Back to the bad old days’: swingeing rail cuts set alarm bells ringing

[Bletchleyite]

Again, I really don't think that any/many people are arguing for a full Serpell - this is just a straw man that people clutch at to try to make their own preferences seem reasonable - the idea that we must either maintain the current number of services/ stations or do Serpell is rather silly - we should be able to discuss revisions without such hysteria...

You would hope so, but @A0wen has argued for zero subsidy, which is basically that.

I still think you could achieve 10% cost reduction (if that is what is meant, not 10% subsidy reduction) without closing anything. Bar the little stuff round the edges like Berney Arms, I think we need a serious review of how buses are done in the UK before anything else is turned over to them, both in terms of quality and of funding.

 

[O L Leigh]

Just an example of a TOC that have a depot with a very limited range of diagrams, where one return trip is less than a full day but two return trips is more than a full day - but if staff were shared across duties you could combine one "long" return trip with a "short" return trip to try to balance out staff duties - that way you use staff more efficiently as well as ensuring that they are able to fill a wider range of duties in the event of any problems (e.g. at the moment you could have a situation where one TOC in a city are short staffed whilst another have a full compliment of staff, but any "spare" staff cannot be loaned out since people are only trained for a limited number of routes/ traction types

But unfortunately you don't know enough about the situation at XC at Newcastle to make such a claim. In fact, their current utilisation on the Derby route is incredibly efficient, as a lot of their diagrams come out at around the average day length of 8h 45m. This not "less than a full day" as you claim. Therefore, with the exception of rest day working, Newcastle runs almost completely without overtime.

 

[ComUtoR]

Your routes are scanned?

We had one that was filmed and then, as an experiment, digitised and used on a Sim run. It was freakishly good. Probably a little too good but all the feedback was decent. Of course that 'experiment' was short lived.

We have no real routes and everything looks like it was drawn on a ZX Spectrum. A couple of more modern Sims have been a lot better with replicated routes with generic assets. A big step up from what I'm used to.

On topic... Sims and all this tech people want to 'improve' route learning and to reduce costs is shockingly expensive for little tangible benefit. It will require millions of investment and a change in the way its used and implemented. Having a company in France running a Sim in the UK isn't efficient in any way and the costs involve to change anything just becomes prohibitive.

Technology isn't a magic bullet.

 

[Darandio]

On topic... Sims and all this tech people want to 'improve' route learning and to reduce costs is shockingly expensive for little tangible benefit. It will require millions of investment and a change in the way its used and implemented. Having a company in France running a Sim in the UK isn't efficient in any way and the costs involve to change anything just becomes prohibitive.

Technology isn't a magic bullet.

But it can be used very effectively in certain scenarios, even at a more basic and cost effective level. Take 2015 with Crossrail as an example when a whole glut of new entrants were coming through and a version Train Simulator was used as an initial classroom tool to provide entry level training to understand basics of traction, signalling and route knowledge.

 

[Greybeard33]

It doesn't matter what the drivers sign because if GWR has X number of diagrams and XC has Y number of diagrams, the total number of diagrams is X+Y and that figure is what would be used to calculate the depot establishment and the spare allocation.

That assumes the driver diagrams remain the same. But what percentage of each diagram is, on average, productive time, i.e. time spent actually driving or on a mandatory PNB? If a larger pool of drivers, with common route and traction knowledge, is shared between two TOCs, it should be possible to rework the diagrams to reduce unproductive dead time. Part of the same diagram could be spent driving one TOC's trains and part driving the other's. Thereby reducing the time spent waiting at/travelling to & from a handover point, or sitting out a turnaround at a terminal station.

In that case the total number of diagrams could be less than X+Y and fewer drivers would be needed to do the same amount of work.

 

[The Ham]

You would hope so, but @A0wen has argued for zero subsidy, which is basically that.

I still think you could achieve 10% cost reduction (if that is what is meant, not 10% subsidy reduction) without closing anything. Bar the little stuff round the edges like Berney Arms, I think we need a serious review of how buses are done in the UK before anything else is turned over to them, both in terms of quality and of funding.

I know not the main point you were talking about.

A 10% reduction in subsidy would be easier to achieve than a 10% reduction in costs, as the subsidy (which was previously typically mostly enhancements to the network and not day to day spending) was typically £4bn out of a total spend of £15bn.

That's the difference between £0.4bn and £1.5bn in reduced costs.

It should be fairly easy to reduce costs by £0.4bn, quite possibly without impacting services all that much.

