Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2008-12-29 09:14:23 - Graham Ellis
Management Summary - TransWilts Train service, linking largest Wiltshire population centres, growing rapidly but cut back to just 2 trains a day.
This is Article 3 of a series of 3. Article 1 - Background to the TransWilts Train Fiasco Article 2 - How much does a train service actually cost?
Article 3 - Why hasn't the fiasco been put right?
I have been asked the following question on a number of occasions:
"If the service that you're backing really IS appropriate, surely it would have been part of the original service specified by the Department for Transport, and even if they had got it wrong it would have been corrected by now ...". I wish!
The current level of service was specified by a body called the SRA - the Strategic Rail Authority - in their dying days; heavily pushed towards a franchise system that maximised profit payable to The Treasury, they took unduly pessimistic growth and traffic figures for smaller lines, and in the particular case of the TransWilts that was a double tragedy as service improvements shortly before their surveys had started a spectacular (up to 35% per annum) growth but at the point of th surveys this hadn't been fully translated into passenger numbers. The triple tragedy is that it WAS translated into some pretty busy trains in the years between the stats being gathered and the new "reduced" service introduction.
As a result of the SRA specification and competitive bids by three companies, won by the First group, one sixth of the income from all rail fares in the South West over the 10 years of the franchise has to be paid to the government - in effect a tax on the traveller. And also, in effect, a raising of the profit threshold that much be made by the average train service. Quite simply, the SRA specification and the way that First chose to bid it has raised the bar so high that it doesn't make sense for First to run services that make only a small operational profit - they need a big profit. Emotively, I could compare it to The SRA setting up a system where they award the nice cushy job to the person who's prepared to pay the most protection money.
First's problems in serving the passenger first (!) are not limited to the need to pay crippling financial sums to the treasury (and, be warned, they kick in much more in 2009, then 2010!). They also have to lease the trains they run from a handful or organisations - the RoSCOs - who bought them from British Rail at privatisation and now, in a growing rail market, are sitting on a scarce commodity for which they can charge a very profitable price. Progressively tougher health, safety and access issues also add a further - and very significant burden; it's always tough to argue against safety improvements, but we now have the absurd situation where rail projects are lost on safety costs, and pushing traffic onto the much LESS safe roads. Oh - and First also have to ensure that they make enough money to pay their shareholders; at their AGM, they proudly state that they're improving dividend payments by 10% per annum ... and that money comes from their passengers and is NOT being spent on improving the service / keeping feeder service running as it would have been in the past.
I mentioned that the SRA had gone, didn't I? Their operation was taken over directly by the Department for Transport (Rail), who you'll see I've commented on earlier. There are largely the same staff in place (so you're not going to find that they'll say "The SRA got it wrong" as they would be admitting to their own errors) - civil servants who are largely guided by the politics of their Labour ministers. Since the summer of 2005 alone, we've had Alastair Darling, Douglas Alexander, Ruth Kelly and (now) Geoff Hoon as the Cabinet Minister at the Department. And we've had Derek Twigg, Tom Harris and (now) Andrew Adonis as the minister for Rail. All very bright people who have done well for themselves, yet little very limited prior transport skills and in many cases not even elected by people who's rail service they control (it always strikes me as undemocratic that a Minister for Rail often represents a Scottish seat, or sits in The Lords, when the Department only controls rail service in England, having devolved the Welsh and Scotch systems to their local parliaments!).
Let's look at Wiltshire County Council - the third key player. The council ceases to exist on 1st April, and is replaced by a Unitary Authority - with all the same people in charge, but taking over district councils. At present, they're busy spending 12 million on new IT systems, and jostling each other for the new jobs in the new authority. The council has a reputation for being "anti-rail", and that reputation is not helped by their view that it is for government and not them (even though they are the Local Transport Authority) to subsidise rail. The question has been asked of them "if it's not your job to tune government dictat of local conditions, what IS you job?" ... pointing out to them examples in Cornawll, Devon, Bristol, Hampshire ... but the question has been met with a deafening silence. Rail improvements - at a tidy price - would lessen the case for road improvements along the corridor, and one or two key elected representatives who hold sway over all of Wiltshire are very determined indeed to get those other schemes through, so will always look to kick plans into the long grass. A report to be commissioned last MAY to review the service hasn't even been awarded yet as far as I can tell. By the time it reports, it will be too late for the December 2009 service. And I believe that this is a calculated delay, wrapped up in the sweetener of "we have to be careful how we spend money" ...
Look at Wiltshire Council, at First and at the Department for Transport, and the position that the system has put them in, and it's little wonder that the grossly inappropriate service that was sneaked into the SRA document hasn't been changed to something more appropriate.
Indeed - what IS a miracle is that the service shown here was drawn up (by First), validated (by Network Rail), and accepted and encouraged as sensible approach (by the DtT and Wiltshire Council). There are very good people working at all of those organisations, and I applaud their work.
The story is an ongoing one. "Keep at it ... you'll get it in a year or two" said one of our professional contacts in the summer, just after we had lost the December opportunity. Yes - the campaign will keep on going, and the objective achieved. But the "you" who will get it won't be me or the other campaigners; the people who get their service will be the people of Wiltshire, and the people who visit this lovely county.
Article 1 - Background to the TransWilts Train Fiasco Article 2 - How much does a train service actually cost?
Article 3 - Why hasn't the fiasco been put right?
Indeed - what IS a miracle is that the service shown here was drawn up (by First), validated (by Network Rail), and accepted and encouraged as sensible approach (by the DtT and Wiltshire Council). There are very good people working at all of those organisations, and I applaud their work.