New Government research on disruption handling

[infobleep]

To be fair it's a bit harsh to always blame the staff on the ground. Often we can only act on the information passed down from above. Without that any information given out could be incorrect.
Also when stopped at a signal often the only response you get from the GSM-R is 'wait'. That's ok if the signaller thinks it's only for a few minutes but 10 mins later and the same response gives you nothing to tell your passengers other than apologies. Yes the signalmans busy and so are control,and if it's quite a serious problem you are then held in a queue waiting for your phone call to be answered. After all it's not just your train they're dealing with.

I personally think being told I have no information is better than silence.

Most times when one of the evening fast trains from Surbiton was late into Woking there would be silence.

Yes, and it's all quite obvious really but unfortunately there are people on the railway, and this forum, who take the view that delays and the reason for them are none of passengers' business and they try to be as evasive as possible.

Most people aren't stupid, they know if there is a signal fault or someone has jumped in front of a train they are going to be delayed and there is nothing rail staff can do to reduce the delay. However, they do want to know what is going on, an approximation of the delay and to be informed of developments. Also, assuming they are at a station and not stuck on a train, they want to know whether there are any alternative routes or services they can take to minimise the delay.

In the past when there has been disruption and no trains or alternative buses between Guildford and Woking for over an hour, there has been no information given out over the tanoy as to which alternative routes to take, such as going via Aldershot. That hasn't even been suggested online.

Perhaps things have improved since then. This was under South West Trains.

As for using a help point during disruption at night. My experience always ended in failure. Again this was a while ago. Twitter now helps.

 

[Chris M]

It's long been a railway thing that, when any incident happens, although you may have orange-jacketed personnel coming out of your ears who are standing around at the site, there is apparently no budget for one information officer who knows how to do it at the centre.

Yes. One thing that consistently gets brought up is that staff are too busy dealing with the incident to gather and disseminate information. One way to avoid this would be to employ somebody whose sole role in the incident is to disseminate information - colocate them with control so they get to hear all the messages, give them read access to the logs, etc. and make their output available to staff and the public. Have a brief explanation with a "more details" option for those that need/want that. If there isn't an incident ongoing then they can assist the social media team, or write up articles about past/generic incidents as examples, etc.

 

[AlterEgo]

Yes. One thing that consistently gets brought up is that staff are too busy dealing with the incident to gather and disseminate information. One way to avoid this would be to employ somebody whose sole role in the incident is to disseminate information - colocate them with control so they get to hear all the messages, give them read access to the logs, etc. and make their output available to staff and the public. Have a brief explanation with a "more details" option for those that need/want that. If there isn't an incident ongoing then they can assist the social media team, or write up articles about past/generic incidents as examples, etc.

There are already dedicated Information Controllers with multiple TOCs these days.

 

[Horizon22]

Yes. One thing that consistently gets brought up is that staff are too busy dealing with the incident to gather and disseminate information. One way to avoid this would be to employ somebody whose sole role in the incident is to disseminate information - colocate them with control so they get to hear all the messages, give them read access to the logs, etc. and make their output available to staff and the public. Have a brief explanation with a "more details" option for those that need/want that. If there isn't an incident ongoing then they can assist the social media team, or write up articles about past/generic incidents as examples, etc.

These often exist already. But sometimes dependening on the scale of the incident they too can get overwhelmed with the sheer number of alterations needed and updating all the required information systems.

 

[Frontera2]

That’s good, but it doesn’t reach very many people. It’s mostly staff and enthusiasts who follow that account.

The tweets are retweeted by the TOCs concerned, so the reach is larger than you'd think

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes. One thing that consistently gets brought up is that staff are too busy dealing with the incident to gather and disseminate information. One way to avoid this would be to employ somebody whose sole role in the incident is to disseminate information - colocate them with control so they get to hear all the messages, give them read access to the logs, etc. and make their output available to staff and the public. Have a brief explanation with a "more details" option for those that need/want that. If there isn't an incident ongoing then they can assist the social media team, or write up articles about past/generic incidents as examples, etc.

