In April 2018 the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a report on Rail Franchising in the UK. In particular, they were concerned with the DfT’s handling of its (relatively) new “mega-franchise”: GTR.
Much of the Committee’s work involved looking at the perceived failings of both the DfT and Govia, the franchisee, during the industrial disputes that had plagued former Southern services. Read the report to completion, however, and a clear theme emerges – that whatever the merits of grouping Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern together were, they represented a bold step for a Department that did not have a good, recent record in acting as an ‘informed client’. That is, one with enough internal knowledge and experience to be capable of spotting delivery risks within the agencies (such as Network Rail) and franchisees (such as GTR) that it was responsible for.
One of the examples the Committee cited for their concerns was the DfT’s handling of fines for the passenger disruption that the 2016 disruption on Southern in particular had produced. The franchise contract included a series of performance penalties that should (and did) kick in for this, but Govia had responded by claiming each incident as a ‘force majeure’ event. Under the terms of the franchise, these each then needed to be considered individually, and many were found to be valid according to the terms of the agreement. Indeed the DfT were forced to acknowledge that this was one of the primary reasons why they had little legal grounds for cancelling the franchise, as many had demanded, even if they wished to.
In response to the Committee’s questions, the DfT were keen to point out that they had learned from this situation. Protracted negotiations over the level of fines had continued until July 2017, the said, at which point Govia and the DfT had reached agreement on a financial settlement.
The terms of that settlement are laid out in the report. Govia agreed to pay £2.4m in performance payments for previous incidents. More crucially though, the DfT also said that Govia had agreed to pay, up front, a flat fee of £10m. This would cover performance payments for any Thameslink disruption up until September 2018.
Confused, the Committee asked the Department to explain how agreeing fines in advance of services that had not yet been delivered was in the best interests of taxpayers or passengers. In reply, the DfT asserted that they felt the performance regime within the contract would actually not benefit passengers because of the amount of management time the DfT might have to spend ‘‘arguing over a huge number of detailed claims”. The DfT stressed to the committee that they believed they had made a reasonable assessment of the costs, based on what they believed would be the ‘worst case scenario of disruption’, so the amount was fair.
This did not go down well with the Committee.
“It is unacceptable” it warned, “that the Department agreed to disregard the terms of its contract and settle the level of fines Govia Thameslink will pay for future poor performance before knowing whether Govia Thameslink was performing well or not.”
As it stands, it looks like that £10m might turn out to be the best bit of money Govia have ever spent.
Playing the blame game
Nothing has highlighted better how complex the process of managing – and improving – the railway network is than the current issues caused by the May timetable changes. We have already written extensively about the operational causes of those issues (as well as the politics of them). To a large degree, the problem has been a combination of late deliveries of both infrastructure and rolling stock, and the failure of GTR to address longstanding driver training issues in time. Nor are these issues confined to London and its commuters. Indeed in many ways Northern’s passengers are now facing a situation that is considerably worse. There, many of the same driver issues found on GTR have emerged, but their impact has been heightened by Network Rail’s failure to deliver key infrastructure work.
All of these issues mean that a timetable change which should have represented the first step on a path to a better future for Britain’s railways has instead made the lives of many thousands of passengers considerably worse. Whether that impact is short term or not is, to the person suddenly left without a way to work or home, immaterial; what matters is that it has happened at all.
As in all such situations, this has naturally led to questions being asked by both the public and press as to who is to blame. Complex causes mean that there is no simple answer to this question. Britain’s mainline railways are essentially managed and operated by a ‘Holy Trinity’ – DfT, Network Rail and the franchisees. In this instance, while the proportion may change by area, the simple fact remains that all three parts of that trinity must bear some of the blame.
What has been remarkable to watch so far, however, has been the resistance of one part of that trinity to acknowledge any share of the responsibility. Whilst Network Rail and the franchisees concerned (GTR and Northern in particular) have at least acknowledged that they have failed, the DfT’s response – where one has been evident at all – has been to point out that it is everyone but the Department who is to blame.
Nothing has perhaps epitomised this more than the letter issued last week by the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling, in which he laid the blame for the current disruption at the feet of Network Rail’s timetabling department and (to a lesser extent) GTR. That we felt compelled to respond in musical fashion should perhaps be indicative of how farcical a letter it was. It is rare to see a Secretary of State so enthusiastically throw a publicly owned body (Network Rail) under the bus, let alone one over which he exercises ultimate control.
The Transport Secretary – and indeed the DfT’s – failure so far to acknowledge or explore their own role in the current issues is one of the things that will bear watching over the coming weeks. This is because although there is nothing inherently wrong with the DfT’s approach to the GTR franchise, there seems to be little doubt that in some way they have failed to perform the role of the ‘informed client’ that approach demands here, and which the Public Accounts Committee (and others) warned them they needed to be.
Whatever operational and logistical issues exist, there is no escaping the fact that it was the DfT who scoped the franchise, set Network Rail’s priorities and – ultimately – had the final say on whether these timetable changes should have taken place now or been rephased, with whatever consequences that might have brought.
All three parts of the Holy Trinity will have questions to answer in the coming weeks, all of which we will cover here. The process of learning from the mistakes that process highlights, however, will rely on each organisation accepting that they are in some way to blame.
In all three cases, the responsibility for accepting that lies as much with the leaders of those organisations as it does with those on the ground. Network Rail still have a lot to learn about delivering projects on time and to budget, the TOCs have considerable work to do in the area of driver recruitment, and – just as crucially – the DfT have a long way to go in rebuilding the institutional knowledge about the railways that will allow them to act as an ‘informed client’. So far both Sir Peter Hendy (Network Rail) and Charles Horton (GTR) have publicly acknowledged the former, but there has been little sign of the latter from Grayling himself on behalf of the DfT.
That’s a worrying sign not just for the industry and passengers, but for those working within the DfT who can see the kind of ‘informed client’ it really needs to be.
Great article. One nitpick: “Whether that impact is short term or not is, to the person suddenly left without a way to work or home immaterial, what matters is that it has happened at all.” reads a little awkwardly. I would punctuate it as follows:
Whether that impact is short term or not is, to the person suddenly left without a way to work or home, immaterial; what matters is that it has happened at all.
Statement from Grayling.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/rail-timetabling
Short term impact daily pain for us commuters impacting my job and family. if I treated my customers in this shoddy manner I would no longer be employed.
