Services under the next Franchise - how to specify them?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

The Department intends that the specification should provide greater flexibility for operators to respond to demographic and market changes and commercial opportunities than is the case under the current franchise. However, the service specified in the new franchise contract needs to be sufficiently detailed to protect key journey opportunities, especially on services that would not be expected to generate a commercial return. The specification also needs to recognise that the Great Western railway serves different railway markets: InterCity, Regional, Suburban and Branch Line, and that purely commercial decisions may not fully reflect the economic benefits and connectivity provided by these services.

The specification could mandate a range of different features of the train service such as:
* first and last train times;
* frequency of services by week, day or hour;
* calling patterns;
* capacity of services or ^peak hour seats^ to and from major conurbations;
* journey times;
* week versus weekend services; and
* connections with onward rail journeys, and other transport modes.

The current level of service will provide our starting point for deciding what goes into the new franchise. We will therefore expect bidders to base their proposals around the overall current level of service as set out in the most recent FGW^▸ (First Great Western) timetable, rather than the contracted minimum, and we welcome consultees^ views on this.

From: Great Western Franchise Replacement Consultation
Republished here under: Open Government License

QUESTION (10)

"The final specification will seek to avoid a prescriptive approach and to balance passenger, taxpayer and stakeholder interests. Respondents are encouraged to consider which aspects of the specification they believe should be mandated and which could be left to greater commercial discretion."

[grahame]

Two comments from me (personally at this stage):


One

The current level of service will provide our starting point for deciding what goes into the new franchise.

That seems like one of the two logical possibilities (the other would be to start from the baseline at the start of the previous franchise) and seems the most positive / less negative of the two.

It refers to the starting point.   Elsewhere in the franchise consultation document, it refers onwards to many other and more recent documents (good - that's what much of this work is for), and in my own Wiltshire "neck of the wood" that should be taken widely to include pertinent information from older, and recent, reports too.   I refer to Park report (Circa 2000), Jacobs (2004), GWRUS^▸ (Great Western Route Utilisation Strategy) (2010),  MVA (2011) specifically, and to recent work by the Wessex Association of Chambers of Commerce in business and public surveys that back up MVA, and the Network Rail report which importantly confirms the robustness operationally in current and future (post electrification) settings.   Financial, economic, practicality and robustness of proposals need to be considered - which probably means that any major service adjustments at the start of the franchise will already be pretty well down the evaluation path.


Two

The more specificational rules that are applied, the easier it is to create apparently absurd services and patterns that seem to run more to meet the needs of the needs of the specification than to provide the services that are operationally what's needed for the passenger flows.

I have looked ... in some dispair ... at some of the very odd services running in parts of the GW^▸ (Great Western) in order to "meet spec". It's very easy to say "take the 4 hours this unit sits at X,  take the 70 minutes that a unit sits unused at Y every 2 hours, remould occasional fillin services which duplicate other trains running within a few minutes, and provide a truely appropriate service across the area where these things happen, with no extra stock or cost".    But I'm not sure how to specify that without coming up with another series of tight rules which have loopholes that would again leave the financial interests of the train operator and of the travelling public opposed to each other.   We all need to find a good solution here!

[ellendune]

I think it would be useful to specify a number of major commuter hubs and their feeder services.  The franchisee would then have to demonstrate how they will filfill the needs of commuters on these routes.  Obviouis hubs would include Reading, Oxford, Swindon, Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Exeter etc.  Salisbury might also be included

As for the feeder services, and taking Swindon as an example, the routes should include those from Reading, Oxford, Cheltenham/Gloucester,  Westbury/Melksham(& even Salisbury?), Bristol/Bath etc.

A commuter route needs a good service to get people to/from the hub to fit the working day and  a basic service during the day. 

[Lee]

A commuter route needs a good service to get people to/from the hub to fit the working day and  a basic service during the day.

How would you define "basic", ellendune?

[grahame]

A commuter route needs a good service to get people to/from the hub to fit the working day and  a basic service during the day.

How would you define "basic", ellendune?

I know I'm not Ellendune, but I've been looking at "minimum sensible service level" recently - TransWilts specifically, but also comparing that to further afield.

As I see it, there are three different mentalities we passengers use when travelling by train / bus / ferry / plane:
a) Travel by train if there happens to be a conveninent service
b) Decide when you wish to travel, and then find a service close to that time
c) Turn up and go

(a) is the only option with a service that operates infrequently - as on the TransWilts.   I got back to Chippenham at 21:57 on Friday evening, and (having missed the 19:01 to Melksham) decided not to wait for the 15:38 the following day (the next train!) but rather I planned to use the bus (last bus failed to turn up, ended up shelling out for a taxi, but that's another story).

For option (b) to work reasonably well, you need a service who's frequency is such that you can adjust your journey time by about the same amount of time as the journey takes to find a convenient service.   For example - if I wanted to travel from Swindon to Westbury at 17:30, a 40 minute journey, I would be happy to plan on getting a train as early as 16:50 or as late as 18:10.  There are "working day" questions here where people with fixed appointments will only be able to travel earlier in the morning, and only later in the evening.  And further questions about people not wanting to wait the extreme time at both ends of the day. (1)

For option (c), I would suggest every 10 minutes (urban), 20 minutes (suburban) , 30 minutes (intercity) are reasonable. I'll cheerfully turn up at Paddington for a Chippenham service and get on the next train that's available (or would if I wasn't paying personally - I'll usually delay to offpeak because I can afford to waste time occasionally!)


