There's a lot of conjecture on this thread, some of which needs putting right.
Some good questioning and very unconvincing answers.
It really wasn't. Questioning DOHL who'd been in charge for 100 days, and not really readied by Ministers prior to a decision taken whereby Robin Gisby was on holiday in France, on things they had no control over is a waste of time. Similarly, questioning an Interim MD who'd been in charge for less than three months and who's been tasked getting TPE back to where it was in 2016. The remit of Chris Jackson and DOHL is different to whatever was proposed in 2016.
Those questions need to be asked to who specified the franchise (DfT), those who bid for the franchise (FG) and those who accepted the franchise bid (DfT again).
One way or another TPE might still end up operating these trains
In a word, no. Chris Jackson said as much at the select committee and as has already been posted elsewhere, their time on these shores seems to be nearly up.
Unless the former Newcastle-Manchester Airport/Piccadilly service group is totally withdrawn in future, there won't be a lot of spare sets to cover for the withdrawn Mk5 sets. The net effect will be a loss of capacity.
Forgetting about the work currently going on in the background for new rolling stock at TPE. The Expression of Interests that were put out last year may have died with First Group, but there will most certainly be new rolling stock being delivered towards the back end of this decade to coincide with TRU.
As much as I loathe this current incarnation of government, that isn’t what has happened.
Directly, not. But when managers are being asked to look for significant budget cuts, the leasing costs were a large factor.
I think you are just reading straight from the senior management book of excuses.
I notice that you have not disagreed with my statement that there are currently more drivers trained on Class 68/Mk5A than were originally envisaged would be needed for 12 sets to be in daily service. So, given you have not disputed this, any company that then claims it can only operate ‘two or three a day’ due (in part) to ‘too few staff being trained on them’ needs to take a really long hard look at themselves.
Can I just say what a churlish statement this is. Or do you know better when it comes to percentages of staff trained? I highly suspect that you don't. The fact of the matter was, as mentioned on the select committee, when DOHL took over only 50% of drivers were fully competent on traction and routes - that's now above 60%. And to anyone who says that's nonsense - may I direct you to the Friday of the last TRU Morley block when only 41% of services ran over the Healey Mills diversionary route. The Saturday would've been worse had action short of a strike ended.
And if you can't acknowledge the significant challenges around the stabling of the sets, the significant training backlog courtesy of late delivery of trains, woeful decision making by Leo Goodwin, the enormous impact Covid had and ASLEF withdrawing RDW, then I'm not sure if you're ever going to find the answers you're looking for. Of course, you could always pop in a Freedom of Information request if we're all apparently reading from the senior management book of excuses...
Now I understand that you are an enthusiast who has an interest in these sets, but the reality of the situation is the product that was delivered by CAF was sub-standard. These sets were delivered late, consistently failed fault free running, didn't run that reliably Pre-Covid, have an awful ride quality, a shocking PIS system, they interface badly with the loco's and the loco's themselves are vastly more complicated that 185/802s. All of that together means they are unreliable, throw in very training intensive and not what an operator that is looking to simplify its operations ever needed. The only way they were ever going to thrive was on the South route, which is why Matt Golton launched what he called Project Havelok to get them on there, but that wasn't a success was it? Barely any days with more than one set on said route and binned off after seven months.
It was a real private company, First Group, and they finally got kicked out, years too late but there you go. First Group ran the service into the ground over 19 years and that isn't going to be corrected anytime soon.
This is just recency bias. Especially when you compare 2004 to 2016. Of course, had First Group been a real private company, not bound by the Franchise requirements set out by the DfT, the Mk5a's would've never been ordered...