Shortage of train crews on Great Western Railway - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[grahame]

The DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) specifies a service level & an overall budget to be spent, and the operator then has to match one with the other to the best of their ability. This budget is shrinking now year-on-year, meaning that savings need to be found in order to continue matching available budget to service level. Next year's is lower still according to a friendly operator.

Of course, they can exceed the service level if they think additional income can be generated, and the DfT agrees. As previously mentioned above, the operator cannot exceed or reduce headcount by more than 5% without agreement.

Removing route-learning from depots of course means that those drivers can be employed in actual driving services, meaning short-term cost gains but not needing as much cover for doing that.....

Good explanation ... but does not answer "how will this be fixed", Chris.    However - we are not even asking for them to exceed the service level specified - we're asking them to deliver it.  I just looked up the last 12 weeks on ontimetrains for my local station - across all 7 days of the week - and rolled over the biggest black cancellation mark which is 4pm to 5pm - 20% cancellations.



"Never mind - catch the next train"?   Err - no - nothing in the next hour.

Edit to add ... P.S. Horrid thought, ChrisB - does the "service level" specified include any reliability factor - how many services should run?   Is 20% cancellations in the busiest time of day / late afternoon early evening within the bounds of what GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and the DfT have agreed?   If so - I wish they would tell us that and we could then start a political campaign for better. 

[John D]

Lots of GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) announcements overnight ahead of Parliamentary Bill.

The new policy is
(Quote)
Passengers have become all too familiar with announcements that their train has been cancelled at the last minute due to a shortage of staff. This is because train operators currently have little incentive to plan how to staff services for the long term and no single body is responsible for training and developing train staff at a strategic level. GBR will be able to take long-term decisions focused on passengers, not profit – including creating more flexible and resilient workforce plans to cut down on cancellations.
(unquote)

So give it a few years and apparently nationalisation and GBR will have a strategy to fix the problem, in the meantime presumably no improvement,

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-railway-fit-for-britains-future-government-response/a-railway-fit-for-britains-future-government-response-executive-summary

[grahame]

So give it a few years and apparently nationalisation and GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) will have a strategy to fix the problem, in the meantime presumably no improvement,

I am going somewhat offtopic here, but I did notice in Rachel Reeves' pre budget speech yesterday that she softened us up to expect tax rises in three weeks time ... and in doing so stated here priority in [continued] investing in three areas, one of which was transport.   As I say off topic, but I want to record in public my noting of that committement (if it was that strong)

[Witham Bobby]

So give it a few years and apparently nationalisation and GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) will have a strategy to fix the problem, in the meantime presumably no improvement,

I am going somewhat offtopic here, but I did notice in Rachel Reeves' pre budget speech yesterday that she softened us up to expect tax rises in three weeks time ... and in doing so stated here priority in [continued] investing in three areas, one of which was transport.   As I say off topic, but I want to record in public my noting of that committement (if it was that strong)

If, as I would suspect, there are rises in tax rates (which almost always seem to reduce the tax take, but that's another argument) in the coming budget, that doesn't say much for The Chancellor of the Exchequer's commitments.  She committed to no increases in rates for income tax, employee NI and VAT^▸ (Value Added Tax), and said after the last budget that there would be no more big tax rises.

Now it turns out there's a £91 bn hole that's been dug (according to former ONS^» (Office for National Statistics - website) wizard Jamie Jenkins)

Don't hold your breath waiting for any meaningful increase in spending on public transport

[IndustryInsider]

Don't worry, Nige and his mob will have it all sorted soon!