New structure for British railways

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Come back Gerry Fiennes: "When you reorganise you bleed"

 

True, but when you need to change, but don't, you die of atrophy.

 

Every organisation faces (or fails to face) that dilemma, and IMO the case that "something needs to be done" about our national railways is overwhelming. The "trick" of course, is to decide upon the right "something", and to minimise the inevitable bleeding.

 

Of course, any senior manager whose individual view of what that "something" should be doesn't prevail can then leave in a huff, and write a book about how much better everything would have been if it had.

[17A]

A paragraph that stood out to me on the Government news site, reads the following.

 

"Local communities will work closely with GBR on designing services with local leaders given greater control over local ticketing, timetables and stations. The new model will encourage innovative bidders, such as community rail partnerships who want to bid for the GBR contract to operate their local branch lines."

 

Could this translate into our heritage railways who have obtained class 142/3 or other mainline running stock over the last few years, to end up running extended services beyond their current limit.   

 

The likes of your Weardale, Wensleydale, Mid Norfolk, GCRN, KWVR.  

 

We'll see.....  

[Quarryscapes]

It'll all work out fine, they've got a new font:  

 

"This publication is the frst to use the new typeface, Rail Alphabet 2. This is a continuation and evolution of Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir’s original Rail Alphabet typeface, which was employed across the rail network from the mid-1960s. Margaret Calvert has collaborated with designer Henrik Kubel to develop Rail Alphabet 2. It retains the overall proportions of the original but the letters are sharper and slightly more compact for maximum legibility. Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage. Rail Alphabet 2 is used for the headings throughout this document."

[InterCitySpud]

There simply is no model to sell to a private company post covid, franchising is finished.  How on earth can anybody predict passenger movements over the next decade with work, life plans altered, freight patterns, demand has also shifted beyond recognition in a year of lock down.

 

These last franchises will simply be morphed into a new GBR over the coming years.

 

If someone with a bit more IT smarts could repaint a Class 800 into the original HST blue/grey yellow front, it would be great to see how the new liveries will look. (Other liveries are also being suggested I see!)

 

With 3 classes of travel also being introduced by Avanti, sorry GBR, it really is back to the future!

[Michael Hodgson]

This sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

 

On finances, the railways need enough money to cover their costs and future investment.  Under BR they didn't get enough investment because the government couldn't afford to keep on increasing subsidies.  There is a limit to what passengers will pay in fares.  

 

Mucking about with things like the state pension system or taxation is political suicide, because if you keep the £££ total the same, there are always some winners and some losers.  Those who are better off as a result of change are pleased for a bit, but those who lose out will harbour a serious grudges and get their revenge at the next election.  That's why it has proved so difficult to change the old multifarious benefit system into a unified Universal Credit system.  The problem with flexible ticketing is where to set the level of discount over dailys such that the punters don't lose out and the Treasury does not have to fork out for increased subsidies.

 

Under the existing rail season ticket system, you pay a fixed amount (your cost of going to work) after which any other trips (eg into town in the evening or weekend) are "free".  When I was commuting an annual season was cheaper than daily tickets if I averaged more than about three and a bit days a week at work.  Definitely a saving if I did the typical 5 days a week with a few weeks off for holidays.   But not clever when my work pattern meant several days in London, then a few weeks or months at client premises than back to London for the odd day.  So I had to try to anticipate where I would be working and when, then juggle daily, weekly and monthly tickets.  Flexibility would have been a big deal to me.  A discounted book of daily round-trip tickets would have been my choice.  However that would not have suited most commuters as they would have needed their 5 days a week at the same price as their current season.

 

There is of course an environmental case to be made for encouraging more people to travel by rail, especially if there is further electrification.  The reason why people choose to travel by car is that once you have made the decision to spend a lot of money on a car, your marginal cost of travel is the fuel (and extra wear and tear).  That decision is a no-alternative for most people - there's often no other practical means of getting to work, as our housing is no longer located a stone's throw from the shop, factory or pit.  If the government expects us to use public transport, it can't expect us to pay the capital cost of both having a car and running the railways.  That means there is a green case to be made for either much bigger subsidies of public transport so that we only pay the fuel costs and probably the drivers' wages or not allowing us to own private transport - in effect forcing a move to ride-hailing type systems.  The former means increased taxation.  The latter might be what happens when autonomous vehicles eventually become general.  That is a major policy decision that the electorate will have views on, and doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that should be introduced as a post-pandemic wheeze on a slow news day.  What have the Cabinet been smoking?

