The East Coast timetable :
regulatory failure and the case for integration
Jonathan Tyler
Almost everyone agrees that the East Coast Main Line [ECML] timetable needs recasting. It has
evolved incrementally. Such patterns as there are disappear in a cloud of variations. Trains are
badly spaced and connections are erratic. Line capacity is poorly used.
Two strategies for change are available. Our railway could, collectively, determine that it needs to
offer good connectivity across the network and a sense of integration and convenience – in sum,
the public service through which progressive countries in Europe have built high patronage and
solid popular esteem for their railways.
The aim would be to challenge the car culture and to carry a higher proportion of travellers as
environmental constraints bite (as distinct from stimulating new trips). With that vision the ECML
timetable could only be recast from first principles unencumbered by history and preconditions,
but the benefits would be substantial.
However, that is not how Britain's railway now works. The model is competition in a free market,
despite evidence of its limitations in the particular technology of a railway system. Provision of the
infrastructure is separated from the supply of train services, which is itself open to multiple
operators with private agendas. Because the monopolistic track provider must be regulated and
because the operators make contracts with it the whole is wrapped in a complex legal framework.
Yet few people are aware of the alternatives at stake because processes are arcane and often
misleadingly focussed on stories about plucky entrepreneurs challenging the big players. This
article aims to shift the perspective.
The planning process has two elements: the Route Utilisation Strategy [RUS] prepared by
Network Rail [NR] and applications for Track Access Contracts.
The ECML RUS was "established" in April 2008. The Strategic Rail Authority had identified nearly
all the issues in 2005. Little happened during the long gestation of the RUS. It then turned out to
be repetitious in analysis and short on committed plans. It eschewed timetabling.
Theoretical calculations did not acknowledge the fundamental truth that the real capacity of a
multi-purpose railway is a function of the ordering of its train-paths, which itself must be a
considered function of the underlying demands. The RUS used no matrix of flows and produced
no fresh insights on service priorities (a caution against allocating scarce capacity to short trains
was removed between the draft and the final text).
Why the RUS followed this course has not been explained, but NR was probably all too aware
that it should not pre-empt the applications for access contracts from four sources.
 The holder of the franchise for the core passenger services, presently National Express East
Coast [NXEC], must apply for rights to operate the timetable agreed with the Department for
Transport [DfT].
 Open Access [OA] companies can apply, and judging by the insubstantial status of Platinum
Trains they can do so before they have fulfilled the statutory requirements for a train operator.
 Freight operating companies [FOCs] are entitled to seek rights for paths they might need in
future.
 And all the other Train Operating Companies [TOCs] running services on or associated with
the ECML have existing rights.
That would be a difficult mix even for a railway with a Supreme Controller. Instead we have the
Office of Rail Regulation [ORR]. Its ideology is competition. It presupposes that each applicant
knows its market. It has no timetable vision of its own and relies for technical advice on NR,
which understands trains but not passengers. And its procedures only judge the relative merits of
applications, although the fact that consultants generate widely differing answers ought to cast
doubt on their validity.
ORR does have statutory duties to protect the wider interests of users and to facilitate journeys
involving more than one operator, but it does not interpret these as an obligation to ask whether
mere aggregation of proposals will deliver the optimal result overall. It has certainly not queried
the focussing of branding, marketing and ticket discounts almost exclusively on each TOC’s ‘own'
internal flows and the corresponding collapse of any real concept of a network. And neither ORR
nor DfT seems concerned that strategic timetabling has no champion.
In February ORR invited interested parties to state their aspirations (it was reassuring that
Merseytravel expressed no intention of running trains on the ECML). ORR did not issue
instructions to NR until July to examine the welter of applications. And following the three lost
years of the RUS, NR was to report in 11 weeks.
To be fair, NR faced an impossible task. This article criticises the system, not the hapless
timetablers charged with implementing it. About the only point of agreement was that a new
timetable should be based on a repeating pattern. There are six huge problems.
