20.02.13
Railway resilience ‘deteriorating’ in bad weather – ORR
Network Rail must do more to improve the resilience of Britain’s railways in bad weather, the ORR has stated.
The latest Monitor – the quarterly analysis of Network Rail performance – found that while performance is strong in Scotland, with effective planning and coordination between Network Rail and the TOCs, performance is deteriorating on key parts of the network in England and Wales.
Heavy snow or rain can significantly affect performance, and more must be done to improve this, the ORR’s report warns.
The report also highlighted areas of poor management, including basic operational planning mistakes causing delays and over-runs of engineering works during the festive period.
Richard Price, ORR chief executive, said: “Passengers need to be able to rely on the railways to get them from ‘A to B’ throughout the whole year. ORR is concerned that the company is losing touch with key performance targets as passengers again suffered poor performance during challenging weather conditions.
“We are absolutely determined to see the resilience of Britain’s railways improve, especially in bad weather.
“ORR will be reviewing whether the company can currently work and plan better, and the Governments’ proposed significant investment of £37.5bn from 2014-19 will enable Network Rail to deliver a railway that can stand up to conditions like heavy rain and snow in the future.”
Network Rail chief executive David Higgins said: “We recognise that this has been a difficult period for passengers, with disruption on many lines due to extreme weather.
“The damage that extreme weather can do to a Victorian rail network which was neither designed nor built for such challenges is clear. Whole lines were closed by flooding and tracks came close to being washed away by rivers which burst their banks. On the worst affected parts of the network, torrential rain caused up to sixty landslides in a single day.
“This has been a wake up call for the whole industry, which we ignore at our peril.”
He added that the company pledged to do more in the future, including better investment in their assets.
Alan Price, ORR director of railway performance, told RTM: “Weather resilience certainly is a worry. Yes, we did have big weather issues over Christmas, and a lot of people worked very hard in some ridiculous conditions to get the railway running – and we do applaud that. Yes the weather is beyond [Network Rail's] control, but in terms of them doing everything they can, I want to make sure they don’t score the own goals that bring their performance back down again. There were some poor examples of that over Christmas: where they booked possessions and tried to run electric trains with no overhead line turned on, for example. Their systems should be robust enough to make sure those things don’t happen, and impact on the passengers as they did.”
Our full interview with Price appears in our April-May 2013 edition. Make sure to get your copy by visiting: www.railtechnologymagazine.com/subscribe
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(Top photo: Library image. Middle: Flooding in the north east. Below: Recent landslips caused by bad weather.)
