Should Rail Replacement Buses cover for Northern’s staffing issues?

[Llandudno]

Seeing as Northern are unable to operate virtually any Sunday train services on the the following routes owing to a shortage of train crew and are advising passengers not to travel
Colne - Preston
Preston - Blackpool South
Manchester - Stoke
Manchester - Stalybridge

These services have not operated for many weeks and are unlikely to return before Christmas, should Northern abandon these services and provide a timetabled rail replacement bus service which is properly planned and resourced in advance similar to pre planned engineering work.

This would give passengers some sort of assurance that they could travel to/from these destinations and intermediate stations.

 

[david l]

Seeing as Northern are unable to operate virtually any Sunday train services on the the following routes owing to a shortage of train crew and are advising passengers not to travel
Colne - Preston
Preston - Blackpool South
Manchester - Stoke
Manchester - Stalybridge

These services have not operated for many weeks and are unlikely to return before Christmas, should Northern abandon these services and provide a timetabled rail replacement bus service which is properly planned and resourced in advance similar to pre planned engineering work.

This would give passengers some sort of assurance that they could travel to/from these destinations and intermediate stations.

Weeks? You want to try some other areas within Northern that have had very few or no Sunday services for months, nearly getting into years. Manchester-Southport, Wigan NW-Stalybridge, Liverpool-Blackpool - and lately the weekday services, particularly Liverpool-Wigan-Blackpool during the week suffer daily consecutive cancellations. Apparently Northern have a 'recovery plan', if they have there's been no movement - regretfully its confidential and even was behind closed doors at the last Transport for the North meeting.
Amazingly there's been a better service several times of late on the Wigan-Bolton/Atherton-Manchester route as there is planned 'electrification' engineering and therefore scheduled bus replacements............you couldn't make this up.

 

[mrcheek]

cant wait until the government is running all train services

 

[43066]

These services have not operated for many weeks and are unlikely to return before Christmas, should Northern abandon these services and provide a timetabled rail replacement bus service which is properly planned and resourced in advance similar to pre planned engineering work.

No. The DfT (via Northern) should stump up the cash to properly incentivise staff to work Sunday - offer enough and they will.

The reality is they won’t want to spend the money either to do this, or to provide replacement buses, so the current situation will continue.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Not this argument again - the buses, or specifically the drivers for those buses, simply do not exist, certainly not in any sufficient quantity to cover all of the services. It's not a question of money at all. There's a whole thread on this point. Same for taxis - most cab drivers don't want to accept this kind of work.

The sensible thing to do is to simply withdraw these services from the timetable on a permanent basis. There's no point having a timetable that is clearly unworkable and then leaving it a couple of days prior to cancel them all with no alternative available. Not great from a publicity or political perspective, but withdrawing the Sunday service or heavily reducing it is the only way you are going to get stability.

 

[43066]

. It's not a question of money at all.

Offer guards enough (say £750 - £1k per day) and there would be volunteers! I wonder how the cost of doing so would stack up against a. The lost revenue due to the cancellations, and b. The cost of buses (which likely don’t exist anyway, as you say).

 

[skyhigh]

Offer guards enough (say £750 - £1k per day) and there would be volunteers! I wonder how the cost of doing so would stack up against a. The lost revenue due to the cancellations, and b. The cost of buses (which likely don’t exist anyway, as you say).

The latest company offer, from what I've been told, was £50 booking on bonus, same rate of pay as currently agreed for Sunday and removal of all favourable terms for Sunday working.

Surprisingly that wasn't received well, and probably actually made things worse.

Not this argument again - the buses, or specifically the drivers for those buses, simply do not exist, certainly not in any sufficient quantity to cover all of the services. It's not a question of money at all. There's a whole thread on this point. Same for taxis - most cab drivers don't want to accept this kind of work.

To be fair, preplanned long-term arrangements would probably be easier to sort than ad-hoc on the day emergency bookings.

 

[Ianigsy]

Would be interesting to see whether punters are defecting to service buses anyway. Many journeys on the above routes can be made on local routes or Metrolink (thinking particularly of Ashton).

 

[HSTEd]

Given Northern's subsidy situation its unlikely that replacing the trains with buses would do anything but make the situation worse, likewise large payments to staff to induce volunteers would likely not be justifiable for the same reason.

I'd suggest that the timetable should be cut back to one that can actually be operated. At which point it will be possible to determine a sustainable future path for resourrcing.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Given Northern's subsidy situation its unlikely that replacing the trains with buses would do anything but make the situation worse, likewise large payments to staff to induce volunteers would likely not be justifiable for the same reason.

I'd suggest that the timetable should be cut back to one that can actually be operated. At which point it will be possible to determine a sustainable future path for resourrcing.

I'm inclined to agree with this. Furthermore that timetable should have really simple diagrams for both units and crews (so no changes of crew on Castlefield at all, which may mean breaking up some of the long routes into connecting shuttles) and should involve maximum length trains for the route, in both cases minimising knock on effects if a member of crew isn't available due to eg sickness on the day.

