Regulator Concerned about the resilience of Britains railways

[michael769]

From the ORR: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.11118

Network Rail must improve the resilience of Britain’s railways in adverse weather conditions such as snow and heavy rain, said the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) today as it published its latest analysis of rail performance.

ORR’s last analysis report, published in December 2012, highlighted that Network Rail had collaborated well with train operators in developing and implementing better plans for improving punctuality. However, in recent months performance has again deteriorated in parts of the country during a difficult winter.

ORR’s latest analysis of rail performance highlights:

* Strong performance in Scotland. Effective planning and coordination between Network Rail and train operators enabled the railways to withstand harsh weather conditions well.

* Deteriorating performance on key parts of the rail network in England and Wales. Overall punctuality on long distance services was 88.3% and for London and South East services was 91.4%, well adrift of funded targets. Admirable flood recovery responses on parts of the network did help to ease passenger disruption.

* Areas of poor management of the railways. Passengers suffered from some substantial over-runs of engineering works during the festive period. There were also several instances of basic operational planning mistakes causing delays.

 

[rebmcr]

Cue Southeastern wiring?

 

[broadgage]

Subjectively things seem to have deterioated markedly over the last year or so.
I am not convinced that official statistics tell the full story, especialy as regards major breakdowns.

For example if 100 trains are cancelled or badly delayed, spread more or less randomly accross the network then that is unfortunate for those wishing to use those services, but in most cases a following train can be utilised without too much trouble, at least sometimes.
There is a great deal of difference between cancelling a train between ABC and XYZ, with the next in one in 10 minutes, and cancelling ALL trains between ABC and XYZ for a day or two.

However in recent years there seems to have been a substantial increase in large scale problems when taking the next train is not an option because the line is closed all day, or even for several days.

I also feel that gross overcrowding is not recognised as the problem that it is, if a service is so badly overcrowded that a reasonable person cant board it, then for practical purposes it may as well be cancelled.
If a cancellation results in the following service being so overcrowded that passengers cant board, then IMO that service should be regarded as cancelled, not throughout but from the point where significant numbers of customers are left behind.

I cant see much improvement in the near term, especially on FGW.
The planned electrification works will mean years of disruption, with the traditional overunning engineering works following holidays.
When the work is done we will have an electric railway that only works in mild weather.
And of course we have new computerised signalling to look forward to, and new trains that probably wont work reliably for the first few years.

 

[tbtc]

However in recent years there seems to have been a substantial increase in large scale problems

That's certainly the way it seems, though I wonder how much of that is to do with the way that every delay is reported and analysed (in the way that the 24hr news means every murder seems to get reported so you hear about a lot more than you used to, which makes it hard to work out whether there's a real increase or just an increase in reports).

The weather does seem more sporadic these days, and there seems to be a lot less "spare" in the system when things go wrong (a lot more trains forced down the same tracks compared to a decade ago, without the yards full of "spare" stock that BR used to have - assets are sweated so much more that there's not always a "plan B").

 

[moggie]

Dontya just love the dear ol' ORR - order NT to cut costs. NR introduce wizzo techno or just plain daft wishful thinking managemnt mumbo jumbo that remove front line staff at any opportunity. Problems occur on the line - no staff within miles to fix them and probably attending to dozens of issues elsewhere so it all goes TU.

My god these ORR people are sharp aren't they. I wonder if they can work out the common link between the two?