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Question: Are service gaps in the middle of the day a good idea?  (Voting closed: June 30, 2017, 08:37:30)
Yes - 3 (10%)
No - 17 (56.7%)
Only on some service [groups] - 9 (30%)
Don't care - don't travel in middle of day - 1 (3.3%)
Total Voters: 30

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Author Topic: Firebreaks in public transport services  (Read 10304 times)
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« Reply #15 on: June 24, 2017, 11:25:33 »

There were a couple, of a fashion, introduced on the St Ives line last summer, where some services from St Ives were timetabled to be terminated at Lelant Saltings and not go on to St.Erth. This was to catch up with any delays caused by loading and unloading. Seemed to work ok

That does have a logic to it, as the timetable is so tight to enable a 30 minute service and I can well imagine in high season dwell times become a problem.

The other time saver I've seen there, is that there is also two drivers, one in each end so they don't have to walk the length of the two units along a crowded platform.
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« Reply #16 on: June 24, 2017, 11:28:16 »

Fascinating to read the views and thoughts.   

Where I grew up (North West Kent), we had longer distance commuter trains that did a morning run into London and then sat for the day and did an evening run out.   The entire fleet of Hastings Diesels overnighted in - err - Hastings ( Ore / St Leonard's / Bexhill) and travelled up to London in the morning peak.   One turned around at Tonbridge to provide the first southbound service; all the others carried on up to Charing Cross or Cannon Street, and then they went for the day to sidings at Grove Park that were empty overnight and at weekends, only coming out again in the late afternoon to do the homeward run. 

Same thing with Kent Coast expresses to Cannon Street parking up on the bridge at Blackfriars - 4CEP and 4BEP units just doing 1 round trip a day.

Sort of super-firebreak ... and hideously inefficient.   And I suspect you'll still see that sort of thing with Oxford HSTs (High Speed Train) into Paddington, and quite a number of the SWT (South West Trains) 159s park up during the day too.

The bus scenario I look(ed) at somewhat differs; it's aimed at efficient crew breaks rather more than service robustness, mainly because (in our parts at least), the bus operation day is short enough to simply and cheapen operation with one driver per bus each day.



Actually there is not much difference regards the Kent services, units stabled at remote ends for the am peak services, the parked up just outside London during the day ready for the pm peak.

GWR (Great Western Railway) seem to a lot of 165/6 moves to Reading after the morning peak and the a number of empties back to Padd for the evening peak.   There are some kept at OOC (Old Oak Common (depot)).

There is no easy solution to this, unless the general commuting population moves away from the "9 to 5" work pattern
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paul7575
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« Reply #17 on: June 24, 2017, 11:50:30 »

There's another Network Rail usage of the term firebreak.   The peak fast line SWT (South West Trains) timetable through Clapham Junction is determined on a 24 tph cycle, but they also leave a couple of paths empty every half hour or so.   The intention is that minor disruptions don't affect every successive service.  The gaps have been referred to in previous strategy documents such as the London and SE RUS (Route Utilisation Strategy) as "firebreak paths", there are descriptions of how 28 tph could be achieved if the firebreak paths were filled, but the downside would be greater unreliability.

Paul
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stuving
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« Reply #18 on: June 24, 2017, 15:54:08 »

Chris Gibb proposed his "firebreak" in the specific context of Southern's complex timetable, and more particularly the crew and train diagramming:

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The method of train crew diagramming, which is highly efficient, and was probably a factor in Govia winning the franchise, is typical of that developed using the TRACSIS diagramming software by many franchise bidders. On a typical journey from the Sussex Coast to London, a train might change drivers three times. On arrival in London the driver will split the train, and then take another set on another service, while the conductor will remain with the first train, and go elsewhere. Trains split and join, sometimes into three portions, and almost every station on GTR has a through service to London as a result. It is all theoretically possible, and reduces the necessary driver hours. But when anything goes wrong, delivering service recovery is very slow: the overall system takes too long to work properly again, as train crew and trains are all in the wrong place.

