Reading Michal Siewniak’s interesting article on public transport provision, I stopped to think more generally about public transport in this great country of ours. Specifically, I thought about the rail network.
I use the train almost every weekday. As a resident in Greater Manchester who works in Cheshire – and doesn’t drive – I rely on the trains to get me to and from work. I’m up early in the morning, and my departure from work is usually timed around when the next available train should be.
I say should be, because we all know the situation as far as train provision in this country goes. An analysis of National Rail data in 2023 should that almost half of trains across Britain were at least one minute late. Between 1st January and 31st July 2023, 3% of trains were cancelled and only 56% of trains were on time. By 9th November 2024, the number of train delays and cancellations had continued to rise; 368,843 were cancelled on the day and a further 33,209 cancellations were classed as “pre-cancelled” i.e., cancelled by 10pm the previous evening.
I do sometimes just sit and wonder – how did we let it get this way? Whilst many of us have become regular users of the various delay repay schemes, why have we gotten to a position where that is the norm? if one were to travel to many European and Asian countries, the thought of public transport – and trains in particular – being regularly delayed or cancelled mortifies the operator. In the United Kingdom, however, we seem to have just come to accept the provision of an extremely poor and unreliable service as the norm.
Cost
Just touching briefly upon cost, the figures speak for themselves. Under the delay repay scheme, payouts to passengers for disrupted journeys reached £101.3m in the year to April 2023 – up by 155% from £39m in 2021-22.
The ORR statistics show that between 7th January and 31st March 2024, there were 7.6 million delay compensation claims. It might not seem like a lot for some train operators but even a small amount, consistently, will have an impact on train operators. That money could be used somewhere better …
Electrification
But okay. Let’s say we accept the disruption caused on a daily basis to commuters; we’ll accept it because we’re ploughing ahead with electrifying the network rail, right?
Wrong.
By October 2024, only 38% of Britain’s rail network was electrified, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). That is substantially less than most of Europe, which hovers around the 60% electrification figure, and obviously massively behind the likes of Switzerland, where the network is completely electrified.
We all know the science. Electrification is much more efficient in terms of energy and operating costs and produces lower gas emissions than its diesel alternative. As well as being quieter than diesel engines, the research shows that electric engines are more reliable and more responsive. I don’t think anyone can realistically argue they prefer diesel over electric (aside from for nostalgic reasons, which I can understand). Less than two hundred kilometres of track was electrified in the last fiscal year.
The reason? Cost, we’re told. Network Rail’s electricity bill has shot up as electrification has continued to advance, but that is to be expected. And it is surely offset by the reality that increased electrification will reduce delays and cancellations, thereby reducing payments under the delay repay scheme, improving public confidence and encouraging commuters to use trains rather than other forms of transport which might be more reliable.
Liberal Democrat Policy
A motion was passed at conference titled “Connecting Communities – Building a Transport Network Fit for the 21st Century”. Maintaining the focus of this article, the motion reaffirmed the 2019 manifesto pledge to fix the railway’s broken fares and ticketing system, improve the experience of people relying on railways and be more proactive in sanctioning operators who fail to provide a high-quality public service.
* Daniel is a party member from Cheadle
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13 Comments
Our lack of electrification is a problem dating back decades – at least to the 1970s. In 2010 the coalition Government sought to fix it by announcing a massive program of electrification, but that went wrong, basically because the lack of any electrification work during the previous decades meant we no longer had people with the right skills, and that in turn lead to bad planning and massive cost overruns, resulting in much of the planned electrification being curtailed (London to Bristol/Swansea/Oxford cut back to London to Cardiff) or abandoned altogether (the Birmingham-Southampton ‘electric spine’). We really need a permanent ongoing rolling electrification program that guarantees steady progress over the next 20 years, thereby keeping experienced teams at work.
For cancellations. There are all sorts of technical reasons for them. Some cancellations will always happen because things do go wrong. And much of our railway network runs at capacity so there’s little scope to cope when things go wrong. The high level of cancellations is partly it’s to do with ongoing staff shortages – rail companies not employing enough drivers and then relying on overtime to fill the gaps. And Covid didn’t help due to the long period when it was impossible to train new drivers (a process that can take up to a year). Partly it’s the DfT only allowing companies to buy the minimum amount of rolling stock to support the timetable, so there’s very little spare (this also causes overcrowding with trains too short).
I’m sceptical of claims that it’s somehow magically better in Europe though. Do you have evidence for that? I would also say that we are now much more aware of cancellations due to online information systems and that information getting collated. I doubt things were really any better 20 or 30 years ago (when the first you’d know of a cancellation would be turning up at the station and your train not arriving)
Simon, I agree that cancellations are now more visible because of how they’re announced and also that there will always be delays and cancellations. That will always be the case because we have to accept, things do sometimes fall down.
