Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
DFT, ATOC, NETWORK
RAIL, ORR AND
SRA
12 OCTOBER 2005
Q60 Mr Bacon: If you have a member
of staff in a medium sized station, presumably they ought to have
capacity for informing passengers?
Mr Muir: That is certainly true
and in large stations there are dedicated people whose job it
is to make announcements.
Q61 Mr Bacon: Could you find out
why this number is so high and put a note in?
Mr Muir: Yes.[6]
Q62 Mr Bacon: The next question is about
information to passengers. Paragraph 3.9 says that satisfaction
with the provision of information at stations was generally high
although lower at times of disruption to train services. It is
precisely when there is disruption that everyone wants information.
We have all had experiences of precisely those moments when the
train service is not operating properly and no one knows what
is going on or appears to know what is going on. Why is it that
when things are disrupted staff are not able better to communicate
with passengers?
Mr Muir: The information during
disruption is our single greatest challenge in providing better
passenger information. In other respects, all the graphs show
much better information for passengers. The fundamental reason
is that during disruption nobody does know what is likely to happen.
You have disruption and what the passengers want to know is: is
my train going to arrive in 40 minutes or an hour and 40 minutes?
In truth, nobody knows.
Q63 Mr Bacon: I accept they will
not know because they will not necessarily know how soon the problem
is going to be cleared but they know what the problem is.
Mr Muir: Yes.
Q64 Mr Bacon: Even transferring that
information to passengers has to be better than nothing, has it
not?
Mr Muir: That is quite true.
Q65 Mr Bacon: And yet it does not
happen.
Mr Muir: In general all the indications
of passenger satisfaction are going up, including satisfaction
with information during disruption. In small stations, if you
look at the disaggregation, the satisfaction is really quite high
but it is true that the things we can do we do not always do well
enough and things that are fundamentally difficult like forecasting
the results of disruption we have a lot of work to do on.
Q66 Mr Bacon: I have a question on
information available about punctuality and the percentages of
punctual trains which train operating companies publish. I am
not sure if this is a question for you or for Dr Mitchell. My
local train company is One, which runs between Liverpool Street
and Norwich and they say that they are about 86 or 87% reliable.
Who imposes that regime on them, where they have to report? Is
it the SRA?
Dr Mitchell: It is now the DfT.
The DfT impose a target and the responsibility for delivering
the target lies with Network Rail. Network Rail work with the
train operators jointly to produce the result we are looking for.
Q67 Mr Bacon: In terms of the information,
86% is an aggregated figure. We ran 350 trains and 86% were on
time. What we have found in Norfolk—it has become quite
a controversial issue—is that what people really want to
know is the punctuality of the main commuter trains between 6.30
and 8.30 in the morning and between 4.30 or 5 o'clock and 7 in
the evening. You cannot get a number for those. All you can see,
as happened earlier in the summer in one infamous week, is that
four trains were cancelled on successive dates, Monday through
Thursday and plainly, whatever it was, it was not 86% punctuality.
Can you not impose on the train operating companies an obligation
simply to publish the actual departure time and the actual arrival
time of every train?
Dr Mitchell: That would be a huge
undertaking.
Q68 Mr Bacon: Why?
Dr Mitchell: Obviously the information
is known.
Q69 Mr Bacon: That is the point.
It is known, but it is not disaggregated.
Dr Mitchell: The train companies
and Network Rail have made huge steps in terms of improving punctuality
to move it from around 80% up to in excess of 85%.
Q70 Mr Bacon: You are giving the
same answer as One. What I am interested in is getting disaggregated
information on individual trains so that you can say, on the 6.58
from Diss to London Liverpool Street, if you take 15 of those
trains over a period of 15 working, business days, how many were
on time. That is the information passengers are looking for. We
had a meeting with One to discuss it and they say it is not in
their commercial interests to reveal this information. Why can
you not force them to?
Dr Mitchell: I can only force
them to do it if it is part of the franchise agreement and it
is not currently part of the franchise agreement. Having said
that, we are looking at ways in which we can improve the availability
of statistics such as those you mention. We have been talking
to the RPC about what kind of statistics they think are meaningful
for passengers and that could include other measures such as delay
on a journey, not just arrival times at the end of a route. I
am very unwilling to ditch the passenger performance figure because
it is a well known figure.
Q71 Mr Bacon: Could you add further
information?
Dr Mitchell: Yes.