Basically look at what easyJet have been doing the last 10 years, which is near enough this.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Judging by experience at Euston today (see my thread on Ticket Acceptance for more details) what the TOCs claim to aspire to and what actually happens on the ground aren't even in the same universe.
Information dissemination is fine if the information being disseminated is actually acted on and not completely ignored by TOC staff who "know better".

In fairness to your situation and thread, often in times of disruption staff on the ground can simply not receive the message.

At my TOC, In order to receive something like information on ticket acceptance, it requires me to have my work phone:

- constantly on my person (sometimes this may be in the cab whilst I’m trying to sort out an issue with the train or passenger)
- with a working SIM card
- on and charged (often the battery will die as it’s used for other work related duties)
- a good connection to 4G at all times
- for my email application to be logged in at all times (of which it does sign itself out due to security)
- or for me to be manually checking disruption apps at every station, every few minutes as things on the railway change constantly

This is an example of why in the past I’ve personally not received information, recently for just over two weeks I was awaiting a SIM card replacement (as mine had corrupted) and had no contact with Control bar GSMR or my personal phone.

It’s not always a case of “staff who know better” or incompetence.

I think both these issues could be improved/fixed by better information dissemination. In particular, I think there needs to be a central electronic data feed containing detailed information on ticket acceptance on other TOCs (for TOC-restricted tickets) and over routes that are not normally permitted. If this was fed out to all sources (National Rail Enquiries, TOC websites, independent websites like BR Fares and RTT etc.) it would go a long way towards different sources claiming that ticket acceptance information is not official or simply ignoring it.

 

[Bald Rick]

One way to avoid this would be to employ somebody whose sole role in the incident is to disseminate information - colocate them with control so they get to hear all the messages, give them read access to the logs, etc. and make their output available to staff and the public.

As others have said - these roles exist. BUT ... they can only disseminate information that they have. In the first 15 minutes of an incident the only people who will know what’s going on are those directly involved - more often that not the driver and signaller only. And then until someone can get to the site who can work out what needs to happen to fix it (and how long that will take), deciding what to do with the service is usually provisional. For a major incident, if there is a plan for rectification within 30 minutes that is good going. Meanwhile tens of thousands of passengers have taken to Twitter...

 

[infobleep]

It's long been a railway thing that, when any incident happens, although you may have orange-jacketed personnel coming out of your ears who are standing around at the site, there is apparently no budget for one information officer who knows how to do it at the centre.

Thus one gets the classic default "Services are subject to delay and/or cancellation and/or diversion".

One of the prime aims of delay attribution etc was it was seen as a means to encourage the rapid resolution of incidents, instead of leaving the disruption all day having had a signal failure etc first thing. Like many initiatives, it worked well at the start but gradually got watered down as various ways of gaming the system were worked out, some distinctly passenger-unfriendly such as suddenly running services non-stop to final destination. I guess it's time to have another go.

I'd love to read about examples where trains were deliberately run fast to game the system.

My understanding was they run then fast so they are then kn time for the next service.

I do have examples where trains were on time a couple of missed stops before the first station they were stopping at.

I oy that don't to their system of recovery being inflexible. The example of Guildford to Waterloo his Cobham. During at least two disruptions they ran the train fast to Surbiton cut still going via Cobham. The train was on time roughly 1 to 2 stations prior to Surbiton and it could have stopped at those stations but didn't
.
I've had other experiences, rare it must be said, where trains have skipped stations but information boards and staff haven't been informed. When I went on Twitter, the Twitter staff couldn't believe what I was saying. I know it to be true because I was on the train and either the guard or driver told us what control had said to them.

 

[Paul Kelly]

I'd love to read about examples where trains were deliberately run fast to game the system.

My understanding was they run then fast so they are then kn time for the next service.

I think the argument is that making sure as many trains as possible run on time for their entire journey could be considered gaming the system, if it inconveniences a large number of passengers but doesn't benefit many. The classic situation is a heavily loaded train heading out of London which skips stops, inconveniencing many passengers, in order to be on time for its very lightly-loaded next service against the peak back into London.

