SWR: RMT ballot over role of guards *48 hour strike 8th/9th November*

[infobleep]

The other thing I've noticed is that during the strike days they are not running a leaf fall timetable. Are the leaves on strike too?!

 

[TheManBehind]

The other thing I've noticed is that during the strike days they are not running a leaf fall timetable. Are the leaves on strike too?!

It's a Saturday service, so headways are significantly increased and probably don't call for the additional time needed for leaf-fall conditions.

 

[Carlisle]

The bottom line of the dispute is that SWR will roster a 2nd member of crew on every train, but want to run trains without a 2nd member if the situation dictates (ala Southern style OBS), RMT want a Guard trained 2nd of crew on every service and that difference is what is driving this dispute.

The above changes on SWT metro services were scheduled to take place over 20 years ago anyway , had Stagecoach not then allowed themselves to be completely outmanoeuvred by the unions on these issues to a level they’d never have even considered entertaining anywhere in their bus industry.
Clearly history shows Mr Souters knowledge of rail operations wasn’t remotely as good as that of busses.

 

[The Ham]

The bottom line of the dispute is that SWR will roster a 2nd member of crew on every train, but want to run trains without a 2nd member if the situation dictates (ala Southern style OBS), RMT want a Guard trained 2nd of crew on every service and that difference is what is driving this dispute.

I have a question, the RMT are saying no to any services being run as DOO. Would that still be their stance if SWR put a limit on the number of services, maybe saying "we'll ensure than no more than (say) 1 in 500 of our services (where they have about 1,700 services a day) would be run without a 2nd member of staff with anything beyond that resulting in cancelled trains"? It would probably need to be based on a rolling month basis, so as stop them banking loads and then announcing full DOO and being able to ride out the strikes but giving them the flexibility to cover for events such as a number of guards getting the flu all in the same week.

It could also allow them to cancel trains during quiet periods and then keeping services running in the peaks or the last trains at night (it could allow them to move trains out of platforms at Waterloo in the peaks so as to not disrupt other services which would otherwise have to be cancelled if a train is blocking a platform due to lack of staff).

Yes it could still be seen as the thin edge of the wedge, but then continuing to object to that could be seen as fairly unreasonable in the eyes of the public especially if the public was sold the view that "The TOC is only doing this to ensure that we provide you with a good service and you don't have to suffer cancelled trains just because the preceding service had an issue on it resulting in a guard being late to the station for your service". Of course there would be other ways to spin the reason, but most customers don't worry too much about where their money ends up as long as the trains that they "have paid for" turn up on time and they are not inconvenienced very much.

 

[infobleep]

It's a Saturday service, so headways are significantly increased and probably don't call for the additional time needed for leaf-fall conditions.

Even on Saturdays SWR currently run a leaf fall timetable.

 

[infobleep]

I have a question, the RMT are saying no to any services being run as DOO. Would that still be their stance if SWR put a limit on the number of services, maybe saying "we'll ensure than no more than (say) 1 in 500 of our services (where they have about 1,700 services a day) would be run without a 2nd member of staff with anything beyond that resulting in cancelled trains"? It would probably need to be based on a rolling month basis, so as stop them banking loads and then announcing full DOO and being able to ride out the strikes but giving them the flexibility to cover for events such as a number of guards getting the flu all in the same week.

It could also allow them to cancel trains during quiet periods and then keeping services running in the peaks or the last trains at night (it could allow them to move trains out of platforms at Waterloo in the peaks so as to not disrupt other services which would otherwise have to be cancelled if a train is blocking a platform due to lack of staff).

Yes it could still be seen as the thin edge of the wedge, but then continuing to object to that could be seen as fairly unreasonable in the eyes of the public especially if the public was sold the view that "The TOC is only doing this to ensure that we provide you with a good service and you don't have to suffer cancelled trains just because the preceding service had an issue on it resulting in a guard being late to the station for your service". Of course there would be other ways to spin the reason, but most customers don't worry too much about where their money ends up as long as the trains that they "have paid for" turn up on time and they are not inconvenienced very much.