To cut £1.5bn would be a much bigger ask and I'd suspect that you would start impacting on services. Which would have to be done carefully so as to ensure that the cuts didn't end up loosing more income than the savings that they bring. That's not too say that it shouldn't be done (much as most of the Beaching cuts were worth doing), rather it needs looking at carefully.

For instance a fairly lightly used branch, where lots of long distance travel continues beyond it might be better to keep than a slightly busier line which only has local traffic using it.

If there are ways to significantly reduce the subsidy by attracting more people to the railways that would generally be the better option.

 

[ComUtoR]

But it can be used very effectively in certain scenarios, even at a more basic and cost effective level. Take 2015 with Crossrail as an example when a whole glut of new entrants were coming through and a version Train Simulator was used as an initial classroom tool to provide entry level training to understand basics of traction, signalling and route knowledge.

I'm a big supporter of Tech.

From scratch, using modern equipment, modern standards, and modern thinking. 100% you could offset the short term costs for the long terms gains. Crossrail needed a new approach, especially as its all pretty much new. Asking an existing TOC to modernise and invest millions into Sims and route learning technology has a huge initial investment and it will take years to recover the initial cost. With short term 'franchising' or 'management contracts' getting a TOC to invest just isn't going to happen. Crossrail is different because its starting effectively from scratch.

I don't say this from a nay saying perspective, only that at a time where savings need to be made, its a little too late. I've often said that this shouldn't ever be about cutting but more of an entire culture change for the railway to grow in the long term. We do need to change but a fair chunk of what needs to change will need investment to protect the future.

 

[O L Leigh]

That assumes the driver diagrams remain the same.

Yes it does.

But what percentage of each diagram is, on average, productive time, i.e. time spent actually driving or on a mandatory PNB? If a larger pool of drivers, with common route and traction knowledge, is shared between two TOCs, it should be possible to rework the diagrams to reduce unproductive dead time. Part of the same diagram could be spent driving one TOC's trains and part driving the other's. Thereby reducing the time spent waiting at/travelling to & from a handover point, or sitting out a turnaround at a terminal station.

A lot of that depends on factors that cannot easily be addressed by productivity alone, such as the timetable itself. There is also a balance to be struck in that making some jobs more productive tends to make others less so. There does seem to be a sort of "productivity density threshold" that planners seem unable to pass, although I will defer to those more expert in such matters to comment upon if they wish to.

Your idea introduces the risk of exacerbating knock-on delays as a consequence of late running, something which my own employer tripped over during their last attempt at driving up productivity. From the service resilience point of view, it is better to keep one crew on one train for as much of it's journey as possible rather than chopping and changing crews. I would even argue that this is also the most productive use of staff in that they have less "dead time" in their diagram because they are being kept moving rather than having to spend time waiting for trains to arrive and depart.

All that said, I would have to estimate that without altering the number of services you will not really make a very big impact on the number of drivers required. Every train in motion needs a driver and so you will always need that number working between whichever two points you want to identify on the network. It's tempting to think that sharing drivers could result in a reduction in the number of diagrams, but actually we have no idea if this would be the case nor how many diagrams might be saved as a result. It might be one or two, but then it might not even result in any savings at all.

As for the other wider points where two specific locations have been identified (Plymouth and Newcastle), I do have to pose the question of what happens when the covering driver reaches the location where their route card diverges from the train's booked route (presumably Taunton and Doncaster respectively)? These are not normal crew relieving locations, so presumably you still have to have a relieving crew come from some other location to take the train forward who would have to travel PASS to the relevant location. This is now not looking particularly good from an efficiency perspective. That it appears to make sense for these two locations does not necessarily mean that it can be widely replicated across the network.

 

[Bald Rick]

Saturdays and Sundays have huge demand this year. Friday is the quieter day.

Not so. Friday is the busiest day of the week. Nearly twice as many people are travelling on Fridays as on Sundays.

 

[ComUtoR]

Not so. Friday is the busiest day of the week. Nearly twice as many people are travelling on Fridays as on Sundays.

Assuming you have numbers to back this up...

We were recently asked "what would you do to entice passengers back to the network" Friday vs Sunday I'd agree (at my TOC) but Saturdays are just growing week on week (anecdotally) Football is back and increases passenger numbers, Theatre is back, events are back, etc. Saturdays are pretty well loaded.

