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Potential slashing of rail services in 2021

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bramling

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The structure at present has a lot of duplication and if you were to have some sensible sectorisation/collaboration it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where savings could be made.

Take a station I am fairly familiar with, Liverpool Lime Street (exclude Merseyrail).

3 train crew depots with their own supervisory and management structure - Northern, TPE and Avanti. Some have centralised resource functions, some are local.

2 dispatch teams, Northern, who look after most services, and Avanti, who deal with an arrival and departure per hour with team leaders and managers each. On top of that there are booking office staff and gateline staff employed by the TOCs, numerous contractors for cleaning and catering from different companies (some of whom work for 20 minutes per hour because they only deal with "their" trains) and the Network Rail station staff as well for security, passenger assistance and the station management team to boot.

All of these different silos have their own chains of command.

What would be the clever person's job would be to work out a better way going forward but the whole web is full of inefficiencies and that is replicated across the network.

The trouble is it is likely to be difficult to do much about all that, without pretty much abandoning the whole structure of the 1990s privatisation. I’m not sure the government has the stomach to take that task on, and even if they did is now really the time?

Completely agree with the point though, just I don’t think it’s something we’re going to see change in the foreseeable future.
 
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Bald Rick

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I would guess that most enhancement spending due to be spent during the next 12 months is already committed via signed contracts, so there would be difficult to cancel. It might be possible to delay signing any contracts for 12 months to achieve some saving over a period in about a year's time, but that might prove inadvisable if demand does indeed pick up. It also deals a hit to the economy.

Indeed. And stopping a project already ‘in flight’, even at the development stage, incurs costs now and makes it more expensive to get it going again.

Very, very roughly, 50-60% of industry costs are staff costs either directly or in the first tier of the supply chain. About half the rest is largely outside the industry’s control, being fuel / electricity, and financing of historic debt.

Ultimately, whatever is done to reduce costs - whether it be closing lines (very unlikely in my opinion), reducing services, reducing renewal / enhancement activity, or something else - there is no doubt in my mind that it will lead to paying fewer people, and paying those that remain less (in real terms). There’s no other way.
 

LowLevel

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The trouble is it is likely to be difficult to do much about all that, without pretty much abandoning the whole structure of the 1990s privatisation. I’m not sure the government has the stomach to take that task on, and even if they did is now really the time?

Completely agree with the point though, just I don’t think it’s something we’re going to see change in the foreseeable future.


I think some of it is relatively easy to streamline - for example if you consider it as coming from the same pot it would be simple enough for the DfT to direct the TOCs at the station to form one team of station staff under one banner (they did it with the Birmingham New Street platform staff for example) which everyone pays into the cost of and loses the inefficiency of having one team dealing with one train per hour and the others running around the place like loonies with a train every few minutes. Same with the cleaning contractors - a central train presentation team would I dare say be more capable and effective.

The big terms and conditions issue raises it's head (I know it took over 10 years to sort out the New Street platform staff and ended up with them having their own grade in the signallers grading system) but if we are talking about tough decisions I would rather they crunched us a bit on that sort of thing rather than compulsory redundancies.

Train crew obviously become more difficult if you want to retain separate operating entities and with route and traction knowledge.
 

Bald Rick

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The structure at present has a lot of duplication and if you were to have some sensible sectorisation/collaboration it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where savings could be made.

Take a station I am fairly familiar with, Liverpool Lime Street (exclude Merseyrail).

3 train crew depots with their own supervisory and management structure - Northern, TPE and Avanti. Some have centralised resource functions, some are local.

2 dispatch teams, Northern, who look after most services, and Avanti, who deal with an arrival and departure per hour with team leaders and managers each. On top of that there are booking office staff and gateline staff employed by the TOCs, numerous contractors for cleaning and catering from different companies (some of whom work for 20 minutes per hour because they only deal with "their" trains) and the Network Rail station staff as well for security, passenger assistance and the station management team to boot.

All of these different silos have their own chains of command.

What would be the clever person's job would be to work out a better way going forward but the whole web is full of inefficiencies and that is replicated across the network.

Whislst I sort of agree, in principle, it’s not that simple. I’ve had some experience in merging business units like this.

The front line teams will need supervision and management, and that will be done at a certain ratio. By merging a collection of front line teams, and assuming you keep the same ratio, you won’t save much, if anything, in supervision or management. You can only make the savings if one or more of the units being merged is operating at a significantly lower ratio, or with much lower productivity (possible with the Avanti people at Lime St, of course).
 