In order to get all the pieces back into order after being jumbled up you need a bit of breathing space; either an off-peak timetable well below the peak capacity or his firebreak. Note that he only proposes this for a year to two, with the long-term solution being that reduction in off-peak service levels, and he also proposes to reduce the use of splitting/joining, relatively common on Southern, but notes:

Quote
The timetable is based on the assumption that almost every station on the GTR network must have regular direct trains to London, at all times of the day. In addition to provide 12 car trains on the busiest sections, principally Horsham / Haywards Heath – London Bridge / Victoria, trains from the “country” couple up at places like Horsham, Haywards Heath and Redhill. This is fine in theory, but results in a complex timetable and plan, with multiple potential failure points. I have noted that stakeholders on each route are unwilling to lose any through services to London, irrespective of the benefits to the overall system. There is no easy short term solution.

Of course he is pushing in the opposite direction to DfT» (Department for Transport - about) and TfL» (Transport for London - about), who favour all-day metro service levels. Thus next year's new SWR» (South Western Railway - about) timetable has 4 tph all day serving Reading and Windsor, but no extras in the peaks. While these are simpler end-to-end operations, complicated only by half the Reading trains going via each of Richmond and Hounslow, I'm sure a recovery strategy is needed and is being planned.

At the moment the usual approach is to cancel or part-cancel (by turning short) trains so as to slot trains back into paths. I'm not sure whether that always gets the train and crew into its original path; I suspect not, but for out and back running that's not a big issue. This turning short always happens at the outer end - I've never seen it done skipping Waterloo. Now I can guess why: crew turns start and end at Waterloo so it can't be skipped. But I have a hunch that crews don't often live near there, and travel in, so perhaps that could be altered.

The advantage would be that the cancelled trains would be over parts of the line where many other trains run, so each passenger's delay would be shorter. It might even be acceptable enough that the recovery break can be built into the timetable, so some interpeak trains will involve a change. Being timetabled has an advantage for passengers needing assistance, who won't call for an unexpected staff presence to help them, though of course would still happen during the disruption.
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ChrisB
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« Reply #19 on: June 24, 2017, 16:10:51 »

Crews still have to book on & off at their home 'depot'....they can't just alight from a late train as past their booking off time owing to lateness & go directly home!
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TaplowGreen
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« Reply #20 on: June 24, 2017, 19:33:29 »

No.

Thin end of the wedge. We are used to regular service patterns and any reduction in service is a retrograde step.

Next it will be cuts after 8pm to prepare for overnight engineering, lengthening the midday firebreak from 1100-1500...



Absolutely spot on, sounds like the start of a race to the bottom, and I am sure that the Unions would be up in arms at the inevitable threats to jobs that this would involve, we don't need even more needless strikes thanks!!!

Please try to understand that life is not 9-5 Mon-Fri any more, and if anything we should be looking to enhance services to reflect this, not cut them.
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Richard Fairhurst
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« Reply #21 on: June 24, 2017, 19:46:22 »

Let's take a station on the Southern (and SWT (South West Trains)) network I once knew well, dear old Leatherdead. Throughout the day, there are six or occasionally seven trains per hour to London.

Chris Gibb defines a firebreak as "every route having at least one service missing from its hourly clockface pattern". Could Leatherhead cope with (say) having only five or even four London-bound trains in the 2pm-3pm slot? I don't see how you could argue otherwise. And that's consistently my experience across the old SR(resolve) - off-peak services are well-loaded, especially given that so many operate in 8-carriage formations through the day, but never so much that going from a 10-minute frequency to a 15-minute frequency would hurt.

But I'm not convinced that model can be transposed to the GWR (Great Western Railway) network. GWR doesn't operate many 6tph routes. Most major flows are 2tph at best. (Reading-Paddington is a special case, of course.) Putting a 'firebreak' on Oxford-London fasts, for example, might mean halving the mid-afternoon service. Anyone who's visited Oxford station at such a time can envisage exactly how well that might go.

We already have experience of this on the Cotswold Line. Even post-redoubling, there are major service gaps, gaps which make the train a much less feasible option for many journeys. 2pm-4pm on Saturday up from Charlbury is my own cause celebre: a 3pm service would make me much more likely to take an afternoon out in Oxford. The evening return has another two-hour gap, between 9pm and 11pm. And I realise that here in the Cotswolds we are blessed with an infinitely better service than the TransWilts or much of the rest of the GWR network.