Can anyone provide stats on the number of trains cancelled on SWR/SWT due to a lack of guard or a lack of driver.

Also what about stats for trains started late and had stops cancelled for both of those. Would need to be broken down by guard or driver as no one has yet got a way of running the trains on the mainlines without drivers.

 

[OxtedSignaller]

SWR state

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/plan-my-journey/rmt-strike

So if they are rostering a guard on every train, what is changing? Is it just that in times of disruption they won't roster a Guard?

It would have been more helpful as a passenger if they had stated what is changing.

Sounds like to me they will have a guard on every train but whilst working their new rolling stock they won’t be working the doors and the driver will be sole control perhaps. Could be that this is because the majority of their stock/routes won’t be DOO enabled so they will keep trained guards as they work a variety of different routes and traction.

Even agreeing to this operation would be paving the way for full DOO as they will just keep rolling this method out as they bring new traction out route by route.

 

[kw12]

As an example if we assume (all figures are arbitrary but are possible figures)
- 1 train in 100 being DOO (due to staff not being available for that journey, be that due to other delays, staff sickness, or whatever other reason that is) with an average load of 100 people
- 1 in 5 million rate of accidents for DOO passengers
- 1 in 6 million rate of accidents for passengers with a guard on board
Based on 1.7 billion passenger movements a year nationally that would equate to the difference if we moved to DOO vs guards on every train would mean the difference between 340 incidents and 283 incidents. However, if the proposed was brought in it would be the difference between 286 and 283 incidents (assuming 1/100th of all passengers being on DOO trains with all others being on trains with guards vs all trains having a guard)

However even the above is flawed as there isn't enough data to have a clear figure for rates of accidents, the last data I saw from TfL had it that the accident rate for trains on part of the London Overground network as higher than that for the rest of the network where DOO was being use (IIRC one rate was 1 in 8 million). However even then that TfL data could be wrong as just one indecent could then skew the figures one way or the other (for instance guards have an incident near the start of the time period having been safe for 10 million journeys previously whilst DOO has an indecent just before the start of the time period and then run for 8 million journeys before having another and then guards having another incident after 10 million journeys and then the time period ends. That results in 2 in a 12 million time period for guards whilst the DOO would be recorded as only having 1 in that 12 million range).

In 2013, shortly before the rest of London Overground went over to DOO, TfL stated:
"On the East London Line, which uses driver only operation, the rate of door incidents is one for every 7 million passengers. This compares to the section of the network which currently uses conductors, where the rate of door incidents is one for every 4 million passengers."

The above stats were probably derived from multiple years of data. However, even they were obtained from only one year then there would have been sufficient data, given that London Underground carried 135 million passengers during 2013-14.

Furthermore, the figures would not have been skewed materially by a single incident or even a pair of incidents. For example, let's consider how the rates would have changed if during the year there been an extra door related incident on a DOO operated service and one of the incidents on a conductor worked service had not occurred. If around a third of the trains had been DOO there would have been around ((1/3) * 135)/7 = 6.4 door-related incidents that year on DOO services and ((2/3)*(135))/4 = 22.5 incidents on non-DOO services. If there had been one extra incident on a DOO service the DOO rate would have increased to 1 in 6.1 million and if there had been one less incident on a non-DOO service that rate would have decreased to 1 in 4.2 million. Therefore, even with this "what if" assessment of a potential skewing of the rates the non-DOO rate of incidents would still have been substantially higher (worse) than the DOO rate.

 

[The Ham]

In 2013, shortly before the rest of London Overground went over to DOO, TfL stated:
"On the East London Line, which uses driver only operation, the rate of door incidents is one for every 7 million passengers. This compares to the section of the network which currently uses conductors, where the rate of door incidents is one for every 4 million passengers."

The above stats were probably derived from multiple years of data. However, even they were obtained from only one year then there would have been sufficient data, given that London Underground carried 135 million passengers during 2013-14.

