Rail passengers have been asked to check schedules carefully this week, as new timetables, with extra services, are to be introduced on Sunday and Monday – almost coinciding with four days of strikes that from Tuesday will stop 80% of trains across Britain.
Only the most optimistic gambler, or a train operator forced to promise rapid improvements, would have staked much on things suddenly coming right for the railways on a freezing winter weekend. Yet the advent of a new timetable, officially from Sundaybut with the big changes on weekdays, should in theory bring more frequent and reliable trains back, especially in the north.
In practice, with strikes on Network Rail and 14 train operators about to derail services again, the success of the new timetables is unlikely to be apparent until well into 2023. But it is some measure of how far services have declined that the first two days of the timetable change are passengers’ best chance of a smooth journey in the next month. In May 2018 a new timetable sparked chaotic, disruptive – and self-inflicted – mayhem.
Avanti West Coast, whose pitiful summer performance was underlined by figures from the rail regulator last week, had circled these dates for a grand restoration of its schedule: three trains an hour between Manchester and London for the first time since Covid, two hourly from Birmingham, and direct trains to and from north Wales.
Overall, the number of Avanti trains scheduled is up almost 40%, from 194 a day on weekdays to 265 – but this is a company that has been put on notice to sort things out during a six-month contract extension. Things got so bad from July to September, according to data from the Office of Rail and Road, that fewer than four in 10 trains ran on time, and one in eight was cancelled – even after it removed thousands of services from the schedules.
Most importantly, the revised timetable should function without requiring rest-day working by drivers and crew. Overtime had been baked in to Avanti’s operation, but the sudden disappearance of goodwill was a reminder that it was a voluntary setup.
Few expect the new timetable to be delivered in full on Monday, not least because of widespread staff sickness at this time of year. But there should still be more trains, and Avanti says it will be a foundation for a stronger recovery in January.
Another First Group operator, TransPennine Express (TPE), is also bringing in significant changes that it hopes will make its schedule more resilient, after a period in which TPE replaced Avanti as the byword for northern travellers’ despair.
TPE plans to reintroduce trains between Manchester and Scotland via the west coast mainline, and extend its Cleethorpes-Manchester service to Liverpool. More importantly, Network Rail planners believe tweaks to the timings for TPE and Northern either side of Manchester will spell more reliable services.
Sceptical northern politicians will believe it when they see it. TPE has, like Avanti, been hit by reluctance to work on rest days, and driver numbers are still fragile after a training backlog built up during Covid.
The industry says the new timetable remains “an opportunity to provide more certainty for passengers, with a focus on improving punctuality and reliability”. But a spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group added: “It is deeply unfortunate that implementation of the new timetable is coinciding with the start of widespread industrial action that will undermine those ambitions.”
That wider rail dispute continues to rage. There is a glimmer of possibility on Monday, when the RMT announces the result of its electronic referendum on Network Rail’s new offer. The executive has recommended it be rejected – but referendums have been known to defy the wishes of those who called them.
General secretary Mick Lynch said leadership would be bound by the result, and if the offer was accepted, “that’s the end of the dispute”. The two-year offer is well below inflation, but with a bigger uplift to the lowest paid. Lynch said three-quarters of RMT members at Network Rail earned less than £35,000. RMT members earning about £20,000 a year could see a cumulative rise of up to 15%.
Action short of a strike – an overtime ban – was lifted for Network Rail staff but still holds, from 18 December to 2 January, for those employed by train operators. On some routes, such as Chiltern Railways’ lines into Birmingham, this will effectively be as disruptive as a strike.
With the rail dispute emblematic of the wider public sector battle for fair pay, and Lynch accusing the government of sabotaging talks by inserting demands for bitterly resisted driver-only operation, a swift resolution looks unlikely. Passengers meanwhile face up to four weeks of disruption – including, ironically, some in Scotland and Wales, where disputes with transport authorities outside Network Rail have been settled.
The RMT strikes will cut train services by 80% on 13, 14, 16 and 17 December, and 3, 4, 6 and 7 January, with some disruption on the following mornings. More strikes from late 24 December to early 27 December will limit some Christmas Eve trains but mainly affect a £100m programme of engineering works – “a monumental act of harm”, according to Network Rail boss Andrew Haines. And for all the dates in between, the overtime ban will reduce services by 20% overall, with more short-term cancellations likely.
