tomroyal.com

Hunter takes on the snow. The snow wins.

About a week ago I wrote to SouthEastern Railway's Public Affairs Manager, asking him two questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no. I didn't get a yes or no answer to either, and when I pushed for a straight answer to one of them the gentleman in question simply stopped replying to my emails. I'll publish the whole lot, names redacted, after the jump – but in summary:

A) SouthEastern Railway receives a huge subsidy from the Government in order to provide a rail service to the public. In January it failed to provide a proper service, slashing trains for three days, but it will not return an appropriate proportion of said subsidy. Nor will it donate the equivalent amount to charity, which is a shame – the DEC could undoubtedly use a few extra hundred thousand pounds right about now.

B) By cutting its service to an emergency timetable before a flake of snow had fallen, it seems* that SouthEastern ensured that its reliability would be measured against this reduced timetable. As this reliability statistic is used to calculate refunds, this gives it a fighting chance of avoiding the need to refund season ticket holders.

The downside, of course, is that many of its customers get left out in the snow, unable to use the train tickets they paid for. Fans of the absurd will note that the company has since published figures claiming 97.5% (Mainline) and 97.3% (Metro) reliability for the December to January period.

Or, to put it another way:

• The taxpayer pays SouthEastern via a £136m subsidy
• We, the customers, pay SouthEastern for our tickets
• SouthEastern decides not to run a service
• Most customers are left stranded
• Neither the taxpayer or the customer gets a refund

And it's important to note here that, under the National Rail Conditions of Carriage and the Passengers' Charter, this is all perfectly legal.

Evidently some kind of political action is required to ensure that this kind of debacle isn't repeated every time the weather forecast looks unpleasant, so I wrote to a few politicians: my MP, my AM and the Transport Minister.

My AM, Len Duvall, didn't reply – I received a response from his assistant promising a "considered response", but none came. My MP, Bridget Prentice, did contact the company on my behalf and put up with a flurry of CC'd emails from me, for which I'm thankful. As for the Transport Minister, like several people I received a response that in parts bore an uncanny similarity to the documents issued by SouthEastern itself. Nonetheless, it also said:

".. we will be conducting a review of the experience of the service that was provided between the 6th and 8th January 2010. This review will cover all aspects of service provision. Where any areas for improvement are identified, we will ensure that proper action is taken to deliver the required improvement.

Your email has also highlighted the difference between services provided across Sussex and Wessex despite simiar forecasts. We will be seeking understand (sic) from all parties involved the reasons for this. Until this review is complete, I cannot comment on how appropriate Southeastern's response was when compared to the actions taken by other operators."

So there's some hope for the future, and I await the findings of that review with interest. In the meantime, I'm sure our beloved Mayor will sort it out at the Emergency Rail Summit he promised to hold within a few weeks of his election.

* I say "seems to" because when asked whether this is the case the Public Affairs Manager stopped answering my emails. I've waited a week and re-sent the email, but to no avail. If he'd care to get back to me and assure me that this is not the case, I'll be happy to correct this immediately. In the meantime, a parliamentary answer from the 25th of January confirms that, unless SouthEastern should choose otherwise, this is the case.

For the sake of completeness, my full email conversation with SouthEastern is copied after the jump.

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The fallout from SouthEastern Railway's utter failure to cope with the recent snow continues, and you'll find a good summary of the latest developments here. One thing to add is that, of the three politicans I contacted, one has sent a proper reply.

Bridget Prentice MP (for Lewisham East) confirmed receipt of my letter via email, then sent a full response by post. In it she said:

"…I am very sorry to hear of these concerns and hope they can be addressed in full very soon.

I have written to South Eastern Trains's Public Affairs Manager and have raised with him your concerns. I have asked him to respond to these concerns, and to let me know what South Eastern intends to do in future to ensure that services will not be affected by weather doncitions in the way they have over the past few days. As soon as I have a reply, I will write to you again."

This seems to me more than fair, and I'm grateful for Ms Prentice's intervention. I now look forward to the company's reply – not least to see if it bears many similarities to the less-than-helpful ones received by Bexcentric and published here.

