ScotRail: actions such as skip stopping during disruption

[kilonewton]

All of Linlithgow, Polmont and Croy have more than 2 services per hour.

Yes, but not E-G services. Glasgow to/from Polmont, Linlithgow 1/2 hour. Similarly Croy to/from Edinburgh.

 

[McRhu]

Have also experienced this. It's a fait-accompli. You're waiting for your train when there comes a belated announcement saying that it isn't going to stop, and there you are, waiting on a bloody cold, damp platform for half an hour (hopefully no longer!) for the next one. And help? What help? You're on your tod because the sole railway employee at the booking office on the far-away platform also hasn't been told what's happening. You've got no option but to wait and hope that the next train stops.

 

[bb21]

If a TOC isn't going to stick to a published timetable then why have timetables. We want a reliable, dependable service not a cheeseparing one. The TOC should be heavily fined for not stopping as all they are doing is avoiding a penalty for arriving late at a terminating station. This is a very good example of why railways should be renationalised.

I'm not convinced you have any idea what you are talking about.

Fail to calls do have a financial penalty attached to it. It could be the equivalent of quite a lot of delay minutes on a low-frequency route for each fail to call, plus some knock-on financial effects on other measures, such as instantly failing PPM and Right Time regardless of lateness. Do you actually think TOCs do it for fun?

A re-nationalised British Rail Mark 2 is going to work in exactly the same way, if not more extreme.

 

[Stopper]

Happening again today on the E-G line quite a bit. What’s going on today?

 

[185143]

I had a train I was waiting for at Renton skip the stops and go straight to Balloch.

Balls. Half an hour delay. Well... at least I get delay repay.

Then the bloody thing broke down at Balloch and it was an hour and 40 minutes until the next train! I wasn't very impressed...

Had a skip stop on Merseyrail the other day. Chester-Liverpool, first stop BC (which is VERY unusual-it's normally HOO-BKC/MRF non stop). We were all told at Chester-however no one told the traincrew. Normal announcement onboard. We stopped at Bache, people got on, and as we passed Capenhurst, the guard said the train wasn't stopping until BC.

Felt for the people who got on at Bache wanting Ellesmere Port mind...

 

[156478]

Hi,

I've joined the forum so I can particiate in this fascinating topic.

I live on the Milngavie line. This is a dead-end line serving a huge amount of commuters with suburban stops at Hillfoot, Bearsden, Westerton and Anniesland heading into Glasgow City Centre.

In the early 90s, the line was single-tracked, and this has now led to the situation where this line has the worst performance in Scotland, and commuters are having an appaling service at peak times, with frequent cancellations and stop-skipping. The statistics do not show the true picture - which is of commuters giving up on this rail line altogether. When your train is so frequently cancelled that you cannot depend on it if you're going somewhere important, the service has completely failed. The problem with stop-skipping, if you're standing on the platform, is one moment you're going to be a few minutes late for work, the next you're going to be 35 minutes late (need to wait for the next extremely over-crowded train). This affects everyone at every stop all at once, as well as the people on the train who, yes, are frequently trapped on board and end up further along the line than expected.

I truly believe that if they stopped stop-skipping, the overall service would improve for the public, the managers would have a clearer picture of what's going wrong and why, and things would improve.

I am full of understanding at the frustration for the poor people who travel on the Milngavie line.

It really was a false economy single tracking the line to Milngavie, in fact its a total false economy all the single track pieces of track on North Clyde Suburban Routes, like on the Hamilton Circle/Larkhall, Helensburgh and Balloch branches. The single lead junction at Westerton like everything done in British Rail days haunts everyone everyday unfortunately.