Furthermore, the figures would not have been skewed materially by a single incident or even a pair of incidents. For example, let's consider how the rates would have changed if during the year there been an extra door related incident on a DOO operated service and one of the incidents on a conductor worked service had not occurred. If around a third of the trains had been DOO there would have been around ((1/3) * 135)/7 = 6.4 door-related incidents that year on DOO services and ((2/3)*(135))/4 = 22.5 incidents on non-DOO services. If there had been one extra incident on a DOO service the DOO rate would have increased to 1 in 6.1 million and if there had been one less incident on a non-DOO service that rate would have decreased to 1 in 4.2 million. Therefore, even with this "what if" assessment of a potential skewing of the rates the non-DOO rate of incidents would still have been substantially higher (worse) than the DOO rate.

Playing devils advocate for a moment, one of the concerns from the unions is that a major incident (which may only happen at a rate of 1 in 12 billion) would mean that the lower rate of any incident wood be wiped out by several deaths or at least multiple injuries.

It's when trying to evaluate those sorts of numbers that the stats are unclear and one or two major incidents would skew figures.

You also have to remember that these figures only record incidents, note that could be a near miss, a minor injury, a major injury, a fatality or even involve several people. Now obviously not all of these carry the same consequences and therefore shouldn't be counted as equal. Even the near misses aren't equal in that one person nearly getting caught in a closing door isn't anywhere near the same sort of near miss as a train load of people getting off a train (the last of which was on a train with a guard, meaning that on this year's worth of data there's a higher rate of incidents for trains with guards than DOO trains but because those sorts of events are so rare you can't be certain that the presence of a guard or not would make a significant impact on the likelihood. You could say that a guard could encourage people to not leave the train but if they are in the wrong location to see what is happening they may not be able to stop it or to know to say anything to try and stop it).

You also have to be careful in that it probably is a the case that not all stations are comparable, for instance does the presence of station staff change the likelihood of an incident, what about length of train or even bend in platforms.

As a network there's possibly enough data to say that DOO is broadly the same risk to passengers as being on one with a guard. However, it could be that on some lines, or even some services one method of working is safer than the other. As such it is not possible to categorically say that one is safer than the other, however with more data it could be possible to say that DOO is likely to be a problem if brought in at station X but for station Y it's not a problem.

There are lots of ways that guards are good on trains, however many of them involve the guard not hiding in the rear cab as "that's the safest place to dispatch from" (which I'm not sure that it always is, especially if it's a train that is over 100m long, on platforms which bend, at stations where there's lots of people still on the platform waiting for the next train, where station entry/exits are a long way from the rear and so on).

 

[Goldfish62]

It's a Saturday service, so headways are significantly increased and probably don't call for the additional time needed for leaf-fall conditions.

The extra three minutes on the Reading line is timetabled at weekends as well. I was surprised not to see it taken account of.

There are some oddities, such as the 0712 from Reading not calling at Virginia Water as per weekday pattern, but Longcross getting no service whatsoever.

 

[Joe Paxton]

Is anyone willing to stick their neck out and predict whether this dispute on SWR is going to become as bad as the GTR Southern dispute?

 

[Goldfish62]

Is anyone willing to stick their neck out and predict whether this dispute on SWR is going to become as bad as the GTR Southern dispute?

Given that there's no end in sight for any of the guards' disputes it seems quite likely to me that it could go on for a very long time. What is different is the apparent level of service that SWR is able to cover on strike days. We shall obviously have to see how that pans out in practice.

 

[The Ham]

Is anyone willing to stick their neck out and predict whether this dispute on SWR is going to become as bad as the GTR Southern dispute?

I would say not, for the simple reason that the GTR Southern the TOC was looking to bring in more timetabled services with DOO and so there has been some level of public support.

Whilst SWR are saying that all trains "should" have a 2nd staff member on them and they should only not have one if the train would otherwise be cancelled due to not having that second staff member.

