TPE franchise to move to OLR

[Neptune]

This is very interesting. Did anyone notice this?
They haven’t bothered with LNER, Northern or Southeastern, although they weren’t lost under Harper.

The same about returning to the private sector was certainly said when Northern transferred to the OLR. I’m fairly sure the same was said about LNER. Covid changed the timelines on these 2 remember.

 

[Benjwri]

We were aware of that tender six weeks ago. As were many others, including MPs, the transport select committee and Andy Burnham... I suspect there's been a U-turn by Mark Harper.

The tender when out 6 weeks ago, but they awarded the contract yesterday. They wouldn’t award the contract if they were going to lose the franchise.

 

[ainsworth74]

This is very interesting. Did anyone notice this?
They haven’t bothered with LNER, Northern or Southeastern, although they weren’t lost under Harper.

That's just boilerplate. Whenever an operator ends up under OLR (or DOR before them) the Transport Secretary of the day always says words to that effect. It's meaningless ideological guff and not worth spending any time thinking about particularly.

 

[VauxhallNova]

News that is 4 years overdue.

A backlog of recruitment and driver training: if these issues are not TPEs fault, it must surely be the previous operator?

 

[gabrielhj07]

So much for the OLR having its hands full then.

 

[Neilandrewhall]

Wonder if First Travel Solutions will still do the rail replacement side for TPE?

 

[Purple Train]

Mr Harper said taking TransPennine under state control was "not a silver bullet and will not instantaneously fix a number of challenges being faced".

Translation: "We're not going to make an attempt at sorting out any of this mess but hey, at least it's not run by First! Remember that and be grateful, O ye uncultured Northern peasant, when you're next standing with your face squashed against someone's shoulder all the way to York, and two hours late because we needed a "short-notice change to the timetable"!"

I wish I was optimistic.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Wonder if First Travel Solutions will still do the rail replacement side for TPE?

I still see Arriva staff at Northern rail replacements, so it's possible.
It always felt a bit off to me that the rail replacements are done almost entirely outside of the TOC but that's a different topic

 

[ValentaFan1974]

Just think about how much money could be saved over time by renationalising the whole bloody lot? Maybe put some of that spare money into refurbishing rolling stock and investing more into maintenance of the tracks/stations etc… maybe even a few pennies spare for an overdue pay rise for the staff…. Hopefully more TOC’s will follow.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I would disagree in the case of LNER. But while the IR issues and lack of a RDW agreement exist I can't see much changing in the case of TPE.

Indeed definitely a case of be careful what you wish for here. LNER was already a solid operation VT gave up the franchise for financial reasons not because they couldn't run it and the OLR have been paraded as the experts when they aren't as aptly shown by Northern. This is being done to appease the local politicians but all it does is set back another 1-2 years any chance of improving things for passengers and will more than likely be used to further cut back services to make it look as though they know what they are doing.

 

[Darandio]

News that is 4 years overdue.

A backlog of recruitment and driver training: if these issues are not TPEs fault, it must surely be the previous operator?

First have had it (in various forms) for nearly 20 years, i'm not sure they can pass the buck back that far.

 

[Neilandrewhall]

I still see Arriva staff at Northern rail replacements, so it's possible.
It always felt a bit off to me that the rail replacements are done almost entirely outside of the TOC but that's a different topic

I work for FTS I didn't want to loose my job.

 

[TomG]

Well they'll have to update the letterhead and remove any "operated by First branding". Otherwise not a lot.

As First Group continuously mucks (in want of another word) up each contract/franchise (whether rail or bus) they have reckon they should change their name to 'Last Group.'

 

[Horizon22]

Just think about how much money could be saved over time by renationalising the whole bloody lot? Maybe put some of that spare money into refurbishing rolling stock and investing more into maintenance of the tracks/stations etc… maybe even a few pennies spare for an overdue pay rise for the staff…. Hopefully more TOC’s will follow.

How much? A very small percentage is profit and the vast majority is already “nationalised”. One major thing that isn’t are rolling stock companies (ROSCOs) and it would cost tens of billions of pounds to buy that all back.

Nationalising means that the “spare money” has to be authorised from the government / DfT/ treasury who are incredibly reluctant for any “spare pennies” to be given out and in many cases is quite the opposite - cuts.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Care to elaborate on that final statement or is it without base?