 

[Highlandspring]

Where a ‘Fail To Stop’ is recorded in the railway IT system it is an automatic PPM failure, so it is in no way gaming the system. The whole point of trying to recover the service during and after disruption is to restore the timetable as quickly as possible. If that is considered cheating then we might as well all pack up and go home now.

 

[Paul Kelly]

The whole point of trying to recover the service during and after disruption is to restore the timetable as quickly as possible. If that is considered cheating then we might as well all pack up and go home now.

Do you feel that running as much of the timetable exactly to time as possible, is a more worthy aim than helping as many passengers as possible to get where they want to go as soon as possible? I think it's a really interesting point of debate.

 

[Watershed]

Do you feel that running as much of the timetable exactly to time as possible, is a more worthy aim than helping as many passengers as possible to get where they want to go as soon as possible? I think it's a really interesting point of debate.

PPM is a pretty poor metric because it's binary, and because (in terms of punctuality) it only measures the impact at the end of the journey. That incentivises trains to be cancelled at the drop of the hat to ensure the back working meets PPM, even if that's not the best outcome for passengers. It also incentivises adding lots of allowances and differentials at the end of the journey, to allow late services to make PPM.

These differentials have had the perverse effect of inflating journey times in one particular direction, meaning that connections are sometimes only official in one direction, or that trains aren't shown in journey planners because they are "overtaken" (on a two track railway).

Fortunately, with the latest contractual arrangements PPM is no longer the primary metric for most TOCs. It's now becoming 'time to X' - which measures whether the train is within X minutes of its booked time at each station along its route.

I think there is still further to go to reach a measure that truly incentivises what's best for passengers. That would, in my mind, be 'passenger delay minutes'. Of course it takes a lot of data, and instant analytics tools for that data, to be able to usefully make decisions on the fly. But I definitely think it's the direction of travel.

 

[Annetts key]

Do you feel that running as much of the timetable exactly to time as possible, is a more worthy aim than helping as many passengers as possible to get where they want to go as soon as possible? I think it's a really interesting point of debate.

This comes down to how do you measure the problem. And when there is a problem, which method is better?

Obviously the TOC will normally try run the service such that it minimises the financial pain for itself.
But what is decided is also supposed to take into account the requirements of the majority of passengers.

This actually makes the decision rather more complex. And the outcome may well be different depending on the various variables.

So if only a small number of passengers will be getting off, or on at a station, and there will be another service not too long after that does stop at said station, then the decision may be to run the late running train fast.

Or if the number of passengers for the last part of the journey will be low numbers, instead of running it fast, it may terminate short, so that the return journey can start short but then run on time.

Other factors include but are not limited to:

• What other train services are running?
• What is the frequency of other alternative train services?
• When was the last service that called at this station and when is the next booked service for this station?
• Is this the last service of the day?
• Can a taxi be arranged? Or a bus?
• How many passengers are or will be affected?
• What effect will the change or the delay have on the crew? Including any crew that are using the service to get to the station where they join their next booked service.
• How will it affect services that are due to be worked by this train or crew later in the day?
• Is the problem the train or the infrastructure, and is it going to be an ongoing problem?

I’m sure I’ve missed some...

What is certain, is that you can’t keep everyone happy. So good customer service by keeping passengers informed and giving them useful and helpful information is important. And if necessary by taking into account their circumstances. For example, it may be better to provide a taxi to take a passenger to their destination station rather than run a mostly empty late train. If the roads are clear, this may actually be quicker in some circumstances.

 

[Horizon22]

Do you feel that running as much of the timetable exactly to time as possible, is a more worthy aim than helping as many passengers as possible to get where they want to go as soon as possible? I think it's a really interesting point of debate.

Well its a judgment call - sometimes you'll accept a delay to a peak service to help passengers out but there's a lot of factors to consider. @Annetts key has listed most of them. There's aspects like turnaround times, crew working and the knock-on impact to consider. By leaving everything as is, you might cause a whole bunch of other people to be delayed who otherwise may not have been. Control will try and look at the overall delay and reduce it and some might take into consideration the importance of a peak service into account, especially if you are aware of alternatives that passengers could take and usual loading. There's no exact science, it can be complex which is where route and timetable knowledge come into play.