I'm interested why Friday is the busiest day of the week. I'm London Metro so as the weekend gets nearer numbers just go up. Does Friday still have a heavy 'POETS' day mindset ? I've always found that (anecdotally) commuters tend to stay late on a Friday so you get a heavy mix of after work and weekend leisure but with 'working from home' almost being the norm I haven't noticed the commuters staying late on a Friday.

Any reason for a Friday being busiest ?

 

[Bald Rick]

Assuming you have numbers to back this up...

I do, but can’t share.

Any reason for a Friday being busiest ?

Commuting is down, so the morning peak is the quietest of the weekdays. But then the weekend long distance leisure travel starts up around 0900 for most of the rest of the day, and then from around 1600 you get people making leisure trips into town (particularly the big cities) for fun, games, drinks and more. Friday evening peak is the busiest, with returning commuters, and lots of long distance leisure / work travellers and the inbound night out crowd.

 

[43066]

Re your last two paras, if you read carefully what l post l often talk about my take on public perception, not my own views, and that take often relates to RMT in particular and not all rail unions.

Ok, so I’ve read the below posting of yours very carefully indeed:

Joe Taxpayer wants railways. This taxpayer is fed up with the current deal. Just waiting for HMT to really get to work.

That strikes me as an extremely clear and unambiguous statement of your own views: you basically can’t wait for HMT to get stuck into traincrew.

In amongst your left wing posturing on here, you’ve frequently posted about how your own civil service Ts and Cs have been diminished, and you now seem to wish the same to be visited on other workers.

Isn’t that a little sad?

Do l think that current T&Cs on the railway will go unchallenged? Not a hope.

I’m sure they will be challenged. Plenty more fat still to be trimmed in Whitehall, I suspect, before they start on the railway.

 

[ComUtoR]

Commuting is down, so the morning peak is the quietest of the weekdays. But then the weekend long distance leisure travel starts up around 0900 for most of the rest of the day, and then around 1600 you get people making leisure trips into town (particularly the big cities) for fun, games, drinks and more.

So kinda tracks with what I'm seeing on the platform.

I'm a little surprised that leisure travel is suffiecient enough to push the numbers higher but I guess low commuting is pretty easy to trump. Out of the window, complete guestimate (at my TOC) feels like Tuesday/Wednesday are the busiest commuter days as working from home tends to lean towards long weekends and a hungover Teams meeting on a Monday...

I'm not sure I'd want to cut commuter and peak travel as we still need to offer a productive service but I can see cuts to midweek leisure and off peak travel as its pretty dead out there. At least during the day (lunch times)

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure I'd want to cut commuter and peak travel as we still need to offer a productive service but I can see cuts to midweek leisure and off peak travel as its pretty dead out there. At least during the day (lunch times)

I think that relates to my view that there is more case for Merseyrail to operate 4tph on Sundays (really busy - 2tph on Sundays dates back to when Sunday wasn't a shopping day) than it is from about 0930 to about 1500 on weekdays, which is about the quietest time of the week.

 

[dk1]

I think that relates to my view that there is more case for Merseyrail to operate 4tph on Sundays (really busy - 2tph on Sundays dates back to when Sunday wasn't a shopping day) than it is from about 0930 to about 1500 on weekdays, which is about the quietest time of the week.

Would have to make it more lucrative for staff to volunteer to work the additional shifts unless more traincrew are taken on but then you are going to have more spare (& more cost) on weekdays so making it difficult to justify.

 

[ComUtoR]

I think that relates to my view that there is more case for Merseyrail to operate 4tph on Sundays (really busy - 2tph on Sundays dates back to when Sunday wasn't a shopping day) than it is from about 0930 to about 1500 on weekdays, which is about the quietest time of the week.

How are they for school runs ?


A fair bit of leisure travel down my way is heavily loaded around 0930. People still want that first off peak trip into town or just popping a few stops to grab a day shopping. We have a lot of school runs around 1500-1700 so I would hate to lose that as it provides a community service for locals. I think my cutoff would be around 1100-1400.

 

[Bald Rick]

Out of the window, complete guestimate (at my TOC) feels like Tuesday/Wednesday are the busiest commuter days as working from home tends to lean towards long weekends and a hungover Teams meeting on a Monday...

Yes that’s right for commuters. But still nowhere near pre pandemic levels. I’d be astonished if there weren’t reductions in peak services (where they haven’t already been made).

 

[74A]

But that isn't how it works. Your example conveniently ignores the depot establishment calculation which is how you arrive at the spare driver allocation. It doesn't matter what the drivers sign because if GWR has X number of diagrams and XC has Y number of diagrams, the total number of diagrams is X+Y and that figure is what would be used to calculate the depot establishment and the spare allocation.