My travel day 4th June Earlswood Surrey 06.24 to London cancelled. Waiting 30 minutes for the next train at 06.54 arrived at work 10 minutes late.
Noted comments on Twitter and no trains for 2hrs 30 mins in peak rush hour.
Left work 25 minutes early to travel on the 16.44 Blackfiars to Earlswood and train cancelled.
No trains until 19.14 and I hold little hope that I will be able to get on-board the train.
I have suffered Southern trains over the last few years and travel has now reached an all time low.
The government want to build 8,000 more houses in this area around Redhill Aerodrome.
You cannot even get the existing residents home and estimate around 4,000 + passengers struggling to get home.
We demand to see clear steps on how the Government will take steps to resolve what is a catastrophic failure. There is mention of fines etc but I want a service that works. A solution is needed ASAP.
What a sorry tale. I truly wonder if the envisioned Thameslink timetable will ever be delivered. It’s a tall order given the length of the combining routes, the complicated interdependencies and the core frequency even if they weren’t running on minimum driver levels. I should love to see this succeed but sadly I dont think it will. I will win a wager I had with some old colleagues though. On the enquiry I assume this is just a blame deflector. For the actual poor s##s on the front line this will be the last thing they need as they will know what’s gone wrong by now and should be desperately trying to fix it not work up statements for their bosses to spout when called as witnesses. The fundamental truth is that you always need more drivers than you think you do – or that the mathematical models tell you. The real world always gets in the way.
One problem that only seems to have recently occurred to manager’s minds is the difficulty in building up enough driving time over the new routes (Three Bridges to Horsham, South Croydon to East Grinstead and Otford Jnc to Maidstone East). Having then gained the relevant experience to accept sole responsibility for driving a train over the route then, you have to maintain it; broadly this means having driven over the route at least once in the previous 6 months.
There is some evidence that this might not be possible!
You can’t blame poor Chris Grayling he’s merely the Secretary of State, so obviously not in charge….
Nuffink to do wiv me guv’!
P.S. Saw the interview earlier on the BBC, first time someone called a spade a spade…
Having watched the SoS’s statement live and then the subsequent questioning I thought the whole thing was close to a shambles. Grayling threw everyone “under the bus” except himself and his department. He threatened to undermine GTR (Govia) at some point in the future – wonder how that will go down with current and future franchise bidders? He even tried to spin the mess as being the ideal reason for his “partnership” of operation and maintenance to go ahead quickly. He threw Chris Gibb under the bus, he threw “railway professionals” under the bus. If his shoulders had sloped any more his arms would have fallen on the floor. A disgraceful performance.
I wonder if MPs in Kent know what will be visited upon them come 2019/20 when the new franchise is awarded with the TOC partly replacing Network Rail for some maintenance activities? I spy a monumental railway and political disaster in the making. And then we have the West Coast and East Coast routes lined up for the same ridiculous treatment.
The man is a liability. The opposition know it but I think their rehearsed “he must resign” stance wasn’t the right one today. They needed to relentlessly attack with facts as Lilian Greenwood managed to do. He needs to be put in a place of “no escape” from the facts that he and his department are culpable for.
Interestingly the Tory side of the House were clearly livid but were reluctant to be obviously disloyal to their own side. The MP for Redhill got closest to delivering a damaging blow by insisting “that the SoS and his department should recognise they are part of the railway and be part of the solution”. Grayling didn’t quite know how to handle that one. The fact he repeatedly insisted he was the person to ensure things got better became more and more farcical the more he repeated the same point in answer to MPs’ questions.
I completely understand why MPs were ranting about the disruption to their constituent’s lives. You’d expect them to be making that point but they really, really need some education on how railways *actually* work and what the structure of the UK industry actually is. There is actually an opportunity here for the railway industry if only they would seize it but they’re probably terrified of DfT disapproval for acting “independently” and arming potential critics with real ammunition.
The Hansard record of the statement and the exchanges that followed it can be found at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-06-04/debates/8053C64D-817B-4041-BB61-9C445FDC599E/RailTimetabling
The video should be available on parliamentlive.tv as well, but I don’t have a direct link for that.
The statement and questions / responses are here:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/b00320b1-dbf7-4fdc-b51c-db3e8a5f200b?in=17:01:28&out=18:23:10
Haven’t had the heart to plough through the whole lot yet, maybe tomorrow when I feel less nauseous
@ B&T – believe me you will lose the will to live if you last to the end of the session. I think Bercow (The Speaker) let it drag on and on merely to increase Grayling’s agony given he’d resorted to 2 or 3 “standard phrases” after 12-15 mins of MPs’ questions. There are only so many times you can hear him repeat the same thing before your brain starts to melt.
I’m quite sure that the SoS will make it all the way until 11:59 tomorrow, but will have been resigned by the start of Prime Minister’s Questions, as is the way with our system.
“You literally could not make this up. Chris Grayling is having to rearrange or cancel meetings with MPs about Northern today because he underestimated demand and cannot make the timetable work” – Lisa Nandy, MP.
Once you’re at the joke stage, that’s it.
Anyway, I thought it was all part of the plan to stop people in Scotland and Devon/Cornwall finding out they wouldn’t have food, fuel and medicines a few days after a Hard B-unmentionable. The Home Secretary yesterday with his “look squirrels” dog-whilst over “no terrorist safe spaces” what being deployed hard.
[I let this comment go but we don’t want too much political speculation or mentions or allusions to Brexit. PoP]
@WW: Last night Grant Schapps (Welwyn Hatfield) pretty much called for Grayling to resign on the BBC news… You could almost see his train of thought doing a hand brake turn to avoid saying it outright.
SHLR
That would be Grant Shapps without the c.
To be fair, he has (for a Tory MP & ex minister) been quite outright in his condemnation of Grayling/GTR/DafT since the timetable fiasco.
You know how when a company makes a really big mistake it is nearly always because upper management are concentrating on something else. They fail to see something coming from a competitor or there’s something that they have been getting away with for years and suddenly they don’t….
But with this, GTR have already had problems with lack of drivers and route knowledge when they took over the franchise, when introducing the 700s to the original route, when introducing the 700s to GN and to top it all the introduction of this timetable is the very reason for the existence of the franchise in the first place – so the DfT should have been all over them on this.
