Raises the age old question again - what's the point of franchising?
But we don't have franchising any more. They are all management contracts.
AIUI▸ franchising is dead.
Dead - but there is a something of a legacy ... when (eventually!) we see "Williams", we may see negatives of that legacy tidied up. Seems everyone has been so busy dealing with other events that Williams is a bit later than intended!
Of course, it's now "Shapps-Williams", which rather gives away the fact that the new system will be based largely on political considerations. Previous governments in recent times - both Conservative and Labour - have had to satisfy a majority based on Middle England voters who were Conservative with a small "c", and who were instinctively suspicious of anything that smacked of "nationalisation". However, the current Johnson Conservative administration has to satisfy a majority based on Northern voters who are Labour with a small "l", who dont really have a problem with nationalisation, and who just want the government to do something - anything - to improve their lot.
However, my
recent research into SENRUG and the Northumberland Line has given me an intriguing insight into who is currently advising the government on transport matters, and what exactly it is they are advising. Basically, the current crop of special advisors is using as its reference point the last time they think that public transport was part of a nationalised system under a Conservative administration and appeared to be working, and with both bus and rail they landed in the early to mid 1980's.
In the case of buses, this means the era where the big, regionalised subsidaries of the National Bus Company had been broken down into smaller, more locally focused units that had not yet been deregulated/privatised and thus could still be relatively easily integrated with the municipal bus companies, and with rail and other public transport modes. In the case of rail, this means the era of the sub-£1 billion railway, of cut-price rail reopenings, and of the "glory days" of Network SouthEast.
The modern equivalent structures they are putting in place are
Bus Back Better, and for rail, I believe that they will go for a more localised version of sectorisation that has the mid-section of Network SouthEast as its inspiration. The
DfT» will set a broad overall strategy, goals and service standards, but ask the rail industry to work out how to implement them. The
TOCs▸ will have their own management structure and oversight, and decide about scheduling, marketing, what infrastructure enhancements they require, and rolling stock specifications - probably wise given recent events. Network Rail will own, maintain, and where required, enhance and build new infrastructure.
Indeed, there are signs that key rail industry players are already working de facto to this new structure. To give some examples - Andrew Haines, in
a recent speech, appeared to acknowledge that Network Rail will need to provide what the DfT, TOCs and customers actually want, rather than what Network Rail think they should have. The DfT - despite it being their duff rolling stock specification that started the sequence of events that led to the current disruption - have told the TOCs that they want the that disruption sorted, and to work out for themselves how to sort it. The TOCs, at least by the look of early indications, appear to be working together to try and sort it as best they can.
An interesting by-product of the evolving service plan that the TOCs have devised is that it appears to have set up an unintentional experiment. In an optimistic scenario, it could provide at least a partial blueprint for how to cater for the likely more localised post-pandemic passenger flows, as well as how to integrate rail services with parallel and connecting bus services, and provide full ticket interavailiability between the two modes.
In a pessimistic scenario though, the rail industry could respond to its biggest crisis since 2002 and the aftermath of Hatfield and make similar mistakes, where the scale of the repairs required took ages to identify and ultimately brought the network to a near-standstill for a prolonged period, finished Railtrack, and sent the industry as a whole into an uncertain future that we've arguably never actually emerged successfully from.
As we know now, the DfT's response to the aftermath of Hatfield and Railtrack's demise was to commission internal reports - which we have copies of in our archives - that proposed widespread closures, service withdrawals and bustitution in the North and the South West, and even at one point advertised for a Closures Manager to oversee their implementation. This thankfully did not come to pass, due in no small part to the huge opposition in this part of the world to the Draft December 2006
FGW▸ Timetable which if fully implemented, would have acted as a Trojan Horse to a far worse end goal.
Could we reach a similar point as a result of this crisis? Let me put it this way - grahame, myself and others are, through
Option 24/7, seeking to use the positive opportunity provided by Bus Back Better to try and achieve hugely improved local bus services and infrastructure, and greatly enhanced bus/rail/active travel integration. However, the wording of some of the passages of Bus Back Better makes it obvious that some of those currently advising the government clearly believe that the bus can do a far better job of many of the tasks that rail currently provides.
You only to look at our
recent walk down memory lane to see where that could potentially lead.
EDIT to fix link.