Yes spare drivers to cover jobs won't change. But there should be less jobs as drivers can be used more productively. Currently it is not unusual to have a XC driver passing on a GWR service when they could be diving. Also you would need less standby drivers.

 

[ComUtoR]

Yes that’s right for commuters. But still nowhere near pre pandemic levels. I’d be astonished if there weren’t reductions in peak services (where they haven’t already been made).

Cheers BR.

I'm an out of the window kinda guy so its nice to still have a finger on the pulse based purely on anecdotal guestimation.

 

[Bletchleyite]

How are they for school runs ?

Quite a number of them, indeed including me back in the day. But they're all done by 0900 and the return journey isn't until about 1530-1545. Mostly on season tickets.

 

[Glenn1969]

Cheers BR.

I'm an out of the window kinda guy so its nice to still have a finger on the pulse based purely on anecdotal guestimation.

I suppose constant rule changes by Govt won't help. Which is why decisions shouldn't be taken until 2024 when we might have got used to living with it without being spooked every time a variant comes along

 

[ComUtoR]

Cheers @Bletchleyite

 

[dk1]

I suppose constant rule changes by Govt won't help. Which is why decisions shouldn't be taken until 2024 when we might have got used to living with it without being spooked every time a variant comes along

Sounds like a plan.

 

[ComUtoR]

I suppose constant rule changes by Govt won't help. Which is why decisions shouldn't be taken until 2024 when we might have got used to living with it without being spooked every time a variant comes along

Agreed. A knee jerk reaction isn't what we need right now but I do understand why the axe needs to fall.

I remember the financial crisis and it took a while for everything to settle down and adjust. It never quite recovered but it did. I'm one of those who believes that there will be a spring back to "normality" and also that there are plenty of new opportunities to be had to change the overall dynamic for commuting. Not so much leisure as we are heavily reliant on things just being open and tourism to recover.

Lots of talk today about another work from home mandate coming in and how thats gonna impact everything just as it starts to recover. Too many changes just makes people hessitant. The City got burned so will be cautious. Right now we need Government stability and a cohesive message.

 

[Wolfie]

Ok, so I’ve read the below posting of yours very carefully indeed:



That strikes me as an extremely clear and unambiguous statement of your own views: you basically can’t wait for HMT to get stuck into traincrew.

In amongst your left wing posturing on here, you’ve frequently posted about how your own civil service Ts and Cs have been diminished, and you now seem to wish the same to be visited on other workers.

Isn’t that a little sad?




I’m sure they will be challenged. Plenty more fat still to be trimmed in Whitehall, I suspect, before they start on the railway.

The context of the post you emboldened was important. I seem to recall that it was in response, directly or otherwise, to someone who was demanding a payrise.

Re fat in Whitehall l suggest that you look at what a certain whistleblower had to say about the FCDO response to Afghanistan and the resources available.

 

[O L Leigh]

Yes spare drivers to cover jobs won't change. But there should be less jobs as drivers can be used more productively. Currently it is not unusual to have a XC driver passing on a GWR service when they could be diving. Also you would need less standby drivers.

That's entirely possible, but the extent would have to be explored to find out just how effective this might be. Individual instances of staff from other companies travelling PASS does not necessarily hint at underlying lack of productivity. Yes an XC driver could be driving that service rather than being "on the cushions", but that driver is going somewhere to pick up an XC train which means that there isn't a balancing move for the GWR driver. In this instance it's likely that you'd only be swapping one driver travelling PASS for a different one doing the same.

But can drivers be used more productively? I keep hearing that we can, but simple repetition does not answer the question. Looking at the jobs at my depot I would have to say that the answer is that you probably couldn't squeeze very much more out of them. We rarely travel PASS anywhere and don't have lots of "dead time" within our day. Therefore, by the measure being applied in this thread, we are probably about as productive as we can be.

My own feeling is that you might save one or two drivers through amalgamation at any particular location but probably not many more than that. In the overall scheme of things this hardly seems worth pursuing and really isn't going to deliver the type of savings that the Treasury seems to want.

 

[Watershed]

That's entirely possible, but the extent would have to be explored to find out just how effective this might be. Individual instances of staff from other companies travelling PASS does not necessarily hint at underlying lack of productivity. Yes an XC driver could be driving that service rather than being "on the cushions", but that driver is going somewhere to pick up an XC train which means that there isn't a balancing move for the GWR driver. In this instance it's likely that you'd only be swapping one driver travelling PASS for a different one doing the same.