That could be quite a big difference in the eyes of the public (especially if SWR were to publicise services that they could have otherwise run if the change were to be brought in, and they would then get a LOT of support if they found that they could say that they could run 3 or 4 extra services on one day during one of the peaks).

I think that the unions should be careful, in that if they fight this too hard then they could find that public support melts away on the other disputes relating to DOO.

Of course given that it would only be on metro services the unions don't have the same arguments that they used on the 80x's where there could be rural trains that ran into difficulties. As such there's likely to be little that the general public would support on the unions arguments side yet with the massive counter argument that trains will be able to be run which otherwise would have to be cancelled:
- having a guard is safer vs we are going to have to cancel this train and the next one will be rammed and quite possibly the one after that too, but over 99% of our trains do have guards on
- guards can help people who need it vs we are going to have to cancel this train and we'll not be able to help you onto the next train because it is rammed
- guards can talk people out of getting off a train vs not if they are the wrong end of a 10 coach train that is full they can't and anyway it's only going to be some services which we would otherwise have to cancel
- guards are helpful at rural un-staffed stations vs this will only be our metro services and only on trains that we would otherwise have to cancel due to things beyond our control

In summary SWR are saying "Basically you, the passenger, have a choice do you want to get to work or home more often on time and maybe there not be a guard but mostly there will be or do you want us to only ever run services with guards which may/may not be safer than DOO but either way is a lot safer than getting to the station?" whilst the unions are stuck saying the same things time after time and are starting to run the risk of upsetting people to the extent that DOO maybe forced through on a much wider scale and/or more restrictive laws come into being to limit their ability to strike; both with the view to stop the unions from being able to disrupt people.

 

[TEW]

The way you are talking you would think that cancellations due to a guard being unavailable are rife. The company have given the RMT a figure for the percentage of trains cancelled because no guard was available, it is 0.17%. In the grand scheme of things that's nothing. I wonder how many trains the company have allowed to be cancelled due to the next weeks strikes, and how many years it would take for that number of trains to be cancelled for lack of guard in normal circumstances.

 

[Bookd]

In that case the number run without guards would be minimal. The company has said that they will only run without a guard in these circumstances ; if they were to go back on their word then that might be the time that a strike would be appropriate.

 

[TEW]

A strike then would be futile, the trains would be able to run without guards and that's exactly what the company would do. Once the company has established DOO as the mode of operation it will only ever expand, and it will be very difficult to stop.

 

[The Ham]

The way you are talking you would think that cancellations due to a guard being unavailable are rife. The company have given the RMT a figure for the percentage of trains cancelled because no guard was available, it is 0.17%. In the grand scheme of things that's nothing. I wonder how many trains the company have allowed to be cancelled due to the next weeks strikes, and how many years it would take for that number of trains to be cancelled for lack of guard in normal circumstances.

Given the number of services that SWR run that's (according to the save source which can be found with in the Standard article below) 1,000 services.

Yes 0.17% means that it is unlikely to affect you on any given day, however on average that would be the train you use about once every year of commuting (1 every 589 journeys). Which is still not very often, however if it then means that your train is even busier because the previous train had been cancelled then this indirect impact will happen at the same frequency, meaning that about twice a year you impacted by this.

That's still not a massive problem, but given that you would have to travel for something like (assuming a 1 in 5 million rate of incidents for dispatch issues) 10,000 years before you are involved in an incident and for about 20 years (assuming an average train loading of 500 people) before a train you are on is involved in an incident.

As pointed out before even then such an incident is likely to be a near miss our result in a single minor injury.

However the change in risk (even assuming that the is much difference) is likely to be measured in years. For increase assuming a change from 1 in 6 million to the 1 in 5 million rate listed above would mean that instead of your train being involved in an incident every 24 years it would be every 20 years. Again that is most likely going to result in a near miss or a minor injury and may not even impact your journey.