They should have been training drivers on the “new” routes well in advance. Apart from the London Bridge area to Blackfriars and the Canal tunnels sections, the routes have been there for years. Even the canal tunnels have been used for ECS movements for more than a year. Of course, by doing things in advance, you would have the extra expense of “refreshing” peoples knowledge before the go live. If they just never caught up from the earlier recruitment problems they should have held there hands up and said “Sorry we need more time”.
Daven, part of the “lack of drivers” problem is down to initial problems with reliability of the Classs 700s. The cadre of extra drivers that GTR had, have had to spend loads of their time ensuring that individual units are reliable enough to bring into traffic. As their reliability rises then the amount of “running in” new trains reduces but that still ties up drivers who should be helping with road learning making sure that new units can be accepted.
Add to this the rather toxic relationship between staff and management and you get the feeling, talking to or merely ear-wigging GTR staff, that having got the company (they generally all appear to hate) over a barrel they are making the most of being ever so slightly uncooperative.
From Chris Grayling in that debate:
The man cannot grasp that Arriva is well run when suitably directed.
Arriva does a good job on the London Overground (overseen by TfL). Its parent company does an excellent job on Chiltern Railways where it is basically left alone. But, as he points out, it also runs Northern (overseen by DfT and him) and there things are going wrong. Yet he cannot understand that there is probably some correlation here.
The lack of effective competition between would-be franchise operators is coming home to roost. Unless you have the ridiculous situation of forcing every TOC to bid then there is no impetus for them to put themselves in the current firing line.
That Grayling has made a cock-up of transport should be no surprise to anyone given what he did to the legal system. Now he’s taken the flak for the Heathrow decision he might be removable — but who would want the unenviable task of replacing him? So I suspect we’re stuck with him.
Re PoP,
May be Northern (Arriva) should have taken the other option NR gave them in early January for a 2 month blockade to complete electrification before the May TT change (the option they went for was actually slightly earlier shut down in the evenings and lots of weekend closures).
Now time to start checking which local greater Lancashire MPs appled political presure on Grayling and Northern for this not to happen.
Northern would still be have problems if electrification had completed in May for similar reason to Thameslink, not enough drivers trained on routes through Mancester that used to terminate.
If it was clear in April that there would be a lack of drivers on the new routes, why wasn’t the old timetable continued for 2-3 months and the changeover delayed?
Christian Schmidt: “why wasn’t the old timetable continued for 2-3 months and the changeover delayed?”
Hubris.
I think the rational way forward would be for the resurrection of British Railways. I don’t even see it as a political matter it’s just so blindingly obvious that we need a publicly directed and funded yet professionally run fully vertically integrated railway organisation. I know EU rules call for separation of infrastructure and operations but there must be ways around that. Look at DB or Austrian Railways. Even the sort of centrally directed franchises that GTR is where government take the revenue risk are so fraught with friction points no one knows or will admit to what’s going on – hence resolving matters becomes all but impossible.
Re Christian,
Because the changeover would have had to have been delayed till December when another large set are / were due…
The changes directly affect 4 other TOCs so have to be done in step.
It is also possible the most senior management were not fully informed and some aggressive unrealistic assumptions over training rates had been made by them and no one wanted to be the proverbial messenger that would be shot for passing on the news. Also a possible belief that training would hit target rates after a slow start.
The COO is off in September as he only signed a 2 year deal to dig them out of the previous hole as the first COO’S railway expertise actually turned out to be in railway retail premises management…
ngh,
If it is who I think you mean, she had a wide variety of railway jobs in Railtrack and had a good reputation. Hence why she is now with HS2 where she is more at home. I think her previous experience of dealing with unions in a dispute was probably nil.
It is true her previous job was commercial director… for Arriva Trains Northern. Looks like she has dodged two bullets!
NGH 14:46
” the change over would have delayed until December” why ? I might be a bit dense but why is say, a September start not feasible leaving time before the December timetable changes and giving 3 months to train drivers on route and new trains together with more rolling stock.
ngh,
Is it really only four TOCs affected? I can think of three south of the river if you include London Overground (SWT is affected on the South Coast by any Southern retimings). Not only the TOCs but potentially the open access operators as well.
@ PoP 1115 – I’m going to quibble ever so slightly about Arriva running Overground. My sense of things is that it is not as good as it was when MTR were involved. Despite a ratcheted up performance regime on the concession contract there seem to be more delays, more rolling stock failures and it just feels “worse” than before. I wonder if Arriva are under so much pressure to make money out of the contract that some of the quality of the previous set up has been stripped out or cut back. Obviously not all the failures are the responsibility of Arriva but there’s not much sign of the expected “better relationships” with Network Rail or Bombardier (who have the rolling stock maintenance contract).
If the parliamentary exchange you referenced is the one I think it is then the MP asking the question firmly belived TfL directly ran the Overground. She clearly didn’t understand Grayling’s entirely accurate answer that Arriva are contracted to actually run the trains. She said “NO, TfL” back to Grayling but by then we were on to the next question. That is partly why I believe MPs need more education about our railways – they wouldn’t make daft mistakes like that in the House.
I completely take your (and JB’s) point that TfL are a more involved and intelligent Client that will understand what needs to be done and how long it takes. However we must not forget that TfL itself was badly caught out by the GOBLIN electrification fiasco and was doing its own version of Grayling’s “I am appalled, I was told by experts it was all OK etc etc” when a walk around the line or even a 4 stop bus ride between T Hale and Blackhorse Rd could have told anyone in TfL the first set of blockades were never going to deliver an electrified railway.
I still think Grayling is useless but no one is immune from believing what they are told by supposedly informed people and then finding themselves in a mess when the informed people themselves haven’t double checked to make sure they’re being told the truth. At some point in the management chain a step back and some double checking / challenging of the “facts” is needed and that’s one of the DfT’s clear weaknesses. Been there, done that etc etc. Nothing I hated more than being made to look a numpty in front of the boss because someone let me down. They didn’t do it a second time.
Walthamstow Writer,
Point taken but is the reason that Arriva is worse or TfL have changed the specification?
Agree entirely on checking. There are numerous examples. Apparently, often engineering work is said to be complete and it is only the final check that means it is clear that it isn’t.
