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Rufus Boyd told the September 2005 Fourth Friday Club about the improvements that have followed the introduction of the new South West Trains timetable. Click here to view the Power Point presentation used at this meeting.
A notice has recently been published in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting interest in a third round franchise for South West Trains. In the light of this the recast timetable introduced by SWT last December has come under renewed scrutiny. A presentation in September on the subject to the Modern Railways / Railway Forum Fourth Friday Club by Rufus Boyd, Commercial Director Business Development with Stagecoach Rail, was well attended.
The revamped timetable has been widely credited as a success. While Rufus Boyd's initial views of what the timetable achieved have already been covered by Modern Railways (p44, July issue), he was able to give the Fourth Friday Club some further insight into the process. "Our aim is to help impart best practice, especially in view of the way the Government is looking to the timetable as a route to changing the performance of the rail network" said Mr Boyd.
The background to the recast was work which showed that under the old timetable, even if trains had had green signals all the way, they would still be late. "We were planning to fail" said Mr Boyd.
A combination of factors, including a 40% increase in the number of passengers since privatisation which has increased station dwell times, had complicated the operation of the railway. The door cycle times of new Desiro multiple-units mean dwell times will necessarily be extended by comparison with slam-door stock, but it had been thought that this time could be recaptured en route by the nippy Desiros. That was until the Southern Power Upgrade was cut back, "when it became clear that on lines with lots of stations, such as the Portsmouth Direct, we knew we would be unable to keep to time and would have to rewrite the rules".
Some easing of journey times was accepted as inevitable if the timetable was to be made to work properly. The stopping pattern came under scrutiny. SWT undertook surveys to identify stations that it might be underserving which included those in the M3 corridor such as Farnborough and Fleet and those it might be overserving, such as some wayside stations in the New Forest.
Following this work it was predicted that the recast would be income neutral: any patronage increase from improved service at stations with suppressed demand would be offset by losses from perceived longer journey times. But as long as it would not lose money, the recast was plainly worth doing.
The experience of the last major recast, in 1967, was revisited and the history lesson told SWT that one thing that was vital was to ensure customers knew about the changes. A blanket publicity campaign resulted in the extraordinarily high figure of 98% of customers feeling that they had been sufficiently informed about the changes.
As D-day approached, SWT said publicly it expected a 6% improvement in performance, while privately it was hoping for as much as a 15% hike in the performance figures. In the event, that latter figure has almost been realised: a Public Performance Measure of on-time performance (up to five minutes late counted as right time) jumped from 75% before the changes to some 14% higher after them.
"This was noticeable to a sceptical public," said Mr Boyd. "Importantly, the variability of performance has gone we are consistently delivering, day in, day out."
One of SWT's most persistent critics, the Rail Passengers Council Southern, was of the opinion that the loosening of the schedules meant there was a worsening of journeys for most people. But research commissioned from The Railway Consultancy disproved that notion: while journey times had increased by about one minute, the performance improvement was worth four minutes to passengers, so overall they are now three minutes better off.
While the altered stopping patterns have helped cater for demand at growth points, the relentless upward trend in the number of passengers means that overcrowding remains an issue. "Network Rail have to sort that out: the forthcoming Route Utilisation Study is the key to this issue" according to Rufus Boyd.
Question time showed that a new phrase has entered the railway lexicon: the 'Mark Hopwood effect'. London Lines Operations Director Mark Hopwood has achieved a remarkable performance improvement on his patch with simple measures such as sorting out rosters this was the subject of an earlier Fourth Friday Club presentation (March 2005 issue). While welcoming such measures Mr Boyd said they would only take you so far when the timetable is unworkable, as SWT's was, a recast is the only option.
A spirited debate took place at the Fourth Friday Club on the merits of driver-only operation, which is not practised on SWT there was some feeling that the 30 seconds spent on the ding-ding communication between guards and drivers means extended dwell times. In the discussion it transpired that SWT's Desiros were specified in a way that makes them incompatible with DOO.
Club members asked if DOO with Class 455s remains a possibility to which Rufus Boyd said that as Class 455s are refurbished, guards are moving from operational to customer service duties as they are no longer constrained by the need to be in the rear cab to operate the doors. "We could have spent a lot of time and energy getting a fix for DOO when it has to be recognised that station dwell times are only part of the mix" said Mr Boyd. MR