Ianno87

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Whislst I sort of agree, in principle, it’s not that simple. I’ve had some experience in merging business units like this.

The front line teams will need supervision and management, and that will be done at a certain ratio. By merging a collection of front line teams, and assuming you keep the same ratio, you won’t save much, if anything, in supervision or management. You can only make the savings if one or more of the units being merged is operating at a significantly lower ratio, or with much lower productivity (possible with the Avanti people at Lime St, of course).

Presumably that, for example, Avanti drivers only needing to sign 221/390s, LNW only 350s, Northern only 156/195, etc etc. is relatively efficient, rather than the pool of crew needing to be "jack of all trades".
 

bramling

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Presumably that, for example, Avanti drivers only needing to sign 221/390s, LNW only 350s, Northern only 156/195, etc etc. is relatively efficient, rather than the pool of crew needing to be "jack of all trades".

Given how many depots operate link systems, it would suggest the industry disfavours extensive route cards.

There’s benefits in having extensive route or traction knowledge for flexibility, but disbenefits in training and keeping it up. It would seem the consensus is that the latter outweighs the former.
 

LowLevel

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Whislst I sort of agree, in principle, it’s not that simple. I’ve had some experience in merging business units like this.

The front line teams will need supervision and management, and that will be done at a certain ratio. By merging a collection of front line teams, and assuming you keep the same ratio, you won’t save much, if anything, in supervision or management. You can only make the savings if one or more of the units being merged is operating at a significantly lower ratio, or with much lower productivity (possible with the Avanti people at Lime St, of course).

That's part of the reason I picked Lime St though it does play out in a similar manner elsewhere where there are lots of little teams. Some of course have one management team looking after multiple sites whereby the ratio is built up that way. I'm going to assume though I don't know that the Avanti management team at Lime St also have oversight of for example Runcorn.
 

Ianno87

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Given how many depots operate link systems, it would suggest the industry disfavours extensive route cards.

There’s benefits in having extensive route or traction knowledge for flexibility, but disbenefits in training and keeping it up. It would seem the consensus is that the latter outweighs the former.

In other words, even if everything were one organisation, crewing would be split in a way not-dissimilarly to how they would be split for multiple operators anyway?
 

Bikeman78

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The structure at present has a lot of duplication and if you were to have some sensible sectorisation/collaboration it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where savings could be made.

Take a station I am fairly familiar with, Liverpool Lime Street (exclude Merseyrail).

3 train crew depots with their own supervisory and management structure - Northern, TPE and Avanti. Some have centralised resource functions, some are local.

2 dispatch teams, Northern, who look after most services, and Avanti, who deal with an arrival and departure per hour with team leaders and managers each. On top of that there are booking office staff and gateline staff employed by the TOCs, numerous contractors for cleaning and catering from different companies (some of whom work for 20 minutes per hour because they only deal with "their" trains) and the Network Rail station staff as well for security, passenger assistance and the station management team to boot.

All of these different silos have their own chains of command.

What would be the clever person's job would be to work out a better way going forward but the whole web is full of inefficiencies and that is replicated across the network.
On the subject of Liverpool, I believe all EMR trains are crewed by Nottingham crew. The first two departures to Norwich are formed off a 106 mile empty stock move departing from Nottingham at 0353!
 

LowLevel

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On the subject of Liverpool, I believe all EMR trains are crewed by Nottingham crew. The first two departures to Norwich are formed off a 106 mile empty stock move departing from Nottingham at 0353!

They are all Nottingham based drivers, with mostly Nottingham based guards a few jobs covered from Derby. It is less inefficient than it seems - it covers most of the diversionary routes on a regular basis. It was a BR idea dating back to 1993. Carries, in normal times, 4 x 158 DMUs for 8 cars and 2 sets of traincrew. BR's view was that it was cheaper than having Liverpool based crews work to Nottingham, and marked a fairly significant retrenchment in that depot's route knowledge in general. Other the other hand the Norwich end of the route was worked by initially Nottingham and Norwich based crews, then Nottingham and Cambridge when it became Central Trains, then Nottingham and Norwich again with EMT.

It is a fascinating route to look into the history of the service provision for, Gordon Pettitt goes into it in some detail in "The Regional Railways Story".

