Christian Wolmar
Rail replacement buses.
IF there’s one phrase that deters people from taking the train, it is: “A rail replacement service will operate on this route.”
Apart from having to sit on grotty old buses, I have had several bad experiences, such as some years ago not being allowed late at night to get on a coach with a bike, despite there being plenty of room in the luggage compartments and barely half a dozen other passengers. This forced me to cycle several miles on dangerous roads in the pitch dark, with cars speeding past me at 60mph.
Research a few years ago by Passenger Focus (now Transport Focus) suggested that just over half of people would not use the train if part of the journey involved a replacement bus. I am certainly one of those. Even I, with my reluctance to drive anywhere, will jump in the car to avoid those smelly old buses operating on greatly extended service times.
Rail replacement buses always appear to be a service operated on the cheap, with little forethought or planning, and patched together at the last minute. Yet, there is a little secret that I confess I only learnt about when reading an article by Alex Warner, the chief executive of Flash Forward Consulting.
This is the fact that rail replacement services are almost all provided by companies associated with the train operating companies which require them. Moreover, they are a highly profitable area for those companies, yet it is very difficult to ascertain the level of that profit because it is effectively an internal pricing mechanism between companies with the same owner.
Warner says that by awarding these contracts essentially in-house, it emphasises “the financial well-being of the greater organisational good than the needs of customers”.
Moreover, it is a highly profitable business. It is quite possible for a train operator to specify low prices in the tender in order to win the contract, but then pay much more to obtain buses or taxis, which boosts their subsidiary’s profits and reduces the profit level of the train operator - money which today is guaranteed by the taxpayer.
Virtually every train operator obtains services from its owning group’s ‘road transport services’ provider. Moreover, some of these contracts continue after the franchisee has departed.
For example, Arriva obtained a two-year contract to provide road services for its Northern services earlier this year, just before the franchise was handed over to the Government-run Operator of Last Resort. Arriva also runs the service in Wales, with a contract lasting until January next year despite losing the franchise in October 2018.
Similarly, Stagecoach still runs rail replacement services for LNER, despite the fact that it handed back the keys to the franchise two years ago and the contract was never subject to a tendering process.
One industry source told me that at times the train operators can earn more from providing bus and taxi services to replace trains than in operating the rail services themselves, not least because of the small margins available in the franchising process.
And one taxi provider in the north of England told me: “We would love to get some of this business, but when it is tendered, unrealistic bids are put in which makes it impossible for us to win the contracts.”
There are a lot of reasons why this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. There is no proper market for services. There is no incentive for the provider to offer a good service, or even a service at all if the in-house provider does not have enough vehicles. Worse, there is a disincentive for train operators to use alternative rail routes. This is because they would have to pay extra track access charges to Network Rail, and therefore it becomes more profitable and simpler to simply offer the dreaded buses and coaches instead.
The Department for Transport has been aware of this unsatisfactory situation for some time, but has found it difficult to take any action. The problem is that this is a secondary service, and therefore the specifications in the train operators’ contract were too vague to be policed.
But there is now a greater imperative for the
Department to take action because it is taxpayers’ money that is being wasted. Certainly, at the very minimum, there should be an open tendering process given that these contracts involve millions (even tens of millions) of pounds.
But it should not only be about money. Given how frequently rail replacement services are used (I have visited Brighton about twice annually at weekends in the past six years or so, and it seems as if every time I see more of Three Bridges or Haywards Heath than I ever want to), more should be done to improve the quality of what is on offer.
So often, in my experience, there is little explanation of the length of delays, the location of buses, the availability of refreshments and toilets, and so on. And (a personal gripe) why is it absolutely universal that bikes cannot be carried, when most coaches have plenty of luggage space available? That stopped me using trains twice this summer.
Now that the Department has all the levers of power at its disposal, it can ensure that a much higher level of service is provided, with more staff provided to help passengers find their way, better-quality coaches and much clearer information.
The Department can also ensure that the cosy cartel of train operators essentially awarding themselves contracts is broken up, with outsiders allowed to put in bids that will be fairly assessed.
Perhaps the Department (or, probably better, Network Rail) should let the contracts, ensuring that the operators, who in future will be mere management contractors rather than franchisees, are cut out of the process.
None of this seems very radical, but this area has been one of the clear failures by the private sector to make any improvements on what came before under British Rail. Perhaps one day, ‘rail replacement’ will not be the dreaded phrase no passenger wants to hear - but somehow I doubt it.