But can drivers be used more productively? I keep hearing that we can, but simple repetition does not answer the question. Looking at the jobs at my depot I would have to say that the answer is that you probably couldn't squeeze very much more out of them. We rarely travel PASS anywhere and don't have lots of "dead time" within our day. Therefore, by the measure being applied in this thread, we are probably about as productive as we can be.

My own feeling is that you might save one or two drivers through amalgamation at any particular location but probably not many more than that. In the overall scheme of things this hardly seems worth pursuing and really isn't going to deliver the type of savings that the Treasury seems to want.

With your depot's location it is hardly surprising that the jobs are efficient. The same can't be said for all other depots.

There would certainly be some saving by combining depots in most places, and even if there is not a great deal of saving you would still gain an awful lot of flexibility which the industry currently lacks.

At larger depots, I don't think it would be all that different to when, before privatisation, you would have different links and eventually you work your way up. But with a greater variety of work, each link could be a little larger and include more knowledge.

 

[O L Leigh]

With your depot's location it is hardly surprising that the jobs are efficient. The same can't be said for all other depots.

Indeed. But the most inefficient depots tend to be the ones that do not appear to have much scope for amalgamation.

There would certainly be some saving by combining depots in most places, and even if there is not a great deal of saving you would still gain an awful lot of flexibility which the industry currently lacks.

Perhaps, although it really needs to be explored before it gets carried through. Bigger depots with more knowledge are not necessarily more efficient than smaller ones with less knowledge, for reasons I have already set out. If it doesn't, the outcome is complex and messy which doesn't necessarily help with efficient staff utilisation.

A complicated link structure with different route and traction cards was found to be highly inefficient where I work and actually hindered the process of covering work rather than helping it. I also think that it could be considered counter-productive if such a move created a large training requirement for people working at these locations in order for them all to be brought up to speed on routes and/or traction. The demands on staffing to cover work has meant that training has been endlessly kicked down the road for certain competencies to the detriment of the company overall.

I don't oppose the proposal, but I would like to know that it will work before going through with it. There's an awful lot of things that will need to be considered and a lot of creases ironed out which will not be the work of a moment. If it's not going to deliver what it promises then I don't believe that it's something that we should do. Change for the sake of it is not what the railway needs right now, but rather a way of working that is proven to deliver the network the country needs going forward.

 

[irish_rail]

That's entirely possible, but the extent would have to be explored to find out just how effective this might be. Individual instances of staff from other companies travelling PASS does not necessarily hint at underlying lack of productivity. Yes an XC driver could be driving that service rather than being "on the cushions", but that driver is going somewhere to pick up an XC train which means that there isn't a balancing move for the GWR driver. In this instance it's likely that you'd only be swapping one driver travelling PASS for a different one doing the same.

But can drivers be used more productively? I keep hearing that we can, but simple repetition does not answer the question. Looking at the jobs at my depot I would have to say that the answer is that you probably couldn't squeeze very much more out of them. We rarely travel PASS anywhere and don't have lots of "dead time" within our day. Therefore, by the measure being applied in this thread, we are probably about as productive as we can be.

My own feeling is that you might save one or two drivers through amalgamation at any particular location but probably not many more than that. In the overall scheme of things this hardly seems worth pursuing and really isn't going to deliver the type of savings that the Treasury seems to want.

Where i agree with you is that one driver to cover a whole journey (eg Plymouth to London) is far more productive and therfore saves the railway money, compared with using 3 different drivers to cover the one trip.
It is small savings like this, that , if multiplied throughout the UK would translate into decent savings.

 

[Horizon22]

That just isn't true though. By amalgamating drivers and ensuring drivers can drive sufficient routes and traction you can significantly reduce the amount of spare coverage needed. And you would be surprised quite how many drivers are needed for each "running turn" at a depot. It isn't one driver for each turn, very far from it.

There's pros and cons for both methods of course. By reducing route knowledge at a depot, you reduce the requirement for as many refresh days. Let's say as an example one depot signs 5 routes and another 2, then that reduces the need for route refreshing and removes complexity of links etc. But at the same time you remove the ability to cross cover and require more spares. Both have associated costs. So what might be beneficial on some routes / TOCs (for example an area with lots of branches or primarily one mainline with diversions) may not be suitable elsewhere and it could get quite complex working out the most efficient system.