Update: On the 23rd of January I received, via the office of Ms Prentice, a 'Briefing Document' from SouthEastern Trains. It's the same document already sent to Bexcentric, and published here.

In response, I've sent the following back to the company, with Ms Prentice CC'd:

Dear Mr [Contact name]

Thanks for passing on, via Bridget Prentice MP, the SouthEastern Railways briefing document regarding the limited service operated on the 5th to 8th January – I note that this response has also been distributed to others. I do have two further questions, however, which I'd appreciate if you could answer.

Given that:

* According to your document, on the 6th of January SouthEastern ran 665 services rather than 2024 – less than one third of a standard timetable, thus leaving up to two-thirds of customers unable to use the service they pay for

* Southern Railways, which operates the same "third rail" electrification system on infrastructure also provided by Network Rail, attempted to run a full service that day, as it did throughout the period of 6-8 January

* SouthEastern Railways receives a significant subsidy from the taxpayer to operate its services – a subsidy that, in 2009, worked out at over £350,000 per day

* On the 9th of January, despite no improvement in weather conditions, SouthEastern decided that it was suddenly able to provide a full Saturday timetable – with more trains and later running than during the 5th to 8th January.

SouthEastern Railway customers could be forgiven for getting the impression that both:

A) The management of SouthEastern Railway cut its service from Weds 6th to Friday 8th in order to avoid damaging its punctuality and reliability statistics, and thus avoid paying compensation to customers as per its 'Passengers' Charter' rather than out of necessity (after all, on Saturday 9th, when the charter no longer applied, the service immediately recovered), and

B) The management of SouthEastern Railway have no intention of delivering value to the taxpayer in return for its Government subsidy.

So, I have two questions. Both can be answered with a simple yes or no:

1) In order to avoid the appearance of slashing services merely to avoid paying passenger compensation, will SouthEastern mark its own  reliability results down to 32.8% (per your running statistics: 665/2024 = 0.328) over the three day period of 6-8 Jan, thus providing a fair chance of customers receiving reasonable compensation for its limited service over this period?

2) In order to avoid the appearance of taking a huge subsidy but providing a service only when it sees fit, will SouthEastern return an appropriate percentage of its last subsidy – say 67% (again, per your statistics) of the amount of subsidy received per day, for three days? Alternatively, perhaps an equivalent sum – I make it just under £749,000 – could be donated, as a gesture of goodwill, to the DEC Appeal for Haiti, providing a positive end to this entire debacle.

Many thanks for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best

Tom

Will update when I hear back.

On Tuesday night, with snow forecast for the South East, SouthEastern railways introduced an emergency timetable for Wednesday. As it happens, South Eastern London didn't see that much snow, but with fewer and shorter trains serving the area on Wednesday morning, Hither Green station looked a bit like this:

All the trains were packed, and commuters were stranded. Many gave up entirely and went home. The situation was made worse as SouthEastern proceeded to cancel all metro services that night (lines closed around 8pm) and implement the same severely limited timetable today and, as it stands, tomorrow. You can read far more comprehensive accounts of the failure at Londonist here and 853 here.

Londonist asked SouthEastern what on earth was going on, and received the following:

"The decision to run a revised timetable was made based on the advice from Network Rail, who has responsibility for the track and they decide what service we will be able to provide.

They were out overnight with de-icing trains and we also ran ghost trains around the entire network, not just in London.

To ensure that we were able to provide a reliable service throughout the entire day and have the right staff and rolling stock in place for the evening peak, when the worst of the snow and ice hit London, we needed to run the revised timetable from the morning, as it would have been almost impossible to implement at the last minute for the afternoon. Our trains also come into London from across Kent where they will, of course, also be subject to the snow and icy conditions found there.

We told passengers at the earliest possible moment on Tuesday of the revised timetable through texts, emails, station notices, onboard announcements, station announcements and providing extra staff at stations, as well as advising the media of the plans.

The revised timetable remains in place for today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday) and we are asking passengers to check with National Rail Enquiries for services and to check when their last train home tonight will be."