My view - option (a) is only viable for train services designed to meet specific passenger flows along a corridor rather than a more general travel flow.  Examples here might be works trains - looking to past services which operated to stations such as IBM, British Steel Redcar and Sinfin.  And you may include pure commuter flows and special in there too, such as some of the South Eastern services into Cannon Street, and perhaps in our own area the through trains from the Thames Valley branches into Paddington, but in those latter cases these are supplementary to other trains serving the same stations, and you need to be certain that you cater for people who may have to stay late at work / have different hours occasionally.  If I worked from 8 till 6:30 in Swindon and lives in Trowbridge, I might use the present TransWilts service - but only because I have an alternative on that 1 day per week when I start or end significantly earlier or later.

Option (b) - if you work it out for the TransWilts - is a train every 90 minutes in each direction.  It's woolly round the edges - there's no immediate switch from a service at level "a" to a service at level "b", and in any case there's a wide variety of journeys - only a small percentage end to end so full time - on this line.  So I'll accept a service "at least once every 2 hours" as a minimum sensible service level at which traffic will naturally flourish and grow, bearing in mind that you need a corridor on which there are travel needs, which we certainly have.  Service at  06:30, 08:50, 14:25, 17:45 and 22:10 - the old Wessex service from Swindon - fall far short of the tip-over point to option (b).

Where there is substantial traffic on a flow, an increase above the (b) level will make a big difference - see (1) above. So you find that a quieter branch line works with a single train at basic level, and a busier one gains substantially from having a loop in the middle with trains passing each other there.

[eightf48544]

Without being too prescriptive taking the list.

General point no servie to be worse than curent ie at least same number of trains but meeting the following:

* first and last train times; All routes first train before 07:00 last after 22:00 earlier and later where there is demand
* frequency of services by week, day or hour; All routes minimum service 2 hourly, commuter routes hourly in peak both ends of the day, with 2 hourly off peak busy routes 2 tph or more
* calling patterns; IC^▸ (Inter City) RE^▸ (Religious Education) RB services as per another post of mine
* capacity of services or ^peak hour seats^ to and from major conurbations; Current figures plus 5% growth per annum
* journey times; As fast as practicle
* week versus weekend services; Saturday weekday off peak Sunday routes with more than 1 tph 1 tph otherwise weekday.
* connections with onward rail journeys, and other transport modes. Yes TOc to specify how.

Also there should be details how the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) proposes to improve it's intial offering over tiem.

it seems to me that  the TOCs should present what they are prepared to run and DaFT^» (Department for Transport - critical sounding abbreviation I discourage - about) should accept the best offer , takng into account best service offering for all stations, least subsidy maximum payments.

if it is to be longer franchise then TOCs should be allowed to put forward capital programmes to deliver the level of service. This would be simialr to the green gauge projects built into teh Chiltern franchise.

This could be tweaked with adjustment to subsidy and/or payments.

The problem with this DaFT will really have to solve the rolling stock problem. Certainly I think an order for 100 2 car 15X 17X compatible units (200 coaches) would be a big help and might even allow some 14xs to be withdrawn.

i think if you try and specify more details then you get bogged down in virtually having to write the timetable.

However the problem with my solution is that it each bidder has to specify a pretty detailed timtable together with the roling stock require to operate the timetable. Which is a waste of skilled resources, timetable gurus and stock diagrammers.

Basically the whole system is flawed almost beyond correction.

[grahame]

I like a lot of those    Let me pick up on some.

* first and last train times; All routes first train before 07:00 last after 22:00 earlier and later where there is demand

Yes

* frequency of services by week, day or hour; All routes minimum service 2 hourly, commuter routes hourly in peak both ends of the day, with 2 hourly off peak busy routes 2 tph or more

Yes

* journey times; As fast as practicle

Not quite. I would prefer reliability, and to allow some time for recovery / robustness.   Specific example - Swindon to Westbury is 40 minutes "as fast as practical".  I would prefer service to be allowed 48 or 50 minutes so that connections don't routinely miss in the event of delays, and that disruption on one line served (London to Bristol) doesn't get knocked on to another route (Cardiff to Portsmouth)

* week versus weekend services; Saturday weekday off peak Sunday routes with more than 1 tph 1 tph otherwise weekday.

Yes.  And that's all day Sunday

[ellendune]

A commuter route needs a good service to get people to/from the hub to fit the working day and  a basic service during the day.

How would you define "basic", ellendune?

It would depend on the route but I think a train every 2 to 3 hours would be the minimum. 

[eightf48544]

Grahame to reconcile my fast as practicle and your reliability criteria why not add "guarenteed connections" that would mean services could be tighly timed but there would be a guarenteed connection. Maybe a penalty for missed connections. That would smarten up operations.

As I say, I go along with Gerry Fiennes the railway should be run "Briskly." It actually probably runs better for being brisk all this slack in the current timetable just leads to sloppy working.