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Author Topic: Long term consequences of present/recent railway problems.  (Read 6401 times)
4064ReadingAbbey
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« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2018, 20:51:03 »

I would suggest, as a long time observer of the railway business, that the failings described by broadgage are a reflection of a deeper malaise within the industry.

There have been two very informative reports published over the last couple of years. One was by Dame Colette Bowe in 2015, Report of the Bowe Review into the planning of Network Rail’s Enhancements Programme 2014-2019 and Nicola Shaw’s The future shape and financing of Network Rail published in March 2016. Both were sponsored by the Department for Transport.

Both point out the confused and unclear relationships between Network Rail, the Office of the Rail Regulator (now the Office for Road and Rail), the Train Operating Companies and the DfT» (Department for Transport - about). Shaw writes:

Quote
But solutions designed for one set of circumstances are not necessarily applicable to the next. Since the early 2000s, the world has changed at a rapid pace, and the heavily centralised and ‘top-down’ planning model of the early Network Rail is no longer appropriate in a world in which the safety concerns post-Hatfield have been overcome, where there is ongoing political devolution, where passenger and freight customer expectations continue to increase, and in which individuals expect a far greater degree of accountability and answerability from the companies and institutions that exist to serve them.

She reports on the results of a wide ranging consultation:

Quote
1.26 While by no means universally raised, there were also a number of other themes arising, both explicitly and implicitly:
• frustration with the quality or reliability of passenger railway services, and in some places a sense that private train operators abstract profit that could otherwise be reinvested into the railway;
• a perceived lack of accountability or answerability in the railway: with many respondents asking who is accountable for the railway – the government, Network Rail, the regulator, train operators, a combination of all or none of these; and
• a sense of disempowerment whereby customers, passengers and freight shippers expressed frustration that decisions are taken in places where they do not have a say and where they feel that the railway operates in spite of them – not for them. Many responses suggest a deep scepticism with the status quo and that passengers’ needs are not best represented in the current structure.

These reports are specifically concerned with Network Rail, but the detail in them suggests there is confusion and lack of clarity regarding who does what and when in a variety of different areas, including relationships with the TOCs (Train Operating Company). It is clear that Network Rail was, possibly still is, uncertain who its customers are - Shaw considered that NR» (Network Rail - home page)’s customers were the TOCs and FOCs (Freight Operating Company) but notes that NR sees the DfT - its owner and funder for improvements - as a customer. The DfT requires a lot of NR’s management time to service its demands. Another customer is the ORR» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) which also continually requires information; NR has much less contact with the TOCs and FOCs than with these two Government bodies.

I don’t think much will change until the DfT works out what it should be doing - at the moment it is confused as to whether it is the Ministry for Transport for the country or the Ministry of Railways. In its MoR role it is so intimately concerned with the minutiae of railway operation that over the last decade and more it has removed any capability for the senior management of the TOCs to act in their interpretation of the best interests of their paying customers. The TOCs are kept in such a financial straightjacket (because of the franchising contracts which insist on a given profile of premium payment increase or subsidy reductions regardless of business conditions) they have little or no incentive to add to their operational flexibility, and therefore increase its costs, by adding more staff or equipment.

If things lower down in the food chain of any organisation don’t seem to be going well it is practically always because the targets set by top management and the directors are vague, contradictory and the incentives perverse resulting in apparently odd decisions. In a publicly quoted company this would result in an underperforming share price making the organisation a target for a takeover. This path is not available to the passenger train operators or to NR, so I only hope that the DfT can reform itself and teach itself to disentangle itself from what should be purely railway management decisions.

If this does happen one result may be that the railway business will be able to hire higher quality managers…good people do not accept being told what to do all the time and (added in edit as it's what I meant to say all along) even more being told what they can't do.

On a positive note these two reports are by respected people so they are - I hope - evidence that these problems are being taken seriously at the highest levels. I hope that they are not simply pro forma exercises. Change may come, but it will be measured in years, not months.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 08:57:41 by 4064ReadingAbbey » Logged
grahame
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« Reply #16 on: July 30, 2018, 07:29:52 »

I am frankly puzzled that the opening post has, until today, generated zero replies and a rather low view-rate.
Partly a function of the way the forum software works. The "Show unread posts since last visit" button doesn't actually show everything you haven't read – after a time things seem to slip off the list.

