Return to Archive -by date - by topic - 2002.
If you doubt that cynicism, opportunism and old fashioned incompetence is rife in the Department of Transport, consider the Railway Benchmarks published on 18 February. According to Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, they have been set so that 'people can judge how we are doing as we tackle problems caused by decades of under investment and a botched privatisation'. And on that basis they about a much use as a milk chocolate brake disc.
"This set of indicators focuses on the issues that matter most to passengers: punctuality, reliability, safety and quality. They are part of a broader range of statistics published by the industry. I am highlighting these figures because I believe they reflect the passenger's priorities. Stephen Byers 18 February 2002 |
Let's start with cynicism. Quite reasonably, you might think, Byers has backdated the Performance and Reliability benchmark, using the Strategic Rail Authority's Public Performance Measure (PPM) to June 2001 when he took over the new look Department for Transport, Local Government & the Regions. Remembering Labour's 1997 campaign song 'things can only get better' you might think that the establishment of Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions by John Prescott might be a better benchmarking date.
Well you might think that, but you would not be considered special advisor material. Apart from helping to airbrush John Prescott out of transport history, the choice f date means that the benchmark will be based on the rolling annual average PPM for the year to June 2001.
This, readers may recall, included 8 months of post Hatfield disruption. As a result Byer's benchmark PPM is an unprecedently low 72% This is about 15 percentage points below the two year's pre-Hatfield when John Prescott was in charge.
As political cynicism goes, such blatant sand bagging is breathtaking in its audacity. Or equally breathtaking in its poverty of aspiration. It gets worse.
The benchmark for safety is the number of serious SPADs - categories 3-8 using the rolling annual average to 30 June 2001. Using SPADs at all is naked opportunism. As the programme to protect 11000 signals with the Train Protection & Warning System rolls out between now and 2004, serious SPADs will inevitably decrease as overspeeding trains are stopped in the overlap and become Cat 1-2 events.
So Byers is onto a guaranteed winner whatever the Government does. But there is much more to railway safety than SPADs and selecting them as its safety benchmark the DTLR has demonstrated a worrying lack of understanding of railway safety issues today.
Since this magazine has taken the lead in reporting railway safety in depth, we will not bore readers with well known detail detail. Suffice to say that the DTLR could have selected various more meaningful and more challenging measures for its safety benchmark. The HRMI uses significant train incidents per million train miles, the Railway Safety Group monitors the risk to the traveller against the current target of one fatality per 133 million passenger journeys.
Obviously the DTLR needed to dumb down a complex subject into a simple statistic, but the choice SPADs would be risible were not the subject so important.
Finally, incompetence. The benchmark for quality is the average age of the rolling stock fleet on 30 June 2001. Unfortunately the Department didn't have the figure on 18 February, which suggested the benchmarks were thrown together in a panic if there was not time to make three phone calls to the ROSCOs.
In fact, the age of the train is fast becoming a non-issue and is certainly not the criterion of quality. For the average traveller, a well refurbished 25 year old train nowadays is as good as new. Indeed, ungrateful readers tell us, that a 30 year old Mk3 is a preferable experience in terms of quality to a brand new Voyager.
Only the remaining Mk 1 stock and the Pacers really drag down the travel experience and even then there are those who will miss the VEPs and CEPs.
So yet another sitting duck in concrete boots for Byers to aim at. And what is really galling is that the bulk of the new trains which will up the age profile are the result of that botched privatisation - although only because the 1064 day order hiatus aborted Network SouthEast's programme to replace the Mk 1s plus a growth build.
So in our view the benchmarks are totally bogus and when they are inevitably beaten will only serve to remind us that when it comes to railways the Department of Transport, by whatever name and serving whatever colour of government is, and has always been, cynical in the extreme and in thrall to the short term. Anyway, those who prepared this bankrupt PR stunt must know that Byers should long gone before the next election - hopefully taking his benchmarks with him.