 

[HSTEd]

I'm inclined to agree with this. Furthermore that timetable should have really simple diagrams for both units and crews (so no changes of crew on Castlefield at all, which may mean breaking up some of the long routes into connecting shuttles) and should involve maximum length trains for the route, in both cases minimising knock on effects if a member of crew isn't available due to eg sickness on the day.

Yes, I'd suggest that the ideal would be that the only time a crew leaves a unit is for a break or end of shift.

Does Northern have any unit splits or anything like that in the timetable? You'd probably want to get rid of those as well.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, I'd suggest that the ideal would be that the only time a crew leaves a unit is for a break or end of shift.

Might even be worth keeping them "with" the unit for breaks and just leaving a round trip gap in the timetable.

The simpler it is, the less bad it will be.

 

[43066]

Given Northern's subsidy situation its unlikely that replacing the trains with buses would do anything but make the situation worse, likewise large payments to staff to induce volunteers would likely not be justifiable for the same reason.

Can you cite any figures to back that up?

Otherwise it’s at severe risk of sounding like something you’ve just made up…

Yes, I'd suggest that the ideal would be that the only time a crew leaves a unit is for a break or end of shift.

Might even be worth keeping them "with" the unit for breaks and just leaving a round trip gap in the timetable.

Are either of you expert enough on traincrew rostering to tell us whether these suggestions actually work, and what they achieve?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Are either of you expert enough on traincrew rostering to tell us whether these suggestions actually work, and what they achieve?

I'm not, but it's rather obvious that simplicity means avoiding knock on disruption. Remember how the LNR Euston-Brum-Liverpool went?

 

[43066]

I'm not, but it's rather obvious that simplicity means avoiding knock on disruption. Remember how the LNR Euston-Brum-Liverpool went?

Simplicity also equalled TPE and GTR route specific depots. How have those gone .

 

[HSTEd]

Can you cite any figures to back that up?

Otherwise it’s at severe risk of sounding like something you’ve just made up…

The last year for which we have data put's Northern's entire fare income at £318m.
To earn this money, Northern operated 49.3 million train kilometres.

So Northern's average per train kilometre farebox is about £6.45.

So if you could get away with paying the two extra crew £750 each, you'd make your money back if you could get 232 average train kilometres out of them or more.
Ofcourse, this bonus will require you to pay everyone who works £750 each, including people who would have volunteered anyway, so the actual number of train kilometres required would be several times that.

In addition, Sunday trains are still likely to be less renumerative than the average Northern train, so the figure will be even higher than that.

EDIT:
Using Colne Preston as an example, it takes ~73 minutes to go 47km, for an average speed, ignoring turnarounds of ~39kph.
So, even making the previous (optimistic) assumptions, the crew would have to be running the route, non stop with no breaks and no turnarounds, for six hours.

 

[43066]

The last year for which we have data put's Northern's entire fare income at £318m.
To earn this money, Northern operated 49.3 million train kilometres.

So Northern's average per train kilometre farebox is about £6.45.

So if you could get away with paying the two extra crew £750 each, you'd make your money back if you could get 232 average train kilometres out of them or more.
Ofcourse, this bonus will require you to pay everyone who works £750 each, including people who would have volunteered anyway, so the actual number of train kilometres required would be several times that.

In addition, Sunday trains are still likely to be less renumerative than the average Northern train, so the figure will be even higher than that.

EDIT:
Using Colne Preston as an example, it takes ~73 minutes to go 47km, for an average speed, ignoring turnarounds of ~39kph.
So, even making the previous (optimistic) assumptions, the crew would have to be running the route, non stop with no breaks and no turnarounds, for six hours.

It sounds as though you’re making lots of assumptions there. If you don’t know, that’s fine. I’d rather not go with your assumptions, when you clearly don’t know what the rostering parameters are.

I’m interested to know, what are the actual figures if the Northern guards were paid (say) £750 per person, given the existing rostering agreements etc. versus the lost revenue for cancelled trains etc.?

@Tazi Hupefi might have an idea…

 

[JonathanH]

What are the actual figures if the Northern guards were paid £750 per person

Are you advocating paying them the best part of £40,000 a year just to work Sundays? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just recruit some guards who only work Sundays?

 

[43066]

Are you advocating paying them the best part of £40,000 a year just to work Sundays? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just recruit some guards who only work Sundays?

You’re fixating on the earnings of the traincrew members, there. If better incentivising them is the solution, why not just get on and do it?

As a taxpayer, who paid an outrageously silly amount of tax last month, I’d just like to see the system function better.

 

[weastebusdepot]

Yesterday I came across a couple in Manchester who told me I should be running replacement buses to Ashton because the trains were cancelled all day so they would have to get a train to Stalybridge then a taxi to Ashton. When I suggested it would be cheaper for them to get the tram to Ashton instead, she told me "I don't do trams". I managed to stop myself from responding "I don't do sympathy". (I don't work for or on behalf of Northern but frequently find myself having do deal with the results of their mess)