 

I am cynically wondering whether "Great British Railways" is motivated by Johnson's desire to avoid a break up of the Union.  Will it be British, in which case what impact does it have on the devolved government's plans to do their own thing?  Will it be the end of Scotrail?  The news headlines this morning raise more questions than answers.

[Flittersnoop]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Hoo-blooming-ray! (tempered with fears)

 

I've experience the Old BR, Sectorised BR, TfL/LUL, and NR/TOC arrangements, and the TfL one, which this seems most akin to, is without doubt the best for both customers and staff (although for the latter it can actually be a tougher regime in some ways, because it leaves fewer places to hide!).

 

My fears for it relate four main things:

 

- The TfL model has very, very clear accountability, direct to a bodies that represents the interests of public very effectively (for many years now an elected mayor, and a board with good representation across the community), whereas all previous national models for England (Scotland and Wales have become different since devolution) have been woefully short on direct accountability, with accountability getting lost in the mire of DfT and parliament, the second of which isn't a fit body for the job, because it has far too many other, much bigger, fish to fry;

 

- TfL has managed very well to keep the national civil service off their back for the vast majority of practical purposes, by a combination of its legislative positioning, and by having directors who have been prepared to hold the line against "well intentioned overstepping of the regulatory line". Again, I wonder if this new body will be able to achieve that, to get the regulatory line set in the right place, and hold that line;

 

- the national rail network is big, which always makes for a tension between centralised and devolved control, which TfL only for a short period in the 1980s allowed itself to get enmeshed in. It was a potential tension under the Old BR model, but the very traditional modes of communication and the regional board structures largely prevented trouble (the regions were on a pretty loose rein in many things), it plagues NR now, despite best efforts to resolve it, and modern communications bring with them a really sore temptation for the centre to micro-manage the periphery, because they give the illusion that such a thing is possible;

 

- culture and competence across the industry have been set by donkey's years of roughly how it is now, and two worrying things that I have observed at every one of the "worm's eye" contacts that I have with it are: that only a tiny fraction of people in NR really "live and breath" the combination of end-user-customer focus and personal accountability that is needed to deliver a cracking good service at a stated price, far too many people simply don't get it, and haven't been required to get it in 20+ years; and, there are genuinely serious competence gaps all over the place, with attempts made to plug them using outside services that themselves are also short of competence. Fixing these two things is going to be a monster task, but if they aren't fixed, the new model railway will bog-in up to its axles.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

Kevin

 

 

Given the state of their finances, I don't think TfL can be used as an example of good practice;  https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/transport-for-london-government-boris-johnson-sadiq-khan-london-b935748.html

 

And keeping parliament out is wishful thinking, just as long as public money is required for rail, which is forever.

 

Great British Railways sounds like the title of a TV series - perhaps they could get Michael Portillo to be chairman - the Flamboyant Controller?

[Mike_Walker]

22 minutes ago, Quarryscapes said:

It'll all work out fine, they've got a new font:  

 

"This publication is the frst to use the new typeface, Rail Alphabet 2. This is a continuation and evolution of Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir’s original Rail Alphabet typeface, which was employed across the rail network from the mid-1960s. Margaret Calvert has collaborated with designer Henrik Kubel to develop Rail Alphabet 2. It retains the overall proportions of the original but the letters are sharper and slightly more compact for maximum legibility. Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage. Rail Alphabet 2 is used for the headings throughout this document."

Can't tell the difference myself but perhaps I'm being thick.  How much did the "redesign" cost I wonder?

 

[John M Upton]

Currently TOC employees get free travel for themselves and family on their employer and any other franchise run by the same company.  Once we become one big happy family, will we get free travel network wide?

[PenrithBeacon]

I think we can expect a lot of strikes as the Treasury seeks to reduce costs. Up till now the unions have been very successful in playing off the TOCs against each other to raise salaries to silly levels. The costs were transferred to the traveller.  Now that the emphasis is on reducing the costs of travelling expect fireworks!

[HillsideDepot]

24 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The news headlines this morning raise more questions than answers.

 

And I doubt if the documents behind them answer any of the questions.

