An Avanti West Coast Pendolino train at Crewe
“UNOFFICIAL STRIKES: Passengers using Avanti West [sic] services should expect disruption today. Archaic rules from 1919 mean working on rest days is voluntary. Unions now stopping drivers volunteering - causing misery for public & staff who won't get paid. We MUST modernise rail” he told. What Shapps did not tell is that there appeared to be a serious problem at Avanti.
Virgin Trains had sufficient drivers to maintain the full pre-pandemic service, and at first, so did Avanti. But now, there were insufficient driver numbers to cover a reduced service, so much so that the operator was dependent on some drivers volunteering to work their rest days. On top of that came news that a (further?) reduced timetable was to be introduced next month.
As Shapps’ dishonest narrative became the new received wisdom, free sheet Metro told readers “Short-notice strike action has seen a train operator slash its timetables and widespread delays are expected from this weekend … Avanti West Coast … accused train drivers’ union Aslef of carrying out ‘unofficial strike action’ from Saturday”. Then came the really bad news.
“Services between London Euston and Manchester are expected to be the worst affected, with frequencies reduced from three trains per hour to just one from Sunday … The company has also paused sales of train tickets to travel from Sunday until September 11 while it establishes a new timetable”.
No ticket sales? You read that right. Go to National Rail, bring up train times for Crewe to Euston for the first week of September, and look at the fare options offered. Every Avanti service shows “No fares available for this journey”. The trains operated by London Northwestern Railway are unaffected. This reduction in services to Manchester from London, coupled with increased pre-strike demand yesterday evening, led to chaos.
The Avanti charge sheet also includes a farcical incident at Oxenholme station, which is the main line railhead for Kendal and Windermere. As Cumbria Crack has reported, “Passengers on a delayed train had to climb over spiked fences after they discovered they were locked in at Oxenholme station. People on a delayed Avanti West Coast service from London arrived at the Lake District station to find that staff had gone home for the evening, locking up behind them”. Local MP Tim Farron was not impressed.
He told “there was the concern that passengers would be forced to cross the live tracks to find an alternative route out of the station” (trains can pass through Oxenholme at over 100mph), musing “There are clearly systematic failures going on at Avanti and we cannot let it go unchecked … Avanti have turned one of the best services in the country into one of the worst”.
But that did not just happen. Going from an operation that has sufficient numbers of drivers to run the full pre-pandemic service to one that cannot run a rather more reduced timetable, without depending on the goodwill of those willing to forego their rest days, suggests that a lot of drivers have left and not been replaced. Which brings us back to Grant Shapps’ involvement.
What did he know about the state of Avanti West Coast’s driver establishment, and when did he know it? And if what looks like a significant reduction in that establishment happened and he somehow failed to notice, what on earth is he doing still in post? Will we get an honest answer? Because, with the certainty of night following day, that information will leak.
As so often, it will be the less well paid staff on the front line who will get all the grief. But the decisions that led Avanti to this place must have been taken way above their level. Either the operator’s management is not fit for purpose - or the DfT knows rather more about this than it is letting on.
Grant Shapps must explain himself. That arrival may be severely delayed.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
7 comments:
I wouldn't worry, Tim.
Quite soon a duce, fuhrer or caudillo will show up and make the trains run on time........
Yet another overpaid individual in Cabinet who thinks their only job is to blame it on someone else. Imagine being the most powerful individual public servant for transport and making the decision to do nothing.
Isn’t public service about seeing problems the public is experiencing and doing something about it?
I don’t think Shapps/Green/Fox/Stockheath has quite grasped the concept of days off.
And this morning Shapps resorted to discussing semantics around what a “direct train” is and insisted there are 4 trains an hour between Manchester and Euston.
23:15.
Understandable, really, since they've never done a days work in their leech-lives.
My employer has had a percentage of its trained crews given golden hellos by a neighbouring train operating company, which has meant continuous excuses of lack of train crew for cancellations. Add in the remaining crews not doing rest day working and it is little wonder the schedule frequently looks like a work of fiction...
Couple this with poor management, elderly rolling stock, bored kids and the usual every day passengers taking advantage of unmanned stations to travel for free while the company does nothing to prevent ticketless travel - which makes no sense when the companies say they want to bring in new operating procedures to save money yet let hundreds of thousands of pounds escape by not enforcing the rules.
Little enforcement either: BTP has regular shifts where several cities and dozens of large towns, all with stations, are covered by just two officers who can do little but answer phones. Of course, for positive PR opportunities there were dozens brought in for things like Pride, but day to day we are told to rely on local plod. My company is using several security firms who provide semi trained staff who do little to actually protect passengers and staff, laughing and joking with the scumbags who think the are entitled to push in and out at will. In the good weather we found many of these operatives turned up for duty at coastal stations but spent the day at the beach.
Despite displaying warning posters declaring that violence against staff will result in prosecution it is generally agreed that there is no enthusiasm for prosecution and line managers quietly tell staff not to get involved. Abuse is a regular occurrence, even from those with valid tickets and expectations of good service! Stress is widespread and moral is rock bottom.
Under the circumstances I am thoroughly unsurprised to hear about a train arriving at an uncaring, locked up station, although our stations have night gates that allow passengers out and the vermin to come in and dump shopping trolleys and wheelie bins on the tracks...
Still, as long as the shareholders are kept happy who cares?
This is the state of the railways today. Sorry for venting.
Anonymous@11:58
Alas, my older Italian relations could remember very clearly that the trains under Musso were anything but on time (unless the man himself was on the train). What's the betting that we get some strutting nincompoop of a Tory poundshop Hitler and even worse public services? or that the only punctual trains will be the ones going to the camps?
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