Discussions like this have me (as the board operator) scrambling to take a look and asking 'what is going on", even with facilities that I tend onto you use in my own day to day browsing.   We are looking at the "Show unread posts since last visit" menu option at the top of the page, I think.  And I suspect that the answer might lie in "Show unread posts since last visit" - and the definition of a "visit".

Individual topics have "new" flags on them when they have not been read and those offer far more than "Show unread posts since last visit" as they have no cut-off.   And having taken a look, I suspect that a visit may be defined as something like "a login by a user who has not been active on the forum for the last 15 minutes". If so, it will work well for many people; imagine you come along and log in once a day, then you'll see back to yesterday. but not the previous day, from which posts will slip off the list given.    But for people who log in every few hours,  and fully browse just at the weekend, posts may get missed as the list will be shorter than ideal come Saturday having been trimmed on Friday night back to Friday lunchtime.

Other factors may be that people tend not to respond to posts ...
* When there's so much else going on that they don't see them or skip quickly by to the big news
* Which are made at a time of day / week after which the reader doesn't come for a while - if my habit was to be here each gay between 9 and 10 p.m., I'm going to less note posts made at 11 p.m., for example
* Ironically, where the post is so good and thought provoking that the reader thinks "I'll have to come back to that one" and doesn't
* as first responder to a really good and long post, especially where they only want to respond to one small point - a thoughtful feeling to help avoid conversation on much of the topic being overlooked as the thread leads off on a sub-point
* As an early response on a very technical thread, as the potential responder may not feel qualified to comment
* To a poster who's known to be argumentative / drag in the responder, or an old subject yet again.  A pragmatic "I will leave that".

Not sure which of these apply on this particular thread - certainly not the last one (we're not talking buffet v trolley  Cheesy ), and checking back on the posts per day counter, it doesn't look as if the forum was especially snowed under with posts.  I will leave it at that / may split this out into its own thread if I draw a series of responses.   The " Long term consequences of present/recent railway problems. " topic is far too important to be drowned out by my long speculation on posting habits and people's reactions.
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« Reply #17 on: July 30, 2018, 07:46:30 »

As someone who always uses "Show unread posts since last visit" it has always worked well for me. I occasionally go on the Home page and scroll down to check if there are any darker blue boxes next to each category to see if I've missed any posts.
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WelshBluebird
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« Reply #18 on: July 30, 2018, 15:45:41 »

The major disruption at York and Leeds was caused by a direct lightning strike on the IECC (Integrated Electronic Control Centre) (Integrated Electronic Control Centre) at York.  Not too much you can do to protect against a major strike like that.  Internally it 'fried' two of the Leeds workstations and externally destroyed up to 20 trackside signalling modules.  Moving trains at York meant having to manually operate and Clip and Padlock (C&P) 30 sets of points, which is a significant task.

I guess the question is, has the move the IECC's and RoC's meant that disruption is spread around a larger area?
Is it acceptable that say a lightening strike on Didcot (to bring it more towards GWR (Great Western Railway)'s area) would mess up the Severn Beach line?
I accept there are reasons why larger signalling centres work and make sense, but I also think the public have the right to then complain when railway industry controlled decisions (aka the move to larger centres that control larger areas) end up making non railway caused disruption worse.

In the example you mention at York, would the disruption at York caused disruption at Leeds like that if systems and signalers were more spread out?
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« Reply #19 on: July 30, 2018, 17:17:45 »

There has always been a centralising policy for signalling centres ever since I started on the railway S&T (Signalling and Telegraph) some 50 years ago next month.  Firstly they controlled areas of about 20-30 route miles, then 50-60 route miles and in the mid to late 1970s over 100 route miles.  Since those days the distances controlled have expanded even more, so that we now see control centres controlling significant parts of the network (Thames Valley Signalling Centre at Didcot being a prime example - It was planned to control the whole of the Western Territory from there at one point).

So, despite all the diversity you can possibly build into such large centres, sometime will come that the whole centre gets shut down.  It has happened in the air industry I think.

Its possible to go back to smaller control centres, but that comes at a cost.  At one time it was planned that a control centre could be switched over to another standby one elsewhere, but somebody forgot about the staff logistics of that one.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2018, 17:22:59 by SandTEngineer » Logged
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