Modern Railways – April 2019

Railtalk

6 Modern Railways April 2019 http://www.modern-railways.com

F

ranchising is bust. That is the

opinion of Keith Williams, the

former British Airways boss

currently conducting a review into

the railways, which he articulated

when he delivered this year’s George

Bradshaw lecture on 26 February:

‘Franchising can’t continue as it is

today... I’ve been talking to investors,

train operators and passengers, and

in talking to all of them what has

become clear is that what served

the industry very well 20 or 25 years

ago is not the way forward’.

This view prompted a plaintive

question from the audience asking

just where that left bidders for the

current live franchise competitions,

for South Eastern and the Midland

and West Coast main lines. They

may well ask. All three have pressing

problems over and above a bust

franchising model. South Eastern has

seemingly insurmountable problems

associated with transferring the risk of

pensions commitments. West Coast

Partnership has no certainty over the

commissioning date for HS2 Phase 1,

let alone Phase 2a to Crewe. Whoever

is in charge of East Midlands

Trains faces a rolling stock crisis at

midnight plus 1 on 1 January 2020.

POOR PERFORMANCE

Plainly, there is much that has gone

wrong recently. Last summer’s

problems on the Thameslink and

northern networks are an obvious

example, but across the network

performance has been on a

downward trajectory for a decade

or more. At the same time that the

railway has been getting worse at

delivery, customer expectations

have been going in the opposite

direction: today’s consumer

culture demands ever-improving

service. And in the age of social

media, if passengers don’t get

good service, retribution is swift.

To some extent, the railway

is a victim of its own success.

The much-vaunted doubling of

passenger numbers has brought its

own problems. For example, Waterloo

has been expensively remodelled

to accommodate longer trains on

the suburban lines, but the network

is now so crowded that the extra

time taken by a 10-car rather than an

eight-car train to clear a signal section

is material. Even the extra seconds

needed for the crew to change ends

at termini on a longer train count.

At the same time, successive

franchise competitions have led to an

ever-tighter press on costs. This has

introduced a level of complexity that

implies more fragility in operations.

Drawing on the South Western

as an exemplar again, extremely

complex diagrams have been

devised in an attempt to maximise

crew productivity. Thus hundreds of

drivers sign for the half-hourly service

on the Shepperton branch, rather

than that line having a self-contained

out-and-back service. So when

things go pear-shaped elsewhere,

drivers are in the wrong place and

the performance virus spreads.

Meanwhile, franchise competitions

have pushed bidders so far that

the pips are squeaking. The train

operating companies collectively

make about a 3% return, which, far

from being the voracious gouging of

consumers and taxpayers that critics

maintain, scarcely beats putting your

money in a building society. Indeed,

some franchises run at a loss: for

instance, the Dutch taxpayer, through

the Abellio subsidiary of Netherlands

Railways (NS), has been subsiding

Scottish rail travellers by way of the

loss-making ScotRail franchise.

A change of mindset needed

Storage space at a premium: Class 717s have been stored at West Worthing on the Coastway

prior to introduction on the Moorgate line. No 717025 was the first to arrive there from

Hornsey, in the early hours of 26 February; it is seen in daylight a few hours after arrival.

The sidings here, on the site of the shed demolished in the 1980s, were rehabilitated for an

early iteration of the Thameslink Programme and have been little used. John Vaughan

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