Great Western Coffee Shop

A whisper ... that when it's restarted, the Great Western Franchise bids will be requested for a seven year period rather than a 15 year period ... said to be because most commercial companies find it hard to bid / predict for their books and shareholders for 15 years, leading to the bidding tending to be restricted / favoured towards organisations who have backing of a national system or government.

Is this just someone flying a kite, or is there some fire underneath the smoke?

I'm sure there's some fire.  It's a conundrum that's been discussed before though, isn't it?  You either have a shorter franchise which prohibits long term planning and restricts incentive to invest in new stock/services/ideas, or you have a long term franchise which allows all of that but comes at a massive risk when it comes to predicting what is going to happen in the future.  Or there's a possible third way which involves letting a concession or management contract such as Merseyrail or London Overground.  Would that work on a less tightly run network with much less predictable revenue and passenger flows?

Personally I don't see that short franchises have worked particularly well so far - lest we forget the problems with the cap-and-collar system in current franchises, and there's still a massive risk of things going badly wrong within seven years should the economy go potty again.

It's a shame that a compromise can't be reached, where you have a franchise term of seven years, followed by the winner of that bid automatically becoming the 'preferred bidder' for a second seven year term provided certain criteria are met (by both parties).  No doubt that would fall foul of European law though!

Sticking with 'normal length' franchises was being reported as the view of the 'Rail Delivery Group' a few days ago, eg in the Grauniad:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/25/long-term-rail-contracts-industry

Paul

 

That's the Rail Delivery Group, headed by First Group CEO Tim O'Toole. A man who was happy to bid for the 15 year WCML franchise and when his company 'won' he robustly defended First Group's figures and projections.

Then, elsewhere in First Group, in June of this year, First TransPennine Express said in a presentation to TravelWatch North West that they'd like to to see longer franchises. This was at the head of list of Government/Industry priorities.

http://www.travelwatch-northwest.org.uk/TPE_612.pdf

So it would appear that the Tim O' Toole who is head of the Rail Delivery Group wants shorter franchises, but the Tim O'Toole who is head of First Group wants longer franchises.  ::)

My take is that local/suburban franchises should be run as concessions, awarded by a new body similar in setup to OPRAF or the SRA, but at one remove from the DfT, for up to 15 years. With InterCity franchises run as they are now but for a maximum of 10 years.

Then split Greater Western back into it's constituent parts, Wessex, London Thames Valley and InterCity Great Western. Same goes for Greater Anglia and the northern part of the current First Capital Connect, split into an InterCity franchise and suburban/local concession(s).

That isn't too strange, as 'chairman' of RDG (rather than 'head of') he'll have to go with the majority view of all the TOCs surely?

I don't know which way he's going. If the RDG do really want shorter franchises then isn't it a little odd that its chairman appears to be publicly dissenting from this view? Either that or the guardian have got it wrong.

On 31st October 2012, Tim O'Toole said the following in his "Franchising Structure Lecture" for the 2nd annual Bradshaw address at the Institute of Civil Engineers. A meeting attended by many industry chiefs:

http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2012/bradshaw-lecture/

On such a fundamental issue as this, having a chairman who appears to be at odds with his industry colleagues (if the guardian article is correct) can't be good for delivering that unified position.

Or maybe the RDG has done a u-turn between that lecture and the publishing of the guardian article. A week is a long time in politics. Perhaps the same is true in this RDG talking shop....

While we are awaiting the reports to the SoS would we not hope that, if enterprise is supposed to be the advantage of franchising, there would be a structure that encouraged that?  I see what BNM is saying about local services (presumably 'micromanaged' by a LTE of some sort, so not really relying on 'enterprise' but direction by such an authority as to what should be provided).

However, on inter-city, where do we get the new services starting up, at the franchiser's risk?  Just through Open Access arrangements?

Does anyone else always read RDG as Reading...  :P

Me... Me... ;D

Or how about as BNM suggested in another thread, A Tendering process similar to London Bus Operations.

Have one Country Wide Brand maybe seperated into 4 Groups called as some once were: Intercity, Regional Railways and Network Southeast. Then another form for Underground, Metro or Tram operations. (Maybe: City & District Transport)

Then the DfT issue a tender process to the private sector such as the likes of FirstGroup, Stagecoach etc to run these services under the above brandnames for a management fee to cover their costs in terms of maybe Staff, Fuel, Repairs to Stock etc.

