Great Western Coffee Shop

An interesting piece in the new issue of Rail magazine today. They lodged a Freedom of Information request with DafT for paperwork relating to the 2006 Greater Western franchise.

Apparently, the civil servants concluded that FGW's proposals for the train fleet "demonstrated a high level of deliverability", however, the notes provided to Rail only relate to main line services from Paddington. They could not find any paperwork about the rest of the franchise area. A DafT spokesman said that just because they couldn't find any paperwork didn't mean they hadn't looked at the other services. Apparently, on a scale of A to E, best to worst, the fleet plan was rated a B.

Anyway, just in case you thought DafT was in any way to blame for events between December 2006 and Ruth Kelly getting tough with FGW in February, in the letters pages up pops the Rail Minister, Tom Harris, to assure us that it is a "myth" that the department specifies rolling stock, timetables or just about anything else at all to do with franchises. Hmm...

Will be picking that up as usual today, apparently there is also a large write up on Tavistock which may be of interest to some people on here.

Being rather an "FOI veteran", I am painfully aware the the DfT will only give you what they want to give you. A good example is the restricted document contained in the link below.
http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gw/ivybridge.pdf

Naturally, I asked for the sections that had been left out, and was told that they all contained "commercially confidential" information. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that every single one did, but maybe that's just me....

I also asked for all the Jacobs Greater Western Franchise Replacement reports. I got most, but some crucial ones were missing, not least of all the Bristol capacity report.

The DfT not being able to find paperwork is nothing new either. Here is a classic example :


Entirely coincidentally, this was among the last batch of parliamentary questions answered by Derek Twigg before being moved from the DfT.

The DfT have stated in previous parliamentary answers that they concluded that FGW's proposals for the train fleet were deliverable (admittedly without mentioning that they gave them a "B"  ;D) and Tom Harris's comments about specification are the standard line that he always gives in such situations.

I also note that the RAIL article quotes the DfT as saying that the First bid was well ahead on deliverability & price, and my view remains that the Greater Western Franchise mess can be blamed on First's determination to win at all costs (having, along with the other bidders, been given strong hints from the SRA that rolling stock cuts were desirable) , plus the DfT's willingness to accept a bid that it should have recognised was fundamentally flawed because it couldnt resist the lure of all that lovely "best value to the taxpayer" premium payment lolly.

Lee, I would concur with your "assessment of culpability".  The whole basis of the decisions, bids and evaluations on both sides show just how far the customer - the passenger - was from the point of focus as the time this franchise was put together and (regrettably) some recent letters that I have been copied on seem to indicate that all too little has changed.  And it's very convenient for all the parties to blame each other and muddy the waters as they all work together to what appear to be financial rather than service goals.

But let's look at some seeds.  Let's look at the 29 million that we are told that FGW must spend rather than pay in a fine.  Let's look at just 5% of the 1.1 billion that the DfT is being paid by First.  Let's look, (more locally to me) at the 1 million plus LABGI funding that's come for services over and above core service to Wiltshire councils. With will (still sadly lacking, I think) there can be some very practical steps forward at an affordable price - just a little bit of the sums I have mentioned.

I stood on the platform at Tower Gateway this evening, and watched C2C's services going in and out of Fenchurch Steet, like clockwork, just across the tracks. They seemed to be all "peas out of a pod" - consistent, quiet, clean trains running at a frequent interval on 4 tracks narrowing to 2.  8 or 12 card long, every train.  Busy, and on some a few standing (specially in the rear coaches) but not overcrowded.  Perhaps the grass just looked greener on the other side, but what a contrast it looked to be.


P.S.  On the TransWilts, the forecast traffic levels for the current franchise were based on so few samples that they were statistically insignificant, and a growth forecast so pessimistic that it was acheived 40 times over prior to services being cut.  On the basis such a data foundation, it's quite possible that the stock levels looked ok; problem was that the figures used were flawed, and the TOC that won had no previous experince of operating the lines that are the biggest problem to realise that they were flawed!