 In combination the characteristics of the paths being sought self-evidently surpass what can
sensibly be planned in a robust timetable.
 NXEC has franchise commitments that, if unmet, could jeopardise its agreement with DfT. It
has already negotiated changes and must safeguard its revenue. (That a franchise of such
importance can have been let on a draft timetable that had profound weaknesses is another
strange – and expensive – aspect of the system.) Nevertheless, some items spell trouble for
any rational plan. In particular, the promise to serve Lincoln 2-hourly rests not on a sound
business case but on opening up a regular path for latent Class 6 freights.
 Hull Trains and Grand Central have disparate operating plans, stopping patterns influenced
more by abstruse regulatory conditions than by logic (eg. HT stops at Retford and Grantham
but not at Newark and Peterborough) – and ambitions to provide through services for all
manner of places. Of course everybody prefers a through train, but it is not physically
possible. On the franchised railway new interchanges are being introduced in the name of
'better' timetables. It is peculiar that ORR mechanically processes the OA applications instead
of objectively appraising the balance between well-organised frequent connections and
occasional through trains.
 The availability of rolling stock is unclear, since the operators are haggling over the limited fleet
of Class 180 units.
 The Freight RUS forecast growth in traffic. This has been consolidated with a legal status. No
matter that previous forecasts have failed to materialise. No matter that a single scenario of
endlessly-expanding consumption was quite at variance with the auguries and with the railway's
claims to be an agent of environmental sustainability. And no matter that the FOCs are
asserting their rights at just the moment when the assumptions have crashed: is it sensible to
distort the ECML passenger timetable to accommodate a fourfold increase in container traffic ?
 All paths other than those of NXEC and existing OA and freight services were to be assumed
fixed, except for a (contended) degree of flexing. This imposition arose partly because NR has
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no authority or inclination to engage in comprehensive recasts, however desirable, but chiefly
because the rigid legal structure renders them infeasible. As it happens, other services are also
being changed, but in discrete, uncoordinated projects. Piecemeal adjustment engenders poor
timetables, and it compares unfavourably with long-term planning in Europe (to 2030 in
Switzerland) and successful 'big bang' changes.
Network Rail produced its findings on 26 September. Tellingly, the document is entitled 'Capacity
Assessment Report'. In other words it does not purport to be a coherent timetable. Rather, it is
a commentary on how a bundle of aspirations could be shoehorned onto the line.
The Report comprises a description of the proposed paths (but no tabulation of a standard hour),
an analysis of performance and an evaluation of whether paths on routes over which operators
wish to run through trains can be made compatible with ECML paths (its detail is incommensurate
with the size of these markets).
In my judgment the Report is bizarre and discreditable.
 NR has not applied the rules that structure timetables in mainland Europe in order to ensure
that every A is linked with every B at an appropriate speed and frequency and through
interchanges that are brisk when they are unavoidable.
 The 'clean sheet' timetable contains buckets of pathing time: eg. an average of 5 minutes in the
principal NXEC services, the southbound York 'all stations' standing at Newark for 7 minutes
to be passed and a Harrogate service waiting 10 minutes to cross at Poppleton.
 In any decent modern timetable calling points should be the same and end-to-end times similar
for the two directions, but here times vary by as much as 18 minutes, while the Lincoln only
calls at Stevenage northbound.
 NR has no stated policy objective. It passively accepts disruptive constraints. Stops are
nonchalantly inserted or taken out without regard to the consequences for markets or
connectivity, and provided a station gets a 'quantum' (a revealing term) it is of little concern if
they are bunched together (eg. four trains in 31 minutes, then a 29-minute gap) or if valued
choices for time-sensitive travellers are negated when a faster train catches up the previous
slower one.
 This approach reaches its nadir with the Scottish services. Attempts to weave the Glasgow
extensions of fast Edinburgh paths into the ScotRail plan end in a proposal that the up trains
(only) should omit Motherwell, a principal reason for their routeing, and Haymarket, which no
one familiar with the geography of Edinburgh could contemplate.
