Signalboxes along the route open for 151.3 hours per week (there are 168 hours in a week, so that’s 90% of the week).
Northern’s timetable has 15 trains a day from Monday to Saturday and 11 on Sundays. That’s a weekly total of 101 (or 15,150 seats).
Performance-to-the-minute figures are not available, so the service group’s PPM of 96.4% is used.
Plugging these numbers into the percentage capacity by percentage on-time by percentage availability calculation gives an overall figure of 6.7%. This relates to the capacity Northern uses in seat terms compared with what’s available. If the calculation was done using average seat occupancy across a week, then the result would be much lower.
A manager in a factory might expect a rate of over 85%. He would not run his factory at maximum rate unless there was matching demand for his product - it’s not efficient to fill a warehouse with unsold product. However, he might take steps to mothball facilities that were not needed, so cutting his outgoings.
Network Rail has few options to cut spending on the line, but it could close or switch out signalboxes (as it has already done with Bardon Mill) to more closely match capacity with demand. Northern could cut the service further to match passenger demand, but it has to comply with the DfT’s minimum requirements.
If Northern could marshall a day’s demand for travel between Hexham and Carlisle onto a single train, it could run a very efficient service in terms of staff and rolling stock used. But this would leave the line empty for the rest of the day, which in turn would make Network Rail’s efficient use figures terrible. Northern might be able to use the stock elsewhere for the rest of the day, making its use efficient, but NR can hardly shift the track to a busier section of line.
BR was adept at trimming costs and capacity towards demand. It rationalised track layouts and removed signals. This took place on the Settle-Carlisle route, such that when demand grew with long-distance coal trains in the early 2000s, Railtrack and Network Rail had to add extra signalling. That demand has now fallen again.
At York, BR simplified track layouts. NR has recently had to alter York South Junction to accommodate more trains every hour. Demand might have been sated by TransPennine Express adding an extra coach to its three-car trains, but that option was dismissed.
Benchmarking maintenance costs typically relies on comparing them with their replacement value. In other words, as you spend more every year maintaining something, you reach a point where it’s cheaper to replace it. Prosser argues that this is a better measure than comparing maintenance costs with other European railways, because it’s hard to know the state of their assets.
Costs could be compared on similar lines across different NR routes, for example, comparing busy sections of mixed-traffic, twin-track lines that are electrified and use continuously welded track. You might compare the northern end of the East and West Coast Main Lines, but you wouldn’t compare them with a quieter main line still laid with jointed track.
Renewals costs and efficiencies are greatly driven by the time available to do a job. High-output equipment can prove very efficient provided it’s given a good run at a job. If it takes an hour to get going and an hour to stow away, there’s little point in letting it work for just an hour - letting it work eight hours would be much more efficient.
Here, NR is up against TOCs’ desire to run trains, particularly later into evenings. It might be more efficient to curtail services early on the first couple of days of a week, in return for running trains later into the night on Fridays, for example, when there might be more demand.
These decisions are best made with good data, which could come from the next generation of trains fitted with better passenger counting equipment.
As with maintenance, renewal costs and efficiencies could be compared provided they were similar in nature.
Delivering an efficient railway demands a clear view of what that railway exists to do. It needs skilled managers working with good information. It needs an openness between its parts about what helps or harms efficiency in those parts. If it plans to change, it needs those plans to be properly developed and fully accepted.
Britain’s railway has a way to go.
