After last Sunday's fiasco, more cancellations for lack of drivers on Great
Northern tonight, plus, I gather, some on Thameslink this time.

Are Govia incapable of retaining drivers? And how much worse will it get
before they do something more effective to retain their drivers?

So far their only response has been about how many drivers they have in
training. They won't be available to drive trains until some time in the
Spring at the earliest.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 18:02:41 -0600,
wrote:

After last Sunday's fiasco, more cancellations for lack of drivers on
Great Northern tonight, plus, I gather, some on Thameslink this time.

Are Govia incapable of retaining drivers? And how much worse will it
get before they do something more effective to retain their drivers?

So far their only response has been about how many drivers they have in
training. They won't be available to drive trains until some time in the
Spring at the earliest.

I wonder if the nature of the TSGN contract, no revenue risk and just
a management fee, means Govia have little scope to "splash the cash"
in order to aid retention. Their ability to earn profits is directly
down to avoiding penalties (not exactly a strength to date) and
minimising costs. As labour is a very significant cost I wonder if
wages and T&Cs are now worse than other TOCs making retention /
recruitment very difficult? I suspect that in the past the view from
TOC managements was that they were prepared to take a "hit" on staff
costs if it avoided reputational damage / loss of income / penalties
under their franchise contracts. TSGN doesn't really have as much
scope to do that given they have no direct incentive to push up
revenue. There may be some "upside" sharing mechanism in the contract
but I don't know for certain. Anyway they won't get 100% if there is
- some will go to DfT.

We know that TSGN breached its franchise early on and has possibly
done so again given the parlous state of various bits of their empire.
I think TSGN is possibly too big to fail and DfT simply can't afford
the risk of retendering the franchise nor losing momentum on the
deployment of class 700s (given it's a PFI contract which DfT has to
pay out on). Further they can't have a situation where they don't
have a TOC to interface with Network Rail on the Thameslink project
and development and testing of the new signalling and new
infrastructure. I also suspect that DfT does not have the resource to
manage a lot of concurrent refranchising activity.

I think it would have to get vastly worse than it already is before
DfT could "pull the plug". Not even having Tory and Labour MPs
berating Southern Trains in the Commons seems to be enough to ring
alarm bells (Qs to the Leader of the House this week).

Not a promising scenario for Great Northern, something of a distant cousin
anyway, is it?

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's Lynn,
has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely North Junction.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 01:27:07
on Sat, 19 Dec 2015, remarked:

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's Lynn,
has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely North Junction.

And while not GN's fault Northstowe Parkway station is a year (or more,
depending on which broken promise you count) late, and perhaps something
to do with co-operation from Abellio the franchise commitment to roll
out "Franchise wide" smart ticketing has been re-jigged as "Royston and
further south".
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 09:21:40 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, Paul Corfield remarked:

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's Lynn,
has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely North Junction.

And while not GN's fault Northstowe Parkway station is a year (or more,
depending on which broken promise you count) late, and perhaps something
to do with co-operation from Abellio the franchise commitment to roll
out "Franchise wide" smart ticketing has been re-jigged as "Royston and
further south".

Roger Ford tweeted this week that the South East Flexible Ticketing
project appears to be "binned" by the DfT.

So my calling it vapourware all those years wasn't completely off the
mark?

Have they also binned the "part time seasons"?

Presumably any future smart ticketing will be delivered by TOCs
themselves with no attempt at an overarching project.

TSGN and TfL account for 95% of my rail travel in the South East, so
that wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Southern had much of the work done already, so all it needs from Govia
is rolling it out over the old FCC network too.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 09:30:20 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, Paul Corfield remarked:

Remember the old idea of GN being lumped in wholly with the
East Coast inter city franchise? That didn't last long.

I thought the proposal was just the non-Thameslink/non-Moorgate services
to Kings Lynn (which are supposed to have 377's not 700's) was all that
might have been moved? Makes some kind of sense given the distance
involved [1] and the fact those trains will continue to terminate at
Kings Cross.

[1] Kings Lynn is as far north as Litchfield and only ten miles shy of
Grantham and Nottingham.
--
Roland Perry

On Sat, 19 Dec 2015 01:27:07 -0600,
wrote:

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 18:02:41 -0600,
wrote:

After last Sunday's fiasco, more cancellations for lack of drivers on
Great Northern tonight, plus, I gather, some on Thameslink this time.

Are Govia incapable of retaining drivers? And how much worse will it
get before they do something more effective to retain their drivers?

So far their only response has been about how many drivers they have in
training. They won't be available to drive trains until some time in the
Spring at the earliest.

