ORGANISING NATIONAL RAIL IN LONDON A statement of evidence from the London Transport Users Committee to the Greater London Assembly’s scrutiny of Mainline Rail Services in London Published by the London Transport Users Committee Clements House 14-18 Gresham Street London EC2V 7PR Phone : 020 7505 9000 Fax : 020 7505 9003 January 2002 This submission has been prepared before publication of the Strategic Rail Authority’s Strategic Plan on 14th January 2002 Introduction 1. The Greater London Assembly’s Transport Operations Scrutiny Committee is conducting a scrutiny entitled “Mainline Rail Services in London”, to which the London Transport Users Committee has been invited to make a submission of evidence. 2. The issues being examined by the scrutiny include: • The current arrangements for rail service and infrastructure provision in London, and the arrangements that are being put in place by the Mayor, Transport for London and the Strategic Rail Authority • The implications for London of Railtrack being placed in railway receivership • The desirability and practicality of the Mayor’s proposal for a London transit authority, and of other proposals put forward by Transport for London • Other models that could be considered, drawing on experience of models elsewhere in Britain, and overseas 3. In looking at the London transit authority idea, the scrutiny wishes to consider: • What such an authority might do (whether it should cover infrastructure, franchising, integration etc.) • The implications setting up such an authority might have for planning and implementation of major infrastructure projects • How a new authority might be organised, managed and held to account • The area a new authority might serve, and the relationship with the wider South East region and its local and regional authorities • Implications for long distance, international and freight services • Implications for organisation of rail services in the rest of the country. 4. The scrutiny is to start by analysing the nature of the problems currently facing National Rail services. We have therefore been requested to begin this submission by identifying what we consider are the main issues, and what their implications might be for any new structure for rail services, before moving on to identifying a preferred option and the steps that would have to be taken to put it in place. A list of the documents referred to in preparing this submission appears as Annex C to his submission, and a glossary of abbreviations as Annex D. 1 The main issues What do passengers want? 5. Our starting point must be to identify what passengers – and potential passengers – want and then briefly consider how successful (or otherwise) the national railways are at delivering this. 6. The basics of what passengers want from their railways are well stated in our Chair’s foreword to LTUC’s Annual Report 2000 – 2001, paras 1.17 – 1.19 & 1.21 - 1.25. There are three key factors which would improve the public transport system for its users – reliability, simplicity and raising the quality. In terms of reliability we want services we can rely on, that turn up on time and arrive without delay at our destination. For the railways we need enough drivers and enough trained staff to maintain track, signalling, trains and other crucial electronic equipment such as information boards and escalators. And, why can’t we have sufficient rolling stock to avoid short trains and the subsequent overcrowding? To make travelling simpler we need clear understandable information to enable us to plan our journeys, affordable user friendly and flexible tickets that can be used on all modes, well-lit pedestrian routes and areas to wait with accessible staff or monitored CCTV and help points. For the traveller information is a vital part of the journey and real time information should be available at all stations and bus stops. Very importantly, when things go wrong we need helpful, well-trained staff able to take responsibility – able to provide timely information about what is happening and what alternative services are available. To make it happen will require more co-operation between operators. They will also need to promote public transport as an understandable network. To raise the quality will require more investment in new trains and buses. At a minimum all facilities, trains and buses should be clean and litter free and in working order. Graffiti and damage caused by vandalism must be removed promptly, weeds and bushes removed from railway tracks, walls and bridges. Only by doing these basic tasks can you reassure us that you are back in control of the whole system. So my maxim for the future is to: - MAKE IT RELIABLE, MAKE IT SIMPLE, RAISE THE QUALITY. 7. These simple ‘traveller in the street’ observations embrace most of the basics to which all public transport professionals would subscribe, but it is appropriate to supplement them by referring also to integration and service frequencies. 8. The importance of integration has long been recognised, particularly in London where the London Passenger Transport Board was set up to integrate bus and Underground as long ago as 1933. Today, with the mass ownership of cars, the low perceived cost of using them and their comfort and convenience for any journey, the need to achieve easy and seamless transfer between street and train or bus, between train and bus or Underground, and then back to street again means that integration is more important than ever if people are to be encouraged to use public transport. 2 9. At the same time, with the rightful emphasis on accessibility for all and the scarcity of space in heavily built up streets, the physical elements of integration are difficult to achieve – not least because of the number of public and private bodies which have to be brought into agreement before transport interchanges can be improved. 10. Good service frequencies are no less important if the convenience of the car – available instantly at the turn of a key – is to be matched by public transport. For services within the GLA area LTUC is a leading advocate of ‘turn up and go’ – trains to run at least every 10 minutes (6 trains per hour [tph]) so that no-one needs to know the timetable – all day every day, and with the minimum possible interruption at night for maintenance of the tracks as already obtains on LUL and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR). 11. Beyond the GLA boundary as far as such important regional towns as Dartford, Swanley, Sevenoaks, Redhill, Caterham, Epsom, Woking, Staines, Slough, High Wycombe, Watford, Luton, Stevenage, Hertford and Bishops Stortford, LTUC looks for at least a train every fifteen minutes (4 tph). No station in the LTUC area – see map below – should have less than a train every half-hour (2 tph). How well does National Rail deliver? 12. There are any number of statistics used to demonstrate how the railways are performing. To interpret them in any detail is often difficult because of the number of caveats regarding precisely what they are measuring and what they mean. Nationally they are produced by the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) (e.g. ‘On Track - Rail Performance Trends’ and ‘National Rail Trends’), and we at LTUC compile the quarterly ‘National Rail Passenger Services in the London Area’ which is submitted to the GLA Transport Operations and Scrutiny Committee. 13. However, two messages are clear. The first is that measures which relate to the basics of reliable service and quality of service show a clear downward trend for both London commuter and inter-city routes. This trend pre-dates the Hatfield accident, so it cannot be excused as a one-off blip arising from Railtrack’s mismanagement in the aftermath of that event. The second message is that (despite everything) rail traffic is increasing. Therefore in the absence of a clear strategy and sufficient committed funding to address the 3 consequences, the well publicised discontent of which we read and hear daily in the media and see in LTUC’s postbag will get worse. 14. Perhaps LTUC’s postbag provides a pointer to the basic truth. If we compare National Rail with LUL, we find that the latter – operating only in London (apart from small cross- boundary working to Watford, Amersham and Epping) carries as many passengers each day as the entire National Rail network spread across the whole of Great Britain. Put another way, the London commuter operators carry roundly two-thirds the number of passengers compared with the Underground. Despite this they generate around five times the volume of appeals. Even if we allow for the possibility that LUL is better at handling complaints than National Rail, this is a very large discrepancy. Add to this the fact that LUL is not short of critics and that its own performance (measured by much more comprehensive statistics than National Rail but not on a directly comparable basis) is in overall decline, and one can only conclude that the weaknesses of National Rail are serious indeed. 15. Looking at the main issues we have identified, let us point up some examples. 16. In terms of reliability, i.e. trains which arrive without delay at destination, ‘National Rail Trends’ (page 15) reports a latest figure of 79.3% of London & South East operators’ trains arriving at the terminus on time (only 77.5% in the peaks). These figures show that on average a daily commuter will arrive late on at least 2 out of 10 journeys per week. Worse, the figures are very misleading because a train is defined as being ‘on time’ if it arrives within 5 minutes of the scheduled time, and because many trains (we suspect the great majority) have artificial extra minutes inserted in their schedules between their last calling point and the terminus; so for example if you are going home from Paddington to Southall your train could be as much as 6 minutes late on a 12 minute journey and still be recorded officially as running on time.