They published 83 pages of National Bus Strategy on March 15th. Last week we got 38 pages of guidance on what they really want, and the promise in a meeting that 2 previous guidance documents (82 pages total) which the strategy largely comes from will be re-written and updated "soon". But they aren't adjusting the timescales for Local Transport Authorities to do our work; informed guesswork is the order of our days. . .

[APOLLO]

11 hours ago, uax6 said:

I wonder what the logo will be?

 

Andy G

 

New livery & logo !!!!

 

 

Quite smart it was too.

 

Brit15

[woodenhead]

Initial livery will be as is, they'll try out a few colours on express trains - blue, green, maroon with and without lining and to begin with all trains will have their existing logos replaced with the words British Railways, to save money 'Great' has been dropped.

 

Next they'll appoint a CME who believes the future is diesel....

[kandc_au]

Green loco's and chocolate and cream coaches

 

I dare not sign this.

 

[Classsix T]

1 hour ago, InterCitySpud said:

There simply is no model to sell to a private company post covid, franchising is finished.  How on earth can anybody predict passenger movements over the next decade with work, life plans altered, freight patterns, demand has also shifted beyond recognition in a year of lock down.

 

These last franchises will simply be morphed into a new GBR over the coming years.

 

If someone with a bit more IT smarts could repaint a Class 800 into the original HST blue/grey yellow front, it would be great to see how the new liveries will look. (Other liveries are also being suggested I see!)

 

With 3 classes of travel also being introduced by Avanti, sorry GBR, it really is back to the future!

This. UK Govt is heading off a large scale handing back the keys headache.

 

I do wonder how this will affect ROSCOS now, do the banks have to give us the stock back?

 

C6T. 

[The Border Reiver]

Quote "All tickets will be sold by GBR in the future, ending the system where passengers must buy them from multiple companies online and in stations"

 

Will this mean the end of split ticketing web sites?

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

This sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

 

On finances, the railways need enough money to cover their costs and future investment.  Under BR they didn't get enough investment because the government couldn't afford to keep on increasing subsidies.  There is a limit to what passengers will pay in fares.  

 

 

Subsidies to the railways have been far higher under the franchise system than they ever were to BR even though fares have also risen to far greater heights. The real problem with  a fully nationalised system is that the railways are likely to lose subsidy and be forced to cut services every time the government is short of a billion or two. From all accounts, BR was one of the world's most efficient railways, partly because it was so starved of funds, but that meant its efficiency didn't translate into better services. (It also had far better catering!)

If this is modelled on the TfL system,  London does now have pretty efficient public transport in the parts it controls. Buses in particular are far better than they ever were under a cash-starved London Transport.  When I first lived in London in the 1970s the tubes were fairly dreadful with constant delays and, outside central London,  you only took a bus if you didn't mind waiting for half an hour for a service that was supposed to run every ten minutes. Nowadays I've never paid the London congestion charge because using the tube to get in and out of central London is such a complete no brainer. I do though wish they'd get Crossrail into service.

 

The greatest danger I can see is that freight becomes the Cinderella again as it became under BR. There are no votes at risk if goods trains run badly, just a lot more lorries on the roads so a lot more particulates in the air we breath and a lot more C02 going into the atmosphere. 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Pandora]

I have read the Williams Shapp Plan

Some of the keypoints I recall :

The Money Roundabout to end,  GBR will receive the fare  revenue, not the TOCs,  TOcs receive fees from GBR

Anticipating a reduction in the % of rail journeys which are for commuting purposes, 47% pre-Covid

New flexible   season tickets  with quotas for journeys in a period and pay as you go ticketing

Anticipates future savings of £1.5bn per annum in costs

Turn up and Go train service  to remain.

The cutting of red tape delays when introducing new services

 

 

[Dunsignalling]

To be fair to the privatisation process, it did achieve some things that BR would not have been permitted to. Without it, many of us might still be rattling around in Mk2 (and even Mk1) coaches three decades older than they were when we last had to...

 

I don't believe for one moment that successive governments (of whatever party or two) would have provided BR with the funds to re-equip in the way the TOCs and leasing companies have been required to. Even if they had, it might well have been done using a PFI, and we'd face the prospect of carrying on paying for stuff long after most of it was worn out.

 

Optimism by all means, but I think we should be careful what we wish for.   

