Years in the making
Driver Only Operation has been in place for three decades. There is no substantive evidence to suggest that it is in any way unsafe, nor any evidence that it is less safe than having a guard responsible for train dispatch.
An entire generation of trains has been built to be capable of DOO, including nearly all rolling stock used by GTR. But on this franchise the controls in the cab have been left unused. Southern’s Electrostars are approaching mid-life without the driver’s door buttons ever having been pressed. Industry-standard kit, fitted in case of a change of heart or a cascade to different train operators, has gone to waste.
It can be argued that the RMT and ASLEF unions have therefore been fighting a change in technology that has always been inevitable. It mirrors a union battle half a century earlier, which dragged on for years. That was about removing a second crew member in the cab. They were called firemen in steam days, and some survived as secondmen after steam trains gave way to diesels. (That’s what the ‘F’ in ASLEF still stands for today.)
Southern provides the contractual environment in which this battle can finally be fought. As a management contract, rather than a standard franchise, the revenue risk lies with the Department for Transport. It can therefore withstand the financial consequences of a strike better than other operators. Some have even suggested it was set up with this partly in mind.
Look back to the start of the project originally called Thameslink 2000, in honour of its projected completion date. Even under British Rail, DOO was part of the plan.
In April 2008, then Secretary of State for Transport Ruth Kelly approved the draft Thameslink rolling stock specification. It was for DOO.
Govia took over Thameslink and Great Northern in September 2014, just ahead of the major engineering work at London Bridge. Southern Railway joined in July 2015. As this was already operated by Govia, it was a change of franchise conditions rather than a change of management.
Up to this point, Southern was generally regarded as a competently managed railway that under-performed mainly because of capacity, infrastructure and rolling stock constraints. It was run by much the same team as today. When it took over the Thameslink services from First Capital Connect, Govia found it had inherited a shortage of drivers. It had expected more than 650. It has 607.
Was FirstGroup at fault for failing to tell its successor that it had insufficient staff to operate the timetable? Was Govia at fault for failing to identify the problem during its due diligence process?
GTR launched a recruitment campaign knowing that the damage had already been done. The company says it takes 14 months to find and train each new driver. More experienced drivers also had to be used to train the recruits. At the same time, existing drivers had to come off the roster to re-train on Class 387 and then Class 700 rolling stock, using new simulators at Three Bridges. To make matters worse, drivers also needed time out to learn changing track layouts at London Bridge.
A driver shortage on Southern Railway is harder to excuse, given the continuity of management.
In the emergency timetable introduced in July, many of the 341 services a day being cancelled come from the DOO inner-suburban metro trains in south London. These were presumably unaffected by the industrial action by RMT conductors, or their “unexpectedly high levels of sickness” that both the company and the Government said amounted to unofficial industrial action. The RMT estimates Southern was also 50 conductors short of a full team.
Filling the Sunday roster with voluntary rest day working is standard practice in the industry. Drivers on a 35-hour, four-day week get extra pay at overtime rates. In return, management can employ fewer drivers, saving money with a smaller workforce.
But the changing nature of passenger demand means that today, Sunday services on GTR are not far short of weekdays in terms of service intensity. Drivers are well paid and the employee demographic has changed. More staff have young families and increasingly value time off at a weekend.
Add to that an unusually high level of staff turnover at GTR. Chief Executive Charles Horton told the Transport Select Committee that the annual figure was currently 5.6%, compared with a historic figure of 3.4%.
