Industry Insider

Passengers advised not to travel unless it is essential

“It must have been obvious to the management teams of both franchises that the new timetable was not deliverable. In both cases, a postponement of the changes was the only viable option.”

The revised timetable introduced by Thameslink on Monday June 4 had fallen apart by the end of the week at Great Northern and Southern stations.

Despite the half-hourly timetable between Peterborough and Horsham being thinned out to an hourly service during most of the day, not a single train ran between 1300 and 1800 on Friday June 8, other than an unscheduled early afternoon service that did not operate on the through route.

Station staff resorted to displaying messages urging passengers not to travel unless the journey was essential, and ticket offices were closed to provide staff to organise bus and taxi services. Schoolchildren were among the worst affected, and the issue was made more vexing as the youngsters were stranded on their way to sit public examinations. As a result, station staff were instructed to ensure all such children were conveyed to their schools by taxi.

Passengers have begun to treat this as a Dunkirk moment, where (despite the odds being stacked against them) they are determined to undertake the journeys they need to make to collect children from nurseries, attend hospital appointments, and reach their employment. The Assisted Travel process has collapsed, but wheelchair users find able- bodied passengers are all too willing to lift them on and off trains and buses as required.

The staff are bewildered. Many longserving people have never seen selfinduced chaos on this scale, but they soldier on despite often having less information about the train service than the passengers. This is because they are not equipped with mobile devices that provide access to the live trains app which is part of the National Rail database.

The customer service failure at King’s Cross and St Pancras continues, and although the relevant platforms are no more than 500 yards apart, staff have no idea what is happening at the adjacent station. It is an urgent requirement to show arrivals and departures for Great Northern services on the customer information systems at both locations.

It must be a matter of reflection for all concerned that after £ 7 billion has been spent on a new cross-London route, with signalling that allows 24 trains per hour to operate, after just three weeks passengers are advised not to travel - one station notice board has the additional message of “until further notice”.

The complexity of what was planned had been recognised with the creation of an Industry Readiness Board, which gave final clearance for the introduction of the new timetable on May 20. Knowing that makes it all the more incomprehensible that Government authorities were assured everything was ready for a smooth transition to the new train service.

The people who made this judgement are among the most senior industry professionals available, but it has to be concluded that the meeting room replaced visiting stations and depots and talking to the people who were going to deliver the service. I am told that train-crew supervisors urged a postponement as sufficient route learning had not taken place.

I realise that there are many passengers using services provided by Northern who are suffering the same woes. Again, there is a published timetable which on the day cannot be run because of a lack of train crew and rolling stock.

There is some mitigation compared with Thameslink, as the new train service depended on the delivery of electrification on a number of routes that was not completed on time. But why go ahead? The outcome has been no less dramatic, with many trains withdrawn from the timetable and Windermere isolated from the rail network with a replacement bus service.

The common factor is that it must have been obvious to the management teams of both franchises that the new timetable was not deliverable. In both cases, a postponement of the changes was the only viable option.

The Chairman of the Office of Rail and Road is to conduct an inquiry about the decision-making that took place, which in essence is about licence compliance and the suitability of the train operators concerned to fulfil their statutory function of providing the required rail service. There are many passengers who will have a view on what the outcome should be, and it is likely that whatever the conclusion there will be very substantial financial penalties.

There is pre-disposit ion among Government officials to blame Network Rail for their planning deficiencies. In their matrix organisation, they have established what is described as a system operator function that controls matters such as train planning. It has been evident for some time that despite the best efforts of the staff involved, the software in use is not suited to operational requirements in Britain.

There has also been an inability to produce timings in accordance with the regulatory requirement of providing service information at least 12 weeks before trains run, so that knowledge for advanced ticket sales is available. Criticism also continues about the accuracy of timetables, particularly in respect of connections and on-board facilities available.

A common strand that runs through both regulatory and delivery performance is a belief that greater productivity is needed to reduce the overall cost of running the network. For the current Control Period (2014-19), the ORR insisted on a reduction in overall NR costs that was not achievable, and this included timetable planning resources which have been shown to be below that required.

As far as the train operators are concerned, there has been a need to squeeze the cost of day-to-day operations to make competitive franchise bids. For Thameslink, the successful Govia bid assumed a cost reduction of £40 million per annum, and the result is what we see now - insufficient resources to undertake driver training, and a woeful lack of technology to enable staff to inform passengers about service availability.

Looking to the future, the Department for Transport has published an Invitation to Tender for the East Midlands franchise and a consultation document about the future pattern of Cross-Country services.

Whatever the outcome, the disaster that has resulted from accepting a bid to run Thameslink services at unrealistically low costs must be avoided. We are dependent on assessors accepting realistic bids and their performance must improve.

“Staff soldier on despite often having less information about the train service than the passengers.”