1Introduction
The 20 May 2018 timetable change
1.For several years, 20 May 2018 had been marked in the diary of the railway industry as a momentous day. The culmination of substantial investment in major infrastructure projects and delivery of new rolling stock was to facilitate the introduction of thousands of new services, providing much needed additional capacity for tens of thousands of rail passengers.1
2.In the north of England, the changes planned for 20 May were to be a substantial step towards unlocking the benefits of the Great North Rail Project, with “brand new trains, including more than 500 new carriages, room for 40,000 extra passengers and more than 2,800 extra services a week.” In London and the south, 20 May was intended to deliver around 70% of the capacity benefits of the hugely ambitious Thameslink Programme, which aims ultimately to facilitate “tube-like” service frequencies, with trains every two or three minutes on new infrastructure through London.2
3.The industry has a long-established system, with clearly set out and well-understood processes, for changing the national rail timetable every six months, in May and December each year. These changes vary in scale. They are often relatively minor tweaks and, when they go to plan, many passengers will be able to access additional services, but many others will be unaffected or scarcely notice the change at all. Timetable changes are crucial for the rail industry, delivering extra capacity to better meet demand, and enabling train operating companies to meet contractual obligations and increase their revenues.3
4.The scale of investment and complexity of introducing new services enabled by the infrastructure projects described above meant that the change planned for 20 May 2018 was unprecedented in scale. It would have complex effects across multiple franchises and very large portions of the national rail network. It involved 42,300 individual changes, affecting 46% of all passenger services on the network. While there had been an increase in the scale of timetable changes in recent years, 20 May 2018 represented a very considerable step-change. It was around four times the scale of a typical six-monthly timetable change.4
Figure 1: Timetable changes (number of planned changes)
Source: ORR, September 2018
Failure to deliver and effects on passengers
5.Far from marking the intended substantial improvement for rail passengers across the north and in London and the south of England, 20 May and the weeks that followed will live long in the memories of a large proportion of rail users as a prolonged period of intensely inconvenient, costly and, on occasions, when there were very late cancellations and platform changes, potentially dangerous disruption. In the weeks following 20 May, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), the operator of the largest passenger franchise on the network, including the Thameslink, Great Northern and Southern commuter brands, covering much of London and the south, failed to run about 470 (12%) of its planned 3,880 daily services. Arriva Rail North, which operates Northern rail services across the whole of the north of England, did not run approximately 310 (11%) of its planned 2,810 services per week day.5 There were very substantial knock-on effects on TransPennine Express (TPE).6
Figure 2: Proportion of trains that ran before and after 20 May
Source: ORR, September 2018; days affected by industrial action or engineering work have been adjusted using data from unaffected days in the same week.
6.Peak time GTR and Northern services that did run were often crowded and extremely unreliable. The number of delayed services on GTR more than trebled and did not return to pre-20 May levels until late June. Northern’s delays doubled before stabilising upon introduction of an emergency timetable on 4 June. This was only achieved, however, by removing 165 services from the timetable. About 75% of these services were reinstated on 29 July. GTR continued to run a very haphazard emergency timetable until 15 July, when it introduced an “interim timetable”, which was still some way short of what was planned for 20 May but was intended to provide a level of consistency and reliability.7
Figure 3: Weekly delay minutes attributable to the train operator before and after 20 May: GTR
Source: Adapted from ORR, September 2018; Delays to train journeys experienced by passenger and freight companies due to disruption.
Figure 4: Weekly delay minutes attributable to the train operator before and after 20 May: Northern
Source: Adapted from ORR, September 2018; Delays to train journeys experienced by passenger and freight companies due to disruption.
7.The statistics cannot do justice to the severe effects on people’s lives. The disruption cost passengers money, with working people forced to pay for taxis and additional childcare costs, for example. Businesses and local economies suffered.8 Children were late for school.9 Anxiety about getting to and from work put a considerable strain on people’s mental health.10 Confusion resulting from last minute cancellations and platform changes subjected passengers to “uncontrolled risks” in over-crowded stations. Effective communication broke down. The situation was chaotic.11
8.Transport Focus, the national passenger watchdog, gave its assessment of the scale of the problems:
“When you add together the number of Thameslink passengers, Great Northern passengers, Northern passengers and, don’t forget, TransPennine—who were very much caught up in this but have slightly evaded the limelight—you are probably dealing with about one in five of Britain’s passengers potentially affected by this timetable crisis. The scale of the problem, adding together all those individual stories, is big and powerful.”12
Figure 4: Effects on passengers
Source: ORR, September 2018
The context of our inquiry and this Report
9.In a Statement on the timetabling crisis on 4 June, the Secretary of State for Transport, Rt Hon Chris Grayling MP, announced that Professor Stephen Glaister, Chair of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR, the economic and safety Regulator), would lead an inquiry, to “consider why the system as a whole failed to produce and implement an effective timetable.”13 The ORR published its interim report on 20 September. This focused on the contributory factors in what went wrong. It identified a collective failure across the train operating companies, Network Rail, the Government and, as set out in a separate “prior role review”, the ORR itself. A key conclusion was that “nobody took charge”.14
10.Our inquiry, and to some extent this Report, overlaps with the initial stage of the ORR’s inquiry into what went wrong. We draw on the ORR’s report and evidence to our inquiry to summarise these findings in chapter 2. The next stage for the ORR will be to make recommendations to ensure future timetable changes are handled effectively. These recommendations are expected before the end of 2018.