In terms of Europe running a more efficient system, there are statistics dating back to 2023. 98% of trains in Switzerland ran as planned and on time. 93% if you look at Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The reality is it’s been that way for years. There are articles and media reports (I recall the BBC writing about it) going back to 2018 on the same issue. I’m not suggesting every country in Europe is ‘better’ or that they’re even more consistent, but from my experience and my reading it seems to be a typically British problem compared to our European neighbours (and we won’t even bring in the Japanese, where a delay of just a minute results in an apology and compensation!)
There’s a fantastic article by Thom Brown which really highlights it, to me, and is worth a read: https://intrepidtimes.com/2024/04/cancelled-coming-to-terms-with-the-chaos-of-the-british-train-system/
>” the research shows that electric engines are more reliable and more responsive”
Probably, however, running trains requires more than engines…
In recent months many of the delays and cancellations have been due to damage (or potential damage) to the overhead wires. Similarly, flooding causes problems with third rail systems. In both instances the only viable motive power is pure diesel (or steam…)
As for electrification, well the LibDem record isn’t good; preferring to fund HS2, a vanity project, over the £1.3bn electrification of the St.Pancras to Sheffield mainline which had a fully costed business case that showed how the project would repay the investment within 10 years…
There’s a third option emerging, battery powered electric trains. No need for massive investments in electrifying the network. We can bypass that, and for low frequency routes it makes much more sense as the investment needed is in the new trains not in electrifying the network.
In addition to a continuous program of electrification, we need a similar program of upgrading signalling. That’s the other regular announcement.
“In both instances the only viable motive power is pure diesel (or steam…)” … or hybrid. A battery the size of an electric car battery would get you over a small break in the power. In the case of third rail systems which are limited by the rate they can pick up power, it would also increase maximum acceleration and regenerative breaking.
Last year, I experienced: one (hourly) train so late I was able to catch it (luckily, as the one I’d been aiming for was cancelled). A train ‘terminated’ at a small station, with few facilities, as a crew member hadn’t turned up. A train stuck in a random station for one hour and fifty minutes, due to a signalling issue. A train stuck in the middle of fields for 20 minutes, ditto. A train that terminated mid-journey due to onboard computer issues. A service up in the air for hours, due to undetermined track inspections. Trains unavailable due to ‘the unexpected demand for repairs’. Trains delayed by others with issues in front of them…
…and heard a lot more, assorted apologies for other services, while waiting on stations.
And that’s just using trains to visit family/friends etc a handful of times a year, and not counting strikes or engineering works.
I’ve not used trains ‘in Europe’ recently, but it’s hard to imagine them being any worse!
@Roland: Can we stop parroting this outright falsehood that HS2 was a vanity project. HS2 was being built and was widely supported within the industry because it would have been the single most transformational improvement to our railway network in generations. Under the full proposals, before Rishi Sunak cut it back, HS2 would have given a huge number of towns – even towns nowhere near HS2 – massively improved, more frequent services because the fastest trains would be moved to HS2 and would therefore no longer be eating capacity on commuter lines. Towns that would almost certainly have benefitted in this way include Stevenage, Peterborough, Milton Keynes, Lincoln, Rugby, Doncaster, etc. Further North, HS2 would have given decent fast links for the first time between Leeds and Birmingham, Nottingham and Birmingham, Manchester and Birmingham, Sheffield and York, etc. etc. Of course now thanks to the Tories we’re just building only a fraction of the original HS2, that won’t happen.
Electrification – yes, it does bring an additional thing that can fail – the wires or the 3rd rail. But set against that, electric trains are a lot lighter (and I believe a bit more reliable) than diesel trains, so less wear and tear on the track and therefore less need for line closures to repair /replace the rails.
Can anyone explain why we need the Rolling Stock Leasing Companies (Roscos)?
There might have been a case for them when the Rail Operators were privately owned but not when we are moving towards a fully publicly owned rail network, apart of course from the Roscos, which are still in private ownership.
The Roscos don’t increase the ability of Government owned companies to acquire rolling stock. The parallel in the armed forces would be that a leasing company would buy such items as tanks, aircraft and submarines and lease them to the army, RAF and navy. It would be an essentially risk free money making exercise for the finance companies. They would naturally accumulate high profits which could easily be transferred to a tax haven country to dodge taxes.
This clearly would make no sense at all from the taxpayers POV.
It is no different on the railways. It’s a scam which needs to be stopped.
https://weownit.org.uk/blog/riding-rosco-gravy-train
It seems that in this country if you want a public sector to flourish it must be under public ownership and tight regulation. It must also have strong public support. I think our rail system fulfils these criteria though significant investment must precede the latter.
Just on the point of comparison, I know from experience that German Trains are much worse than those around London & The South-East. Again, they seem to have a mixed ownership model, perhaps the root of the problem ?