Rail Franchising - The Future

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future

(04/10/2012 13:53)First Class Wrote:  Virgin has had billions pumped into it, and is no better than East Coast who are doing just as well (if not better) than Virgin with far less investment AND has the profits going to the government rather than Branson.

You've claimed above that the "success" of East Coast under state ownership is a yardstick of why the West Coast (and others) should follow suit. My point is that it hasn't been a success, which doesn't bode well for the success of other state owned TOCs.

Source for your PPM East Coast figures? Or have you just cherry-picked the best ones? Again, over to Wikipedia.

East Coast: "Over the third quarter of the 2010/11 financial year East Coast achieved 81.7% PPM and a moving annual average of 83.3%"
Virgin: "The latest figures published were 87.8% (PPM) for the fourth quarter of 2010-11 and 86.6% (MAA) up to 31 March 2011"

Not the same quarter, but this hardly suggests East Coast are "outperforming" Virgin.

As for your claim of "not just using PPM scores", what else do you want to use? Virgin have a very modern fleet of clean, fast trains, fantastic staff, a clear and vibrant brand and you can get excellent fares if you book early enough. I've never paid over the odds for a Virgin journey to London, always been well served with polite and helpful staff and never had a bad experience. I'm sure I've read that before Virgin took over the WCML, it was less used than the ECML. Now, the reverse is true.

[DVL418]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future

(04/10/2012 14:07)507009 Wrote:  

(04/10/2012 13:53)First Class Wrote:  Virgin has had billions pumped into it, and is no better than East Coast who are doing just as well (if not better) than Virgin with far less investment AND has the profits going to the government rather than Branson.

You've claimed above that the "success" of East Coast under state ownership is a yardstick of why the West Coast (and others) should follow suit. My point is that it hasn't been a success, which doesn't bode well for the success of other state owned TOCs.

Source for your PPM East Coast figures? Or have you just cherry-picked the best ones? Again, over to Wikipedia.

East Coast: "Over the third quarter of the 2010/11 financial year East Coast achieved 81.7% PPM and a moving annual average of 83.3%"
Virgin: "The latest figures published were 87.8% (PPM) for the fourth quarter of 2010-11 and 86.6% (MAA) up to 31 March 2011"

Not the same quarter, but this hardly suggests East Coast are "outperforming" Virgin.

As for your claim of "not just using PPM scores", what else do you want to use? Virgin have a very modern fleet of clean, fast trains, fantastic staff, a clear and vibrant brand and you can get excellent fares if you book early enough. I've never paid over the odds for a Virgin journey to London, always been well served with polite and helpful staff and never had a bad experience. I'm sure I've read that before Virgin took over the WCML, it was less used than the ECML. Now, the reverse is true.

As highlighted earlier in this thread, judging a TOCs 'performance by relying on the PPM indicator, many factors of which are not within its own control, is extremely subjective and unreliable.

Therefore the PPM KPI should always be read with a considerable 'health warning' rather than parrotted out as done by the tabloids as a neat sound bite.

By the way - who paid the lion's share of the WCML upgrade? - not Virgin!! - yet they still wanted to hand back the keys at one point until Stagecoach stepped in and helped blackmail the Govt into letting them delete the payback causes.

At least lets agee on something - the current way we operate our rail system is expensive (infation + fare rises for every one of the past 10 years!, inefficient and broken.

However, the last Govt chickened-out of mending the process, and the current one will not do anything that upsets their spiv, sorry, city backers.

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future

(04/10/2012 14:32)DVL418 Wrote:  As highlighted earlier in this thread, judging a TOCs 'performance by relying on the PPM indicator, many factors of which are not within its own control, is extremely subjective and unreliable.

That doesn't answer my question - what other measures do you want to use? I've already outlined my views on Virgin aside from the cold, hard facts. Take Merseyrail for example - no doubt about it, a very punctual operator. Their performance figures are taken in exactly the same way as Virgin's and East Coast's, with absolutely no other measure to address their overall "performance" as an operator. I could point to overcrowded and dirty trains, for example, but none of this is relevant to the PPM or MAA figures.

