alero would cope.

 

[SS4]

What about Hydrogen fuelled coaches? Yes that's a number of years off but so are all Intercity services running on electric power. In the short term we've still got Intercity 125s in operation for the foreseeable future.

It raises the question of where we get the hydrogen from though. At the moment most comes from natural gas via steam reforming.
It can be produced by the electrolysis of water but that requires a lot of power either nuclear or hydroelectric would be the best sources for the job using current technology.
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I wonder how Parliamentary services are affecting the figures. I'd imagine TOCs would love to close some of those routes but they're not allowed.

 

[Zoe]

Let's not start that again. Yes, cars may one day become unaffordable - even modern electric vehicles - but for now, you can easily afford to use a car. I know you don't drive, but many other people do - and will for a long time. I can still afford to run my gas guzzler (just paid £270 to renew the VED this week) and I'm sure the insurance renewal coming through in the next few weeks will have gone up, but it's not yet unaffordable that I'm forced to ditch it and only use public transport.

There are many cars that are cheap to buy, insure, with various service packages and if you pick the right engine you might get 50-90mpg. Electric cars will soon be cheaper and more viable, with longer ranges and faster charging times.

Let's not start making assumptions over if people drive or not, we had a very long discussion on this topic in another thread. It's going to be some time before electric cars fully take over and fuel may become too expensive before then. People with high wages may well be able to afford cars but I doubt many on the average minimum wage job will be able to. You may not think that some new cars are very expensive to buy but they will still be out of the range of quite a few people. When you have rent/mortage, gas, electricity, phone and other costs to pay out of your wages, you are simply not going to suddently find £5000 for a new car. I know of people that until recently used their car for almost everything but when it became life expired they simply couldn't afford another car and so switched to public transport.

Yes, rich people will continue to use cars but they will be out of the range of people on low wages and so these people are not going to suddently switch to car if train services are cut as they won't be able to afford to. I am not suggesting that train services should be cut, just saying that doing so is not likely to result in as large a shift to car as it would have done previously.

 

[HSTEd]

The operating costs of most branch lines are not that high, hardly any track maintenance, in many cases no significant signals (one train working and a ground frame at the entrance to the line) and so on.

The only major things that can be cut are staffing and rolling stock.

The development of low cost electrification systems for branch lines (including the proposed neutral sections under low bridges rather than raising them) will reduce the rolling stock costs in my opinion.

If changing does not discourage passengers perhaps we could break Intercity trains at convenient points? Perhaps we could run a London-Crewe shuttle that could connect with Manchester-Crewe, Glasgow-Crewe and Liverpool-Crewe?

 

[gordonthemoron]

or London-Edingburgh to conect for Glasgow/Aberdeen/Inverness?