Yesterday saw Mike Brown, Managing Director of London Underground and Isabel Dedring, the new Deputy Mayor (Transport) appear in front of the London Assembly’s Transport Committee.
The two-and-a-half hour session looked to explore the current state of the Underground and yielded some interesting comments, particularly from Mike Brown. A selection of highlights is below.
Post PPP Performance
One of the particular hot topics of the session was the performance of the Underground since the effective end of the PPP arrangements. Here, Brown was keen to stress that all lines had seen overall performance improvements since the end of the PPP, with the exception of the Jubilee and Waterloo and City.
He did, however, acknowledge that last Autumn/Winter saw particularly bad disruption on the Sub-Surface Lines. The bulk of this he attributed to two particular issues:
1) Cracks on District Line trains requiring a full review of all carriages.
2) Pitting on Metropolitan Line stock wheels – a problem not previously experienced.
He also acknowledged that the rollout of the new Victoria Line rolling stock had not been entirely satisfactory, largely thanks to the well documented issue with sensitive door edge issues activiting based on inside-out pressure.
Similarly (and unsurprisingly) the significant issues associated with the Jubilee Line upgrade implementation were acknowledged.
Overall, Brown pointed to the positive that there were 17% less lost customer hours overall since the end of the PPP, but as Chairperson Caroline Pidgeon accurately pointed out, this is a slightly misleading statistic, as disruption in 2010/2011 has proven higher overall than 2010/2009.
As the Chair wisely asked:
If that performance had been the performance of Tube Lines, what would you have been saying to them?”
This provoked an interesting answer from Brown:
The issues around the Jubilee Line are entirely related to the introduction of new technology which was a hypothetical case in the time of Tube Lines because they didn’t actually introduce it, and it is fair to say, I believe, that I would be sitting here if tube lines still existed in its previous guise with you quite rightly asking when on earth any new signalling was going to be introduced on the Jubilee line. Because I don’t think it would have been done to this date.
When asked by Val Shawcross how many lines he felt would see improvement next year, given that 8 out of 11 had seen deteriorated performance this year, Brown answered simply:
All of them
This was something that Isabel Dedring was keen to build on. She stressed that, from her perspective, what she would like to see moving forward was a renewed focus on day-to-day reliability and more robust plans on a line-by-line basis. As she admitted:
2010/2011 was not where we needed to be.
Transparency
Something that the Assembly have been keen to emphasise for some time now has been the lack of raw data made available on performance from TfL – especially since the demise of the PPP Arbiter’s role. Thus understandably this was another topic that received much attention.
The Chair was keen to highlight this lack of performance data – commenting that charts and presentations were all well and good, but that they weren’t raw data.
The new Deputy Mayor acknowledged the point, although displayed a certain degree of nimble footwork, by suggesting that lots of information was indeed made available by TfL – perhaps too much in fact – but that this overflow may in fact sometimes make getting to useful data tricky. She agreed to work with the Committee to address the issue.
Another interesting snippet that emerged from this topic was that there will be a new paper on Benchmarking the Underground as part of the next Board Papers. Given the demise of the PPP, this is certainly a welcome development. Something Brown acknowledged:
Benchmarking data is not for me an academic exercise – it is about the core of how you run the place. It’s about ensuring that you do learn from best practice activity where it takes place. It’s about ensuring that you use that activity – that data – to compare yourself with other Metros and other businesses.
Upgrade Timescales
During the meeting, Brown give a good, succinct, summary of where all the current major upgrade projects currently stand. This is worth repeating here:
Jubilee
– Full signalling in by end of July.
– New Timetable Sunday, end of July with a new 27tph peak that Monday
– Service increases again next year in time for the Olympics
Victoria Line
– New train rollout now nearly complete
– Decommissioning of old signalling started
– First phase of service increases end of summer
– Increase again in Spring next year
Northern Line
– Contract for signalling upgrade now in place (more on that here)
– Delivery by 2014
Sub-Surface Lines
– Signalling contract now awarded
– Rollout of 191 trains now underway
Again, Brown returned to the subject of Tube Lines when it came to talking about the Jubilee and Northern Line upgrades, explaining why time lost under the PPP could not be recovered:
I do not believe that if we had not taken control of Tube Lines we would have had any new capacity or any new signalling on the Jubilee Line this side of the Olympics. I think its inconcievable.