 

[WelshBluebird]

As others have said - these roles exist. BUT ... they can only disseminate information that they have.

I think the point is, that even in that case there is no reason why they can't be available and talk to passengers to say that they do not know for sure yet, but it is being looked at by other members of staff and that they will provide updates as and when possible.

What we have now is that way too often during disruption, station / platform / train crew just collectively disappear! Now I am sure there are reasons (either they are busy dealing with the actual issue, or similar) but it really isn't a good look that when passengers need staff the most, staff are the least available to help!

 

[Taunton]

Where a ‘Fail To Stop’ is recorded in the railway IT system it is an automatic PPM failure, so it is in no way gaming the system. The whole point of trying to recover the service during and after disruption is to restore the timetable as quickly as possible. If that is considered cheating then we might as well all pack up and go home now.

This whole thing of needing to ensure the next working departs on time arises through overtight turnround times and removal of resilience with crews and trains. And that's wholly under railway control.

When the 1970s push-pull ran between Edinburgh and Glasgow, four trains were required to maintain the half-hourly service. But all day there was a fifth, crewed, kept at Cowlairs, which if the inward working was badly delayed would be sent down to pick up the next working. The delayed service, on arrival, was then sent up to be the spare. Likewise I recall at London Waterloo there was a spare train kept all day in the siding just off the end of Platform 1. And elsewhere.

These arrangements have just been taken out. When discussed here previously it leads to ridiculous hyperbole by presumably rail staff such as "we can't have whole roomfulls of spare crews hanging around doing nothing". Time was when the practicalities were weighed up more sensibly than that.

A real lulu was the Brighton to Bristol and Worcester service, a several-hours marathon across all sorts of conflicting other routes, was extended from Worcester to Great Malvern, just as an Orcats raid by GWR on the West Midlands revenue on this stretch, with a minimalist few minutes turnround before returning the same lengthy journey. Constantly the trip was cut short to ensure the return left Worcester on time.

Now that it's all one system again, perhaps all those "roomfulls" of delay attribution staff and managers no longer needed to cross-charge one another's businesses can be rertrained, as spare traincrews .

 

[Horizon22]

This whole thing of needing to ensure the next working departs on time arises through overtight turnround times and removal of resilience with crews and trains. And that's wholly under railway control.

When the 1970s push-pull ran between Edinburgh and Glasgow, four trains were required to maintain the half-hourly service. But all day there was a fifth, crewed, kept at Cowlairs, which if the inward working was badly delayed would be sent down to pick up the next working. The delayed service, on arrival, was then sent up to be the spare. Likewise I recall at London Waterloo there was a spare train kept all day in the siding just off the end of Platform 1. And elsewhere.

These arrangements have just been taken out. When discussed here previously it leads to ridiculous hyperbole by presumably rail staff such as "we can't have whole roomfulls of spare crews hanging around doing nothing". Time was when the practicalities were weighed up more sensibly than that.

A real lulu was the Brighton to Bristol and Worcester service, a several-hours marathon across all sorts of conflicting other routes, was extended from Worcester to Great Malvern, just as an Orcats raid by GWR on the West Midlands revenue on this stretch, with a minimalist few minutes turnround before returning the same lengthy journey. Constantly the trip was cut short to ensure the return left Worcester on time.

Now that it's all one system again, perhaps all those "roomfulls" of delay attribution staff and managers no longer needed to cross-charge one another's businesses can be rertrained, as spare traincrews .

There's a balance really - yes a sensible spare provision but extra stock and crew on standby ultimately costs money. I don't think arrangements have just been "taken out" - with the intensification of the timetable in the past decades, there has had to be more 'efficient' use of space. Of course a lot of this comes into the realms of train planning rather than disruption management, but I agree that some timetables are more 'fragile' than others. The worst turnarounds are usually at peak times and hopefully going forward with reductions in some peak services planned this will add much needed resilience to the timetable as well as perhaps a greater understanding by the powers that be that "more trains" doesn't actually account for a better service.

 

[edwin_m]

Does XC still keep a standby set at New Street?

