'Extra cash for West Coast to prop up reliability': Transport Briefing, 22/06/09

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From Transport Briefing:

Network Rail is to pump a further ^50m into the West Coast Route Modernisation amid mounting embarrassment that the line is the most unreliable in Britain despite a ^9bn upgrade.

The long-running saga to overhaul infrastructure on the London Euston to Glasgow route was officially completed just before Christmas to allow Virgin Trains to introduce a higher frequency timetable with more train services and shorter journey times.

However, punctuality on the line remains well below that for lines which have not benefited from major investment. Publishing period 2 (3-30 May 2009) monthly punctuality figures on Monday (22 June) Network Rail said punctuality for Virgin Trains on the West Coast line had risen 3.8% year on year to 84.6%. But this is 10% lower than First Great Western at 94.6% while other inter-city train operators report 93.5% (East Midlands Trains) and 92.5% (National Express East Coast).

Last month Virgin Trains formally complained to the Office of Rail Regulation about the performance of West Coast rail infrastructure and has demanded the regulator hold Network Rail to account. Earlier this month Virgin and Network Rail agreed a six month Joint Performance Improvement Plan which is to due to be scrutinised at the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)'s board meeting this week.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail's director of operations and customer service, said: "We accept that particular focus is needed to improve performance for Virgin trains where only four out of five services arrive on time. Working together with all the train operators on the West Coast route we have embarked upon a ^50m package of improvements aimed at raising train punctuality to acceptable levels."

In May Network Rail announced it would create a specialist maintenance team at the southern end of the West Coast Main Line tasked with improving the reliability of the infrastructure (Transport Briefing 26/05/09).

Period 2 saw 93.4% (91.7% last year) of train services across Britain arrive on time with 16 of the 19 train operators seeing improvement compared to the same period last year. Only three operators saw performance dip, and all still delivered significantly above average performance - First Scotrail to 92.4% from 93.7%, First Capital Connect to 92.3% from 93% and Merseyrail to 96.9% from 97%.

Edit note by Chris: my emphasis in bold. 

[bemmy]

You don't need infrastructure improvements to boost punctuality.... just add 10 minutes to the end of each journey! 

[IndustryInsider]

You don't need infrastructure improvements to boost punctuality.... just add 10 minutes to the end of each journey! 

I wouldn't be surprised to see extra minutes added here and there over the next few years - some of the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) timings are very tight making its average recovery time easily the smallest of all the main lines.

[Btline]

But experience shows that adding padding does nothing to boost train reliability.

Virgin seem to be one of the only TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to be all in out trying to reduce journey times. Whilst others add slack here and there, Virgin has tightened up its operations, which - if the infrastructure allows - should boost punctuality.

[eightf48544]

Virgin do seem to still have the Chris Green philosophy of running fast, long and frequent trains.

The trouble with doing that it pounds the infrastructure thus pushes up intial capital costs for more robust track and overhead and inreases maintenace charges. But it should bring in the punters.

Fast, long and frequent trains are in my opinion it's the only way to run a railway. With the exception of HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) on commuter routes which should be electric.

[IndustryInsider]

But experience shows that adding padding does nothing to boost train reliability.

Virgin seem to be one of the only TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to be all in out trying to reduce journey times. Whilst others add slack here and there, Virgin has tightened up its operations, which - if the infrastructure allows - should boost punctuality.

Tightening up the schedules does not boost punctuality. As soon as anything goes wrong it takes longer to recover. Part of the reason FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s performance has shot up is due to the padding - especially on a route like the Cotswold Line where with the old schedules once a train was delayed it stayed delayed and that delayed the next train and so on. With the current excessive padding, at least things get back to normal quicker.

With the 0-5 or 0-10 minute delay threshold on the destination arrival time being all-important in terms of PPM^‡(resolve) figures (wrongly in my opinion), then if Virgin were to add, say, 2 minutes to the scheduled arrival time on all services into Euston, but keep the same working arrival time in terms of pathing and internal 'working' schedules, then all those trains that currently arrive 11 or 12 minutes late would come into the 'on time' category. That would be enough to add a couple of percentage points instantly. As my previous post hinted, I think they've been a little ambitious in their timing and I wouldn't be surprised if some of that ambition is scaled back slightly as the route is quite clearly struggling to cope.

I've been watching the WCML^▸ (West Coast Main Line) trains with interest since the new timetable, and, almost always, when a train from Glasgow or Liverpool or Manchester gets delayed early on in its journey it will make up none of the delay en-route as with the VHF timetable the route's capacity is so much more contested and the opportunity of a clear run into Euston is usually lost.

[Tim]

Fast, long and frequent trains are in my opinion it's the only way to run a railway. With the exception of HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) on commuter routes which should be electric.

Absolutely,

The only real advantages that rail has over other modes is that they can go faster than road traffic and that they can carry hundreds of people (providing energy and staffing efficencies)

Any rail service ought to have one or both of those advantages - otherwise why is rail any better than a bus or tram or private car?

IMHO^▸ (in my humble opinion) Virgin have got the right idea about cutting out slack.  And it has worked, for every minute they shave off their journey times, their share of the combined rail and airmarket goes up (the CAA^» (Civil Aviation Authority - about)'s most recent statistics show that they have 77% of the Manchester-London market).