Q72 Mr Bacon: Mr Armitt, a splendid
and very encouraging press release came out two days ago. You
have been Chief Executive for almost exactly three years this
month?
Mr Armitt: I have been with Network
Rail for three years.
Q73 Mr Bacon: I know you have had
a lot of problems to cope with, with Hatfield and everything else.
I have one question about the clusters that you are proposing,
instead of small, piecemeal upgrades, inviting developers to bid
for clusters and offering them as attractive packages. On page
45 I think it says, "It is difficult to construct a business
case for some station improvements." Are you expecting that
the developers who take on these clusters will effectively cross-subsidise
some of the station improvements so that they all get done?
Mr Armitt: That is exactly the
objective we are seeking to achieve. By offering real opportunity
where there is a real business opportunity for a developer, some
of the benefits of that will be used to cross-subsidise stations
where there is not necessarily a commercial property development
opportunity but where clearly money needs to go.
Q74 Chairman: In the press release
on 10 October Network Rail has announced plans to launch an ambitious,
multimillion pound, 10 year modernisation scheme for stations.
That is nothing to do with your appearance today, is it, Mr Armitt?
Mr Armitt: It is to a degree.
We have just come back from the party conferences. We have been
talking about this for several months, particularly to the property
sector. When we were at the various conferences over the last
couple of weeks, a number of MPs said to us, "We have heard
about this. What exactly is the situation?" so it was right
that we should make a full statement. It is clearly part of our
objective and we thought that Members of this Committee should
be aware of what we were doing and therefore making an announcement
before today seemed sensible.
Chairman: We are very grateful that just
by sitting here we have encouraged a multimillion pound investment.
Q75 Helen Goodman: Dr Mitchell, I
was asking about the rather shaky incentives on train operating
companies given that the payback period is different from the
franchise length. Do you have it in mind to reconsider this system?
Dr Mitchell: We have thought very
carefully about the length that a franchise should be. Originally,
about four or five years ago, there was a thought about going
for a 20 year franchise and in fact Chiltern Trains has a 20 year
franchise. However, there are some serious difficulties in having
such a long franchise. First of all, from the point of view of
the train company, you are required to predict revenue 20 years
ahead and that is a very risky prospect. Having been in that position
when I worked at First Group, they did not value the idea of trying
to predict what the revenue would be like in 20 years.
Q76 Helen Goodman: I accept that
but what about changing responsibilities? Who is responsible for
investing in railway stations?
Dr Mitchell: The responsibility
is initially with Network Rail because they are the station owner.
The franchisee is the station facility owner in most cases, except
in 17 specified, large stations.
Q77 Helen Goodman: Mr Armitt, what
do you think about the suggestion on page 46, box 15, of extending
your role to cover all repairs, renewals and maintenance at stations?
Mr Armitt: It is something which
we would be prepared to accept. We have argued in the past that
there could be some logic in it and there are two sides to this
argument. As the national network owner, you could say that we
are dealing with the long term interest. We own the stations and
therefore would it not be appropriate for us to carry out not
only the major repairs, renewals and enhancements but also the
day to day maintenance. That has, I know, been thought about in
the past. The counter argument is that the train operating companies
have a day to day, face to face relationship with passengers and
are on the receiving end of complaints about when is the waiting
room going to be painted. Therefore arguably they are in a better
position on a day to day basis to understand that and get on with
it.
Q78 Helen Goodman: Are you saying
that you are even less enthusiastic about what the NAO call the
radical option of setting up a station company that would be wholly
responsible for railway stations?
Mr Armitt: I am totally unenthusiastic
about that.
Q79 Helen Goodman: Mr Newton said
earlier on that investment was driven by value for money and rate
of return. Do you have estimates on how many extra passengers
and how much extra revenue you would get from investing in station
upgrades?
Mr Armitt: If you are considering
a station upgrade, that is part of the equation. A classic example
a couple of years ago was Swindon, platform four which improved
the capacity of Swindon station and the operation of the station
was more effective. There were benefits to us in terms of making
the station more effective and efficient to operate. There were
benefits to First Group, the train operator, because they could
see they could raise revenue off the back of having an additional
platform. Those benefits alone were not sufficient to pay for
Swindon, platform four, so the Department for Transport came along
with SRA and put in the other third. It was paid for a third by
us, a third by the operator and a third by the government which
met the total expenditure.
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