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Rail Timetable Changes: May 2018

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Rail Timetable Changes: May 2018 House of Commons Transport Committee Rail timetable changes: May 2018 Seventh Report of Session 2017–19 Report, together with formal minutes relating to the report Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 27 November 2018 HC 1163 Published on 4 December 2018 by authority of the House of Commons Transport Committee The Transport Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Department for Transport and its associated public bodies. Current membership Lilian Greenwood MP (Labour, Nottingham South) (Chair) Jack Brereton MP (Conservative, Stoke-on-Trent South) Ruth Cadbury MP (Labour, Brentwood and Isleworth) Robert Courts MP (Conservatives, Witney) Ronnie Cowan MP (Scottish Nationalist Party, Inverclyde) Steve Double MP (Conservatives, St Austell and Newquay) Paul Girvan MP (Democratic Unionist Party, South Antrim) Huw Merriman MP (Conservatives, Bexhill and Battle) Grahame Morris MP (Labour, Easington) Graham Stringer MP (Labour, Blackley and Broughton) Daniel Zeichner MP (Labour, Cambridge) The following Members were also members for the Committee during the Rail timetable changes inquiry: Luke Pollard MP Ian Stewart MP Powers The committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication Committee reports are published on the Committee’s website at www.parliament.uk/transcom and in print by Order of the House. Evidence relating to this report is published on the inquiry publications page of the Committee’s website. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Gordon Clarke (Committee Clerk), Ed Faulkner (Second Clerk), James Clarke (Committee Specialist), Nerys Davies (Committee Specialist), Andrew Haylen (Committee Specialist), Deborah Courtney (Senior Committee Assistant), Michelle Owens, (Committee Assistant), Estelle Currie (Senior Media Officer) and Oliver Florence (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Transport Committee, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 3266; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. Rail timetable changes: May 2018 1 Contents Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 The 20 May 2018 timetable change 5 Failure to deliver and effects on passengers 6 The context of our inquiry and this Report 9 2 Why did the system fail? 12 Network Rail 12 Infrastructure programme governance structures 14 Great North Rail Project 14 Thameslink 15 Culpability of the train companies 18 Northern 19 GTR 20 The ORR 21 What happens next? 23 A more cautious approach and putting “someone in charge” 23 3 Contingencies to assist disabled passengers 26 The experience of disabled passengers 26 More stringent obligations and enforcement 27 4 Fairer compensation schemes 30 Calls for a fares freeze 30 Delay Repay and the additional compensation schemes 31 Delay Repay 31 Additional compensation schemes 33 Moving towards automatic or automated compensation 34 5 Meaningful consultation and proper impact assessment 37 Passenger views on the consultation process 37 Late changes before May 2018 and waiving the obligation to consult 38 Conclusions and recommendations 43 Formal minutes 48 Witnesses 49 Published written evidence 50 List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament 53 Rail timetable changes: May 2018 3 Summary Far from marking the intended substantial improvement for rail passengers across the north and in London and the south of England, the 20 May national rail timetable change and the weeks that followed will live long in the memories of a large proportion of rail users as a prolonged period of intensely inconvenient, costly and, on occasions, potentially dangerous disruption. Rail passengers caught up in the timetabling crisis do not deserve to face an increase in their fares in 2019. We urge the rail industry and Government to consider all options to keep any regulated fares increase in 2019 to a minimum. Northern, TransPennine Express, Thameslink, and Great Northern’s 2018 season ticket holders should receive a discount, equivalent to any increase announced this year, on renewed season tickets in 2019. The May 2018 timetabling crisis was in part a consequence of the astonishing complexity of a disaggregated railway in which the interrelated private train companies operating on publicly-owned and managed infrastructure have competing commercial interests. While there can be little doubt that “root and branch” reform of governance structures is necessary, passengers cannot wait for the Government to implement the recommendations of the Williams Rail Review from 2020. Key lessons from the experience of passengers must be learned and addressed now or in short order. The rail industry, Department for Transport and the ORR must: • ensure effective policies are in place—and are enforced—to assist disabled passengers when things go wrong on the railway; • set a measurable target for implementation of “simple, one-click