It has not exactly been a happy new year for the UK’s rail network, or at least for those parts of it affected by the chaos caused by overrunning engineering works for the last few days.
While passengers on the West Coast Mainline and those heading for London Liverpool Street fumed, Network Rail held its hands up to a series of miscalculations that could hardly have come at a worse time.
January is when many rail travellers are presented with an inflation-busting increase to the cost of their season tickets. Having just handed over the extra cash, to then be confronted by a dose of travel hell on their first day back at work was rubbing salt in an open wound.
So what went wrong? Work on the Rugby and Liverpool Street upgrades would have been long in the planning, and Network Rail’s official statement on the issue is intriguing.
It blamed a shortage of ‘critical specialist engineering and contractor staff’ for the delays, inevitably bringing an incredulous reaction from those who insist (with some justification) that it must have known what resources were needed before the work began.
Maybe a clue lies in the bigger picture of Network Rail’s activities over the holiday period. The work undertaken at Liverpool Street and especially at Rugby was complex and demanding. Yet as Network Rail pointed out, they were just two of 35 major projects carried out by the company during Christmas and New Year, including £10m worth of track and signalling work in Edinburgh and a £14m signalling upgrade at Wakefield.
The infrastructure operator knows only too well that it will get not a shred of credit for the 33 projects that went to plan, and may be rethinking its festive ambitions for future years. In theory, the last few weeks are the best time to undertake rail engineering work. Though it will be of little comfort to holiday travellers forced onto buses, passenger numbers are drastically lower than at any other time, particularly on commuter lines. Fewer passengers disrupted equals fewer grumbles.
So much for the theory. In practice, the sheer scale and complexity of the combined operations looks to have put a massive and unsustainable strain on the resources available to Network Rail.
The UK rail network is growing rapidly, and with that growth is coming a massive, and essential, investment in infrastructure and technology. As we have found out in the last few days, implementing that investment can be the cause of big headaches, not least for the long-suffering rail passenger.
Better that, however, than the stagnation that characterised the rail industry for much of the last few decades. We’re on track for something approaching a modern railway system, even if the journey is a bumpy one.
Andrew Lee, editor
Sir,
With respect to the theoretical improvement to the railway system in the UK, it should be noted that we, in the UK, persist in using a mixed traffic railway system for virtually the whole network. In contrast, our continental European neighbours have long since moved on to dedicated high speed passenger railway routes to split traffic as a means to significantly improve the whole railway system. In the UK, we persist in patch and repair to a system that was original produced in Victorian times. This means that apart from using French technology for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the rest is a mixed traffic Victorian ideal, long since passed its ‘best before’ date.
Even the East Coast Main Line, rather than being fully upgraded to make use of existing, purpose designed 140mph passenger trains, is to take delivery of old 1970s and 1980s 110mph stock from the West Coast Main Line to provide more trains.
A leap forward? I think not.
According to local news reports, the crunch at Liverpool Street came as a result of not having sufficient qualified engineers available to carry out the work on time at the time.
So surely this means that the real ‘over-run’ is by the companies that recruit, engage and retain engineers for the companies that supply them? In turn, does it indicate significant openings available for appropriately qualified and motivated individuals, perhaps?
Switzerland changed its timetable for the first time in many years about three years ago. This was to enable a two minute slot for the faster Zurich -Bern commuter train.
Of course, in the first few months there were delays, missed connections, cancellations (in a country where you wonder if WW3 has broken out when your train is more than two minutes late – this is pretty serious), but a few years down the line – the teething problems are solved.
Would anyone now like to scrap the Zurich-Bern fast commuter train and return to the old timetable? I dont think so.
The UK needs to wake up and see the wider picture. OK, so your first day back a work started a bit later. In the grand scheme of things – is it such a problem?
There will never be any long term plans while it is all split up and in private hands, along with share holders worried about short-term gain. The railway should be looked at as a tool for the nation, with its performance and cost effectiveness looked at on a much broader scale. This will only happen if it is under one roof with proper co-ordinated management and operating policies. Public transport and railways should not be seen as independent profit centres. Their operation affects the efficiency and operation of everyone that uses them.