Update: what’s it like being a Southern rail passenger?

“The company is perennially and openly short-staffed” – surely the free market solution for that is to pay much higher wages, to attract more staff?

“the key to it all is the safety-critical part aspect of the current role of the guard” – and yet other railway operators can manage without guards. As far as I know, the Tyne & Wear Metro commuter trains have never needed them.

Indeed, and many trains run by Govia already run without guards. The dispute is the front line of the rail unions’ attempt to hold back technological progress on the railway system as a whole.

The reason often given is “to protect jobs”. However, as we have seen from so many disputes in the past, protecting jobs, also called overmanning, in fact destroys those jobs as the industry or business becomes uncompetitive and withers away.

your point about unnecessary staff means higher fares is wrong on 2 points.1) having a guard on the train in my mind is not unnecessary it is a vital member of staff.2)the fares are the same if you travel from Epsom to Clapham junction on a southern train with only a driver you pay the same fare as passengers travelling on a south west train service from Epsom to Clapham junction with a guard on the train the government want to get rid of the guards on trains so profits can be bigger not for lower fares.

If the Rail Safety & Standards Board and the Rail Accident Investigation Branch do not consider a guard is necessary, and if thousands of train services have been operating everyday without guards for decades, there must be unnecessary costs in the system where train companies continue to employ guards.

The South West Trains system is fully equipped both on trains and at stations to enable Driver-Only Operation yet it continues to employ guards; to me that seems to be an unnecessary expense. I don’t know which train operator sets the fares for the Epsom – Clapham Junction service but the fare obviously has be the same. Since Southern has hitherto employed guards the operating expenses are probably similar and Southern will not make much saving by employing On-Board Supervisors instead of guards and converting to Driver-Controlled Operation but there is considerable potential for avoiding costly delays [and compensation] if an OBS is not available. On SWT’s routes where there is no other operator its continued employment of guards must have an impact on operating costs and ticket prices, the more so on unregulated fares. I cannot believe the DfT will ignore this in future franchise awards.

neil, many trains run without guards perfectly safely, according to rail safety experts, so on such trains a guard would appear to be unnecessary.
Fares are split across the network, not on the way individual trains are staffed. So you would not expect a particular train with one man operation to be charged differently.
Overall, if a company has excess staff its costs are higher and the customer will pay for that.
However, the point here is whether guards are necessary on (some or all) Southern trains when they are not on other networks. That can be discussed rationally by the parties concerned, if they so chose.

For 175+ years the Guard has been in charge of he train, not the driver. There are good reasons for this, only one of which is that it is the Guard’s responsibility to protect the train from the rear in the event of a failure or derailment. He should walk back down the track for a prescribed distance and place detonators on the track to warn anything approaching from the rear that his train has stopped in the section. If the driver is on his own, or is incapacitated, he can’t do that, or at least will have to walk the length of the train plus the prescribed distance behind it, thus leaving it unprotected for longer. While he is away, the train and its passengers will be left completely unattended. You may say that modern signalling systems obviate the need for this procedure, but we all know that the more technology you have, the more there is to go wrong, trains do pass signals at danger and the inherant danger in such systems is that they are very attractive to metal thieves (just look at how many delays are attributed to cable theft and signalling faults and you will know what I mean). The old ways really are the best ways to run a safe and delay-free railway and no amount of lies,deceit, profiteering and penny-pinching by cowboy Train Operating Companies is going to change that.

That is certainly how trains used to be operated Robert but much more reliable modern technology has made such procedures obsolete. With track-circuits, axle-counters, train management systems, modern signalling and control systems, GPS tracking, and radio communication to the signallers, the days when the guard used to need to find the detonators and walk back down the line to place them on the track are long gone. British Rail started phasing out guards on commuter trains in the 1980’s. The Rail Safety & Standards Board and the Rail Accident & Investigation Branch have both said the presence of a guard is not essential for safety compliance and that in some circumstances [like miscommunication with the driver] it could impair safety.

I can understand why the RMT wish to push the safety argument: once it is established that trains can operate without a second crew member on board [which Southern are not proposing except in specified circumstances] the Union will lose its leverage and bargaining power as it will no longer have the ability to call a strike that brings the trains to a standstill [unless the drivers’ union ASLEF is also in the dispute]. This is where I see the hand of the DfT as eliminating the need for a guard or second operative across the remainder of the network not already under driver-only control will bring about massive savings.

“to some extent” ” the hand of the DfT”
In my view this dispute is entirely driven by the DfT. South West Trains abandoned attempts to introduce Driver Only Operation (DOO) during their first franchise in the late 90s/early 2000s. Because Southern is operating a management contract and not a franchise, they don’t lose money if the fares income drops.

The fact remains that DOO has been proved safe in operation of freight and passenger trains whatever the RMT may say. In fact DOO may result in quicker journeys as the can release the doors immediately the train comes to a stop. This compares with guards who, under modern safety rules, cannot open their own door until the train has stopped, and then only after checking the platform can the release the passenger doors.