Skip stopping while grossly unpopular is done for the bigger picture, and if anything if Skip Stopping was to cease delays on a delicate route would actually get worse. You will end up with more conflicting trains, traincrews out of hours, train crews in the wrong positions, trains in the wrong positions, more cancellations and even more ripple effects across Scotland. It's the way the trains interact on an extremely congested route- Hyndland to Finnieston is already full to capacity- a delayed train from Milngavie to Edinburgh can easily delay a Dalmuir to Motherwell service that then can delay services on the WCML at Rutherglen/Cambuslang/Motherwell/Whifflet and delay Virgin West Coast, Transpennine and XC Services and a myriad of freight services. This is one of the reasons why Lanark services now run to Glasgow Central High Level - to enhance their reliability and for the services not to get caught up in any service disruption in the North Clyde area and then destroy the service in Lanarkshire. Then at the other end of the route train presented late at Newbridge Junction can ripple across Central Scotland and delay E+G, Alloa, Stirling, Virgin Trains East Coast services and then they ripple effect other services. Then further on Haymarket to Waverley is also running at capacity, it just takes one train to be late to have consequences throughout East Scotland and down the ECML down south.

While I have given you the reasoning, I know it wont be a consolation knowing you are the sacrifice to keep others moving when you are trying to get somewhere and the service you want is not being given to you. I think the only ultimate solution here is to keep lobbying your local MSP, Transport Scotland, SPT and ScotRail. It would cost a lot of money to double the track to Milngavie - but then again people spend a lot of money to travel on the train to Milngavie.

 

[bspahh]

Well I hope he relies on the 7.39 service from Milngavie, which is maybe the worst affected service of all (although when I requested an FoI on this, they told me that they don't actually have punctuality figures for a particular timetabled service, which left me dumbfounded).

They might not have "official" statistics. However, at http://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/ you can get a summary of the performance for specific journeys. For example this is for Milngavie to Cumbernauld in the mornings:

http://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/Home/Search?Op=Srch&Fr=Milngavie+(MLN)&To=Cumbernauld+(CUB)&TimTyp=A&TimDay=6a&Days=Wk&TimPer=100d&dtFr=&dtTo=&ShwTim=AvAr&ShwAdv=ShwAdv&TOC=All&ArrSta=5&SvcCtC=SvcCtC&SvcPcR=SvcPcR&SvcPcC=SvcPcC&SvcArS=SvcArS&SvcPfS=SvcPfS&MetAvg=Mea&MetSpr=RT&DaySum=DaySum&MxScDu=&MxSvAg=10&MnScCt=2&MxArCl=10

It says that the 7.39 has been cancelled 10 times in the last 100 days. It has arrived within 5 minutes of its scheduled arrival time 69% of the time.

The bottom of that page has this text on the source of their data:

The information shown on Recent Train Times is sourced from Network Rail Infrastructure Limited (as licensed under this licence) via Network Rail's Data Feeds. Recent Train Times is not part of Network Rail and is not an official rail industry body. Nor is Recent Train Times a source of official rail performance information / statistics.

If you have a specific journey where you know a station was skipped, it would be good to see if it is being picked up in these statistics.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

It says that the 7.39 has been cancelled 10 times in the last 100 days. It has arrived within 5 minutes of its scheduled arrival time 69% of the time.

Is that measured at the destination though? I gather the problem Rob flags up is at one of the intermediate stations.

 

[gordonjahn]

Nice thread... The one that annoyed me was, upon arriving in Stirling from KGX connecting to Lenzie I found the Stirling to Glasgow was running direct.

This was on a Sunday, when trains are hourly, meaning there's a lot more slack in the timetable than normal anyway and there weren't many people about to slow it up with alighting and boarding. The train that skipped stops had the baby-change facility out of order, and I had a 1 year old that was now having an extra hour's delay added to her bedtime, and she had to be changed on a 1st class table instead. I still didn't find any good reason for the skip-stopping - going through all real-time running, we might have delayed an Aberdeen service behind us (but it would still have been within the "on time" window) and the train would still have been in Glasgow to turn around and get out again.

I seem to recall Scotrail not quite understanding that the delay repay on this journey meant they'd be paying for out on our London to Lenzie tickets though, trying to fudge it with "our system doesn't say you should have changed at Stirling" when Virgin had very nicely sent me an email with the itinerary. I honestly think they completely miss the fact that they operate as part of a bigger system and think the maximum cost of compensation per passenger will be a Stirling to Glasgow journey. I only hope the financial penalties, once they figure out how they work, eventually result in them resorting to skipping less often...