So, firebreaks on Southern? Absolutely - if it's operationally worthwhile, go for it. On GWR? I remain to be convinced.
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« Reply #22 on: June 24, 2017, 20:05:43 »

It needs to depend on the level of service. 1tph to 1tp2h no way, 6tph to 4tph would be ok
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« Reply #23 on: June 24, 2017, 20:09:40 »

Chris Gibb defines a firebreak as "every route having at least one service missing from its hourly clockface pattern".

But he didn't say that!
Quote
For the immediate future I recommend that there needs to be a “firebreak” in the current timetable between 1200 and 1400 that enables the system to recover fully for the evening peak. This should mean that every train has at least a 30 minute break in its operation, and is parked, even if this means every route having at least one service missing from its hourly clockface pattern.

So it's only short-term, and missing a service is only needed if there isn't spare capacity otherwise.
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« Reply #24 on: June 25, 2017, 09:59:33 »

Hmm. Yes, he did, and more.

"At least a 30min break in its operation" equates to losing one train in a 2tph service, for one hour. In addition, that means losing 2tph in a 4tph operation, and 3tph (consecutive) in a 6tph operation
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stuving
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« Reply #25 on: June 25, 2017, 10:59:54 »

Hmm. Yes, he did, and more.

"At least a 30min break in its operation" equates to losing one train in a 2tph service, for one hour. In addition, that means losing 2tph in a 4tph operation, and 3tph (consecutive) in a 6tph operation

I think you're misreading that too. The "it" that has a 30 minute break in its operation is the train, as a physical object, not the service. Provided there are more trains is use that day than the service requires, and crew (e.g. at a kind of shift change, at least for that train), your 2 tph service can be continuous. He explicitly warns against running the maximum peak service all day, partly for than reason.
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« Reply #26 on: June 25, 2017, 12:08:11 »

I find it difficult to answer the question. A service gap of say 30 minutes in a 15 min service interval would be OK.  A gap of 4 hours in a 2 hour service defiantly not. Somewhere between these extremes is a reasonable compromise.  It also depends on the amount of off peak traffic there is.

It sounds like you may be voting "only on some service groups" ... which is one of the options offered  Grin
That's how (and why) I voted. If passenger usage thins out enough on a given route during the off-peak period, it makes sense to reduce the frequency a little from say a 6tph service (every 10 minutes) to 4tph (every 15mins) or 3tph (every 20mins) provided that this does not put off many passengers and would not result in passengers not getting a seat who otherwise would have one. However, any route which has less than 3tph should not be subject to any reduction in services, since intervals any longer than 30mins are likely to introduce many cases of "there isn't a train when I need it".
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« Reply #27 on: June 25, 2017, 12:32:38 »

French Railways has, or at least used to have, a 'white period' of an hour or so in the middle of the day when no trains were timetabled to allow for inspection of the infrastructure. This was mostly on the trunk routes and the train service was never so intensive anyway - suburban services (at least on the Île de France) seemed to keep running.

Note, though, that the Gibb report only suggests this a short term measure until the other recommendations bring longer term improvements in reliability.
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« Reply #28 on: June 29, 2017, 16:01:27 »

I votod no and would be dead against this.  Sure match the supply of trains to demand, but leaving a white space gap in the timetable just for service recovery is an admission that "they" are incapable of running a proper service.  Operating staff will know they have this recovery time and it will cause them to relax their focus on minimising delays.  Just as timetable padding encourages sloppy platform work 
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« Reply #29 on: June 29, 2017, 21:58:11 »

As is well known, many rush hour services are overcrowded, some grossly so.
Complaints about such overcrowding are often answered with statements that it is the passengers fault to choosing to go to work in normal working hours.

Rather than provide sufficient capacity, it is often suggested that the answer is to encourage flexible working hours so as to spread the load.
A partial closure or significant thinning out of services during the middle of the day is hardly going to encourage off peak travel.
I have no doubt that some TOCs (Train Operating Company) will simply use this as an excuse to cut back on staff during the fire break, and employ only the absolute minimum to just about run the much reduced service, with no staff in reserve to recover from any earlier disruption, when of course the whole point of the exercise was to facilitate recovery from earlier problems.
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It has space for cycles, surfboards,luggage etc.
A 5 car DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) is not a proper inter-city train. The 5+5 and 9 car DMUs are almost as bad.
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