Of course the DfT intended it to be worked from Lime St and Sheffield by TPE fairly imminently but COVID has put paid to that.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Reorganising the railway can only follow a rather slow process involving a new management structure with a mandate to make significant changes.
It will surely take several years to move from what we have now to anything new that is markedly less costly.
The only way to cut operational costs quickly is to implement service reductions and the consequent staff/stock reductions (ie parking/scrapping trains).
Even then the stock is mostly on medium-term Rosco contracts linked to the last franchise agreements, which will cost more money to break.
The DfT hasn't got the capability to execute those changes itself, it will have to be at TOC/NR level, and there are a multiplicity of contracts involved (a mix of franchises/concessions and old/new EMAs).

It seems, like fares reform, to be "too hard" to do much on a short-term basis, beyond stopping service enhancement projects which consume current/more resources.
But the "railway deficit", as Bald Rick explains, will be multiplying upwards every month and will have to be addressed by the industry sooner or later.
You only have to look at other critical industries and their travails (eg steel or aviation), to realise that there will be big future demands on the Treasury, and the railway will have to shoulder its share of the pain to get back to equilibrium.
Whichever way you look at it, the current railway is insolvent.
 

yorksrob

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Reorganising the railway can only follow a rather slow process involving a new management structure with a mandate to make significant changes.
It will surely take several years to move from what we have now to anything new that is markedly less costly.
The only way to cut operational costs quickly is to implement service reductions and the consequent staff/stock reductions (ie parking/scrapping trains).
Even then the stock is mostly on medium-term Rosco contracts linked to the last franchise agreements, which will cost more money to break.
The DfT hasn't got the capability to execute those changes itself, it will have to be at TOC/NR level, and there are a multiplicity of contracts involved (a mix of franchises/concessions and old/new EMAs).

It seems, like fares reform, to be "too hard" to do much on a short-term basis, beyond stopping service enhancement projects which consume current/more resources.
But the "railway deficit", as Bald Rick explains, will be multiplying upwards every month and will have to be addressed by the industry sooner or later.
You only have to look at other critical industries and their travails (eg steel or aviation), to realise that there will be big future demands on the Treasury, and the railway will have to shoulder its share of the pain to get back to equilibrium.
Whichever way you look at it, the current railway is insolvent.

Then those reductions must be on routes that already have an over-provision of services, not on important routes for communities that already have a scarce service.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Then those reductions must be on routes that already have an over-provision of services, not on important routes for communities that already have a scarce service.

That makes a lot of sense, and probably the greatest cost savings are in thinning out London and big city commuting anyway.
Some of the 12-car extension projects don't look so clever now, either.
Stock can always be repurposed, in the same way as SWT's excess Desiro order went to London Midland for the WCML, avoiding the need to acquire a new fleet.
 

RT4038

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That makes a lot of sense, and probably the greatest cost savings are in thinning out London and big city commuting anyway.
Some of the 12-car extension projects don't look so clever now, either.
Stock can always be repurposed, in the same way as SWT's excess Desiro order went to London Midland for the WCML, avoiding the need to acquire a new fleet.

The 12 car extension projects allow for fewer, but longer, trains, thereby reducing train crew costs, so they are no less clever than before, maybe just for different reasons.
 

MDB1images

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They are all Nottingham based drivers, with mostly Nottingham based guards a few jobs covered from Derby. It is less inefficient than it seems - it covers most of the diversionary routes on a regular basis. It was a BR idea dating back to 1993. Carries, in normal times, 4 x 158 DMUs for 8 cars and 2 sets of traincrew. BR's view was that it was cheaper than having Liverpool based crews work to Nottingham, and marked a fairly significant retrenchment in that depot's route knowledge in general. Other the other hand the Norwich end of the route was worked by initially Nottingham and Norwich based crews, then Nottingham and Cambridge when it became Central Trains, then Nottingham and Norwich again with EMT.

It is a fascinating route to look into the history of the service provision for, Gordon Pettitt goes into it in some detail in "The Regional Railways Story".

Of course the DfT intended it to be worked from Lime St and Sheffield by TPE fairly imminently but COVID has put paid to that.

With apologies if going slightly off topic.
I can remember Manchester Piccadilly crews working through to Peterborough on the Norwich trains in the early 90's, not sure how it changed after that.

