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Inured as we are to the progressive disintegration of what was once a fully functioning railway, even we were shocked by the revelation in the Hartwell Accord (Modern Railways December) that the 125mile/h service for Phase 1 of the West Coast Route Modernisation could not be timetabled. Quite simply, it was not possible to reconcile the access rights of the 16 operators using the route.
This is the ultimate breakdown of the fragmented railway. If you can't timetable then you haven't got a functioning railway. The timetable determines journey time, service frequency, capacity and thus revenue. It establishes the size of traction and rolling stock fleets. Traction and timetable interact, trading off speed and acceleration against headways, journey times and recovery times.
By establishing the intensity of service, the timetable determines the level of maintenance required, by both traction and rolling stock and infrastructure. From maintenance requirements stem the possessions regime. Investment in enhancements is justified in part by the ability to timetable more or faster or longer trains. The timetable can determine the need, scale and location of enhancements.
And where there are bottlenecks, the timetable represents the allocation of scarce capacity. At present the Rail Regulator adjudicates between competing claims for a finite number of paths, as in the three-way tussle on the East coast between WAGN, GNER and Hull Trains.
As long as we can remember timetabling was the work of specialists, the men in the small back room. They interpreted the business' changing commercial specification, an earlier arrival here, a better use of drivers there, a 5,000 tonne freight path threaded though a busy suburban railway. And when we wrote our annual timetable reviews, it seemed logical, even straightforward.
This was clearly the view of the civil servants, whose aim was to introduce competition on the rail under privatisation. Back in 1994, the idea was to introduce a modified timetable every eight weeks, so that Train–u-Like could book a slot at short notice under the Peterborough process.
Reality struck and it was back to the bi-annual summer and winter changes. And now, it seems we can't even do that on the West Coast. Perhaps we should not be surprised. Virgin Cross Country has finally achieved its new Timetable for Summer 2003. What we will experience will be the 83 rd iteration – that's not a misprint – the eighty third version, with all that means in skilled manpower.
But that is not all. Many of those major projects, upgrades and enhancements people have been putting forward have overlooked the primacy of the timetable. Thameslink 2000 has changed significantly since its genesis in 1996 and railway services feeding it have changed too. Can it be timetabled? Who knows. Is it compatible with the South Central upgrade. Probably not.
Cross Rail is back on the agenda. Has anyone thought to investigate how its 24 trains an hour fit into the timetables at each end? We don't think so.
In the small print qualifying the approval of Terminal 5 at Heathrow there is a best endeavours requirement for an Express Service into St Pancras. Can this be timetabled into the reduced number of platforms when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is completed? Who cares, it's a nice aspiration.
In these troubled times, when our railways are subject to more political interference than ever before, the timetable should represent the one firm bit of ground in a swamp of uncertainty. From the Government's point of view, the timetable determines what the taxpayer's money is being used to buy.
Because of this, we believe that the timetable is too important to be kicked around by a fragmented railway. It is a national strategic issue and should be managed as such. This means a national strategic timetable, treating capacity and pathing issues holistically in an industry where chaos theory applies. If a driver is sick in Aberdeen , Birmingham New Street falls apart.
Lets us predicate an National timetable Authority under the aegis of the SRA. Instead of establishing the minimum, in the form of Passenger Service Requirements (PSR) were have the full service, passenger and freight. This would have several clear advantages. All the timetable expertise, a dwindling and over extended resource would be brought together, with the added benefit of training opportunities. This elite corps would be supported by the best in computer software and hardware.
Politically, the Governmenbt would have to specify what it wanted and was willing to pay for. The Department of Transport and the Treasury would be tied into the railway they had willed.
nd a national timetable would provide a vital framework for the reorganisation of the railway, which we believed must be vertically integrated.