 

John

[Dunsignalling]

38 minutes ago, kandc_au said:

Green loco's and chocolate and cream coaches

 

I dare not sign this.

 

If we're talking about passenger services, there are precious few of the former these days....

 

Though I do agree that GW's shorty HSTs would look rather good so finished.

 

John

Edited May 20, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Flittersnoop said:

Given the state of their finances, I don't think TfL can be used as an example of good practice;  https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/transport-for-london-government-boris-johnson-sadiq-khan-london-b935748.html

 

And keeping parliament out is wishful thinking, just as long as public money is required for rail, which is forever.

 

1) Finances of TfL, two very important points to mention:

 

- if the primary revenue stream of an organisation is shut-off like a tap, as has happened to TfL, and a host of others, as a result of Covid precautions, particularly if you expect it to continue to provide at least a basic level of service, while taking-in very little revenue, its a stone-bonk certainty that it will eat its financial reserves, then be in financial difficulty. That's why HMG has had to "bail out" countless organisations, to keep them functional in preparation for the long-awaited return to normality. The report you link to says it very clearly: "The collapse in passenger numbers during the coronavirus pandemic has decimated TfL’s finances, leading it to require Government funding to keep services running.".

 

- between the 2015 HMG funding settlement and 2018, revenue grant income to TfL fell to zero, nothing, not one penny. It wasn't subsidised. TfL income  effectively narrowed down to revenue, which got turned-off by Covid, a slice of business rates, and borrowing. The fact that services have largely been maintained* over that period of change is a testament to good financial management, not bad. IIRC when something similar happened in New York in the 1980s, their services went to the brink of collapse.

 

2) The involvement of parliament.

 

There is no reason on earth why parliament couldn't decide to delegate its legitimate public interest in the railways to another, and better fitted, publicly accountable body set-up for that purpose. It has effectively delegated its interests in transport provision in large conurbations to other bodies for donkey's years, and has devolved its interests to parliaments in Cardiff and Edinburgh.

 

My overall point is that parliament as a body is a truly useless institution for the purpose of mediating legitimate public interest in the operation of railways. It has too many more important things to do, and is too remote from the action. What is has to do for practical reasons is hand all the work over to civil servants, and they are even further detached from the realities, because they can't be unseated at elections (not that transport policy really ever unseated an MP, its too far down the list).

 

One model for inter-regional rail, which can't sensibly covered by delegation to regional mayors/authorities, although I've not thought about it in great depth, might be a national board of elected transport commissioners, holding delegated powers.

 

* Most of the central revenue grant was spent on bus services, resulting in parts of London being frankly over-provided with buses at some times of day. This was something that Ken Livingstone can be said to have started, but perhaps counter-intuitively, Boris Johnson enthusiastically continued with - it fell to Sadiq Khan as Mayor to trim the bus services, which was very ironic considering what a very strong supporter of buses he is, and that his dad was a bus driver!

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Nearholmer

[corneliuslundie]

But I fear that one things which will not change is detailed involvement of the Civil Service in the running of the railways. I suspect, rather cynically, though that the structure will be such that no blame for any decision they make can be pinned on the Civil Service.

BTW The Civil Service used to attract the cream of our youngsters. What has gone wrong there?

Jonathan

[Ron Ron Ron]

43 minutes ago, Classsix T said:

.........I do wonder how this will affect ROSCOS now, do the banks have to give us the stock back?

 

 

There's almost nothing left to "give back".

More than three quarters has gone to the razor blade factory; some went long ago.

 

 

 

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

Just now, corneliuslundie said:

But I fear that one things which will not change is detailed involvement of the Civil Service in the running of the railways. I suspect, rather cynically, though that the structure will be such that no blame for any decision they make can be pinned on the Civil Service.

BTW The Civil Service used to attract the cream of our youngsters. What has gone wrong there?

Jonathan

 

That worry is that GBR will largely constitute a rebranded DafT Rail, with NR thrown in.

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

One of last weekend's newspaper articles prefacing today's official announcement  (probably enimating from a government leak, as usual),  covered almost everything announced today.

 

It also suggested the "Double-Arrow" signage might be slightly modified and in Black & White, or White on Black.

Was this included in the "leak', or just speculation, I wonder?

 

 

.

[APOLLO]

Is that train gender neutral ?

 

Brit15