In a year when a major intercity franchise collapsed, passenger numbers dwindled and a timetable change threw commuter train services into turmoil, it is little wonder that a sense of crisis has pushed the government to consider a rail review.
Outcry over ever-rising fares, Virgin’s East Coast failure, then Thameslink and Northern chaos have all captured the headlines. Yet beyond all that, passengers have quietly suffered startling disruption, discomfort and delay in 2018 on a line that has undergone extraordinary investment and whose story poses further questions about how the railway is run, from procurement to franchising.
By the time work is completed, almost £10bn will have been poured into new track and trains for Great Western Railway, whose sprawling network runs from London to destinations such as Swansea, Penzance and Cheltenham Spa. GWR services are operated by the British bus and rail company FirstGroupwhile the maintenance and renewal of the infrastructure are overseen by government-owned Network Rail. This outlay on controversial new trains under a government-run process as well as poorly costed electrification work carried out by Network Rail have been the subject of scathing reports from the National Audit Office.
Now, though, much of the route from London Paddington to Cardiff is electrified, with bottlenecks ironed out and the major interchange of Reading station rebuilt. Ten months ago, the first of the long-awaited new Intercity Express trains made by Japan’s Hitachi entered service.
Instead of heralding improvement, performance nosedived. Figures from the Office of Rail and Road, the industry regulator, show punctuality declined steadily from that moment, while delays reached unprecedented levels. Cancellations because of problems with trains or train crew rocketed to almost 800 a month in March, four times the average for the decade. Roughly one in six GWR trains were classified late, delayed by more than 10 minutes; at a lowpoint in May when barely one in four of GWR’s long-distance services ran at the advertised time.
Intense engineering work on the route has disrupted services and GWR achieved the rare feat, in March, of having more delays recorded as self-inflicted than caused by Network Rail. Meanwhile, passengers regularly found themselves crammed and standing on half-formed, five-carriage trains, with seat reservations rendered meaningless.
The consumer group Which? found that accounts of “train pain” it has received featured a disproportionate number of GWR passengers: more than one in four of 1,000-plus complaints, although GWR carries less than 6% of all rail travellers in the UK. Common concerns were overcrowding, poor compensation, a lack of information and the harm disruption caused to passengers’ personal and professional lives. Alex Hayman of Which? said: “It’s simply wrong that they have to suffer from consistent delays and cancellations, can often only claim compensation if they have been delayed by an hour or more and even then have to put in the legwork themselves.”
Among the Which? testimonies was an account by Theo Knott, 25, from Bath, who said: “It gets exponentially worse … missing important family events and meetings, and the feeling of utter impotence when trying to get recompense, have made me angry at this company more than any other thing in everyday life.”
What went wrong? If teething problems on the Hitachi fleet were anticipated, the disastrous PR spectacle of a leaky, malfunctioning official launch train signalled worse. Software was rewritten to make seat-reservation systems function and address the coupling of five-carriage sets into long trains.
The rush to complete over-budget electrification work by Network Rail left less time for GWR to train enough drivers (although it insists it has employed plenty). Rescheduled, repeated track closures threw GWR’s logistics into disarray. The railway-wide May timetable change contributed additional stress. Some GWR staff appeared to have grown disaffected: one miserable Sunday the company said trains would not run as its drivers had opted to watch the World Cup rather than work overtime. One insider calls it a “perfect storm”.
Christian Wolmar, a rail historian and former Labour by-election candidate, said: “It’s extraordinary how things have come home to roost. All this comes about because the railway isn’t an entity but has been broken up into separate functions, when the management ought to be under one roof. The investment programme has made that worse because work is being carried out without regard to operational problems.”
In late August, the government decided against breaking up the GWR franchise but warned: “Restoring punctuality and reliability performance to acceptable levels and then maintaining them will be a key priority.”
Despite those words, the Department for Transport has long let FirstGrouprun GWR without competition. Buried in the small print of the “strategic vision for railways” issued last November by the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, was the DfT’s intent to extend First’s contract from 2018 to 2022, with an option to extend to 2024. The DfT said the move “will allow the improved services to bed in fully before running a competition for a new long-term franchise”.
That could mean that First will have been given short-term extensions on GWR totalling 11 years, having exited its original contract after 2013 to avoid £800m in payments due to the Treasury. One industry figure, declining to be named, said: “How could you in all conscience give this contract to someone running this so badly, with all this investment?”
GWR said it will take until May 2019, when electrification should be completed and the timetable redrawn, for the benefits of the £10bn investment to be fully evident. Services have improved in August and it believes it has turned a corner, with the Hitachi trains now outperforming the older HST trains in the fleet.
A GWR spokesman said: “We welcome the department’s desire to maintain continuity and stability for passengers as Network Rail continues its electrification programme.
“In the meantime, we are concentrating on delivering the biggest package of improvements for customers across the network in a generation.”
Some suspect the direct contract award is an effort to keep First in the industry as one of the last British firms in rail. First’s financial woes have long persisted, while the only franchises it has won this decade look like poisoned chalices: the loss-making TransPennine and South Western.
Wolmar said: “To give people direct awards seems to negate anything the Tories said about competition – but it’s an act of desperation. National Express are no longer in the game, Stagecoach have been booted off East Coast. Who’s left? We need a new way of running the railways.”
A review of franchising in 2013 found the system was fundamentally sound. That conclusion looks increasingly hollow now, as Labour calls for renationalisation gain support and Grayling is pushed toward a new review.
Senior industry figures believe a root-and-branch inquiry is necessary. David Brown, the chief executive of Go-Ahead, which runs transport services worldwide, including the troubled Thameslink, said: “I’d want a review to cover all aspects of the industry.You’ve got to look at the way it’s funded and regulated. Its about having common objectives. If you just look at franchising you won’t end up with the right answer.”
On all sides is a belief that the operations of train and track should be more united to improve the railway. Passengers should hope the question of just how is answered soon.
TROUBLE ON THE TRAINS
Govia Thameslink Railway
The busy commuter route, which runs from Brighton to Bedford via
central London, has suffered years of strikes and delays. But this was
eclipsed by the cancellation of thousands of trains after the timetable
fiasco. An interim schedule since July has restored stability but there is still no date to bring in services promised in May.
Northern
Badly hit by the timetable chaos but has restored 75% of cancelled
services as well as punctuality. Still affected by strikes.
London North Eastern Railway
Back in the hands of a reluctant transport secretary as a
state-operated service after Virgin Trains East Coast ran out of cash
in June. Passengers and profits had failed to materialise.
South Western Railway
FirstGroup hope to salvage some money while renegotiating the
contract to reflect timetable issues but passenger numbers
and season ticket sales have slumped since it took over in August
2017, while industrial action also continues.
TransPennine Express
Another First operation and the most obviously overbid franchise
since Virgin’s collapse. First admitted that this year it expects a £106m
hit from the contract.