RMT’s intransigent attitude is going to lead to more staff cuts not less.

Disgraceful state of affairs. Talks, talks and more talks. All leading to nothing except for luncheon at passengers expense. The time for talks is over, remove their franchise and forget about golden goodbyes and soft landings. The operators should be prohibited from further Government employment in any office.

And the union?

That’s all well and good in theory, but in practice, modern technology has more to go wrong and is constantly subject to cable theft. There is no substitute for the belt and braces effect of a two-man (preferably three) crew. One driver can’t be in two places at once and someone needs to be looking after the passengers while the driver is dealing with safety-critical matters. Who looks after the passengers and and train when the driver is incapacitated? There is no substitute for tried and tested so-called old fashioned methods.

We should reduce the need for commuting – expense, overcrowding, inefficient use of time – and start to relocate work to nearer where people choose to live.

Rail passenger numbers from south of the Thames into London termini during weekday morning peak [Autumn 2015 – DfT figures]:

Victoria – 64,600
Waterloo – 110,300
Blackfriars – 29,300
London Bridge – 137,400

[There are more : To Stratford & St Pancras from Kent, to Cannon Street, Holborn Viaduct, & Charing Cross, and some Thameslink passengers to through stations in London]

[For comparison: Birmingham – 42,900]

And don’t forget the number of commuters coming from south and south-west London on the London Underground and Overground.

Arrivals from the north, east and west are more modest but Liverpool Street has 70,500.

Quite agree Mr Hawkins, I particularly like your comments on the ‘good old days’ of BR, a reality which, it would seem, the vast majority of commuters today have never experienced! However, it’s all about the current situation and I travel on Southern too, the last time on 28/9 having spent all day out on trip……last trains delayed by up to 20 minutes for no apparent reason! It seems all too familiar.

In the mid 70’s British Rail said that they were removing seats from trains “for more comfortable standing”, I believe that the self same thing is happening now, tho’ with the current sausage machines on the Overground that would be hard to do. At least we haven’t gone like the New York subway where they have a metal trough down each side for passenger seating, though time will tell.

It has been suggested that Southern have deliberately worsened the impact of the dispute in places as a weapon in the prevailing hostility with the trade union. They claim to have optimised services on the main lines at the expense of the branches and one can only conclude that the DfT have approved of their reallocations even though it is a reduction in the scope of the service under the management contract. Not to provide a rail replacement service to an alternative station because it is on a different operator’s system is disgraceful [the more so as they are both under the ultimate control of Govia].

That’s a good suggestion, Rosealee. The problem with Southern is that it is already in a form of ‘special measures’. It is not operating a normal franchise but is performing a management contract for the Department for Transport whereby virtually every aspect of the service is specified and directed by the DfT which also takes the revenue risk [so the operator is not affected by the decline in ticket sales and income during the period of substandard services]. The DfT could theoretically strip Southern of the contract but the same people and the same limited number of trains and the same unreliability problems would persist for some time until a new franchise could be awarded [and who would bid for it without a hefty financial comfort cushion?]. Since Southern is just one of three conjoined operators in an enormous single franchise that extends from the south coast to the Wash it is not conducive to an easy solution.

I’m glad you draw attention to Network Rail. It seems a great many people – although rightly hacked off at the poor service – seem not to understand that the rail network around south London is an absolute spaghetti mix of lines. In my view, the one single factor in running trains on time is just that, as on the roads, too many users and not enough tracks. Others have made suggestions about working times etc but none of the arguments focus on the one single issue that contributes the greatest difficulty – the overpopulation of the area both in residential and business terms. You just cannot go on cramming ever larger numbers of people into a small area and expect there not to be problems. Still, I expect it will all be resolved by knocking down loads of houses, businesses and installing superrail tracks all over the place etc etc etc. Those who press on with this sort of growth know nothing about how systems work!

To run a poll means acquainting all concerned with the key facts. For example if passengers are not given any information on safety, but are led to believe it will be compromised, then that will skew the results. Equally if the terms (financial and other) offered to staff are not honestly disclosed then again the result will be skewed. It’s like asking people “would you like to pay less tax” without pointing out the consequences.

Take a close look at Germany. Actually many regional services are contracted out and well run. This is in the teeth of legal action from the nationalised operator, DB, every time it failed to win a contract. DB has lost all of these cases but occasionally manages to scare away the private operator. Is that the kind of nationalised railway you were thinking of?

Changes that would improve services in this country would firstly be to abolish franchising contracts and replace them with concessions. These are much more successful where they are in operation in London (Overground), and Liverpool (Merseyrail). Secondly, to line up the track management with the train management. It will take time to see whether the government’s latest announcement in this regard will be sufficient. These changes will have much more effect than a change of ownership, whether the organisations involved are private or public. Remember it took 40 years for the nationalised British Rail to become efficient. Since all that was destroyed at privatisation, we need to start from where we are.

Frankly, these calls for nationalisation are just like the calls for a return to a grammar school system. It is a harking back to a golden age which may never have existed.