Therefore on the one hand the RMT want to keep people safer from an incident that is highly unlikely to even impact a service that they are on let alone them, using either method of working. Whilst on the other the TOC is looking at ways to reduce the number of trains that they cancel which could mean up to two trains a year not cancelled or overloaded because the previous train was cancelled. It also has to be remembered that the information only relates to trains cancelled and there's still trains that are delayed (which may even skip stops so may well as be cancelled for those people) which would also impact on passengers. Assuming the same (1,000 a year, although probably much higher in reality) number then that would be up to 3 journeys a year that are impacted.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/lon...with-rail-bosses-break-down-a3675241.html?amp

A strike by workers on South Western Railway will go ahead next week after talks to resolve a dispute over the role of guards broke down on Thursday.

The strike is part of a fresh wave of travel misery set to hit passengers from south-west London on November 8 and 9.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union will walk out for 48 hours, causing disruption to services.

The union said it asked South Western Railway management to guarantee a safety critical guard on trains
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said in a message to members: "The union proposed to the company that they adopt the model agreed on Abellio Scotrail.

"Which is:-

• Guarantee a guard on every new electrified train.
• Guarantee that the conductor will retain their full competency (rules, track safety, evacuation).”

South Western Railway run around 600,000 trains a year with guards guaranteed on each train.

Mr Cash said the company want to change this so that they can run trains without a guard.

He added: "When asked why they want to change the arrangements when there is nothing wrong with the current ones, they said it does not deliver the best customer outcome.

"They state that about 1,000 or 0.17 per cent of the current trains do not run due to the non-availability of a guard.

"We do not know the figure for non-availability of drivers but we have said that we are prepared to sit down and discuss ways to ensure that guards are available to ensure trains are not cancelled."

A South Western Railway spokesman said: "We are disappointed that despite re-stating all our previous commitments that we will have more jobs not less, that we plan to retain a second person on every train, and guaranteeing salaries and terms and conditions, the union executive is going ahead with this unnecessary strike which will damage both our passengers and staff."

The train company had previously said it aims to run more than 60 per cent of its normal train services on the two days of the strike.

Strikes will also be held by workers at Southern, Greater Anglia, Merseyrail and Arriva Rail North in similar disputes.

Talks between the union and Arriva will be held on Friday.

 

[The Ham]

Also (again assuming a change from 1 in 6 million to 1 in 5 million and passenger numbers of 2,820,190,450) there would be something like an extra 1.6 incidents per decade compared with 4700 over the same time period (on a 1 in 6 million rate).

However that's assuming that there is a decrease in safety due to going to DOO. Based on the TFL figures if SWR went over to full DOO the accident rate per year would fall to 403 incidents from 705 incidents.

The unions keep saying that having a guard on board is safer, yet don't provide any numbers to prove this. There's only presumption and citing individual cases where things could have gone wrong (but even then there's no certainty that it would have.

What's the view of the RSSB:

http://www.railway-technology.com/f...rains-and-safety-whats-the-big-issue-5769231/

The RSSB says it has undertaken research over the last 15 years on DOO on passenger trains, and is yet to find any increased risk when dispatching a train without a guard being present.

“Our conclusions from the latest analysis are that there is no discernible difference in the risk associated with driver-only dispatch vs driver and guard dispatch,” adds Bearfield. “There is no such thing as absolute safety, you cannot remove all risk. We take a rational, evidence-based view, to ensure progress in safety.”

Conversely in the same article the RMT said:

With the [DOO] model being nothing new it is right to ask the question why, if it is so safe, has it only been adopted by less than a third of the network? The answer is that it is unsafe, unpopular with the public and opposed by all of the rail unions

Of the three reasons given safety had been covered above, unpopular with the public I'll cover later and opposed by the unions is a circular argument. In that the unions don't like it so it hasn't been rolled out due to the risk of strikes and so the unions can argue that it shouldn't happen because it's unpopular with the unions.

Going back to it not being popular with the public I would suggest that is mostly due to the strikes that plague the introduction of it.

As such the reason that it hasn't been rolled out further is almostly solely due to the unions not accepting it's further spread. Again that's circular in argument, in that it shouldn't be rolled out further because it is limited in it's spread and it shouldn't have a wider spread because that means rolling out it more.