No, I don't necessarily agree the railways are "inefficient" and "broken". I'll use Merseyrail again - despite their obvious capacity shortcomings - they are very reliable indeed and I wouldn't mind betting significantly more trustworthy than BR ever were when they operated the network. Virgin have done an excellent job for most passengers' money, and as a semi-regular user I'll agree. There are other examples of strong franchises such as South West Trains, Southern, ScotRail, London Midland. Hardly "broken".

[CX06 EBK (Administrator)]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future
Another issue is why would the government want to take on a whole rail network 100% when historically they have sold off even more important things such as energy and industry (the latter of which most has vanished from the country) and more recently want to find ways to cut the NHS left right and centre, something which is far more important than the operation of trains. What makes anyone think that when the figures don't add up, they won't just cut certain services? They have cut many things already so I have no doubts that if they did run the rail network and they needed to scrape some money together, they would cut the least performing train services in this country.

[DVL418]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future

(04/10/2012 14:39)507009 Wrote:  

(04/10/2012 14:32)DVL418 Wrote:  As highlighted earlier in this thread, judging a TOCs 'performance by relying on the PPM indicator, many factors of which are not within its own control, is extremely subjective and unreliable.

That doesn't answer my question - what other measures do you want to use? I've already outlined my views on Virgin aside from the cold, hard facts. Take Merseyrail for example - no doubt about it, a very punctual operator. Their performance figures are taken in exactly the same way as Virgin's and East Coast's, with absolutely no other measure to address their overall "performance" as an operator. I could point to overcrowded and dirty trains, for example, but none of this is relevant to the PPM or MAA figures.

No, I don't necessarily agree the railways are "inefficient" and "broken". I'll use Merseyrail again - despite their obvious capacity shortcomings - they are very reliable indeed and I wouldn't mind betting significantly more trustworthy than BR ever were when they operated the network. Virgin have done an excellent job for most passengers' money, and as a semi-regular user I'll agree. There are other examples of strong franchises such as South West Trains, Southern, ScotRail, London Midland. Hardly "broken".

They why does even the Prime Minister at the time of privatisation accept that the franchising model his Government introduced is 'perverse, inefficient and wasteful' - if that isn't a good indicator that something is broken - what is?

Merseyrail - other than the Isle of Wight the only vertically integrated franchise, and run by a nationalised railway organisation. A co-incidence perhaps that it works fairly well?

South West Trains - Stagecoach threatened to throw the keys back if they weren't released for £400,000,000 (yes that is 400 million £££s) of premium payments due for the remaining years of their franchise, this AFTER they had taken £350 million of public subsidies for the opening three years of the franchise?

Southern - weren't Connex 'sacked' from all/part of this franchise and the keys taken off them and it run by Govt for a year or so to get it sorted out ready for the current TOC?

Scotrail - for every £1 of subsidly in final years of BR now gets £3, even when allowing for inflation etc. This despite £100s millions of Scottish Executive capital investment as well.

London Midland - see another thread about its incompitence leading to having to cancell dozens of journeys a day because it can't recruit or retain enough drivers due to paying low wages.

Yes, other than some exceptions like GNER (sacked for refusing to match the crazy bid submitted by the winner - which threw back the keys within two years) and the Transpennine services, the franchising model is broken.

In fact it has never consistently delivered on the wild promises made by bidders or offered value for money for the benefit of anyone other that the City spivs, so why don't we stop than tinkering with it before it causes the railways to start disintegrating altogether.

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future

(04/10/2012 15:03)DVL418 Wrote:  They why does even the Prime Minister at the time of privatisation accept that the franchising model his Government introduced is 'perverse, inefficient and wasteful' - if that isn't a good indicator that something is broken - what is?

Merseyrail - other than the Isle of Wight the only vertically integrated franchise, and run by a nationalised railway organisation co-incidence?

*Snip*

Where does John Major "accept" this?