I think it was such a mess – much more of a mess than I’d even imagined in my worst nightmares. When we got hold of it there wasn’t a plan. There wasn’t proper communication. There wasn’t a decent proposal to take it forward and to introduce that signalling system.
It was therefore inevitable that the delay on the Northern Line, that was always coincident with the completion of the Jubilee Line, was always apparent and was always going to happen.
He also reiterated that the approach taken with the Northern Line will be that which should have been taken on the Jubilee, but which Tube Lines abandoned as they fell further and further behind (we’ve covered this in detail before here):
On the Northern Line, we’ll be doing it by individual sections of the line. That was the plan for the Jubilee, but they kept slipping so much that they melded all the sections together. Which is why we ended up having to turn the new signalling system on all the way from Stratford to Dollis Hill rather than having the original intent.
We are not going to slip from that intent on the Northern Line.
Jenny Jones asked Mike what lessons had been learnt from the various upgrade works so far, and from other bodies such as Network Rail.
Brown commented that the fresh mindset now in place at Network Rail hopefully heralded closer cooperation on some of the key challenges both face in rail terms. In terms of the upgrades, he stressed that more offsite testing was vital – the lack of a test track for the Victoria Line demonstrating that and a problem that hopefully can be avoided on the Sub-Surface. Similarly no offsite signalling testing for the Jubilee was a huge failure.
Future Risks
The Deputy Mayor expressed the opinion that, going forward, efforts need to be focused on reducing disruption of new programmes for the customer. She highlighted that there is a difference between “good slippage” and “bad slippage” – it is better to slip on discovery of a problem and fix offsite, than continue in order to meet targets and cause disruption.
She also stressed that there needs to be a focus on reliability not just capacity and performance – if a commute takes 30mins 90% of the time and 45mins 10% of the time, she pointed out, then people have to always budget 45mins for that trip anyway.
The Assembly also brought up a number of concerns recently expressed by ASLEF, which Brown looked to address:
1) Whether the new Jubilee Line timetable was robust
Brown responded that he understood there was a sense= that the assumptions going into the new timetable on required dwell times may not have kept up with the demand we’ve seen. He acknowledged that this had proven a problem in the past, but was happy that it was not going to happen on the Jubilee.
2) Potential problems with the System Management Centre at Neasden
Brown acknowledged that this involved a huge amount of work, but had been a key part part of the testing process. He indicated that lots of work had been carried out with Metropolitan Line control at Baker Street Met to make sure any potential problems or complexities north of Dollis Hill are clearly understood.
3) The difficulties of signalling at Neasden
Again, Brown acknowledged Neasden was complex but that there’d been a huge amount of testing. He also indicated that human interventions (i.e. additional supporting people) would be part of the rollout process.
4) Whether Alstom (the holders of the Jubilee Line rolling stock maintenance contract until recently) had been getting complacent ahead of handing the contract back?
With the contract now handed back, Brown’s comments here were limited:
Early insights have given us some cause for concern now we’ve got in and had a look at it, and that was one of the reasons we wanted to take over the contract.
Lessons from the Jubilee Line
The Committee asked Brown to elaborate on any lessons learnt as a result of the Jubilee Line upgrade difficulties. Brown suggested there were three fundamental lessons, which are worth quoting in full:
Do it in sections. Don’t do the whole thing in one big chunk. Because you are just spreading your risk across the whole line, rather than a manageable part of the line and having proper test operations in that management chunk.
Secondly, Off. Line. Testing. Much more of the trains – or in this case the signalling system. Put them in a simulator. Get the issues. Get the operators involved at the front end, which they didn’t have the opportunity to be in the Jubilee Line. Operators are the ones who know how to break this! That’s the way their minds work! Technical guys can only do so much – it’s Operators who know how to break this, the types of failures that will emerge and therefore the fixes that need to be put in.
And the other thing on this, fundamentally, is to make sure you have the full involvement of all parties at the earliest possible stage. Not just Operators, but Maintainers as well. Because again, even though Tube Lines was one entity, that it wasn’t just the Operators on the LU side – Train Operators and Signallers – who hadn’t been involved, the Maintenance Staff within Tube Lines hadn’t been involved either and that’s very difficult – to just give somebody something that you tell them confidently as a project team its going to work, but that they have had no ownership or involvement until you hand it over. That’s not the right way to do things.