As such until such time as the unions can prove there is a difference in safety then there's likely to be a public backlash against the unions when the resist very minor changes (such as those proposed by SWR).

 

[HowardGWR]

^^^ These are powerful postings, but I don't think it will matter very much what 'the public' think. Remember 'the public' mostly don't go near a railway and the commuter element are stuck with it, come what may. What, IMO, matters is what the government is prepared to stonewall on and ditto the industry management, coupled with whether RMT union members come to the view that their case is a hopeless one, or otherwise.

 

[3141]

Brutal but to the point sadly. It’s even worse that the only people that will benefit from this technological change will be the shareholders, and that the passengers won’t see any benefit.

Passengers will benefit, because driver operation of the doors saves a few seconds at each stop, which allows for faster journeys to be timetabled, or a bit more flexibility in an existing timetable, or cumulatively an extra service to be fitted in on the way to Waterloo. Also it contributes to meeting First's targets which include paying a large premium to the DfT, which benefits all rail users.

 

[superhands]

What you have to remember about does tfl numbers is that most of these incidents where on a 378 and some were wrong side door releases. So it's a case of tfl using the numbers to bend the facts

 

[HH]

Passengers will benefit, because driver operation of the doors saves a few seconds at each stop, which allows for faster journeys to be timetabled, or a bit more flexibility in an existing timetable, or cumulatively an extra service to be fitted in on the way to Waterloo. Also it contributes to meeting First's targets which include paying a large premium to the DfT, which benefits all rail users.

And shareholders won't benefit, it's taxpayers who will, because whatever SWR are doing they will have bid and put in a relevant premium. If it all goes pear-shaped, the shareholders will lose however, including all the staff (AFAIK First still runs an employee share scheme).

 

[HarleyDavidson]

And shareholders won't benefit, it's taxpayers who will, because whatever SWR are doing they will have bid and put in a relevant premium. If it all goes pear-shaped, the shareholders will lose however, including all the staff (AFAIK First still runs an employee share scheme).

I won't. I don't do share schemes.

 

[TEW]

Passengers will benefit, because driver operation of the doors saves a few seconds at each stop, which allows for faster journeys to be timetabled, or a bit more flexibility in an existing timetable, or cumulatively an extra service to be fitted in on the way to Waterloo. Also it contributes to meeting First's targets which include paying a large premium to the DfT, which benefits all rail users.

SWR insist that their bid does not rely on DOO. If we are to believe them, (personally I don't but I know many people love to take everything they say at face value), then passengers will get faster journey times regardless. The journey time improvements are a commitment SWR have made in their franchise agreement, they have to be made regardless of whether they introduce DOO or not, and if we are to believe what they say, they have made no decision yet, which suggests they believe journey time improvements are possible whatever mode of operation is employed. I don't think you can make a sweeping statement that DOO will lead to decreased dwell times anyway, I am not at all convinced it does.

 

[pompeyfan]

Passengers will benefit, because driver operation of the doors saves a few seconds at each stop, which allows for faster journeys to be timetabled, or a bit more flexibility in an existing timetable, or cumulatively an extra service to be fitted in on the way to Waterloo. Also it contributes to meeting First's targets which include paying a large premium to the DfT, which benefits all rail users.

I have to disagree with your point above, driver release, guard close with the appropriate CSDE and ASDO would result in the same reduction of dwell times.

It’s a sad state of affairs when multiple members of this forum are actively advocating the deskilling of Railway employees.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

You're always going to get the pro DOO-P lot on railway fora.

They live in their own idyllic world, where they only "work" 9-5 Mon-Fri, have every weekend off, yet they have the absolute audacity to criticise traincrew for having their inviolate right to their days off or to take their leave days especially at weekends because it might mean that their train gets cancelled.