11.We first heard oral evidence, from Arriva Rail North, GTR and Network Rail, on 18 June, by which point it was clear that passengers were facing a prolonged period of severe disruption. On 9 July, we issued terms of reference for written submissions from the key stakeholders and passengers, and heard oral evidence from the Chairs of the Thameslink 2018 Industry Readiness Board and Independent Assurance Panel, who were key parts of additional Thameslink governance structures put in place by the Secretary of State.
12.We took the opportunity, on 24 July, when we had him before us in our InterCity East Coast inquiry, to ask Mr Grayling several questions about his accountability for what was happening and what he was doing to put things right.15
13.We invited passengers to share their experiences via video submissions on twitter using #railtimetabling and heard oral evidence, on 5 September, directly from affected passengers and representative groups.
14.Finally, on 22 October, we again questioned the Secretary of State, alongside senior DfT officials, and then heard evidence from Professor Glaister and ORR colleagues. A full list of witnesses is included at the end of this Report. Terms of reference for the inquiry and related evidence are available on our website.16 We are grateful to everyone who engaged with our inquiry, particularly passengers who contributed compelling evidence about the awful effects of the timetabling crisis on their work and family lives.
15.The DfT chose 20 September, the day the ORR’s interim report was published, to announce a much broader, “root and branch” review of the rail industry, including commercial models, structures and fares, in the light of the timetabling crisis and the recent collapse of the InterCity East Coast franchise. This review will be chaired by Keith Williams, Deputy Chairman of John Lewis Partnership and former Chief Executive of British Airways. The Williams review is intended to result in a White Paper on fundamental change in the rail industry by autumn 2019, with reforms to be implemented from 2020.17
16.This Report therefore makes recommendations in the context of the likelihood of recommended reforms to rail industry structures and governance arrangements in the longer term. There can now be little doubt that such change is necessary. However, three further national rail timetable changes are currently scheduled before 2020.18 Our first aim is to ensure urgent steps are taken to avoid a repeat of May 2018, and that passengers’ interests are central to the approach and protected.
17.While the ORR focuses on governance and decision-making structures in relation to timetabling, and Mr Williams begins his more “root and branch” review, we want to ensure that key lessons from the experience of passengers following May 2018 are learned and addressed now or in short order. The timetabling crisis demonstrates that urgent, passenger-focused change is required in at least three key areas:
- ensuring effective policies are in place—and are enforced—to assist disabled passengers when things go wrong on the railway (chapter 3);
- fixing inadequate and unfair compensation schemes, which place the onus on passengers to make claims, and moving more quickly towards more automated, or automatic, compensation (chapter 4); and
- ensuring sufficient time in the process for proper impact assessment of, and consistent, ongoing and meaningful public consultation on, all significant service changes.
It has been the policy of successive governments that passengers not taxpayers should increasingly bear the cost of financing the railway.19 With passengers facing an annual regulated fares increase of up to 3.2% in January 2019, a key focus for Mr Williams’ review must be establishing a much clearer link between the quality and reliability of train services and the fares passengers pay (chapter 5).
18.This year was intended to be a positive story for rail users; instead the passenger railway perhaps reached its nadir. This must now be the catalyst for genuine change to the benefit of people who rely on our railways.
1 See ‘Great North Rail Project’, Network Rail (accessed 25 October 2018); ‘RailPlan 20/20: Transforming your journey for good’, RailPlan 20/20 (accessed 25 October 2018)
3 Qq119–20 [Jo Kaye]
4 Office of Rail and Road (ORR), Independent Inquiry into the Timetable Disruption in May 2018, September 2018 [hereafter, ORR, September 2018], figure B1; see also ‘Biggest rail timetable change in decades’, Transport Focus (accessed 26 October 2018)
5 ORR, September 2018, p 33
6 See weekly blog on ‘Working for passengers affected by timetable changes’, Transport Focus (accessed 26 October 2018)
7 ORR, September 2018, para 5.97
10 See, for example, Miss J Baron (RTC0075); Which? (RTC0077); St Albans Commuter and Passenger Action Group (RTC0096)
11 Letter dated 5 July 2018 from Ian Prosser, HM Chief Inspector of Railways, to Patrick Verwer, Managing Director, GTR [not published]
14 ORR, September 2018, p 5, ORR, Prior Role Review, September 2018;
17 “Government announces ‘root and branch’ review of rail”, DfT press release, 20 September; HC Deb, 11 October 2018, cols 318–21
18 One in December 2018, for which plans have already been scaled back, and two in 2019.
Published: 4 December 2018