Should we expect Chaos after Christmas again in 2015, 2016, ...?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

By Richard K Shepherd, former Network Rail employee ... in the Daily Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11354235/Rail-chaos-will-happen-again-unless-we-fix-the-system.html

This Christmas, London's trains were paralysed by engineering works which slipped behind schedule. But Network Rail's report ignored deep, systemic problems

Last week the head of Network Rail ^unreservedly apologised^ for the travel disruptions which hit King^s Cross and other London stations over Christmas. Rail chiefs have been hauled before Parliament, and an official report has pledged to do better.

Reading between the lines, however, its solutions are the kind you might offer to a small, single project going off the rails ^ not to solve wider fundamental problems.

The work regularly undertaken is nothing short of staggering. It occurs on one of the most densely operated railways, in some of the most intensive construction environments in the world, all borne by a still largely Victorian infrastructure. Yet every year we see larger and more complex improvements made to an ever more crowded railway.

That construction overruns happen is hardly surprising. But when they do, as I saw in my time on the railways, it^s usually due to the same set of pressures, out of the hands of the operatives on site. These pressures mean that while safety and quality are critical, time isn^t always accorded the same importance ^ until it^s too late.

Long snip - lots of very interesting reading ...

Something will need to be done, by politicians rather than operatives. Whether they will take the issue seriously remains to be seen.

[tomL]

2015? Probably not. It's election year. The current government probably have better election campaign things to do and the (possible) new government won't have time to change anything this year I suspect.

2016? Possibly. Who knows.

Exciting times ahead. 

[readytostart]

I'd personally be worried about crewing problems on the 27th this year as it's a Sunday and many traincrew aren't contractually obliged to work them. Through December of last year guards with a company I may or may not be associated with were offered double time for Saturdays so long as they worked the Sunday as well, this increased to treble time for Saturday 27th if they worked Sunday 28th. Now this year there's no trains to work on the Saturday after Christmas (26th) so a lot less of a sweetener to work the Sunday.

[TaplowGreen]

As someone who works between Christmas and New Year (sadly without the ability to avoid it by waving a contract about, my Business quite rightly puts the customer first) in my experience it is chaos to a greater or lesser extent every year at this time (admittedly never as bad as the festive period just gone!) so my hopes for it being better over the next few years will not be high.

Things will go wrong, we'll get the usual apologies, everyone will blame everyone else and there will be handsome speeches about "lessons being learned", and it'll all (including the lessons) be forgotten until the next time.