They have no idea what it's like to do shift work, get up at anywhere between 0100 & 0400, one week & then possibly get home at 0100 or later the next and we have to come in no matter what the weather is like too, none of the would have the nerve or skill to do a drivers job and drive at up to 125 mph or more in thick fog at night with the leaves down, nor would they have a clue about how to deal with accidents or failures, go ask one or two to put dets down and see what happens. Could be fun and a busy time for the mortuary or A&E!

What particularly grates with them is they don't like unions for looking after their membership and workforces, I would suggest that they're highly jealous of it, probably because they lack any skill in getting themselves a union to protect them from draconian management & their rights as employees and to get them a decent pay rise each year. All they see is militancy which isn't always the case, sometimes it can be others most of the time it's definitely not, it's just protecting jobs and in the case of the railway the safety of the travelling public, unfortunately they (a significant majority) are so selfish & shortsighted that they can't see beyond the end of their noses.

We'll see what happens when a whole load of people decamp themselves onto a mainline from a DOO-P train and get turned into chunky salsa. Still never mind eh, profits first, safety second.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

I have plenty of time for those who are prepared to listen, I have plenty of time for those who work in the emergency services, NHS and for those who serve our country.

What I don't have time for is those who think that no one else matters except themselves and especially no worker in any of the transportation or service industries who they think they can talk down to, think that they can scream & shout abuse at (a regular occurrence), think that we're not entitled to have our time (rest days) off or take leave if it causes them inconvenience.

Who the hell do they think they are to dictate to & abuse those who provide a service and assistance when they obviously have no understanding of how a pubic service like the rail network actually works and what sort of toll it takes on the workforce and how much skill & training it takes to get things moving everyday to take "them" to work each weekday.

It's not just drivers & guards that it takes to keep things moving, it's a damned team effort and that's everyone from the guys who do train maintenance, cleaners, platform staff, signallers and in fact everyone who has to do anti social hours.

And just because someone earns £100k pa or more doesn't give them the right to use & abuse and take for granted all of the staff, as I've said you wait until such time as something goes wrong and they decide to decamp from a DOO-P en masse and promptly turned into chunky salsa or cremated by either a fallen 25Kv cable or juice rail, then we'll see how vital a safety critical trained guard is to the safe working of train.

I should point out that if train crew wanted to cause chaos they can do so without holding a ballot, all they need to do is put in a overtime & rest day ban and passengers on SN know how destructive that can be and there's nothing a lawyer can do about it because overtime & rest day working is optional NOT COMPULSORY and that's because the railway instead of employing the correct number of staff, wholly rely on the good will & nature of the staff to work overtime, work rest days to keep the service running, without it the service would implode.

 

[HH]

SWR insist that their bid does not rely on DOO. If we are to believe them, (personally I don't but I know many people love to take everything they say at face value), then passengers will get faster journey times regardless. The journey time improvements are a commitment SWR have made in their franchise agreement, they have to be made regardless of whether they introduce DOO or not, and if we are to believe what they say, they have made no decision yet, which suggests they believe journey time improvements are possible whatever mode of operation is employed. I don't think you can make a sweeping statement that DOO will lead to decreased dwell times anyway, I am not at all convinced it does.

They are correct; their bid did not rely on DOO. However, whether they can achieve the time savings they are committed to is another matter. Faster times will be achieved, but how much faster? Of course the timetable may end up saying one thing; what the trains actually run may not be the same...

 

[TEW]

They are correct; their bid did not rely on DOO. However, whether they can achieve the time savings they are committed to is another matter. Faster times will be achieved, but how much faster? Of course the timetable may end up saying one thing; what the trains actually run may not be the same...

If the only way to achieve the timetable committed to is to introduce DOO, then they have committed to DOO in the franchise agreement, whether they will admit it or not. I don't think DOO is faster anyway, and SWR do not seem to want to be drawn on the point either, and I don't think the bid journey time reductions are workable in practice anyway.

 

[HarleyDavidson]

Definitely not on the Portsmouth line, the difference in arrival between a 1P & 2P service is just 3' and that's being very optimistic with just the slightest delay the 1P will be on the signal behind the 2P. Whoever wrote that has no idea.