 

[Rob Lightbody]

They might not have "official" statistics. However, at http://www.recenttraintimes.co.uk/ you can get a summary of the performance for specific journeys.

Sorry for coming back to this so late. Hope re-activating an older topic is OK, when it still hugely relevant.

Thank you for those links to that recent train times site - absolutely brilliant!!

Here's the stats for the route/time I'm looking at for the morning commute. Looks pretty bad to me? >Link<

And the evening commute is even worse - >link<

 

[Altnabreac]

Sorry for coming back to this so late. Hope re-activating an older topic is OK, when it still hugely relevant.

Thank you for those links to that recent train times site - absolutely brilliant!!

Here's the stats for the route/time I'm looking at. Looks pretty bad to me? >Link<

Only problem with looking at the Cancelled / Not run stats is it doesn't show you if there is any skip stopping or not. It only tells you if services didn't run.

The inevitable consequence of banning skip stopping is that to get back to timetable you have to cancel a whole service instead. So it could be that all of those instances are of entirely cancelled trains rather than stops at Hilfoot being missed out.

 

[Highlandspring]

As predicted in post number 6 of this thread the official service recovery policy is now to part cancel a service and run the train empty to allow it to start right time at an appropriate location en route, terminate a late running service at an appropriate location en route to allow it to start back right time or where the first two aren’t possible to cancel a service throughout and if needed run empty to get the train and crew in position for their next workings.

Fail to stops/express/non stopping/skip stopping (whichever term you prefer) is only permitted as a very last resort requiring special permission to be obtained and only when a part or full cancellation isn’t possible. This policy has come about as a direct result of intense media and political pressure.

 

[gordonjahn]

I have to agree with this policy change.

I’ve never liked skip-stopping as Scotrail have been abysmal at updating whatever databases drive real-time trains, Traksy, etc and the only way to know is via their official version of the truth (Journeycheck), which isn’t helpful or transparent. I’ve long suspected by stops not appearing as “Cancelled” (but trains mysteriously making up 3 minutes per missed stop) they’ve been massaging official figures somehow.

The only way I’d have been happy is if Scotrail would have placed a stop orders or two on other services to minimise gaps in service. That simply never happened, which always gave the impression of Scotrail performance first, passenger last.

 

[gsnedders]

I have to agree with this policy change.

I’ve never liked skip-stopping as Scotrail have been abysmal at updating whatever databases drive real-time trains, Traksy, etc and the only way to know is via their official version of the truth (Journeycheck), which isn’t helpful or transparent. I’ve long suspected by stops not appearing as “Cancelled” (but trains mysteriously making up 3 minutes per missed stop) they’ve been massaging official figures somehow.

The only way I’d have been happy is if Scotrail would have placed a stop orders or two on other services to minimise gaps in service. That simply never happened, which always gave the impression of Scotrail performance first, passenger last.

Pretty sure the NR data feeds that supply that data don't have any way of changing the schedule they display once the journey has been activated; this is much more apparently on operational diversions (e.g., the VT train I was on yesterday from Euston to Glasgow was diverted via Manchester, so there were no reports for it passing anywhere between Crewe and Wigan where it magically reappeared around 45L).

 

[Highlandspring]

I’ve never liked skip-stopping as Scotrail have been abysmal at updating whatever databases drive real-time trains, Traksy, etc and the only way to know is via their official version of the truth (Journeycheck), which isn’t helpful or transparent. I’ve long suspected by stops not appearing as “Cancelled” (but trains mysteriously making up 3 minutes per missed stop) they’ve been massaging official figures somehow.

‘Fail To Stop’ orders are entered into the railway IT system (called TRUST) in real time by independent staff employed by Network Rail and these changes flow directly into downstream systems through Darwin like any other change. ‘Fail To Stop’ orders are recorded as reliability events as per the DAPR* causing a train to automatically fail its PPM target and thereby attracting a financial penalty for the TOC through the Track Access Contract Schedule 8 performance regime. There is definitely no performance figure massaging going on.