To be honest it’s quite frustrating watching the response to it all. On the one hand you have MPs tweeting about meetings with Chris Grayling where, as an example from a Bedford MP, someone has agreed to ‘look at reinstating EMT calls at Bedford’ where we now have 5 and 6 car trains working these services which previously stopped and paths which clearly will not work if they were reinstated, or where Tim Farron is pushing for the Windermere line to return to Transpennine when they are suffering just as much as Northern: It just goes to show even further how much of a lack of understanding they (Grayling, his Department and other MPs) have over the situation.
On the other hand it isn’t even clear what the solution is going forward: Thameslink’s emergency timetable seems to be adding petrol to the inferno as the service seems to have deteriorated since it was introduced, and to an extent there seems to be more effort going into running that than there is into route learning, which might go some way to dealing with the problem. Regardless I think the situation is inexcusable when the basic outline of the network has been known for 18 months, plenty of time to increase the driver establishment and for route learning. For not doing these fundamentals, only DfT and GTR can take the blame.
@ Anon 1746 – The problem is that most people are not concerned about details or complexity. They believe you can snap your fingers and all will be well. Worse they believe that if you shout, yell and stomp your feet and say “sack people” or “it’s a disaster” that this actually helps. It demostrably doesn’t. Having had more than 25 years with LUL I know railways are fiendishly complex things and running them well takes enormous skill and effort. However even with that experience I am still learning things from the GTR / Northern debacle. I think one of the most distasteful aspects of the “political debate” is the way in which the poor souls inside the TOCs and Network Rail who do difficult and involved jobs are being “trashed”. I don’t feel this helps at all.
I have only the tiniest insights into timetable construction and scheduling (and that’s for buses, not trains) but these repeated remarks from Grayling about the process and the people in it shows a complete disregard for the skills needed to do the job well. You need these people to be motivated and respected for their efforts not being called useless and failures and then making pronouncements about future changes which just increase the risks and complexity about future changes multi-fold.
As is evident from the volume of discussion and articles drivers can only be doing one thing at a time. They can’t be driving passenger trains, doing route learning, doing mileage accummulation on newly delivered trains and instructing new drivers all at the same time. There has to be progress on all of these *but* it involves some horrible cuts and compromises in the short term until one or two of the problem areas ease significantly or are resolved. Then you can make progress in rebuilding the timetable – provided the poor timetabling and staff rostering people can keep up. Oh and it’s not exactly helpful of Mr Grayling to launch the Glaister inquiry now which will only take up management time within NR and GTR / Northern when management should be concentrating on the day job not worrying about how not to look like incompetents in front of the professor and his team.
I think the problem is more fundamental. Who is Thameslink trying to serve? Nobody is going to want to spend 2.5+ hours in a Class 700 between Brighton and Cambridge (and anyway it would be quicker to change in London). As the Thameslink trains are mostly the stoppers (Horsham to Peterborogh via Redhill) they are not really tapping a regional market, yet by sending them to the far reaches of the network the chances of disruption are all the greater. Perhaps, better a north-south equivalent of Crossrail, with shorter routes and less destinations? What is needed, is an intra-London “express” service, to serve cross-London (say 20 mile radius) trips that would now would involve train-tube-train transfers. Perhaps this is a role Thameslink could fulfill? Currently, this massive investment is achieving nothing. Who would head to Farringdon to catch their train over going to Kings Cross?
PoP @ 1529. Said former COO had plenty of dealings with unions in dispute, perhaps most notably in the long running* Network Rail / RMT national dispute about signallers terms and conditions in 2010; and appeared on the steps of the High Court to speak to the media when the industrial action was ruled unlawful due to ballot irregularities.
* but clearly not as long running as the subsequent Southern Guards dispute.
Mike Jones: It has been said before, but it’s worth repeating, that Thameslink is not trying to serve the Brighton to Cambridge market (even supposing there is one). But Brighton/Gatwick etc to Kentish Town, and Croydon to Stevenage/Cambridge etc are realistic journeys, and it make sense (arguably) to serve both these sub-markets with the same train. We should also remember the soon-to-be-crucial state of Farringdon, once that is served by Crossrail.
Which does not invalidate your observation about spreading disruption, which is an important point. However, rather than containing disruption in isolated pockets, perhaps we should be trying to prevent it happening in the first place?
Mike Jones @ 23:03
I think you’re partly right, what it can do is provide additional N-S capacity, and distribution from London Bridge and Kings Cross St. P. It doesn’t really matter where the trains go, but destinations that minimise the chances of disruption would be helpful!
What is also does is increase capacity on suburban lines to Kings Cross & St P where there is limited platform capacity.
Given that delays are inevitable to, say, 5% or 10% of trains it is essential that spare paths be left to accommodate these, i.e. the timetable should not exceed 24 t.p.h. if the capacity is 30.
@WW – The reason Grayling has announced the Glaister enquiry now is that it’s the ONLY thing he can do in the long, dishonourable tradition of Ministers kicking a problem into the long grass – announce an “independent” enquiry to buy some time, give the impression of actually doing something and hoping that by the time the enquiry concludes the whole mess will be forgotten and / or Grayling will have moved on – probably to create yet more havoc somewhere else.
Will be interesting to see whether the enquiry addresses (or is allowed to address) what I suspect to be at the heart of many of the issues here, one touched upon in previous comments – an aggressive, fundamentally bullying culture where executives (or ministers?) create such a climate of fear within departments or organisations that no one is willing to present bad news or point out serious issues with strategies dictated from on high. By the time “successful” leaders have eliminated dissent from their immediate circle and surrounded themselves with sycophantic nodding the type of horror show we now have becomes inevitable. Lots of studies on “Corporate Psychopaths” to back this up.
I’ve no detailed knowledge of how much of an issue this was within or between DfT, NR, GTR or Northern, but having witnessed the build-up to and fallout from the Heathrow Terminal Five opening I would guess that we have here a pretty malignant, fear-driven culture that needs some serious overhaul – and all of the grandstanding promises to “hold companies to account” and “demand immediate solutions” will only worsen the problem.
Also… Having now watched most of the Grayling Statement / Q&A the only person who seemed to have much of a clue to me was Lillian Greenwood – so hopefully the Transport Select Ctte will get their teeth firmly stuck into this and not be simply sandbagged by the Glaister activity. Seems quite possible to me that part of the appeal of Glaister to Grayling / DfT may be an attempt to spike Greenwood’s guns?