In terms of Liverpool, when it was all one depot (or even when it split to Inter City and Regional Railways)the depot had a good route card as I frequently worked with Liverpool drivers to Leeds (and York if my memory is correct)both ways.
Further inroads into sectorisation pretty much condemned Liverpool to a local work depot(indeed they had zero Trans Pennine work up until TPE opened a depot up, it was worked by Man Picc/Leeds when it was RRNE then pre TPE Man Picc/York).

I was at Man Vic which was another depot that went from working a raft of routes (literally anywhere)to with further sectorisation becoming a local route depot not even a fraction of the size it was.
Ironically very short sighted decisions also saw Manchester Victoria go from 16(plus bay and through roads) to 6 Platforms along which with Track removal saw a huge drop in capacity which pre Covid would have proved an answer to all the problems during severe route restrictions in Manchester which affected the North - hopefully a decision that needs to be remembered should any cuts be thought to be a long term plan now!
 

yorksrob

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In terms of the three Avanti trains an hour from Euston to Manchester, I don't think they even should aspire to bring the third one back after things begin to recover. The third train an hour should be a budget option, providing cheap walk on fares as well as connections to places such as Barleston.
 

Watershed

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In terms of Liverpool, when it was all one depot (or even when it split to Inter City and Regional Railways)the depot had a good route card as I frequently worked with Liverpool drivers to Leeds (and York if my memory is correct)both ways
Until very recently, Newcastle would work all the way through to Liverpool on certain services (as well as going up to Edinburgh).

In other words, you can't definitively say that having more or less route knowledge is inefficient. It purely depends on what the service pattern is, and what the conditions relating to shift lengths and allowances are.

In terms of the three Avanti trains an hour from Euston to Manchester, I don't think they even should aspire to bring the third one back after things begin to recover.
Should Stoke be condemned forever more to having 2 fast trains to Manchester spaced within 4 minutes of each other? If not, are you proposing to revive the second Avanti service, or the second XC? Service cuts have to be looked at quite carefully to see the side effects.
 
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Ianno87

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In terms of the three Avanti trains an hour from Euston to Manchester, I don't think they even should aspire to bring the third one back after things begin to recover. The third train an hour should be a budget option, providing cheap walk on fares as well as connections to places such as Barleston.

Who is footing the bill to fund these budget fares then to the detriment of higher fare receipts from a restored Avanti service?

Budget options are already available between Manchester and London - it just needs a change of train and (in some cases) split tickets. Or a Megabus.
 

LowLevel

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With apologies if going slightly off topic.
I can remember Manchester Piccadilly crews working through to Peterborough on the Norwich trains in the early 90's, not sure how it changed after that.

In terms of Liverpool, when it was all one depot (or even when it split to Inter City and Regional Railways)the depot had a good route card as I frequently worked with Liverpool drivers to Leeds (and York if my memory is correct)both ways.
Further inroads into sectorisation pretty much condemned Liverpool to a local work depot(indeed they had zero Trans Pennine work up until TPE opened a depot up, it was worked by Man Picc/Leeds when it was RRNE then pre TPE Man Picc/York).

I was at Man Vic which was another depot that went from working a raft of routes (literally anywhere)to with further sectorisation becoming a local route depot not even a fraction of the size it was.
Ironically very short sighted decisions also saw Manchester Victoria go from 16(plus bay and through roads) to 6 Platforms along which with Track removal saw a huge drop in capacity which pre Covid would have proved an answer to all the problems during severe route restrictions in Manchester which affected the North - hopefully a decision that needs to be remembered should any cuts be thought to be a long term plan now!

Of course it was the opposite with Nottingham - Derby historically was the local passenger depot for the most part with a lot of the work at Nottingham being freight inherited from Colwick with some trips to places like Grantham, Skegness, Lincoln etc. The depot nearly shut with the local pits closing as Toton took on more of the freight.

Sectorisation saved it and before long it was up to over 100 drivers and 100 guards working trains over most of the Midlands/North West/East Anglia when the Derby provincial crews moved over.
 

yorksrob

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Until very recently*, Newcastle would work all the way through to Liverpool on certain services (as well as going up to Edinburgh).

In other words, you can't definitively say that having more or less route knowledge is inefficient. It purely depends on what the service pattern is, and what the conditions relating to shift lengths and allowances are.

*Their route card has now been curtailed to Leeds, primarily due to the mind-boggling number of diversionary routes they would have to sign for TRU works.


