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Who will tell the Government it can't have everything at once?
While I am often too clever by half, I wasn't clever enough when I questioned Transport Secretary Alistair Darling about the re-mapping of the Central Trains franchise. Did he agree with industry concerns that the associated reorganisation would distract staff from the daily operation of the railway, just when the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit was demanding a 90% Public Performance Measure (PPM) in good time for the next election?
‘No I don't', came the robust reply. In support, Mr Darling drew a parallel with the decision in 2004 when the Government realised that the structure of the railways was unsatisfactory.
Then and now, the ‘big decision to be made' was similar: ‘do you try and muddle through and hope it will get better or do you recognise that in some cases there are fundamental problems'.
Thus the ‘over-arching aim' of the current franchise reorganisation is to align franchises with Network Rail operational areas. Experience to date has shown that when the two work together reliability and punctuality improve, Mr darling added.
He believes that ‘most people in the industry' think that rationalisation of franchise areas ‘is a sensible thing to do'. ‘You can always find some in the railways, like politics, who will always complain about something' he remarked, passing onto the next question.
Retiring hurt I sought advice from a wise old bird. ‘You got the right answer because you asked the wrong question' he said, gnomically. And, mea culpa, my question had been 180 degrees off track. I should have started with what is needed to get a national 90% PPM, not how you run the railway.
Aligning TOCs and Network Rail indisputably improves day-to-day operational performance. And as the performance within the London Lines Group of Franchises shows, relentless attention to operational detail – the Mark Hopwood Effect, is the key to a high PPM. But it cannot compensate for inherent weaknesses in the timetable.
As Rufus Boyd of Stagecoach told the Fourth Friday Club in September in his presentation on the new SWT timetable, research showed that with the previous timetable trains could not run to time even when everything went right. A two year total recast of the timetable – henceforth the Haines Eccles Transformation – followed. It was introduced last December and in the most recent Period SWT recorded a PPM of 91%.
And note that there is more to a timetable than reconciling traction performance, sectional running times, station dwell times and pathing. Overall journey times reflect back into turn-round times at termini and peak hour platform availability. Then you have to match train diagrams to fleet size and availability and maintenance, not to mention the potentially fraught issue of crew diagrams and rostering.
Now, if the industry is to achieve a 90% PPM by 2008, all the big operators will have to be achieving 90% and a bit day-in, day-out. But we already know that some of them will not be able to do this with their existing timetables.
Working backwards from a notional May 2009 general election, it takes a year for the benefits of a new timetable to be reflected full in a moving annual average. So for maximum electoral benefit, all the dysfunctional timetables need to be re-cast in time for the December 2007 timetable change.
But that would give the 90% overall PPM in the spring of 2009, which is a bit tight for electoral comfort. On the other hand, the next window of opportunity is December 2006 which is only a year away.
Optimistic Informed Sources reckon that a simplified timetable re-cast might be feasible in 12-15 months. So you might be able to do something by the old ‘summer' timetable change date in 2007, rather than wait for December.
Which TOCs need the Haines Eccles Transformation to achieve a 90% PPM? A look at the latest performance charts suggests Central Trains, Virgin Cross Country and Trans Pennine Express as immediate candidates: these are all affected by DfT Rail's franchise re-mapping programme.
South of the Thames , Southern has been impressed by the SWT recast and is planning to introduce its own version in December 2006. The new Integrated Kent Franchise, the letting of which has slipped slightly, will require a recast anyway to merge services on Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the classic lines.
Finally, there is First Great Western, one of only two TOCs with a PPM below 80% in the most recent Period. With its associated FGW Link, it also suffers from structural timetable problems. These can only be exacerbated should CrossRail happen.
Meanwhile the timetable prepared by the Strategic Rail Authority as the basis of the current Greater Western franchise replacement process, has required a number of subsequent revisions because of basic errors. Apocryphal sources allege it was produced for DfT Rail by economists.
Whoever produced it we should not be surprised that it has not been structured to optimise performance given the timescale. And, according to Informed Sources, one bidder has offered DfT Rail, which is now handling franchise replacement, a non compliant but high-PPM timetable.
However the history tells us that the most immediate and hardest task will be recasting the Central Trains and Cross Country timetables through Birmingham New Street station. Back in the days when this magazine ran detailed timetable reviews, Cross Country was on my beat and it was fascinating to see how pathing through Birmingham would affect departure times at the extremities of the route network.
So now we come to the question I should have asked. Do we have the management resources to reorganise the re-mapped franchises, re-let them and, most important, recast these and other inefficient timetables all within the next two years?
Informed sources think not. And, don't forget that the aim is to let the remapped Midlands franchises and Cross Country by the end of 2007, or early 2008 in the case of East Midlands . To get that election winning PPM in time for a May 2009 election, those timetables will have to be recast while franchise bidding is underway.
Since even the DfT would recognise that as a non-starter, what timetables do bidders for East and West Midlands and Cross Country use as the basis for their business plans? If new timetables are to be introduced they will be bidding blind.
Alternatively, if the recast is to be deferred until the new owner is in place, then the successful franchisee will surely need a reopener in the subsidy profile to allow for any fall in income. Remember that the SWT recast was only revenue neutral. And if the recast is deferred, achievement of the 90% PPM is less likely.
And even before we get to this turmoil, timetabling resources are under pressure. Much of this pressure is coming from recasts to achieve that magical 90%. At the same time everyone wants the top timetabling team to be put onto their pet project, like the pending decision on East Coast Main line path allocation.
But, as this column is wont to say, the situation is even worse than this. Because over the same period – 2006-2008, the 2008 Periodic Review will be taking place.
As long suffering readers will know this requires the Government to specify in detail the rail services it wants. It requires Network Rail to cost this specification against the Government's rail support budget. And if funding doesn't match expenditure service levels will have to be tweaked.
So even more demands on the finite pool of skilled resources, and to a tight schedule. So like Caesar the timetablers have three things to do at one and the same time. Recast inefficient timetables, support a franchise bidding war and iterate train services to match the HLOS and SoFA.