Totally agree about the need to look at “corporate psychopaths”. Having lived through the RBS/ABN debacle (where Fred Goodwin point blank refused to discuss any of the pitfalls with underlings who could see exactly how the wheels would fly off), that really resonates for me.
Does it apply here? The 2016 speech by Wilkinson in Croydon, boasting about picking fights….
Not that I expect the government to allow this aspect to be reviewed.
Re “corporate psychopaths” the GTR issues were predicted, including (as mentioned by others) by the National Audit Office e.g.
“Challenges remain: the Department and Network Rail did not ensure that efforts began early enough to build the readiness to deliver the new services; and the poor state of the rail network in the South East could undermine passenger benefits. The late schedule change also introduces operational and commercial issues which must be resolved. The Department and Network Rail will need to carefully manage these uncertainties and risks as the programme draws to a close.”
I’m open to the idea that Ministers ignore advice but – and I may be completely naive – not that it is not given. I think the NAO matters, not least to the Permanent Secretary and the Chief Executive of Network Rail who are frequently called before them to explain issues.
Apols, Perm Sec and Chief Exec are hauled up in front of the Public Accounts Committee but the NAO is present and often asks questions too.
Mike Jones 5 June 2018 at 23:03
“Who would head to Farringdon to catch their train over going to Kings Cross?”
When my wife used to travel from Euston Square to Hendon, she found changing at Farringdon a great deal less grief than changing at Kings Cross St Pancras.
Mike Jones: When through trains between Cambridge and Brighton started, I caught the second through service from Cambridge to Brighton, and (of necessity) two separate services and the Underground home again. I far preferred the through service. Yes, it was a bit slower, and yes, class 700 seats are too hard, but avoiding the hassle of transferring from Victoria to King’s Cross more than made up for it.
I was a fit single traveller with no luggage. I expect there are others for whom avoiding the inter-station transfer is even more valuable.
@ B&T – I do understand what Grayling was doing politically in launching the inquiry. I don’t actually object to someone digging around to find what has gone well as well as gone badly. It’s the timing. I know Grayling would have been criticised if he had delayed the start of Glaister’s work but I’d have preferred a later start so that the respective management teams were not distracted. The priority is to ensure service stabilise then as resource issues ease to build the timetable back up.
We’ve already got plenty of evidence from past NAO reports that plenty of mistakes were made. It’s clear that Lilian Greenwood knows that further “difficult decisions” were botched late in the day. However how many investigations do we need? I am sure NAO will be back at some point to conclude their oversight of the Thameslink programme. We have the Transport Select Committee undertaking an investigation and we also have the Glaister work. On top of all of this I’d expect GTR and Network Rail to be undertaking their own internal investigations and it’s possible their own audit functions will be asking questions. That’s a lot of work and I doubt there will be one clear, agreed timeline and matrix of responsible / accountable persons that underpins an agreed statement of actions and decisions. It’s far more likely we’ll end up with conflicting views and opinions and not much clarity. As for assessing organisational culture and personal behaviours – well who knows. Depends how deep down in the organisations the investigators go to find out what it was like for front line / head office staff doing the day to day slog and if said staff feel able to speak freely.
WW re Transport Select Committee inquiry, could be v interesting if Mark Carne is called to give evidence before he leaves Network Rail. My impression is that he’s so far tried to avoid reacting to Grayling’s letters to MPs (and other public statements) laying the blame at NR’s door – partly because NR has been part of the problem but mainly because he realises that the blame game is mutually assured destruction and doesn’t help the industry. However, he may feel that his last appearance at the TSC would be a good chance to set the record straight.
Re A-mous,
I suspect Mark Carne is sitting on the fence as the evidence will probably come out any way. ASLEF is doing / will do most of the hard work well before any appearances so he probably doesn’t have to.
In the case of Northern, ASLEF have already pointed out that new route training required driver training to have started 4 months before it actually did and that they have copies of helpful warning letters that they sent to Northern in advance to point out the last possible moment training could start if enough drivers were to be available for day 1.
Sufficient MPs are already aware and have copies.
I also believe the same will happen with GTR as the additional route training will need to have started happening more than 3-4 months in earlier than it actually did.
I also suspect that a non communication of bad news culture within organisations will have covered up the driver training issues.
Longer term LR readers will know this as the “thermocline of truth”
Horton at least now admits a glint of a problem rather than complete denial today:
“We have sufficient drivers, but where drivers are available to run these services is mismatched,”
from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44388190
To which the obvious response is that a driver can only drive one train at a time which appears to be news to Horton given the actual number of drivers suffieicntly trained for the new service pattern…
It appears Horton needs to read “The Mythical Man Month” by Fred Brooks aka “Brooks Law” -summarised as: the later you start the more additional inefficient resource you need to throw at things to get things done.
The APTU (official Thameslink users group on the midland side) has published this brief one pager on their understanding.
http://aptu.org.uk/pdfs/may2018timetableproblems_aptuview.pdf
Can we please get the APTU author hired to help the railway’s comms?
@NGH: The fundamental rule of throwing more people at a late project is this: It’ll be even later…. That is assuming they can actually do the job in the first place.
In your case Brook’s law doesn’t apply, instead I’ll summarise your summary: Game over! You’re f*****d!
Brooks Law etc was only really intended to apply to software development projects. For those, even if appropriate suitably-skilled people are available, in some cases they should not be brought in.
This problem is not (mainly) a software development project (although maybe parts of it come close). If lots more suitably-skilled drivers were available (even without the specific route knowledge required) then it probably would be feasible to bring them in, get them the route knowledge ASAP, and the problem would be solved.
However, this is quite hypothetical, because no such pool of trained drivers exists.
However, another message in the “Mythical Man Month” book may be more relevant. Here is the Wikipedia quote which summarises it: ‘Brooks wrote “Question: How does a large software project get to be one year late? Answer: One day at a time!” Incremental slippages on many fronts eventually accumulate to produce a large overall delay. Continued attention to meeting small individual milestones is required at each level of management.’
@Malcolm: I had forgotten about the “one day at a time” bit! Yes, very apt…
My big problem is with this statement from NGH where he mentions the use of “inefficient resource”. By the time you’re doing that, you should have canned the project. At least in IT….
I also have a big objection to humans being referred to as “resource“, but that’s not the topic at hand….
