Great Western Coffee Shop

I sat down and watched Panorma last night - "Train Fares - taken for a ride"

Brought home just how *much* of a difference a change in franchise to a longer period one could bring.   At times, we seem to look at the immediate detail but actually there might be much more - both positive and negative - to it.  I'm afraid I dispair at times when I hear people objecting to logical changes for the medium to the long term in case it removes some quirk of the fare system that saves them money.   Folks - such quirks are often under the control of the franchise holder, and any new holder could withdraw - as I understand it - Groupsave or very low cost advanced fares more or less at a stroke.

What did I pick up on

* 600 staff involved in blame attribution for delays.   There are 1,340 staffed and around 1,100 unstaffed stations on the network, so for every 2 staffed stations more or less there's an extra member of staff looking to shift the blame for delays. So the employment cost of this lot is probably around 15 million pounds.   Now - what could we do with a half of that?

* Network Rail are accused of wasting 30% of their expenditure.   They didn't seem to dispute that they waste - just how much they waste (!).  And they're taking on MORE staff so that they can make their accounting more open to the public.

* Warwick Parkway - NR quoted over 13 million, Chiltern did it for 5 million.

* Won't know if Reading is on budget until it's completed - by which time it's too late.

Amongst other things ...

The four things you picked up on from last night's Panorama concern me too; particularly the first one. I understand that when things go wrong a record of who or what was a fault needs to be kept but 600 people to do this job?!?!? This is somewhat concerning all the while staffing levels at stations is being cut.

I am acquainted with a senior member of Chiltern Railway staff who was closely involved in the Warwick Parkway project. He told me many years ago that this station is sited on a former cattle market and there was an underground passage that enabled cattle to be taken from outside the sale ring into the sale ring. Chiltern proposed to use this existing passge in the station plan, suitably upgraded for people use. However there was an objection to this plan from NR that the passage would not be wide enough under H & S regulations. It seemed that these regulations required the passage to be wide enough so that two wheel chairs could pass within the passage. It was pointed out that to achieve this would have required major construction work adding a million pounds or so to the project cost and the number of occasions when two wheelchairs might need to pass would be tiny. Eventually common sense prevailed and this was one of the measures used by Chiltern to keep the construction costs well below NR quotes. I suspect that this type of very onerous specification could well account for some of the high costs of rail construction in this country compared to mainland Europe.

Very strange how NR decide to "release" this news (http://goo.gl/aMMYl) the day Panorama "investigates" them.

Your calculation seems to have an average wage of ^25,000. that may be correct but from knowledge of a similar contractual disputes in another industry I would say that the cost of employing 600 people would be much higher. Many of these staff would be legally/contractually trained and earning much more than the given figure, as would management. There would then be other overheads such as HR etc. Also I have heard rail staff get free/discounted travel. If this extends to these that is a further large cost. Overall I would say the figure for employing 600 is well over ^30,000,000 if not considerably more (i wouldn't be surprised if it is over ^50 million). obviously you may have more knowledge than me in which case apologie-i am new here!

Welcome to the forum, BristolBoy.

You're spot on - in fact I first did the calculation assuming a cost of employment of 30k per person, but then used 25k on the basis that I wanted a figure that no-one could argue were too high.

Which industry were you comparing with??

Delay attribution is a legasy of the last tory goverment's privatistion of the national railway system, the stream lining of the number of TOC and a large effort by NR this process is a lot smaller than it used to be. 

Rail staff that are employed by a TOC do get travel concessions on their own company trains and there are some benifits on other companies (this is agreed through ATOC) NR employees (other than ex BR) get no travel concessions, they do get a refund on a session ticket which has a limit and is taxed as a benifit in kind not a lot different to having a company car except it is of no use to the family.


The Panorama program fired some cheap shots it journalism was poor, it failed to pick up the surceases at Reading Caversham Road bridge Cow Lane Bridge resignalling in and around Reading all on time with very low impact on the public; all the work at Backfiars and London Bridge the Olympic amount of work done for the little sporting event later this year all with low impact on the traveling public, just a few examples but there are many many more projects going on all the time done without the public even noticing

Yes there are many things that NR can do to deliver it projects in a more cost effective manor but while we have to deliver projects and keep trains running be prepared for it to be expensive.  HS2 is cheaper to build than upgrading the WCML or ECML unless we can shut them down for a couple of years but then look a the Fiori over the weekend closure on the WCML while it was being upgraded.

Don't knock NR it is actually very good at what it does in the environment it has to work in, companies that have share holders look for one thing - profit so they can pay the dividend to the share holder the theory that share holders keep a company in check is a bit weak as they fail to keep executive pay in check, NR does not have share holders but could do with a Board of Trustees that monitor the executive

I thought the program was a typical jounalistic mishmash of fact and supposition.