Should Stoke be condemned forever more to having 2 fast trains to Manchester spaced within 4 minutes of each other? If not, are you proposing to revive the second Avanti service, or the second XC? Service cuts have to be looked at quite carefully to see the side effects.
The two fast trains to Manchester should ideally be evenly spaced.
Who is footing the bill to fund these budget fares then to the detriment of higher fare receipts from a restored Avanti service?

Budget options are already available between Manchester and London - it just needs a change of train and (in some cases) split tickets. Or a Megabus.
it's about reaching people who wouldn't ordinarily faff with advance booking. Or people who have the option of jumping in a car without planning it months in advance.

There is a budget option already from manchester. Why not have a direct, jump on the train one.

Realistically, most Avanti fares are likely AP, so they are already providing a low yield bums on seats model to an extent. This is just a different form of the same thing. The comparatively small proportion of genuinely high yield passengers must surely be able to be accommodated on two trains an hour !

Or perhaps LNWR and Northern could team up to provide a walk on through ticket if we're not going to have a direct train.
 

Ianno87

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The two fast trains to Manchester should ideally be evenly spaced.

it's about reaching people who wouldn't ordinarily faff with advance booking. Or people who have the option of jumping in a car without planning it months in advance.

That already exists - the LNW/TfW fare (or an LNW fare from Crewe with an Any Permitted to Manchester). All walk-on, no "faff".


There is a budget option already from manchester. Why not have a direct, jump on the train one.

A direct train is lovely, but not necessarily the best use of capacity. Lots of people would like a direct train from Place X to Place Y and to pay very little for it.
Realistically, most Avanti fares are likely AP, so they are already providing a low yield bums on seats model to an extent. This is just a different form of the same thing. The comparatively small proportion of genuinely high yield passengers must surely be able to be accommodated on two trains an hour !

The people that pay a premium for walk up tickets do in part because of the 3tph "turn up and go" frequency and the ability to pretty much walk straight onto a train at Euston all day long. It is worth something to them, for which they are prepared to pay for it.
 

Ianno87

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That's a good one. I'd use it, although presumably a Northern version would involve less hanging around at Crewe.

If you want less hanging around, just split tickets at Crewe with an Any Permitted between Crewe and Manchester.
 

yorksrob

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The people that pay a premium for walk up tickets do in part because of the 3tph "turn up and go" frequency and the ability to pretty much walk straight onto a train at Euston all day long. It is worth something to them, for which they are prepared to pay for it.

It would be interesting to know how much additional revenue that generates, over a half hourly frequency.

If you want less hanging around, just split tickets at Crewe with an Any Permitted between Crewe and Manchester.

It's about convenience. A northern tie up and single through ticket would increase this, along with not having to meticulously plan in advance.

That said, even in terms of walk on fares, Avanti appears to be massively better value than anything we have on the East coast.
 

Greybeard33

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Then those reductions must be on routes that already have an over-provision of services, not on important routes for communities that already have a scarce service.
Well, binning off a few or even all of the scarce services on the likes of the Whitby branch or the Bentham line would not make much of a dent in the £9bn black hole. It is the empty main line and commuter services that are swallowing most of that cash.

If the Treasury decides to turn off the taps on the magic money tree, I fear that the entire rail industry will be in for a massive shock.
 

Iskra

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To be fair, this is a massive opportunity to have a properly resourced and crewed railway*, with adequate capacity and uniformly fit for purpose rolling stock.

So much depends on the fortunes of home working however, which nobody really understands right now; so it's important not to keep an open mind and make sure any changes can be reversed easily.

*Maybe not on Sundays
 

philosopher

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So much depends on the fortunes of home working however, which nobody really understands right now; so it's important not to keep an open mind and make sure any changes can be reversed easily.
If there are going to be service cuts, then the trains should be mothballed rather than scrapped so they can quickly be bought back into service if commuting patterns do turn out not to change too much.
 

Bald Rick

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If there are going to be service cuts, then the trains should be mothballed rather than scrapped so they can quickly be bought back into service if commuting patterns do turn out not to change too much.

But that doesn’t save any money...
 

philosopher

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But that doesn’t save any money...
Putting a train in storage is still likely to save some money compared to keeping it running. Plus if demand does pick up then it is likely going to be cheaper having to buy new trains again because the old ones were scrapped.
 
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