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[email protected] · December 19th 15, 06:27 AM posted to uk.transport.london,cam.transport

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 18:02:41 -0600,
wrote:

After last Sunday's fiasco, more cancellations for lack of drivers on
Great Northern tonight, plus, I gather, some on Thameslink this time.

Are Govia incapable of retaining drivers? And how much worse will it
get before they do something more effective to retain their drivers?

So far their only response has been about how many drivers they have in
training. They won't be available to drive trains until some time in the
Spring at the earliest.

I wonder if the nature of the TSGN contract, no revenue risk and just
a management fee, means Govia have little scope to "splash the cash"
in order to aid retention. Their ability to earn profits is directly
down to avoiding penalties (not exactly a strength to date) and
minimising costs. As labour is a very significant cost I wonder if
wages and T&Cs are now worse than other TOCs making retention /
recruitment very difficult? I suspect that in the past the view from
TOC managements was that they were prepared to take a "hit" on staff
costs if it avoided reputational damage / loss of income / penalties
under their franchise contracts. TSGN doesn't really have as much
scope to do that given they have no direct incentive to push up
revenue. There may be some "upside" sharing mechanism in the contract
but I don't know for certain. Anyway they won't get 100% if there is
- some will go to DfT.

We know that TSGN breached its franchise early on and has possibly
done so again given the parlous state of various bits of their empire.
I think TSGN is possibly too big to fail and DfT simply can't afford
the risk of retendering the franchise nor losing momentum on the
deployment of class 700s (given it's a PFI contract which DfT has to
pay out on). Further they can't have a situation where they don't
have a TOC to interface with Network Rail on the Thameslink project
and development and testing of the new signalling and new
infrastructure. I also suspect that DfT does not have the resource to
manage a lot of concurrent refranchising activity.

I think it would have to get vastly worse than it already is before
DfT could "pull the plug". Not even having Tory and Labour MPs
berating Southern Trains in the Commons seems to be enough to ring
alarm bells (Qs to the Leader of the House this week).

Not a promising scenario for Great Northern, something of a distant cousin
anyway, is it?

Already an important franchise commitment, greater capacity to King's Lynn,
has been sabotaged by Network Rail's inability to deliver Ely North Junction.

--
Colin Rosenstiel