automated” compensation schemes, including, though franchise renegotiations if necessary, piloting such schemes on parts of the network worst affected by the timetabling crisis by the end of 2019; and • ensure sufficient time in future timetabling processes for ongoing and meaningful public consultation, and commit to work with rail users to assess and mitigate adverse local effects of the May 2018 timetable change. Even though all the main stakeholders had been aware for several years that the scale of change planned for 20 May was unprecedented, the industry did not adhere to its long-established system for timetable changes, which clearly sets out well-understood processes and timescales. The reasons for this were different in the north and south but the ultimate effects were the same. There was simply not enough time to put everything in place to ensure a reasonably smooth implementation. People who rely on our railways have been very badly let down by the whole system, including Network Rail, the train operating companies, the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). We endorse the ORR’s finding that “nobody took charge”; this is extraordinary and totally unacceptable. In relation to industry structures, the immediate priority must be establishing effective oversight of the next national rail timetable changes. In the short term, we are content 4 Rail timetable changes: May 2018 for the Chief Executive of Network Rail to take charge, but the Secretary of State must make clear the extent of Mr Haines’ decision-making power over whether and when the next timetable change goes ahead. We await the ORR’s final recommendations, but our clear view is that the national rail timetabling process requires genuinely independent oversight, following accepted principles of professional project management, including the appointment of an independent Project Sponsor or Senior Responsible Owner for the whole national timetabling project. We believe this role would need to be located outside of Network Rail, so that it is more effectively insulated from commercial and political pressures. Rail timetable changes: May 2018 5 1 Introduction The 20 May 2018 timetable change 1. For several years, 20 May 2018 had been marked in the diary of the railway industry as a momentous day. The culmination of substantial investment in major infrastructure projects and delivery of new rolling stock was to facilitate the introduction of thousands of new services, providing much needed additional capacity for tens of thousands of rail passengers.1 2. In the north of England, the changes planned for 20 May were to be a substantial step towards unlocking the benefits of the Great North Rail Project, with “brand new trains, including more than 500 new carriages, room for 40,000 extra passengers and more than 2,800 extra services a week.” In London and the south, 20 May was intended to deliver around 70% of the capacity benefits of the hugely ambitious Thameslink Programme, which aims ultimately to facilitate “tube-like” service frequencies, with trains every two or three minutes on new infrastructure through London.2 3. The industry has a long-established system, with clearly set out and well-understood processes, for changing the national rail timetable every six months, in May and December each year. These changes vary in scale. They are often relatively minor tweaks and, when they go to plan, many passengers will be able to access additional services, but many others will be unaffected or scarcely notice the change at all. Timetable changes are crucial for the rail industry, delivering extra capacity to better meet demand, and enabling train operating companies to meet contractual obligations and increase their revenues.3 4. The scale of investment and complexity of introducing new services enabled by the infrastructure projects described above meant that the change planned for 20 May 2018 was unprecedented in scale. It would have complex effects across multiple franchises and very large portions of the national rail network. It involved 42,300 individual changes, affecting 46% of all passenger services on the network. While there had been an increase in the scale of timetable changes in recent years, 20 May 2018 represented a very considerable step-change. It was around four times the scale of a typical six-monthly timetable change.4 1 See ‘Great North Rail Project’, Network Rail (accessed 25 October 2018); ‘RailPlan 20/20: Transforming your journey for good’, RailPlan 20/20 (accessed 25 October 2018) 2 Department for Transport (DfT) (RTC0084) 3 Qq119 –20 [Jo Kaye] 4 Office of Rail and Road (ORR), Independent Inquiry into the Timetable Disruption in May 2018, September 2018 [hereafter, ORR, September 2018], figure B1; see also ‘Biggest rail timetable change in decades’, Transport Focus (accessed 26 October 2018) 6 Rail timetable changes: May 2018 Figure 1: Timetable changes (number of planned changes) Source: ORR, September 2018 Failure to deliver and effects on passengers 5.
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