 

[Taunton]

I was recently told, after standing from Birmingham to London, that it was "quite impractical" for Avanti to have a standby in the Midlands. The every 20 minutes service from Birmingham to Euston has some of the trains worked through from Scotland; the one such at 5pm had run into problems much further north, actually in Scotland, leaving a 40 minute gap, and the inevitable consequences in the peak point of the day. When we got to Euston the return working of the cancelled train had also been cancelled, the same double-load overcrowding was apparently going to happen on the next return service as well.

 

[Bald Rick]

I was recently told, after standing from Birmingham to London, that it was "quite impractical" for Avanti to have a standby in the Midlands. The every 20 minutes service from Birmingham to Euston has some of the trains worked through from Scotland; the one such at 5pm had run into problems much further north, actually in Scotland, leaving a 40 minute gap, and the inevitable consequences in the peak point of the day. When we got to Euston the return working of the cancelled train had also been cancelled, the same double-load overcrowding was apparently going to happen on the next return service as well.

Unaffordable rather than impractical. If you have one in the W Mids, you also need one at Manchester and London. That’s £40-50m worth of train stood around doing nothing for 99% of the time, plus about £2m a year in crew costs (excluding any catering crew).

 

[infobleep]

A new app covering corruption would be good, although as an enthusiast of timetabling, I do like being able to glean some details from the way the National Rail Enquiries app functions.

Today I saw a train from Havant to Bognor Regis was cancelled. The 14:21. However, when I went into it to see the details Bognor Regis wasn't even mentioned. I've not experienced this behaviour before.

I've attached two images showing this.

 

[Annetts key]

Corruption you say. Would it include the politicians on that list?

 

[Wolfie]

Corruption you say. Would it include the politicians on that list?

I must admit that was my first thought too....

 

[infobleep]

Corruption you say. Would it include the politicians on that list?

Dam it. I didn't spot that one and I use the Grammarly Android keyboard too. Not that it would pick that one up.

Anyway, I forgot to add that the disruption notice for the Horsham signal failure doesn't allow you to click through to it.

Perhaps someone forgot to enable the ability to reach the notice. I don't know. What I do know is this isn't a rare occurrence so something must occur that makes it reasonably easy for someone to not link them up.

As for corruption, one could start a whole thread of such matters unrelated to this.

Still it's dawned on me that delay repay will be due for my journey, whatever happens. Hopefully the next train will just a minute late and I will get the 30 minute rate for half of a return journey.

 

[IanXC]

I think both these issues could be improved/fixed by better information dissemination. In particular, I think there needs to be a central electronic data feed containing detailed information on ticket acceptance on other TOCs (for TOC-restricted tickets) and over routes that are not normally permitted. If this was fed out to all sources (National Rail Enquiries, TOC websites, independent websites like BR Fares and RTT etc.) it would go a long way towards different sources claiming that ticket acceptance information is not official or simply ignoring it.

Ultimately such a facility does exist. The overwhelming majority of ticket acceptance messages are sent by Tyrell message, however they are free text messages rather than coming from a template which can be automatically shown to the public. Amending a train by Tyrell message is done via a pre formatted message which alters the Darwin feed. This feels like low hanging fruit to me, if ticket acceptance messages could be turned into a pre formatted template for Tyrell then it would be very easy to make this consistent and consistently available to the public.

This whole thing of needing to ensure the next working departs on time arises through overtight turnround times and removal of resilience with crews and trains. And that's wholly under railway control.

When the 1970s push-pull ran between Edinburgh and Glasgow, four trains were required to maintain the half-hourly service. But all day there was a fifth, crewed, kept at Cowlairs, which if the inward working was badly delayed would be sent down to pick up the next working. The delayed service, on arrival, was then sent up to be the spare. Likewise I recall at London Waterloo there was a spare train kept all day in the siding just off the end of Platform 1. And elsewhere.

These arrangements have just been taken out. When discussed here previously it leads to ridiculous hyperbole by presumably rail staff such as "we can't have whole roomfulls of spare crews hanging around doing nothing". Time was when the practicalities were weighed up more sensibly than that.

