Sadiq says...

Via Twitter...

On FCC problems - can people please email details of complaints/experiences to rail@dft.gsi.gov.uk - thanks.

Extra-ordinary - is there no limit to the Department's nano-management?!

Presumably DafT has set up an entire shadow organisation to deal with customer complaints about delays on FuCC?

Back to the Wolmar Question: 'What are TOCs for?'

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

DfT want to know about people's 'experiences' of FCC?

Not exactly empirical is it?

UPDATE: This, via Twitter, from cbuchanancubed...

Why doesnt DfT just look at all the blogs/comments etc on the internet - but no you have to send them all in again.

UPDATE: This from Jumbo...

With First Group winning the Business of the Year award at the recent Eversholt Rail Business Awards and FCC being presented with an award for their communications skills, it seems hard to credit that the number of complaints against FCC warrants the DfT's attention.

Do the DfT know something that we don't?

Surely the people who made such prestigious awards to First were not taking the pxss?

Lord Adonis resides in parallel universe

This surreal response from the Noble Lord, given in the Upper House yesterday:

Lord Dykes (Liberal Democrat)
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of suggestions for gross cost contracts for future rail franchises.

Lord Adonis (Secretary of State, Department for Transport; Labour)
Gross cost contracts would place all revenue risks of passenger train operations with the public sector and would require the Government to be more greatly involved in specification and monitoring of all elements of rail operations, including the setting of fares, timetable development, revenue protection, service quality and marketing activities.

We do not believe that government involvement in such an approach would benefit users or franchisees. The Government believe that the ability of private sector operators to attract more passengers, grow the market, improve the service and receive the revenue benefits of such actions is a key element of the current franchise model and one of the reasons for the significant growth delivered in recent years. Our discussions with operators have generally supported this view.

Using your skill and judgment you may care to guess which one of these the Government is currently NOT directly involved with:

- Setting of fares (DOR recast of East Coast fares at the Noble Lord's behest )

- Timetable development (Adonis telling NR to path a sub 4hr London - Edinburgh service)

- Revenue protection (DafT proposals to increase penalty fares and demanding station gating)

- Service quality (Adonis specifies catering on train and at stations)

and marketing activities.

The clue is marketing...

But Adonis has had a jolly good go at pushing the All Line Rover, despite ATOC's best endeavours...

UPDATE: This from The Tailor....

The noble lord DOES get involved in marketing.

I am reliably informed that he personally approved the East Coast newspaper advert, which appeared just before Christmas, that sought to capitalise on the threatened BA strike by proclaiming the rail alternative.

All very laudable, but surely not in his job description?

PS The 'arm's length' DOR offices at Marsham Street are literally an 'arm's length' from m'Lord's very own throne room.

A case for Hall and Green!

Telegrammed by The Master
Plymouth may be home to the Royal Navy, but the Spar shop on the railway station certainly isn't home to any wine buffs.

As the chiller cabinet contains bottles of Merlot - a red wine!

Perhaps Lord DafT Vader will ask his 'stationers' to demand that Network Rail address this epicurean faux pas (once they've taken direct control of the station)?

DafT's abysmal PPM

The Commons' Public Accounts Committee has published its report into the Department of Transport: Letting of Rail Franchises 2005-2007.

Predictably the media focused upon the PAC's call to make discounted fares more easily available to those without internet access.

However, as those without internet access won't be reading the Eye probably not worth focusing on this overly much.

Of greater interest is the criticism the PAC reserved for the Government's endless spin over the alleged 1,300 vehicles the department keeps promising the network.

The PAC report stated:

The Department promises of bringing 1,300 new rail carriages into service by 2014 look over-optimistic.

There are only 423 on order so far, and another 150 carriages are the subject of negotiations. It takes 30 to 36 months to mobilise the supply chain, suggesting deliveries running into 2011–2012 for the current work in progress.

If Daft were an owner group, and this piss-poor rate of delivery were translated into a Public Performance Measure, it would forfeit its franchises.

Now there's an idea!

Duck Soup

A question for My Lord Adonis.

Why is catering on trains a 'commercial decision for train operators' when, following the Pilgrimage of Grice, catering provision at stations is now to be determined by a government minister?

Particularly as station catering is nothing to do with the franchised operators, being mostly in the hands of Select Service Partners.

Would the minister care to clarify?

UPDATE: This from Sir Humphrey Beeching...

The Treasury is particularly pleased with this unfunded commitment.

Buy paint shares NOW!

Who would be a train operator on today's railway.

Obviously the "thinly capitalised equity profiteers of the worst kind" cannot now even be trusted to run their own stations without some apparatchik of the state sticking their oar in.

Comrade the Lord Adonis today unveiled his latest big idea - "Station Czars".

“I have asked Sir Peter Hall and Chris Green to look at how we can get the basics right as well as to consider the broader role of stations in the future” said Adonis.

Sir Peter Hall is currently the 76 year old President of the Town and Country Planning Association, whilst Chris Green, 65, is a non Executive Director of Network Rail.

How clever of this tired administration to select two men so obviously at the cutting edge of twenty first century retail and facilities management thinking.

No matter.

Messrs Hall & Green, Stationers by appointment to Lord DafT Vader, has a certain ring to it!

On the up-side, shares in Dulux have rocketed on the expectation of an immanent return to the Red Lamp-post Railway.

UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...

Given that Adonis described British Rail in the Guardian as "a national joke in terms of quality and reliability" one wonders what is the point of inviting an old-BR retread like Chris Green to be his station czar.

Surely he should appoint some thrusting dynamic new-railway-man, in touch with today's demanding rail travellers like, err... Richard Bowker or Brian Souter or Moir Lockhead or, why not Sir customer focus himself, Richard 'Beardie' Branson?

Odd that when Adonis is in a hole he turns to someone who ran not one, but two "national jokes".

"Railways, like any other industry, have got to modernise." Adonis told the Guardian.

So that's back to the future then!