Perhaps Virgin is different in that they see their main competitor as the airlines whereas FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'scompetitor is the M4.

Padding can work both ways - improving preformance but at the risk of making staff too relaxed about timing.  It is only human for dispatch staff to think "I'm not going to run to close that door" or "all hold it a coupel of seconds for that late passenger" if they know that there is timetable padding.

Is it unreasonable for Virgin timetable people to expect virtually no-infrastructure delays when ^8 billion had just been spent on the route?

[Btline]

Tightening up the schedules does not boost punctuality. As soon as anything goes wrong it takes longer to recover. Part of the reason FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s performance has shot up is due to the padding - especially on a route like the Cotswold Line where with the old schedules once a train was delayed it stayed delayed and that delayed the next train and so on. With the current excessive padding, at least things get back to normal quicker.

Nonsense. Whilst FGW's punctuality is now up, it is not due to the excessive padding. Over the last few years as padding was added, punctuality got worse. The recent improvements are due to excellent work on FGW's part.

Furthermore, adding padding discourages tight running and allows slack operations, as I, and others, have seen on many occasions on various TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company). The consequence of this is that the trains still run late.

I also think we should distinguish between adding padding at the end of journeys (a la Chiltern, where you'll stay on time, and then arrive 5-10 minutes early) and adding padding at every stop and junction (a la XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)), where you seem to dwell for 5+ mins at every station; admittedly XC can't path perfectly throughout the country, but the padding is still unacceptable IMO^▸ (in my opinion)). The former is a lot better, as regular travellers know the real timings, and occasional travellers are extra happy with the TOC.

I know that when I travel Chiltern, I'll get in at least 5 mins early each time.

But I still feel it is "cheating" the system. I'd rather all padding were removed. (or should that be indicative "was")

[devon_metro]

I'd rather all padding were removed.

Perhaps you do not travel on the real railway, however the slightest thing can cause a delay, and as such, I like to be able to make sure that my connection home will stand without having to dash around!

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

I'd rather all padding were removed.

Perhaps you do not travel on the real railway, however the slightest thing can cause a delay, and as such, I like to be able to make sure that my connection home will stand without having to dash around!

to be fair the wcml has fell victim to alot of delays which were not down to the toc... plane on the tracks, wires just falling down, snow, this is no doubt included in the figures

[IndustryInsider]

Tightening up the schedules does not boost punctuality. As soon as anything goes wrong it takes longer to recover. Part of the reason FGW^▸ (First Great Western)'s performance has shot up is due to the padding - especially on a route like the Cotswold Line where with the old schedules once a train was delayed it stayed delayed and that delayed the next train and so on. With the current excessive padding, at least things get back to normal quicker.

Nonsense. Whilst FGW's punctuality is now up, it is not due to the excessive padding. Over the last few years as padding was added, punctuality got worse. The recent improvements are due to excellent work on FGW's part.

Furthermore, adding padding discourages tight running and allows slack operations, as I, and others, have seen on many occasions on various TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company). The consequence of this is that the trains still run late.

I also think we should distinguish between adding padding at the end of journeys (a la Chiltern, where you'll stay on time, and then arrive 5-10 minutes early) and adding padding at every stop and junction (a la XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)), where you seem to dwell for 5+ mins at every station; admittedly XC can't path perfectly throughout the country, but the padding is still unacceptable IMO^▸ (in my opinion)). The former is a lot better, as regular travellers know the real timings, and occasional travellers are extra happy with the TOC.

I know that when I travel Chiltern, I'll get in at least 5 mins early each time.

It's not nonsense my old mate. It's nonsense to suggest that you'll always be on time on Chiltern though - having travelled on three of their trains today all were late, by less than 10 minutes in each case, but all late nonetheless. The LTV^▸ (London [and] Thames Valley) stats for FGW were actually better than Chilterns a couple of weeks ago - not bad considering the open route nature of the LTV routes compared with the largely self-contained Chiltern route. The challenge for FGW is to retain these figures which Chiltern has achieved year on year.

I'm pretty sure FGW's performance on the Cotswold Line is at record levels at the moment. Like it or not, that's partly down to the padding - if FGW removed all the padding you would see the figures tumble. That's due mostly due to the HST^▸ (High Speed Train)'s that are on the route needing that extra time to allow for silly problems like the SDO^▸ (Selective Door Opening) fault FallenAngel was talking about the other day.

Yes, there was similar amounts of padding in the latter days of the Forster years when HST's replaced the Adelantes, but that was when she was happy to see peak trains stand at Charlbury for 5 minutes every morning when everyone piled in the one set of doors that wasn't first class that was platformed. That was when bikes were loaded in power cars as a matter of routine, but unlocking the door and hanging the damn thing up could also take minutes. That was when the crew were new to the trains (driving a HST is a completely different technique to driving a turbo) and faults with the new SDO system were being ironed out. That was when ridiculously tight turn-rounds at Malvern were in the timetable. That was when more trains were HST's. That was when there was a tangible malaise affecting the staff and passengers alike. Enough differences for you?

Now, since those dark days, most of the major problems have been ironed out. The padding still stays because of the fragile nature of the route, and FGW's desperate need to climb back up the respectability table. Some of the padding will go when the re-doubling work is complete. It will be interesting to see how much...