 The Aberdeen and Inverness trains would run as extensions of the slower Newcastle, which
decelerates them. Then, the ECML path having been determined independently, the search for
paths in Scotland results in prolonged dwells at Waverley, an admission that the 10:30 from
London cannot run to Aberdeen, and timing of the southbound 'Highland Chieftain' so early
from Inverness (at 06:22) as to destroy its raison d'etre – and it cannot stop at Gleneagles
because a Dunblane local is in the way !
 Exacerbating the problems is the presumption that a Class 4 freight should be incorporated
every hour between Doncaster and Peterborough and a Class 6 in alternate hours, despite
there being at present only seven daytime freights in both directions together and no
specification of when the additional paths would be taken up. Moreover these paths depend
on precision operating which, if not achieved, will regularly disrupt the passenger service.
 Other services are only considered where they cause conflicts. The fact that some
connections will markedly worsen is not mentioned: for example, the train from Scarborough
arrives in York at xx.37, but NR plans the main London departures at xx.09 and xx.30.
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 The proposals are not a standard hour of any distinction, and they only apply for a short interpeak period, since reorganising the peak sits in the 'too difficult' box. NR admits that large
tracts of planning have been ignored and that this is a single 'solution' (there having been no
time to explore others).
Having cobbled together a scheme that shows what can – after a fashion – be fitted in, NR
subjects it to a performance analysis that is as detailed as analysis of the quality of the offer is
inadequate. One can understand NR's dilemma since performance has become such a fetish, yet
one does get a sense of an organisation thinking negatively to protect its own interests.
And two important questions are not asked: whether a point comes at which performance is good
enough, because customers would prefer a higher frequency and sufficient seats to marginal
advances in reliability; and whether regularity itself will promote more disciplined operation
(experienced managers believe it will).
When ORR initiated a consultation stakeholders weighed in. DfT and NXEC were diplomatic,
with curate's-egg comments and a somewhat optimistic belief that, given further work, a passable
timetable might be designed. Other TOCs complained about threats to their businesses.
Transport Scotland, quite rightly, protested that the plan for their trains is unacceptable. Only
London TravelWatch stressed the case for a comprehensive approach.
Faced with an impasse ORR has postponed a decision on the allocation of paths from October to
January and has asked NR to review the issues. In 11 pages of pettifogging instructions there is no
realisation that the exercise is fundamentally flawed. Meanwhile the companies are fighting a battle
of partial press-releases.
My own researches, supported by players in the industry, have demonstrated that an integrated
timetable could yield five times the revenue growth predicted for the NR version, an advantage of
over £15 million/year.
The plan is believed to be operationally feasible, it optimises the pattern of services for the whole
day, it incorporates OA activity, and it best serves the environment by diverting freight to the
alternative route via Lincoln. Yet the rules are such that these proposals cannot be studied as an
option (ORR, barely understanding the concepts, passed the buck to NR, which has no incentive
to respond).
For the premier main line (ECML carries more passenger-kilometres than the West Coast) this
saga marks a pathetic end to years of planning. Perhaps it was inevitable that the defects in the
'regulated market' model of how to run a railway should come to a head on a route with
inadequate infrastructure and rising demand. What happens next is open, but one might hope that
at last questions will be asked.
Will anyone have the courage to recognise that a railway works best and uses its capacity most
effectively when its timetable is planned by a central authority with priorities specified in the broad
public interest ? As the London Buses exemplar shows, that can yield excellent results – and of
course services are delivered by private operators under contract.
It may be too late to achieve a good outcome for the ECML for 2009, but it could still be done for
2010 – as the first stage of a National Timetable Plan that could capture people's imaginations
about their railway's future.
Jonathan Tyler is an independent consultant [www.passengertransportnetworks.co.uk]
12 Nov 08
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