*Delay Attribution Principles and Rules

 

[gordonjahn]

Pretty sure the NR data feeds that supply that data don't have any way of changing the schedule they display once the journey has been activated; this is much more apparently on operational diversions (e.g., the VT train I was on yesterday from Euston to Glasgow was diverted via Manchester, so there were no reports for it passing anywhere between Crewe and Wigan where it magically reappeared around 45L).

Diversions I can understand, but I'm sure with other operators I've seen individual stops show as "Cancelled". Looking at ORR review of performance metrics (http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/25376/review-of-new-performance-metrics-2017-07-18.pdf, page 41, table row for "Reliability - Cancellations") suggests that TRUST (which is one of the data sources from NR) can indeed record part cancellations and skip-stopping but that these figures are reconciled with the TOCs own records.

Now it may be that Scotrail always kept very accurate logs of skip stopping and never massage the figures, but the report also recommends that "improved reporting" is necessary. The cynic in me thinks that if a licensee stops doing something after their regulator is looking for better reporting on that thing, then perhaps they weren't reporting 100% of the incidents. The decreased level of independence between NR Scotland and ASR through the Scotrail Alliance would surely call into question these stats too.

As is often the case, it's not just about doing the right thing - it's about being *seen* to do the right thing. I've no problem with skipping stops as long as I can see that they have declared it both to the regulator and the passenger, that they review whether it's the right thing to do up until the service reaches the destination, and look at alternatives for passenger. That's not how it was working. I do hope their skip-stopping a Stirling to Glasgow when I had a connection from Kings Cross to Lenzie at Stirling (with all the booking details confirming it), and the resulting delay-repay they had to stump up for the family, went some way to reminding them that every service does not operate in isolation.

 

[Stopper]

I think everybody understands the principle of skip-stopping and why it’s done. It’s just that it was becoming regular in certain areas of the ScotRail network which was unacceptable and unreliable.

 

[bramling]

It would be very easy to write the franchise agreement in a way which bans station skipping.

The train operator would then have to respond in one or more of several ways:

1. Terminate trains short instead of skip stopping
2. Cancel trains instead of skip stopping
3. Increase turn around times to reduce need for skip stopping
4. Reduce stock/crew utilisation to allow more "spare" stock and crew at termini to reduce need for skip stopping

The problem is that options 1 and 2 are actually worse for passengers than skip stopping (which is why the operator currently does skip stopping) while options 3 and 4 would cost extra money to the government in subsidy (so we need to have a conversation about how bad skip stopping is and what we are willing to pay to have it not happen).

Investment in more redoubling, infrastructure reliability etc can all help reduce the requirement for skip stopping as well but ultimately once services are delayed and out of position the only options to get back to normal service are skip stopping or cancellations. Making skip stopping the political flavour of the day is just going to lead to Scotrail having to cancel more services instead.

This is an excellent post and sums up the issue rather well.

 

[Stopper]

Are the bay platforms at Milngavie at capacity right now? I’m not familiar with that area so I don’t know. If not I’m pretty sure they have the spare stock to increase turnaround times. The A-B trains are 6-car all day and run empty for the majority. The 334s could be split, surely?

 

[43096]

Are the bay platforms at Milngavie at capacity right now? I’m not familiar with that area so I don’t know. If not I’m pretty sure they have the spare stock to increase turnaround times. The A-B trains are 6-car all day and run empty for the majority. The 334s could be split, surely?

How do you split the 334s? Are you magicing up some extra crews to do it? It would just cause a whole host of more problems just as they try to recover the service.

 

[JohnR]

Anyone else annoyed by the term Skip-Stopping? They're not stopping Skips! It should be Stop-Skipping, ie missing Stops!

 

[156478]

Are the bay platforms at Milngavie at capacity right now? I’m not familiar with that area so I don’t know. If not I’m pretty sure they have the spare stock to increase turnaround times. The A-B trains are 6-car all day and run empty for the majority. The 334s could be split, surely?

The line is at capacity. There is a single lead junction at the start of the branch and the majority of the line is single track. A victim of rationalisation for economy that was fine for a 30 minute service but now at every 15 minutes with a lot less turn around time at Milngavie has created a daily problem with reliability combined with services which now run all the way across from Edinburgh and from Lanarkshire/WCML.