So apparently it's all Network Rail's fault. I asked Network Rail and, for what it's worth, here's the response I've received from the press office:

"Network Rail and the train operators (in this case Southeastern) have agreed contingency plans in place to operate train services in extreme weather conditions.

In severe winter weather running a reduced service allows us to respond to any incidents quicker, with the intention of resolving them before they have a significant knock-on impact on other services.   We do everything we can to reduce the risk of passengers being stranded on trains which can happen quickly when the network is operating at normal levels.  Both Network Rail and the train operators also face the challenges of moving staff to where they need to be to do their job, particularly when the road conditions are as severe as they are at present.

We are working closely with the train operators to run as many trains as possible.  We will continue to review the situation on a frequent basis with a view to resuming a normal service as soon as possible."

I've asked the company – whose press office has, I should add, beem prompt and helpful – why Network Rail and SouthEastern have implemented such drastic cuts while other services in far more snowy areas are carrying on regardless, and will update when I get a reply – hopefully tomorrow.

Quick update: Transport Minister Paul Clark MP has said he'll be writing to SouthEastern to ask for a meeting with management. I've raised the obvious question, but please do pass on any others.

Another update: a reply from National Rail's press office. I'd asked why SouthEastern services were so severely restricted despite minimal snowfall in the SouthEastern metro line area:

"A one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't work in these circumstances. The contingency plans in place take into account a wide range of factors specific to each route including the characteristics of the railway infrastructure itself and the type of trains which run on it.

We can assure your readers that Network Rail and Southeastern are working hard to run as many trains as possible and the plans in place aim to achieve this. We will continue to review the effectiveness of the plans and if we identify a way to improve them further, we will do so.

In addition to the volume of snow on some parts of the network, we have also experienced some problems as a result of the prolonged freezing temperatures which have been experienced in Kent. The third rail electrification system used to the south of the capital can be susceptible to this sort of weather, especially when combined with rain or melting snow. Special trains which spray hot de-icer fluid on the tracks/third rail and empty trains, known as 'ghost trains', are run across the network to try and prevent ice forming, however, if ice does form it can interfere with the power systems on the trains and cause significant disruption.

We apologise for any disruption to passenger's journeys but we have a duty of care to passengers and our staff and it would be irresponsible to ignore the severity of the forecast and how the icy conditions can result in trains being stranded. We'll continue to do what we can to run the best possible rail service in the circumstances – it is in nobody's interest to do anything other than this."

Too cold to run this weekend, so I took a walk up to Greenwich Park instead. The paths were treacherous, but the rose garden was pretty – a few flowers had survived, and a robin even popped in to complete the scene.

This article on the Mail website is stupid enough (the "ice in eyes" thing comes from one teacher, who didn't even close her school, for example), but check out the top image (after the fifth paragraph if you click the above link, or direct link here).

Now, many Mail articles seem to be designed to direct the irate towards people that they can blame for the various perceived wrongs of society, while simultaneously providing a happy glow of smug moral certainty. So then, blame-fans, let's see what we have here: snow on the ground, and the weather's clearly freezing. Kid on the left: T-shirt with no sleeves. Kid on the right: appears to be hugging self for warmth. Hmm. And I'm supposed to blame the school, you say?

There's no attribution on the image and the quality is pretty poor, so I'm guessing this was sent to the Mail by a reader. Possibly one of the parents of the kids in question. I wonder if said reader actually got these kids to take their coats off just to pose a photo so they could send it off to a newspaper with a caption ("it's political correctness gone mad", etc)?

If that's the case, it strikes me as a pretty good example of irresponsible parenting. I wonder what the Mail's own pet moral guardians (including Parents Outloud, whose qualification for being relentlessly quoted appears to be a blogger page) would make of it.

I'm not generally a fan of snow. Too cold and, you know, wet. But when you get a pristine covering like this (spot the animal tracks):

Then you just have to go and stomp in it, even if it is 7am. So we did:

Also, there are snowmen everywhere. Here's the best I saw up on Blackheath:

Of course, the whole capital ground to a halt, all the trains broke, etc. But not such a bad day.

You're welcome.