Re Malcolm and SH(LR),
My opaque reference was actually to Driver Instructors as the critical skilled resource rather than route trained drivers as the DIs are the critical change process enablers as are the programmers etc in Brooks law. Attempting to train all the drivers in half the time will need more than double the number of DIs…
“Resource” – probably easier to spell correctly than
personelpersonalpersonellPersonnel and has a simple abbreviation?“By the time you’re doing that, you should have canned the project.” I find the headhunters tend to start emailing and calling me at that point…
“We have sufficient drivers, but where drivers are available to run these services is mismatched,”
– Eric Morcambe? 😉
Regarding the question of which city-pairs are a “market” across London.
In terms of an integrated transport network, I would suggest that to Gatwick (southbound) and to Luton are markets for through trains, even if there is a quicker option by changing trains/using tube. This is because of the convenience of getting to an airport with minimal handling of luggage, herding of children etc. Maybe not the largest group of passengers, but significant throughout the day.
Thameslink also offers some creative options for to Stansted without needing to go via Liverpool Street, too, although these are quite slow workarounds (needing a coach for the last bit into Stansted or multiple Overground trains to get to Stratford to pick up the Stansted non-express.)
To a lesser extent, to KGX/STP is also a market for connecting to HS1, trains to the North & Scotland, for similar reasons, minimising changes.
Also, less mobile people might welcome not having to change trains (or have easier changes) for the slower long distance north/south journeys, but the lack of toilets on the new trains (and at many intervening stations–joining the next train) is not joined up thinking for that group of passengers on longer journeys
@MilesT
The new Thameslink trains do actually have toilets – you are confusing them with the new Crossrail trains which don’t.
One of my grumbles about the new Thameslink trains in fact is that the whole train smells of toilet (disinfectant), due to the walk-through design.
Quite a well-informed article in today’s “Observer”, at least by mainstream press standards…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/09/uk-railways-great-timetable-fiasco-whats-gone-wrong
Yes, it’s almost like they have read LR!
@Ben – 🙂
@MilesT – I’m not sure the issue for TLK is pairing destinations N&S. There probably aren’t any significant pairs of single O/Ds in volume terms- certainly not Luton and Gatwick airports, where the numbers of people interlining between air services is quite small (not least because of the nature of the air markets they serve). What you will have is passengers from a wide catchment are converging on a single O/D. To take your Gatwick example, there will be a widely spread catchment N of the Thames including all the usual suspects such as S Albans and Stevenage which will each probably generate much more cross-London traffic to Gatwick than Luton airport.
The case of the airports is probably a fairly extreme “many to one” cross-London pattern, although I would expect Brighton to be up there too. Otherwise, the TLK volume will be made up from many smaller flows, few cross-London.
The number of north-south journeys possible by direct trains is relatively small, but the number possible with one change is very large, and the same-platform interchange makes it much more convenient than negotiating escalators, ticket barriers etc. It’s a pity that none of the core stations are particularly pleasant places to wait – Blackfriars is the only one with a decent view, but is not ideal in cold weather, and none of them have particularly wide platforms or much in the way of facilities like toilets or refreshments.
Regarding the debate about Metro / express / regional metro … I made a mistaken attempt earlier, which was very badly worded , leading to much misunderstanding.
So:
I was trying to suggest that, in mirror to terminating the S-side “Metro” services @ Blackfriars, a site needs/needed to be found on the “Midland” side – since there are platforms @ King’s Cross already.
Where?
Or is there track-space & more importantly track-time to turn them around at Kentish Town – crossovers would be needed & a possible centre-turnback siding – is there space?
Plus, as often mentioned, making the bays at Blackfriars “central”, by running a n other track through on the W side –but, is there space to rejoin the incline N of the station, though?
IF all of that could be both afforded & done, then you could go regional-metro, with your first stops @ St Albans / E Croydon / Bromley S on the “fasts” ( You would still have to pause @ Finsbury Park, of course, but the semi-fasts do that anyway, so no change. )
@timbeau – that was very much the point of the original TLK concept – with CR1, putting most of the major Roseland settlements within one easy interchange of each other, You are right about the smallish numbers of journeys made on direct cross-London services. No one expected vast numbers of Radlett to Earlswood trips, but cumulatively…
I agree with you about BFRS being a somewhat bleak place. I must confess I don’t think any of my planners ever considered the view from the station as being an appraisable feature (Goodness knows what the PDFH would make of it, although I would have expected the TfL appraisal system to make a confident stab!).
I did notice amongst the comments last week on the Thameslink Twitter feed there was one person highlighting the collapse of their Hitchin – Three Bridges commute. Only one example I know, but maybe the previous reliability tempted some people into taking on much longer commutes than was anticipated.
@Mike
So you answer to the current mess is to hand yet MORE power to the [Inappropriate adjective snipped. ] DfT and its [Inappropriate adjective snipped. LBM] minister who UNLIKE everyone else (GTR, Northern and NR have all admitted to making mistakes) has failed to apologise for failings in his department and is more obsessed with making sacrificial lambs out of everyone else.
The debates over vertical integration are thus a total distraction – what the railway needs more than ever is a effective ‘firewall’ between it and the politicians. What made BR work (in spite of year on year budget cuts) was its ability to hold back some of the wilder political ideas or amend them into something more sensible. We also have seen how it was able to use sleight of hand (e.g. get money out of the Treasury for Thameslink under the guise of ‘more efficient unit utilisation by cutting out layovers at termini’) to the advantage of the industry. Those abilities have gone and hell will freeze over before such an ability is restored, vertical integration or not.
In the early years of Privatisation we had a truly independent Rail regulator headed by a Tom Windsor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Winsor) who was very happy to criticise and keep the Government at bay. Similarly the “Office For Rail Passenger Franchising” didn’t mind telling the DfT to get stuffed on occasion.
However politicians don’t like it when they get told to stop interfering so the civil servants and their political masters subsequently took steps to bring said organisations to heal. Firstly the demise of Railtrack presented an ideal opportunity to bring the ORR into line by absorbing it into the DfT proper while the West Coast franchising deal that Virgin contested (and won) in court was the final nail in the coffin OFRPF. Decisions that should be left to the industry or which require independent oversight have thus been politicised or ‘managed’ to suit political motives / budget pressures with detrimental effects on the railway industry as a result.