A real lulu was the Brighton to Bristol and Worcester service, a several-hours marathon across all sorts of conflicting other routes, was extended from Worcester to Great Malvern, just as an Orcats raid by GWR on the West Midlands revenue on this stretch, with a minimalist few minutes turnround before returning the same lengthy journey. Constantly the trip was cut short to ensure the return left Worcester on time.

Now that it's all one system again, perhaps all those "roomfulls" of delay attribution staff and managers no longer needed to cross-charge one another's businesses can be rertrained, as spare traincrews .

In a lot of other places the issue it that having started off with a driver, conductor and unit available for these purposes, the pressure has mounted to use said resources to operate additional services, the space to park the spare unit has disappeared, the diagram times have changed meaning you have a driver for one period of time and a conductor for another (which is all very well and good if you're trying to cover one or the other due to sickness etc, or even that today's diagrams rarely keep driver and conductor together anyway, but not much good for late running), and so overall the ability to do what was then possible is gone.

Does XC still keep a standby set at New Street?

In my experience prior to the pandemic they had a spare 170 and a spare Voyager at New Street. As compared to other operators its a particularly useful location to the entire operation rather than needing to do the same at multiple locations.

A new app covering corruption would be good, although as an enthusiast of timetabling, I do like being able to glean some details from the way the National Rail Enquiries app functions.

Today I saw a train from Havant to Bognor Regis was cancelled. The 14:21. However, when I went into it to see the details Bognor Regis wasn't even mentioned. I've not experienced this behaviour before.

I've attached two images showing this.
View attachment 97218View attachment 97219

This is very bizarre. Looking at the base timetable, where all this should start, the only 1421 I can find is 1J30 1237 London Bridge to Southampton Central which should depart Havant at 1421, but this is after the portion for Bognor Regis should have been detached at 1334...

 

[Falcon1200]

This whole thing of needing to ensure the next working departs on time arises through overtight turnround times and removal of resilience with crews and trains. And that's wholly under railway control.

Now that it's all one system again, perhaps all those "roomfulls" of delay attribution staff and managers no longer needed to cross-charge one another's businesses can be rertrained, as spare traincrews .

Not necessarily wholly under railway control; Take as an example a single track branch with a half-hourly service, each train taking 26 minutes to enter and return from the branch. If one train runs late the entire branch timetable is disrupted, for hours, not to mention all the other trains affected elsewhere by the delayed branch services. Running one train express can avoid all that.

And whether one system or not, someone has to investigate and explain delays, so that the causes can be addressed. Hopefully what will be abolished is the dispute and resultant argument and horse trading process !

 

[infobleep]

Here is another example of discretion information. The train is delayed due to trespassers. It will be 1 minute late into the next station, which is Blackwater but 10 minutes late into North Camp, which is the station after.

Now I thought these times were auto-generated.

My interface has also messed up and the station links below are not displaying

This is the 15:01 Reading to Gatwick Airport service. Perhaps it is possible to manually change the disruption time estimates.

 

[Horizon22]

Here is another example of discretion information. The train is delayed due to trespassers. It will be 1 minute late into the next station, which is Blackwater but 10 minutes late into North Camp, which is the station after.

Now I thought these times were auto-generated.

My interface has also messed up and the station links below are not displaying

This is the 15:01 Reading to Gatwick Airport service. Perhaps it is possible to manually change the disruption time estimates.

They are not always auto-generated and can also be manually added. Perhaps the caution is between Blackwater and North Camp hence the delay? Saying that the NRE interface is awful, and I'd prefer literally any other app.

 

[IanXC]

Here is another example of discretion information. The train is delayed due to trespassers. It will be 1 minute late into the next station, which is Blackwater but 10 minutes late into North Camp, which is the station after.

Now I thought these times were auto-generated.

My interface has also messed up and the station links below are not displaying

This is the 15:01 Reading to Gatwick Airport service. Perhaps it is possible to manually change the disruption time estimates.

NRE will show the Darwin feed. In this instance the actual train running is showing the service is expected to be 1 minute late departing from the next station, however a staff member has intervened and told Darwin that they expect the service to leave the following station 10 minutes late, as a result you get what your screenshot shows.