I wonder if the nature of the TSGN contract, no revenue risk and just
a management fee, means Govia have little scope to "splash the cash"
in order to aid retention. Their ability to earn profits is directly
down to avoiding penalties (not exactly a strength to date) and
minimising costs. As labour is a very significant cost I wonder if
wages and T&Cs are now worse than other TOCs making retention /
recruitment very difficult? I suspect that in the past the view from
TOC managements was that they were prepared to take a "hit" on staff
costs if it avoided reputational damage / loss of income / penalties
under their franchise contracts. TSGN doesn't really have as much
scope to do that given they have no direct incentive to push up
revenue. There may be some "upside" sharing mechanism in the contract
but I don't know for certain. Anyway they won't get 100% if there is
- some will go to DfT.

We know that TSGN breached its franchise early on and has possibly
done so again given the parlous state of various bits of their empire.
I think TSGN is possibly too big to fail and DfT simply can't afford
the risk of retendering the franchise nor losing momentum on the
deployment of class 700s (given it's a PFI contract which DfT has to
pay out on). Further they can't have a situation where they don't
have a TOC to interface with Network Rail on the Thameslink project
and development and testing of the new signalling and new
infrastructure. I also suspect that DfT does not have the resource to
manage a lot of concurrent refranchising activity.

I think it would have to get vastly worse than it already is before
DfT could "pull the plug". Not even having Tory and Labour MPs
berating Southern Trains in the Commons seems to be enough to ring
alarm bells (Qs to the Leader of the House this week).

Not a promising scenario for Great Northern, something of a distant cousin
anyway, is it?

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's Lynn,
has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely North Junction.

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is / was intended for Ely North
junction?

But there was some mention of a problem on BBC Look East last week,
but no explanation.



TIA, David C.


PS. The Subject Header confused me at first, I was wondering why
Nissan Drivers were on topic for this N.G.........

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

In message , at 12:09:36 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, David C remarked:

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is / was intended for Ely North
junction?

But there was some mention of a problem on BBC Look East last week,
but no explanation.

It currently has four "single lead" junctions (a, b and c).

Only the Peterborough direction has a full two-track junction.

https://goo.gl/maps/3JziEjRARYF2

So it's like this:

Ely ------------------------------------ Peterborough
\
Ely ---------a-------------------------- Peterborough
\
*
\
b------c--------------- Kings Lynn
\ \
\ -------------- Kings Lynn
\
d------------------ Norwich
\
----------------- Norwich

As is fairly obvious, places like "*" are a monster bottleneck.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 13:43:53 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, Paul Corfield remarked:

Roger Ford tweeted this week that the South East Flexible Ticketing
project appears to be "binned" by the DfT.

So my calling it vapourware all those years wasn't completely off the
mark?

I still think smart ticketing will be delivered via the TOCs
themselves so it won't be vapourware in the sense I think you mean it.
If you are not trying to create a regional product structure spanning
several TOCs and removing boundary issues why do you need an
overarching project structure / team? I've never been convinced,
given the sparse level of info, that the DfT envisaged a South East
region set of tickets / pricing that was enabled in a consistent
manner across the SE area.

I'd be happy with one ITSO card being able to host smart tickets from
TSGN, C2C, AGA and FGW (and anyone else I've forgotten[1]), and then for
the gates to be able to check that whoever issued/priced the ticket I've
pre-bought, it's valid on any such journey I would want to make. PAYG
over such a wide area is probably beyond their wit at the moment.

[1] LM probably; each National Rail TOC appears committed to having
interoperability with TfL travelcard seasons, but I'm not clear if
they have ambitions to interoperate with TfL day travelcards.
--
Roland Perry

Day travelcards are available on ITSO from C2C and Southern. I think it's possible that Contactless Payment Cards and the back office version of Oyster will eventually cover most of the South East.

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at 12:09:36 on
Sat, 19 Dec 2015, David C remarked:

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is / was intended for Ely North
junction?

But there was some mention of a problem on BBC Look East last week,
but no explanation.

It currently has four "single lead" junctions (a, b and c).

Only the Peterborough direction has a full two-track junction.

https://goo.gl/maps/3JziEjRARYF2

So it's like this:

Ely ------------------------------------ Peterborough
\
Ely ---------a-------------------------- Peterborough
\
*
\
b------c--------------- Kings Lynn
\ \
\ -------------- Kings Lynn
\
d------------------ Norwich
\
----------------- Norwich

As is fairly obvious, places like "*" are a monster bottleneck.

especially as the stretches of single line on the King's Lynn route make
that (GTR) service rather fragile elsewhere on the route, e.g. at Downham
Market.

--
Colin Rosenstiel