So in short nationalisation is a very bad idea at present and will DO NOTHING to improve the problems currently being experienced. Even if the next general election does return a Labour Government then I have zero confidence that whoever Mr Corbyn may chose to appoint to the role will be any better at leaving the industry to get on with things – let alone be willing to recreate a BR mk2 that might act to frustrate the desire of politicians to keep control.
@Reggie: As long ago as the last millennium, I had a colleague who lived in Biggleswade and did a daily commute to Woking.
If the ECML was broken then he would simply drive to Flitwick instead… It seemed extreme to me then.
Re MilesT. I can’t think of any rational use of Thameslink to get to Stansted, at least not one involving a crossing of London. Incidentally it has been several years since Stansted ‘non express’ services served Stratford (in the normal timetable). Indeed all services from London to Stansted are now badged Stansted Express.
Back in the dim and distant past, there was a proposal under the fledging Thameslink 2000 project for Thameslink to serve Stansted, through a reinstated south to east curve at Kentish Town and a new chord at Tottenham Hale. But I suspect this was defeated by reality, and wouldn’t be possible now (at least not without ripping up a couple of timetables).
There is actually a small but notable flow between Luton Airport Parkway and Gatwick Airport. But it is almost entirely easyJet staff. Whilst no doubt someone has done it as an air passenger making a connection, I can’t think why they would!
Phil
Slight problem with your critique.
In that …
One: Privatisation was, of itself a 150% political move, deliberately designed to fragment ( & possibly destroy ) the the railways. It was certainly “Put together” in such a way that re-integration would be very very difficult indeed.
Two: You mention Railtrack – an organisation, that famously, was an engineering business, with no engineers anywhere near the seats of power.
It was supposed to gradually manage failure & decline & be a property company.
We know what happened – & I’m sorry to say that probably ( unfortunately ) putting politicians in charge was inevitable at that point.
Three: Something you don’t mention – the supposed EU diktat that track & trains should be separately owned… Does not exist
It merely states that they should be separately accounted for.
The Civ Engineer’s department & the CME’s department render separate costings & accounts to the General Manager, in pre 1922, or even pre-1948 terms.
Obscure “connections” between London airports. Most of us who visit this site know that getting between any of the six London airports is hard work. But ill informed (or just plain greedy) travel agents sell all sorts of ridiculous ‘self connecting’ itineraries to unsuspecting punters who assume the agent know best….
Certainly not a huge passenger flow, but it exists.
Greg Tingey 10 June 2018 at 09:30,
I can see various problems with what you are suggesting. Don’t change horses mid-stream springs to mind.
Any change at Blackfriars would be difficult given that it has only just been built. But to what purpose? You hit a two-track bottleneck at City Thameslink anyway. And by the time you rebuild it various train management system (TMS) packages will be in force so that there is a steady ordered flow of trains into platform 2. Furthermore, passengers are not going to be happy losing their same-level interchange between platform 4 and platform 2.
When considering passengers coming in from the north side at times of disruption in the centre, it may be better to hold passengers back rather than dump them out at Kentish Town – if even possible. I don’t relish the impact of a full 12-car train of Thameslink commuters descending onto the Northern line platforms. You would be the first to rant about how stupid is was to let such a situation develop if it even happened.
Furthermore, I can see the attraction of a more of a suburban/long-distance mix but no-one promoting this has really explained how you justify the loss of capacity due to the difficulty of running 12-car suburban trains in South London and hence the need for shorter trains.
@Greg T 0930 on 10/6 – rem acute as Wooster might have said – if you were going to build a TLK metro, you’d want to spend a lot on keeping the infrastructure separate from the regional stuff, and if you were going to do that, you’d probably conclude that you wouldn’t necessarily build the extra lines in exactly the same place as the regional routes. I offer no crayonista views on where you would put a “TLK metro” except to say that it would probably have relatively little to do with what we have now – within the conurbation, the GN and GE Inners seem to have the most pressing need for relief north of the river, given the pace of development in the Lea Valley. Equally, City TLK is not where I would site a metro station particularly as it has poor connectivity with the rest of the metro (aka LU) network and is slightly to one side of the major traffic objectives. Faringdon and Bfrs (to some extent) likewise.
Graham H ( & PoP )
“Where you would put a TLK metro”?
Crossrail-2 ??????
@Greg.
I don’t dispute any of the points you raise, but are you still telling me you want to give Mr Grayling and co even more power to screw things up? They are already responsible for procuring the most expensive train to lease in history (the 800s), deliberately picking a fight with the RMT over DOO and on the ECML awarding 3 contracts to bidders that couldn’t deliver to name just a few examples.
Far too many people assume nationalisation = a return to British Railways when nothing is further from the truth. NO politician of ANY party is gong to give up the levers of power if they can help it – and that includes Mr Corbyn etc.
Day to day railway operations (and even significant projects are best done by those who actually run / work in the industry NOT the inhabitants of Whitehall or the DfT. British Rail ‘worked’ NOT simply because it was ‘nationalised’ – it ‘worked’ because it kept ministers at bay.
Hence my point that the structures included at Privitisation designed to keep politicans out of operational matters have been systematically dismantled – not because they in themselves failed* but because they were getting in the way of Politicans desire to meddle.
Whether the railways should be privitised or not is one thing – having politicans making operational decisions like the procurement of trains and industrial relations with staff is another.
*Railtrack not focusing enonugh on engineering is technically a failing of Railtrack management rather than the independent ORR – who if I remember rightly were in fact pretty hostile to them.
A Pollyanna observation – delay repay has never been processed so quickly/efficiently/apologetically.
Rewriting history is possibly a form of crayoning. There will be many examples nationwide of extensive projects planned in the 1980s/90s that would have looked different if it was ‘known’ that ridership would double, funding would be at low interest rates, & HS2 level budgets could be committed.
Holborn Viaduct was a disposal as surplus to forecast passenger numbers. If considered as an opportunity site in 21st century terms as a new financial centre hosting the Stock Exchange then the wider zone included the redundant Thames bridge piers, the safeguarded Ludgate Hill bomb-site, extensive railway lands and redevelopment of the Smithfield area, and the redundant route to Moorgate.
Phil,
I think you have hit several nails on the head.
Some of the current popularity of renationalisation is based on the notion that “Something must be done. This is something, so it must be done”.
Though I do accept that if the objective is to have railways run by railway people, renationalisation, if done correctly, could be one feasible means to that end.