On The Victoria Line
Brown acknowledged that the Victoria Line rolling stock rollout had slipped slightly, placing some of the blame for that on supply issues at Bombardier – including problems with a Japanese supplier affected by the earthquake.
He confirmed that decommissioning of the old signalling between Walthamstow and Blackhorse road had been completed over the recent Bank Holiday weekend, and will now continue south once the rolling stock rollout is complete. He also confirmed that a permanent software fix for the door issues had now been produced.
On the Northern Line
Richard Tracey pressed Brown and Dedring why Seltrac had been retained for signalling the line, given TfL’s own critical assessment of the Northern Line signalling contract in 2010.
Brown pointed out that the original contract with Thales was for both the Northern and Jubilee Lines, but that TfL had taken the opportunity to renegotiate and that had resulted in:
– Better value
– A better delivery method (i.e. less closures)
– More confidence that the system will meet LU’s needs.
He also pointed out that there is already some minor infrastructure already in place on the Northern at track bed level and on trains, so there is a benefit to staying with it.
Brown also indicated that N1 – the first stage of the resignalling – will be Finchley to High Barnet, to make sure phased implementation started on the least used part of the network.
Dedring also patiently and politely tried to explain to Tracey [I’m sure she’ll learn – JB] that he was slightly misunderstanding the situation, and conflating the signalling system itself with the way it’s implemented – with the implementation being the major problem on the Jubilee.
Tracey did raise a good question over the subject of closures – asking for confirmation on the likely form these would take.
Brown confirmed that it would be weekends and slightly extended closures at the likes of Easter and Christmas. He highlighted that the plan was to make more effective offline testing and simulators, and more effective use of the nightly window via some slightly later starts on Sunday mornings to maximise windows and minimise overrun risk (but still mindful of key workers who need to get around).
Overall, Dedring pointed out that there would be a 60% reduction in customer hours lost over Tube Lines original forecast (although Caroline Pidgeon did point out that Brown himself had actually suggested they may be able to do it with no weekend closures at all at one point – something Brown acknowledged, but pointed out that this would have meant starting again completely from scratch).
On the Sub-Surface Lines
Murad Qureshi led the questioning on the SSL. He asked Brown how LU would approach what is a truly mammoth project – the upgrade of both trains and signalling whilst maintaining the existing elderly line infrastructure.
Brown indicated that the process had already begun, with 8 new S-Stock trains now available and in service. The process of removing the least reliable old trains would begin shortly. He indicated that LU were aware of the need to stay on top of anticipating failure and work in deploying staff better to places like Edgware Road where the risk from things such as wire degradation is greater (on which Qureshi commented that he looked forward to seeing the infamously aged Edgware Road signal in the London Transport Museum).
Moving away from the SLL Upgrades, Jenny Jones questioned the impact of the removal of District Line services from Olympia outside of event hours.
Dedring pointed out that the Consultation on this was still open, and urged interested parties to contribute. Jones’ response probably makes it clear that she’s not the biggest fan of Daniel Moylan, TfL’s Deputy Chairman:
I have dealt with Daniel Moylan before. I have no faith in Daniel Moylan’s ability that ‘consultation’ actually means ‘consultation’
As Brown pointed out in defence of the proposal, however:
I use Earls Court every evening and, I have to say, I stand there on the platform waiting for a train, with empty Olympia trains with – on average – six people on a train.
Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Central Lines
The final comments worth summarising here relate to the remaining lines.
Here, Brown was keen to highlight that these lines would see some investment in the coming years. On the Bakerloo, we’re likely to see signalling and control room life extension work and work on the track circuitry. In fleet terms, interestingly, Brown revealed that LU are looking at moving a couple of old Vic line trains over to Bakerloo as a float.
Similarly, on the Piccadilly there will be signalling, train reliability and traction control improvements. Brown acknowledged that the major Piccadilly upgrade was likely to remain unfunded for the duration of this Parliament, however, at least.
He did suggest that the SSL work though might provide the opportunity to plug in control a bit better above ground.
The Central Line will see train works and works on water ingress.
Interestingly, Brown also expressed an aspiration for a single Deep Level Tube train, similar to the S-Stock approach on the SSL.
Those interested can watch the full committee meeting webcast here.
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