Shall we also go with the OLR start date for Northern of 1st March 2020 which had many plans in place but then some event took over 3 weeks later and changed things on the railway forever?

Northern have big plans under OLR. May 2018 proved that Arriva’s plans were crazily optimistic in such a short timescale from franchise renewal, anyone with half a brain could see that. OLR have stabilised it (remember that ARN was losing money at an alarming rate) and looked at the bigger picture and where to go which became clearer in the last year.

Northern have recovered from covid better than most operators but also suffer the same issues as other operators such as staff shortages and IR issues. This is due to a variety of reasons mentioned elsewhere which I won’t go into. The training schools are full and there are still courses being filled for the future. Yes it takes a little time but it will bear fruit.

Now the plans might not be as grandiose as those set out 7 years ago under Arriva but they are going to be more realistic especially in the post covid environment.

There are many things to look forward to such as new trains on the horizon, new and improved accessible stations, new services, TRU which is a long game but will see incremental benefits over time until it is complete.

Would merging Northern and TPE be such a bad thing? Both franchises have had a meltdown in recent years, both cover the same area, both will be now under recovery under the OLR and crucially it is a benefit to amalgamate into a single entity especially at this time of manifesting into GBR.

You can still run them separately but with one set of directors and head’s of each department and it means Northern gains a premium intercity brand to boot.

Cue the person who’s main reason not to merge is a 150 on TPE services which wouldn’t be able to happen in my plan.

My comments weren’t about merging Northern and TPE (which I’d support) - they were about how OLR doesn’t seem to have any measurable impact unless the franchise was well ran already.

As a user of the Cumbria routes, the only change has been 6 car 195s and associated minimum platform lengthening (which probably would’ve happened under Arriva due to the Manchester changes). We’ve already gained all the ‘grandiose’ that we were promised, apart from Northern Connect catering which was unlikely to happen anyway.

As a user, there’s been no real change for the better. Disruption is creeping in again more than it was in the initial post COVID period. Sure there might’ve been changes on TRU but my venture to Leeds is via the Bentham line!

Contrast the relative stagnation on Northern (however well intentioned) to the continuous improvement on LNER. It doesn’t change my point that how you perform under an OLR mainly depends on the existing management.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Did anyone from the OOR bother to tell TPE this? They very much seem to have been unaware, having awarded a contract yesterday for maintenance of the Class 68s:

It’s the wording of ‘in preparation for an award of a National Rail Contract’ which interests me. It’s very specific and not the kind of thing you’d put in if you knew you were losing the franchise the next day, or were even worried about it.

It’s fairly standard stuff. You negotiate the contract, irrespective of who the new “owner” is going to be. If you were FG, you would hope it is going to be an NRC but as an OLR “Service Contract” is very similar in construction to an NRC, it isn’t going to matter much to the maintainer who the new “owner” is going to be.

I am not very surprised at this move, especially after the local election results. The Government needs to be seen to be “doing” things in key seats so they can claim any improvement as being a result of their actions, rather than anybody else’s. If I was them in this situation, I would have done exactly the same thing. Cynical but that’s politics, I’m afraid.

It will be interesting to see if OLR appoint their same two consultants to the TOC board and/or whether they will start to amalgamate the senior team at Northern with the senior team at TPE.

 

[Agent_Squash]

Now we need the same with Avanti!!!

Avanti got rid of Phil Whittingham which seemed to solve a lot of problems….

 

[dooton]

Avanti got rid of Phil Whittingham which seemed to solve a lot of problems….

Nothing more than a scape goat. I'd look at the head first rail as the heart of the problems.

 

[weastebusdepot]

I work for FTS I didn't want to loose my job.

If previous 'nationalisations' are anything to go by, the provider will stay the same until the contract is due for renewal. Then it will go to whoever does the best bid... which may still be the same provider.

Hence Arriva still do the rail replacement (badly) for Northern, Stagecoach have LNER and Abellio have ScotRail. But Transport for Wales switched from Arriva to Abellio.

 

[mpthomson]

Just think about how much money could be saved over time by renationalising the whole bloody lot? Maybe put some of that spare money into refurbishing rolling stock and investing more into maintenance of the tracks/stations etc… maybe even a few pennies spare for an overdue pay rise for the staff…. Hopefully more TOC’s will follow.

