The Office of Rail and Road has blamed the unpopular cancellation of an early morning train from Manchester to London, which was hastily reinstated, on a lack of information and pressure of work.
A controversy blew up in late November when it was revealed that the 07.00 Avanti West Coast service from Manchester to London would become a ‘ghost train’ without passengers from 15 December, even though it would still depart from Piccadilly as before and carry a full crew. Critics pointed out that the 07.00 was well-used and also the fastest service on the line, reaching Euston in a minute under two hours.
The ORR had said the change meant that its path would become a flexible ‘firebreak’ to help maintain performance, because such a path can be changed or cancelled without affecting passengers.
After protests, the ORR reversed its decision at the end of November. Critics had included transport secretary Heidi Alexander, who welcomed the regulator’s rethink.
Following questions from the House of Commons Transport Committee, the ORR’s chief executive John Larkinson has admitted in a letter that ‘we did not have all the facts’. He continued: ‘although we expect applicants to provide all relevant supporting information with their applications, if the ORR team had contacted Avanti for more information, our decision may have been different, but they were stretched …’.
Mr Larkinson said the ORR had been dealing with ‘82 complex and competing track access applications’, adding that Network Rail and Avanti ‘were clear throughout’ that if access rights were not granted, Avanti would still need an Empty Coaching Stock move.
In fact, after the ORR had made its ruling on 22 September, Avanti provided more information on 1 October and again on 5 November. By now it had become clear that the train would still have a full crew. Both they and the train would be needed at Euston to work the 09.30 to Glasgow.
But Mr Larkinson has conceded that the new details were not considered fully, ‘not least because it is very unusual for ORR to receive pertinent new information from applicants after we have taken access decisions’.
Mr Larkinson, who is standing down at the end of April, concluded: ‘I take full responsibility for what happened and we are strengthening our processes to reflect the lessons we have learned.’
Transport Committee chair Ruth Cadbury said: ‘The public was understandably baffled by the ORR’s decision not to allow the 7am fast service from Manchester to London to carry passengers when a fully crewed train was running anyway. On the face of it, this was a strange decision – especially when the train was popular and profitable – and one that the Transport Committee had a number of questions about.
‘Now we have some answers, a detailed explanation for why this happened and a welcome recognition of responsibility. As the Government sets up Great British Railways, we will be looking at how the new system can avoid instances like this and ensuring that Ministers take away the right lessons.’
Readers’ comments
It's welcome that the ORR has admitted its errors that led to the fiasco and resulting negative publicity over the 07.00 Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston. The question now remains why Avanti was prevented from continuing operating the Blackpool and Chester/North Wales services it was forced to withdraw from the Dec 25 timetable change? While it's beyond dispute that Avanti has faced a difficult recovery from the pandemic when it entered into its then franchise agreement either these services were part of the timetable inherited from Virgin or committed obligations. Granted ORR was presented with a flurry of applications from potential open access operators but many of these were clearly speculative kite-flying whereas as the incumbent WCML intercity operator Avanti had committed rolling stock and a recovery plan in place to recover the backlog of recruitment and training affecting its traincrew compliment in order to restore its full contracted timetable. Thankfully the publicity and subsequent backlash generated by ORR's initial decision has brought the current complexity of track access and timetable planning to a wider audience and why the current Railways Bill is trying to simplify things by creating a single directing mind. The timetable is the railway's shop window. It will always be a trade off between competing demands but discipline needs to be enforced to ensure that within the constraints of the network it is operationally robust to meet performance targets. There also has to be a degree of agility within the process to allow for changing patterns of demand. Unfortunately a downside of the rigid application of contractual rights to track access has far too often produced produced an inefficient use of capacity available on the network, as an example the number of 'Q' paths either unused or exceptionally rarely used. Going forward, the remit of the directing mind will be all important in capacity allocation but hopefully the decision making will be devolved back to professional timetable planners and operators where it rightfully belongs.
Chris Jones-Bridger, Buckley, Flintshire
What do you think? Click here to let us know.