Phil & Malcom
I never said anything about “wanting” to give more power to Mr G, just that, unfortunately, at the present, we have few options.
Note that the”general public” also haven’t a clues as this newspaper article shows – since “renationalisation” means giving all of it to Mr G.
Um.
I disagree re, Railtrack – they were deliberately set up that way by the politicians then in charge – the managerial failings were “baked-in” from the start, & it was only a matter of time before they showed up – though no-one was expecting quite such a “crash” ( horrid pun intended ) as actually happened.
I think you two are saying that the politicians should be the really-arms-length regulators, as indded they were in the period 1825 – 1992?
@ Phil – I understand the proposition you are putting forward. However one counter point is that the railways now consume vast sums of public money even with the shift in the proportion of funding coming from fares. There is an entirely legitimate point to be made about full and proper political oversight of the spending of public money. I am certainly not saying the DfT is an effective organisation. However any future structure will need to be very carefully crafted to ensure a proper balance between legitimate oversight of spending and outcomes alongside an appropriate delegation of relevant policy and decision making.
Even “old BR” with its distance from government was not immune from the effect of government decisions even allowing for management ingenuity. There are endless examples, not to be repeated, of how parts of BR were badly affected by expenditure cuts. We’ve spent the last decade reversing a fair proportion of those decisions and incurring a lot of expense in so doing.
I have yet to see anything from anyone that even attempts to describe an alternative industry structure that could achieve the right balance of accountabilities, responsibilities while ensuring a cost effective approach that also retains the right amount of “independence” for private operators (such as freight). It seems to be beyond anyone’s legitimate interest or competence. I’m not suggesting we “design” it here – far too much risk of thread drift. I’m just observing that it is missing from “public debate”.
I’ve also read far too much comment on social media recently which shows a great lack of understanding as to how the railway works. That lack is not just with the general public but with politicians and others in position of influence. A great deal needs to be done to improve knowledge and understanding to ensure that we might get to a better structured railway at some point in the future.
@Phil – yes you are right – I spent much of my working life in the department telling ministers that they didn’t run the railway. We kept BR as a dog to be kicked for that. Fortunately, BR were only too willing to help us in ensuring that they stayed at arms’ length. I agree very much with WW’s assessment that the post-privatisation structure was supposed to reinforce that relationship but the arms have been shortened steadily to the point where the Minister does indeed determine how may cars the 18.15 has – a fact that is neither understood by the opposition nor acknowledged by Ministers. This isn’t perhaps the place to discuss the “how” of that process, however I agree with WW that nationalisation won’t of itself solve the problem of what in Eastern Europe is engagingly called “telephone management”. As far as I can see, much of the agitation is based on the patently wrong assumption that nationalisation would make fares cheaper or the trains run on time . It won’t. The arguments have more to do with saving unnecessary costs and making proper allocation of risks to those who can manage them.
Graham refers to ” the patently wrong assumption that nationalisation would make fares cheaper or the trains run on time “
Some may be assuming that, and I agree that they are mistaken.
But some may alternatively, and more plausibly, consider that nationalisation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for achieving those excellent ends. They would also anticipate further steps (exactly what steps requires more work!) to fix things properly. Certainly comparing such matters in the UK with other European countries where the railways seem to be “a bit more national” might encourage such a view.
@Malcolm – yes, that’s about right. Two “privatisation” assumptions seem particularly destructive – that there is no such thing as the railway system; the legacy of the BR era, such as through ticketing, for example, is acknowledged by the department through gritted teeth and persistently undermined by them. The other is the bizarre assumption by bidders, encouraged by the department, that railways are like airlines when it comes to commercial offering.
Specifically on the fares point, it is unlikely in the extreme that nationalisation will be allowed to reduce the total sum collected from fares. What one can reasonably hope is that the complexity and absurdity of the present structure will be properly simplified (and not the “simplification” offered by the RDG…)
As to trains running on time (and other aspects of quality), one might reasonably expect nationalisation to remove the games playing and wooden dollar movement although even in BR days, we had quality metrics in place. of course.
@Malcolm – just so.
Specifically on the fares point, it is unlikely in the extreme that nationalisation would lead to the total collected from fares to be reduced. What one might reasonably expect is the proper rationalisation of the present complex and absurd structure (and not the placebo that the RDG review will no doubt be offering this autumn…)
As to trains running to time (and other aspects of quality), one can only hope that the opportunities for games playing and the movement of wooden dollars would cease. Of course we had quality metrics in place when BR was still in existence but we relied on a more balanced scorecard approach and different weapons – fear amongst board members and senior management, mainly, (Whether that worked is another matter, of course).
Political intervention shouldn’t be assumed automatically to be negative. In the early 1980s BR and DoT officials were actively progressing the closure of 41 rural railway lines. I happened to be leaked a copy of the papers and these found their way to the media resulting in the then SofS (he may just have been Minister at the time) saying to Parliament that there would be no railway closures – and the 41 rural railways are still open.
Political accountability his generally a good thing, but it does need the discipline of ministers not getting involved in detailed operational decisions, even when there is a clamour for ‘something to be done’. Sadly I have yet to meet a minister who could stand up and say ‘this is an operational matter and I am sure the operators are doing the best thing they can’.
@Quinlet – You have reminded me of my former local MP, the dear late Tessa Jowell, who was tremendously supportive of the inner South London railways and those who ran them for over 20 years. It followed that she listened to her constituents and combined that with many informative meetings, arranged by herself, with those involved running the railways. Everyone concerned learned something.
She went further and instituted the Safer Stations concept, which started as a publicised project at Sydenham Hill station, to which I was personally invited by her (the waiting room was even reopened for the day, complete with refreshments within!).
When it came to the “Save the South London Line” campaign, she was fair and understood that London Overground would run its service to Clapham Junction, thus diverting services off the SLL serving Victoria; nevertheless, she applied what pressure she could for Southern to maintain a direct service to Victoria as well on that line.
She also shared a meeting of minds with Val Shawcross, by then on the GLA but she was also happy to be cross-party on transport matters. In other words, she indeed had an understanding of railway operations – essentially because she listened to people in the know.
Unfortunately, Tessa did not have a post in the relevant Department to counteract what you say in your final paragraph. If only. Sadly missed hereabouts for all sorts of reasons.
Am I the only one wondering how long it will be before closet doors open and skeletons start falling on the carpet?