East Coast ‘pain’ line
Franchise failure illustrates that serious investment is required
decision by Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling to go for another short-term fix for the East Coast franchise is truly depressing ( RAIL 853).
Does he not remember that was the claim when National Express was relieved of the franchise in 2009, and that it was actually run by Directly Operated Railways for over five years?
The sterile argument over the future of the East Coast Main Line (ECML) will no doubt continue.
On one side, you have people who think competition is the answer to everything, but who overlook the fact that although the ECML has more rail-on-rail competition than any other route, there has been a lack of focus on the need for investment on the infrastructure. Routes such as Chiltern with a single operator have been far more successful in improving the service to passengers.
On the other side are those who advocate renationalisation, but who refuse to acknowledge that our privatised railways have received far more funding than they did when in the public sector.
I agree that the ECML is not a failing railway, but it is certainly an unreliable one with trains consistently underperforming in the longdistance sector as a whole. The latest performance figures issued by the Office of Rail and Road on May 24 show that the trend continued in Q4 2017, with none of VTEC, Grand Central or Hull Trains achieving the average 85.3% PPM (Public Performance Measure) or the 5.8% CaSL (Cancellations and Significant Lateness).
It is over 60 years since I started work on the railway, and I have never seen a train plan that is so fragile as the current one on the ECML. The infrastructure is simply inadequate to reliably deliver the train service, and the capacity on the route is not optimised with far too many short trains.
The ORR appears not to understand that fewer, longer trains has the potential to both increase the number of seats available and improve reliability. It is also clear that it has approved additional access rights without ensuring that infrastructure improvements are in place. It has a statutory duty “to promote improvements in railway service performance and, in particular. reliability including punctuality”. In the case of the ECML, it has clearly failed to discharge that duty.
At a time when our railways have received record levels of funding, it is testament to our lack of strategic planning that improvements on the ECML have received so little investment.
The East Coast franchise has continually generated premium payments that help to reduce the level of funding our railways need from the taxpayer. Average train loads on East Coast in 2016-17 continued to be the highest in the UK (at 245 passengers per kilometre run, way above other operators).
So why have only three of the eight interventions on the route, identified in the Initial Industry Plan published by Network Rail in 2011 as being necessary to improve reliability and increase capacity, been delivered? No wonder it is so unreliable.
The service on the route is also prone to collapse, as illustrated on May 20 when the 0930 King’s Cross-Edinburgh failed in the Alnmouth area at around 1300. Normal working northbound was not resumed for almost four hours, and the impact on southbound trains from Edinburgh on a Sunday afternoon (one of the busiest times of the week) was catastrophic.
Between 1430 and 1705 just one of the seven booked trains for King’s Cross actually left - the 1347 from Aberdeen. Three trains were cancelled, with both the 1600 and 1620 trains departing 65 minutes late. To add to passengers’ misery, the 1700 was terminated at York due to problems with the overhead line equipment that also caused heavy delay to the four remaining trains from Edinburgh to King’s Cross.
The impact of the train failure would have been greatly reduced if the ECML had bidirectional signalling on the long sections of two-track railway that leave it so vulnerable to any out-of-course incident.
Recovery from such incidents is also hindered by the lack of electrified diversionary routes, with only one (the Hertford North branch) on the 425 route miles between King’s Cross and Leeds/Edinburgh. The contrast with the West Coast Main Line is stark - when electrification through Bolton is complete, there will be nine electrified routes on the 209 route miles between Euston and Preston.
How many trains have been cancelled between Leeds and London, due to the failure to electrify the short link between Leeds and the ECML at Hambleton? The infrastructure on the Hertford North branch is also woefully inadequate to deal with the number of diverted trains, as illustrated on May 10 when the 1030 Hull train caught fire in the Welwyn area.
The East Coast franchise is only a small part of the business on the East Coast Main Line, but the train service it operates has far greater value than that. Only East Coast and Thameslink/ Great Northern routinely run 530-plus-seat trains, with East Coast also generating premium payments.
The delivery of long-distance trains on the ECML is surely more important than all of the other services on the route, including those of the heavily subsidised Northern services that wander across the route via 15mph connections at Doncaster.
A major problem with our privatised railways is that too many decisions are made by the Department for Transport, the ORR and Network Rail - organisations that have little or no contact with passengers.
More authority needs to be given to the train operating companies, who are far more customer-focused. But with the number of operators using the route, I question whether the ECML is the best place to start to making that happen.
Beyond doubt it is one of the most important strategic railways in Europe and needs more than yet another change of management and rebranding. The route urgently needs a recovery plan that addresses the need to remove capacity pinch-points and provide bidirectional signalling together with electrified diversionary routes.
Sadly, the DfT and the ORR appear to be like rabbits in the headlights of a car, with no idea of where to go next. As the late Gerry Fiennes once said: “What a way to run a railway.”
“It is over 60 years since I started work on the railway, and I have never seen a train plan that is so fragile as the current one on the Eeast Coast Main Line.”