It relied on inference:

Rugby was bad, so Reading will also be a disaster!

Chiltern did Warwick Parkway for the half the cost of NR, and Reading will cost over ^800m, so would obviously cost less than half if managed by FGW!!

Nobody will know if Reading is completed within budget until the project is finished!!!! Really?

As has been said in other threads, I also find the arguement about "I pay ^x thousand a year for my season ticket....." to be completely fatuous because, if you work out the cost of a one way trip in the peak averaged over a year, the actual cost per journey is incredibly good value.

And, as for the Oxford commuter that emails Mark Hopwood every time his train is late with a load of esoteric nonsense, if that is the best Panorama can do, it desperately needs a new producer. Think I might send him/her an appropriate email!

Even if we still had BR there would still be people employed to log delays and the reason for them.  If you dont investiagate delays then you are not going to stop them happening again !

Not such a great need for 'attribution' though if we still had BR.

Except perhaps between just four sectors: Intercity, Regional Railways, Network SouthEast and Railfreight, along with delays caused by outside influences such as weather, animal incursion, trespass/vandalism and numpties.

Instead we have around two dozen passenger operators (franchisees and open access), half a dozen freight operators and a dozen or so railtour operators. Add to that Network Rail and their sub-contractors. Anyone of whom, along with the aforementioned outside influences, could be responsible for a causing a delay that requires attribution.

Still, 600 staff 'involved in blame attribution' does seem rather a lot, even with our fractured rail network. However, I suspect that few of those 600 are rail employees whose only role is delay attribution.

Perhaps a Freedom of Information request to East Coast (being Govt. run they are the only TOC obliged to provide information following FoI requests) asking them how many of their employees sole role is delay attribution. That could give us a figure from which to extrapolate.
 

Yeah, I'm sure BR would have had fewer delay attribution staff. Surely passengers would prefer 250 more staffed stations (leaving 100 delay attribution staff and assuming 2 staff needed for each staffed station) and a nationalised industry than a privatised industry with 600 delay attribution staff.

The program seemed to leave out one of the uneccessary costs of privatisation that anoys me the most, rolling stock leasing. Even if we have to have privatised franchises, if the government owned the rolling stock they could include a free lease in the franchise agreement, slashing the TOCs' costs and therefore the subsidy they require.

I have some experience of the energy industry, and in particular who's fault it is when electricity is not supplied etc. in many cases the cost of arguing by both parties can far exceed the actual compensation claim and I expect in many cases it is the same on the railway.

Given the track record of DfT procurement I wouldnt put them in charge of rolling stock supply!  There are some faults but privatisation has provided the capital to replace a very large amount of rolling stock.

I thougth the programme was pretty poor and missed out on one of the key reasons for the high cost of the railways - staff pay (esp drivers!)

Fully Trained and skilled Railway staff have proved to be valuable asset during the privatisation years, and  with market forces at work staff pay has risen over the years but so has productivity.

And let us not forget, despite all the perceived problems, passenger numbers are at an all time high. Whilst the system, as a consequence, may be creaking at the seams, UK rail must be doing something right if folks keep using it day in, day out.

Sorry - the sole reason for that may well be the rising cost (faster than rail!) of motor fuel...

There's very rarely a sole reason for anything.  Though of course increased cost of running a motor vehicle will be a significant reason.

Which has nothing at all to do with the train itself being popular....just a means to a (cheaper) end...

From personal experience (albeit in a totally different industry) I never trust anything I hear on Panorama.

A couple of comments:

1. ^25K per year per employee - what about NI/pension costs?

2. If we reverted to the old BR system or regional railway companies, instead of fragmented operators/Network Rail/rolling stock lease companies, would there be so many complaints and/or need for staff to deal with them?

Market forces have driven up pay which in itself I do not think is a bad thing.  Plenty of staff work hard and are entitled to a decent wage and pay used to be low, but the picture for productivity per staff member tells a different story.

For frieght companies productivity HAS risen due to both longer trains and greater staff flexibility with respect to roles.  Therefore unit costs have been kept down at the same time as staff pay has risen.  By this measure frieght staffs' pay increases are affordable.

Wish it was the same with the passenger railway, but unfortunately it is not.  Trains have got shorter and frequences increased and a huge number of extra staff are employed doing things that previously did not need doing (putting together franchise bids, checking legal agreements, arguing over delay compensation).  The number of staff needed to move one passenger 1 mile has stayed stubonly high.  This means that increasing passenger numbers, which ought to be a good thing for the economics of running a railway often lead to more not less subsidy requirement.   

Having a year on year increase in customers and revenue would lead to lower unit costs in the bus or airline industry, but somehow the railway manages to squander a customer growth rate that would be the envy of any other industry.