History shows that Government organisations cost at least as much, if not more, than their private equivalents to operate and run. There are many examples within the NHS, knee and hip surgery being two instances where it's cheaper for the NHS to contract this out with the same or better outcomes even with the private provider's profit taken into account.

If the rail service improves significantly I don't think most people would object. But the idea that nationalisation will save large sums of money simply isn't correct, especially given some of the recent DfT procurement decisions..

 

[Djgr]

This seems to be the exact opposite of what "insiders" were saying on this forum several weeks ago.

Still, I think it is a very important economic and moral principle that private profit driven organisations that fail to deliver on their societal and consumer promises are told to take a running jump.

I would agree that the "car crash" local election results probably led to a change in decision, as the Tories didn't want to dig their own hole to make it even larger.

 

[timothyw9]

I would disagree in the case of LNER. But while the IR issues and lack of a RDW agreement exist I can't see much changing in the case of TPE.

Under the impression TPE driver do now have a RDW agreement in place, but it went into place the same time as Action short of a strike by ASLEF - overtime ban.

 

[Royston Vasey]

A reminder that OLR is a consortium of three massive consuiting firms, Arup, Ernst & Young and SNC-Lavalin. Regardless of what it will cost the public purse (it won't be cheaper) and the fact that DfT call the shots, at least it's not a bunch of civil servants in Whitehall fiddling around running four franchises at once. But it does typically have something of a positive impact on service.

 

[12LDA28C]

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really? You realise it will still be the same staff on the ground running the railway? Nothing will change, in fact things could even get worse.

 

[tbtc]

Indeed definitely a case of be careful what you wish for here. LNER was already a solid operation VT gave up the franchise for financial reasons not because they couldn't run it and the OLR have been paraded as the experts when they aren't as aptly shown by Northern. This is being done to appease the local politicians but all it does is set back another 1-2 years any chance of improving things for passengers and will more than likely be used to further cut back services to make it look as though they know what they are doing.

Agreed

VTEC was running fine, other than the need to pay big premiums to the government… something which the government were happy to sign up to at the time but then used as a stick to beat Virgin/ Stagecoach with

LNER looks fine now, it’s turning a “profit” to the Treasury , but then every operator of the main ECML franchise does… the only difference is that it’sa lot easier for East Coast/ LNER than it was for the private operators as they didn’t need to worry about meeting targets

Similarly, the Government had to approve Arriva’s service/ rolling stock plans for Northern (given how heavily subsidised it is), so if Arriva were “too ambitious” in terms of running improved services with insufficient trains then doesn’t part of the blame lie with the government?

I know that the mood on here odd generally “Private Sector Bad, Public Sector Good” (and that we’d have billions of pounds spare of only those pesky TOCs didn’t repaint trains every seven or so years etc), but it feels like some TOCs are set up to fail and the government get to act the good guys for stepping in

(That said, today’s decision must really annoy a lot of “free market” conservatives, already smarting from the latest Brexit news, now seeing a Tory government doing yet more Nationalisation, so that’s going to make social media amusing…)

 

[Efini92]

Northern have big plans under OLR. May 2018 proved that Arriva’s plans were crazily optimistic in such a short timescale from franchise renewal, anyone with half a brain could see that. OLR have stabilised it (remember that ARN was losing money at an alarming rate) and looked at the bigger picture and where to go which became clearer in the last year.

In fairness to ARN, they were miss led by Abelio on how much RDW was required each month. They under budgeted by a lot.

 

[Davester50]

The FAQs on the TPE are laughable.
Has "Can I still bring my bike?" ever been asked about the OLR taking over any failed franchise?

 

[12LDA28C]

Now we need the same with Avanti!!!

And what difference will that make?

 

[childwallblues]

It did not stop them with their timetable changes into Liverpool last December were we gained additional through to Hull and Cleethorpes.

 

[ivanhoe]

I'm of the opinion that the Headline is to divert attention away from a problem franchise that in Government circles, is undermining the process of rail franchising. Let's get control of the narrative! TPE has had problems for a number of years and Northern Mayor's are beginning to control the narrative.
In the meantime, there will be little change really. The driver shortage does not go away with a change of ownership. Was it though beyond the capability to run some form of a robust timetable which may not be to the liking of the Northern Mayor's, but at least Passengers would know what to expect. I hope for the sake of Passengers and Staff, that the crisis is eventually solved. It effects staff moral when you're constantly in the news and Passengers are probably getting used to finding alternative forms of transport anyway .