Or as another idea. Transfer ALL rail operations to Network Rail and thus create a global TOC called: Network Rail

Then maybe this Global TOC could run a similar process to the above proposal but have targets and limits set by the DfT or ORR they says a single 'area sector operator' must run 95% of it's allocated services in any 12 month period and of that 95%, 90% need to run and arrive at the terminating station within 5 minutes for a Class 1 Service (InterCity) and 10 minutes for a Class 2 Service (Regional/Local). Obviously minus any contributory factors outside the control of the railway and/or it's associates.

This thread has been started in "The Rumour Mill" - a  members-only board, but there seems something more than just a rumour and I'm going to move it into one of our public boards later today.

I have sent personal messages to each of the contributors so far in case they want to amend their posts / request that I don't make the move because they don't want to say something in public.

New posters - you are welcome to continue the thread, but please be aware that it will probably be going public at lunchtime, and what you say will be "world visible" in the way most of our other boards are.

Even after all these years there is still no answer to the basic Wolmar Question "What are franchises for?" Until that question is answered we are only tinkering with what is a basically highly flaud system.

The Greater Western franchise is a particularly difficult one. Up until 2020 whoever runs it will have to cope with implementing what will basically be a new railway whilst still keeping the trains running. If you lsit what's happening it's a formidible task,

Finish Reading rebuild
Acton flyunder
Heathrow flyover
Electrification
Introduction of IEPs and cascaded EMUs
New Signalling  and last but not least
Crossrail will be coming out of the tunnels to ?

After 2020 it should all be sunshine and profits.

So do you award a 15 year franchise and hope whoever gets it can manage the transistion well and therefore deserve to reap the rewards or do you split and have someone do the transisiotn and someone else reap the rewards?

Industry Insider has suggestedn that  a 7 year franchise could be awarded with a chance for 15 years if the winner performs well. Although as he says it may be against coompetition law.

There is also the suggestion that the local services are concessions, This seems to work well in Germany but it's still basically state owned by the Lander.

One other thought Crossrail is a TFL project maybe TFL becomes Network Southeast and runs the network under a series of concessions.

Thread moved from "The Rumour Mill" - which is one of our very few members only boards - to a public area as it's of wider interest and what was just a whisper I heard on Saturday turns out to be a bit more than that.

As things stood, with so much 'WCML' type disruption planned, it does not seem sensible to plan the next 15 years on a franchise basis.  The bidders will all have to be conservative (under-bid) and that means higher costs for passengers (sorry 'customers') and especially as any real improvements will be subject to DfT micro management interference.

I would rather that the Bristol area (alright  - 'WoE') and Cardiff area (alright  - 'Valleys') were put under a TfL arrangement.  The rest should be run by DOR until it's all done.

We really do need some very decisive government action for planning the next 15 years in the area.     

It's possible to get carried away with this potential for 'disruption' though surely?

Completely unplanned chaos such as seen in the last week or two must be far harder to deal with.

Acton diveunder will almost certainly be fairly trivial in its effect, I'd expect that it will happen almost without people noticeing outside a couple of relatively short possesions to slew the track temporarily and then change to the new route, likewise the Heathrow flyover alterations.

IMHO there is much scope for exaggeration of the effects of the Reading rebuild too, a year or more between major blockades is hardly noticeable in the overall scheme of things, and I seriously doubt there have been any significant unplanned disruptions to the train service through Reading caused by the work so far.

Closures that reduce the area to two lines only over weekends are part and parcel of normal planned maintenance anyway...

Paul

It's one thing to be so sanguine about what is to happen but my point is what will be the effect on the franchiser (actually franchisee) on his bid?  More importantly actually is the effect on public acceptance of inevitable delays.

The Mainline has diversion routes (via Trowbridge and Badminton) and careful planning of those will be key to stemming dissatisfaction during those years.  A few non-stops, for the - er, - voluble, would seem commercially important. 

Agreed Reading Acton and Heathrow could be seen a relatively non disruptive but we are now talking about the complete electricfication plus new completely new signalling (ERTMS) and completely new trains all basically being introduced simultaneously.

It only needs one of those to go wrong and the whole thing is up the shute.

Don't forget that one of the problems with modern railways is the amount of software required a lot of which has to interact with other software, especaily with moving trains which will have software controlling the traction power inteacting with both the power supply and the signalling. Ask the Dutch and Belgians about ERTMS software and the train/signal interface it's still not really right.

I think it will be a very long time before the lineside signals go and ERTMS equipment is fitted into cabs. As I understand it there was a plan to use Cornwall as the ERTMS test area and remove rather than replace the lineside signals. This has now been abandoned.