New thinking needed.

Could devolution be the solution to service delivery collapse?

Despite all the reassurances that services will improve following the flawed implementation of timetable changes in May, passengers continue to experience high levels of service cancellation, delay and poor journey experience on both Northern and Thameslink operations.

This has led the Manchester, Liverpool, and London Mayors to press the Department for Transport to give up its oversight of local rail routes, where expertise has proved to be lacking across the spectrum of planning and implementing service provision.

The London Mayor has renewed a bid to take over South Eastern metro services, given the delay in deciding the future franchised operator to allow new policies to be adopted, that would lead to a freeze on fare increases and better station staffing standards, as seen on London Overground.

The argument also applies to Thameslink. It is becoming more obvious by the day that the concept of this service is completely wrong and that it needs to be seen as a Crossrail route that runs 24 trains per hour as an inner suburban railway running over largely dedicated infrastructure.

Since the timetable implementation in May it has become clear that an operating incident far beyond the central core causes wholesale disruption to the service. The furthest boundaries on the Southern network are at Littlehampton ( 62 miles from central London) and Brighton (50 miles), and involve passing complex junctions at Horsham, Three Bridges, Gatwick and East Croydon. This infrastructure has the advantage of trains operating at similar speeds and little freight, which means simpler operations in terms of train headways.

For Great Northern and Midland routes, the furthest boundaries are at Peterborough ( 76 miles), Cambridge ( 55 miles) and Bedford (50 miles). These sections of line operate complex mixed traffic railways with high speed passenger trains and heavily-loaded freight services where individual train delays quickly multiply.

Much can go wrong in the presentation of trains to run through the Thameslink central section in the allocated two-minute time slot. Of course, it is not happening, even though the service has been reduced to 16 rather than 24 movements per hour.

It has emerged that the Rail Operating Centres at Three Bridges and York are in conflict about priorities. Initially Thameslink services were supervised from the Three Bridges ROC, where regulation decisions were made. The impact on East Coast performance has been so dire that York ROC refused to allow staff at Three Bridges to make train service decisions on the East Coast Main Line. This followed traincrew relief failures that led to trains remaining stationary for 30 minutes or more during peak periods.

The York ROC solution isn’t good. It pays scant regard to passenger needs, because if there is Thameslink late-running – as occurs every day – station staff are instructed to issue ‘non- stop’ orders to traincrew so that trains omit stops between London (Finsbury Park) and Peterborough/ Cambridge (and in the reverse direction), as needed, in order to make up time.

The allowed turn-round time is also abandoned, which means that there is no time to service the train in terms of interior cleaning, restocking of toilets or the collection of any lost property. It appears similar policies have been adopted by the Three Bridges ROC, because the ‘Live Trains’ app records a similar deletion of train stops on Southern routes.

This is disruptive in the extreme to passengers, and GTR has instructed that vulnerable users must be provided with taxis to make their journeys; this includes people with train and airport connections. That sounds good, but at quieter stations there is no taxi rank and these service providers have become reluctant to step up as they have a lengthy wait for payment against purchase orders, rather than collecting cash from ticket offices.

Both the Liverpool and Manchester Mayors believe that Transport for the North (TfN) should provide the service specification and supervise delivery to agreed benchmarks. The Northern and Trans Pennine Express franchises are jointly managed by DfT and TfN but decisions taken about the failure to deliver the May timetable did not include any representation from local government.

In July Northern reinstated 75% of the 168 services it cancelled in May but it is still struggling to run trains, particularly on Sundays where there is a cancellation rate of 5%. Taken as whole it was only able to operate 80% of services within the Public Performance Measure threshold in the first two weeks of the revised timetable.

Without local stakeholder input, Northern initially produced a resource-led timetable that removed services to Windermere that were judged a low priority. Clearly there was no awareness that the substitute bus services would have little hope of making the journey to meet connections at Oxenholme, given the gridlocked roads in the area during the holiday season.

TfN must be responsible for overseeing decisions Northern and TPE make when faced with resource shortages, and that they develop an incentive regime that influences management behaviour. An example would be recruiting drivers and there being less reliance on volunteers working overtime.

Where TfN is wrong is in wanting to take on revenue risk. This means the operator has no incentive to spend money on the journey experience to increase revenue, and that it can cut service standards even if this means the product is less attractive.

This was the structure adopted for the Thameslink franchise and the management behaviour it has created has led to reduced commitment to product quality because it doesn’t matter what effect there is on revenue. In due course the effect of this will be seen when DfT revenue falls short.

In seeking more control of rail operations there is a parallel objective not to increase fares. Both the Liverpool and Manchester Mayors have asked for the scheduled 3.2% increase in controlled fares to be abandoned in January 2019. In London the Mayor has already implemented a fares standstill which has not resulted in increased passengers and which has left a large hole in the investment budget, meaning that the replacement of London Underground trains has been postponed.

There is a very simple message here: freezing fares will reduce revenue and lead to an investment shortfall.

“In July Northern reinstated 75% of the 168 services it cancelled in May, but it is still struggling to run trains”