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 ,
() 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.

And now a similar GN non-service has been announced for tomorrow. It seems
all Foxton, Shepreth & Meldreth get is a taxi.

A few of the London trains are class 1, making the trip in as little as 66
minutes instead of the class 2s in 83.

Back to the future!

--
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

On 19/12/2015 08:39, Roland Perry wrote:
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".

That's nothing. The Thameslink-2000 project is at least 18 years late.


--
Clive Page

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 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 ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Sat, 19 Dec 2015 10:23:29 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

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?

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.

It seems Rail North do have such a scheme in mind and Mr Osborne has
lobbed them £150m to try and implement it. If they manage it I'll be
amazed given it hasn't been done in the South East where there is only
TfL and TOCs and not several PTEs, potential new ITAs, TOCs and
private bus companies to deal with. None of the PTEs have yet managed
a fully integrated smart solution in their areas that can deal with
single, return, day, period and PAYG type ticketing (which seem to be
the minimum expectation these days).

Have they also binned the "part time seasons"?

Don't think so. There are suggestions elsewhere that something is due
for announcement early next year. SWT is one TOC and Greater Anglia
might be the other. Don't know what TSGN are doing.

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.

I thought Govia were doing that but I am not up to date as to how far
things have stretched north of the Thames. As you say they have a lot
of project expertise inherited from Southern. Of course there may be
more difficulties north of the Thames given operator interfaces etc.

The real problem, Paul, is that every TOC doing its own things is a disaster
for any routes, like Cambridge to London, with 2 competing TOCs like Abellio
and GTR.

Will we all have to get two ITSO cards to allow for the different tickets to
London we can buy? Will Liverpool St only accept Abellio cards and King's
Cross only GTR's, even for "any permitted" tickets to London Terminals? I've
already got an ITSO card (my bus pass). Why on earth can't I use that
instead of having to get separate ones from each operator (including, if I
was still paying to use buses, a Stagecoach bus smartcard)? Meanwhile London
buses still can't read my bus pass despite ITSO on Prestige.

GTR are rolling out "The Key" as far north as Huntingdon and Royston only to
start with but are promising availability on the rest of their route later.

Cambridge station has a specific problem off-peak with ludicrous queues at
the oddest times because there is no way for the vast majority of passengers
to get tickets other than from a ticket window or machine. FCC were starting
on m-Tickets but GTR scrapped that and Abellio seem to have some limited
print at home facilities which I've not yet found a way to use for a ticket
from Cambridge. So ability to pick up tickets at the gateline without going
to a machine first is very important and being promised by GTR.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 19:07:42
on Sat, 19 Dec 2015, remarked:
Will we all have to get two ITSO cards to allow for the different tickets to
London we can buy? Will Liverpool St only accept Abellio cards and King's
Cross only GTR's, even for "any permitted" tickets to London Terminals? I've
already got an ITSO card (my bus pass). Why on earth can't I use that
instead of having to get separate ones from each operator (including, if I
was still paying to use buses, a Stagecoach bus smartcard)?

It's worse than that - I bet there's still no interoperation between any
of the Stagecoach ITSO card and the two different ITSO cards for the SWT
and EMT franchises operated by Stagecoach.
--
Roland Perry