For a start, Merseyrail is not vertically integrated. Island Line (Isle of Wight) is the only vertically integrated section, and even this is not a standalone rail franchise any longer, merely a sub-brand of South West Trains.

We appear to be coming at this from different angles - I'm dealing with the quality and reliability of service from a passenger standpoint, which is, let us not forget, the reason why railways are operated. Southern is a Govia-owned franchise, nothing whatsoever to do with Connex, who were one of the poorest rail operators and lost both of their franchises early. There is absolutely no doubt Govia have turned this franchise around and making a mockery of the Connex South Central era.

"Dozens of journeys a day." What a malevolent piece of hyperbole. You make it sound like the same journeys are being cancelled each and every day, which is utter nonsense. "High turnover of staff" is not the same thing as "underpaid drivers". I think if the drivers were so disgruntled at their wages, a lot more journeys would be cancelled than what we have actually seen.

You haven't offered a reasonable alternative to the PPM or MAA in deducing which franchises are better performing than others, either.

[wirralbus]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future
Another problem is that the peak days for travelling are now Friday afternoon and sunday afternoon and we all know staff like to have Sunday off so it has to have a bit of incentive in it .

[DVL418]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future
Ok, here goes.

London Midland have withdrawn 12 services every day for at least the two months. Lets round the numbers down to eight weeks and six days - 12 x 8 = 8 dozen, and that is at the conservative end of assumptions. If you care to check they have paid the lowest salaries for qualified drivers by a TOC and, until current crisis hit them, did not have an ongoing driver training programme.

John Major's admission that he got the privitisation of the railways wrong; He first hinted that they might have got 'some aspects' of the process wrong in his autobiography - Major, John (1999) – Autobiography.

In recent years he has spoken publically on several occasions on the issue, and has made more admissions that in retrospect the methodology used was largely untested on the scale it was implimented, rolled-out too hurriedly rather than piloted, and was fundamentally flawed in several key aspects that resulted in poor VFM for the taxpayer. He may also have repeated these comments in print - but I have better things to use my time on that failed politicians jottings.

Finally, how can I offer an alternative set of KPIs for a system that is fundamentally broken? The only KPI that matters to the TOCs are profit and dividend payments - the rest are an inconvenient neccesity to grab the keys to the franchise.

[H101GEV (Administrator)]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future
Where are you getting this information about London Midland from? I've searched well and have found no evidence these cancellations have been exactly the same for two months, though happy to be corrected. In fact, the BBC News article is from just two days ago, which suggests this recent raft of cancellations is just that - recent.

So, he didn't directly say privatisation was 'perverse, inefficient and wasteful' as you directly, and erroneously, quoted him as saying? Admitting "some aspects" were wrong is totally different, and I don't think many people in general would disagree with that sentiment. Privatisation had its flaws, indeed I wasn't in favour of the idea like the majority at the time. However, to suggest that the errors of civil servants in calculating figures is the catalyst we need to renationalise the railways is deeply flawed logic.

So in other words, you don't have a better option but MAA/PMM is no good to you because it shows East Coast (nationalised franchise) in a bad light. It might have its drawbacks, but it's the same for every operator. Virgin run a lot more trains per hour than East Coast and have a larger network, but still manage better reliability figures. East Coast is worse than NXEC, which simply does not provide evidence that renationalisation would be a good thing.

[wirralbus]

RE: Rail Franchising - The Future
The Inter city franchises effectively have a different definition of on-time is upto 10 minutes late is classed as on time , but the amount of padding in the timetable on the last leg of the journey usually means that the service arrives earlier than booked , so something major has to have happened on route .

Most of the suburban routes the definition of on time is up to 5 minutes .

PPM (Public Performance Measure) is a mixture of whether the train was on time according to above and whether the service completed the full journey , a service fails PPM if it doesnt complete the full journey .

Sometimes train companies will then talk to Network Rail and try and decipher whom is to blame . There can be various reasons Overhead Line Difficulties (wires detached) , track circuit failures , axle counter failures , staffing difficulties , train failures , passenger sickness the list goes on and on.