Southern Trains - The Way Forward?

Actually, now, it's "Southern No Trains"

Without going into the merits/pitfalls of DOO*, as crusty54 says, it's not a great fit for transferring wholly to TfL. Indeed, most of the London area services already operate DOO and so are unaffected by this whole debate (other than the driver's walkout and southern's general inability to do anything properly).

And FWIW, both the 377s (which this debate is centred on) and the 700s (brand new trains that are due to be DOO only) have at least one guards panel per side per carriage.

edit: Also, not going to touch the role of the government in this debacle with a 10ft pole on this forum!

*Driver only operated

"Well Jeremy, what do you think of that? Oh sorry you can't as they put money into your party."

Mr. ASLEF, answer the following:
1) How many members directly involved in this dispute?
2)How many voted in your ballot?
3)How many of those who voted, voted to strike?
4) What was the percentage of those involved directly who voted to strike?
5)How many of your members are guards on the London U/G?

Any time in the next "ten years" will do

www.aslef.org.uk/information/163030/aslef_drivers__southern_ballot/

1) From the number of ballot papers issued there are 937 ASLEF members on Southern
2) 722 voted, 77%
3) 630 voted to strike (87.3% of those who voted), 690 voted for action short of a strike aka overtime ban
4) 630 out of 937 is 67.2%
5) ASLEF is a driver only union and has never had guards as members.  There are no guards on the Tube, they were withdrawn after a settlement was negotiated with the unions, either replaced with platform mounted CCTV or with in cab CCTV as new rolling stock was introduced.  The last train to operate with a guard was on the Northern Line on Friday 7th January 2000, the guard is now a driver on the Central Line and he's my local ASLEF rep

Any more questions?

I think it took them a few attempts to get the ballot done properly for whatever reason. After the Gatwick Express industrial action ballot (and voiding of the results) they had to be absolutely sure of the validity of the ballot, hence the quite frankly ridiculous basis of appeal by GTR of "it restricts the freedom of movement of EU citizens because of Gatwick airport rail station" (or something to that effect)

We can forget about takeovers and devolution. Mr Grayling will never devolve anything to TfL while under Labour control at City Hall.

The dispute is of the government's creation. That much is clear. They will continue to bankroll GTR as franchisee for as long as it takes to "win" (however they define victory). The fact that passengers, families and businesses are suffering hugely appears to be an acceptable cost in order to defeat / weaken the trade unions. It takes something to get ASLEF to go on strike given their long term record since privatisation is actually to settle rather than strike. It should come as no surprise that the unions have responded as they have.

I have a decent amount of experience of platform / train interfaces on LU and I certainly have some concerns, based on feedback from drivers on GTR, that there are genuine safety issues with the plans to eradicate guards without compensating investment in and high quality maintenance of the equipment that surveils and feeds back images of the platforms at GTR stations. In the context of burgeoning growth on the GTR network then there is a need to keep on top of the risks. There are lots of ways to do this that may or may not involve guards. The lack of any commentary on this central issue from any of the parties suggests they either don't care about it or there are some inconvenient truths in discussing the real issues.

From Mark Colombini, ASLEF executive committee member for south London and the south-east yesterday.
 
"What they are looking to do under driver-only operation is to transfer those duties to the driver so the driver would have full responsibility for dispatching the train. How that would work is that there are bodyside cameras that view down the side of the train and the driver would have to view down a set of monitors to check all the doors.

There are issues relating to that because, particularly with very long formations of coaches, effectively 24 sets of doors, for the driver to do that in a short period of time. The images produced by the bodyside cameras are really unreliable, particularly in poor lighting, whether that be at night or just dusk or when it’s overcast, particularly in the rain – even light drizzle has caused some of the images to be really poor. That’s quite clearly an unsafe method of operation."

Certainly not - on SWT it is possible to have one platform showing an "up" train as on time despite having been scheduled to depart over an hour ago, and the opposite platform shown as expecting a "down" train expected in five minutes, when all the time the rolling stock supposed to operate both services has been standing in a third platform for the last hour.

Personally, I see the value in having two (minimum) safety-trained staff on board every train that regularly spends more than about 5 minutes between stations. Whatever their normal duties the second member of staff should be competent to undertake the following where needed:

• safely dispatch the train in the event of technology failure (including overruns of platform-mounted cameras/monitors)
• give basic first aid
• arrange for the attendance of emergency services at or between stations
• check the welfare of the driver (e.g. following an incident)
• observe any signs of the driver being impaired (e.g. because of fatigue, illness, drugs/alcohol, etc), with the authority to prevent the driver driving if necessary
• protect the train following an incident (place short circuiting devices, track circuit clips, detonators, etc)
• assist the driver when asked to examine the line, especially at night/in poor visual conditions (particularly important in stock with gangways that restrict the driver's lateral vision)

Even if these tasks do not need to be regularly undertaken the safety benefits of having someone available to do them when they are required should be obvious. For metro services with frequent station stops the needs are less, but there should (imo) be one or more members of staff at every such station able to dispatch every train that calls there if technology fails, etc.

You will not be surprised that that pretty much aligns with the feedback I've read in other places. Some aspects also "chime" with issues I was aware of on LU but clearly LU didn't have train mounted cameras back then nor does it operate trains with 12 carriages. Obviously some LU formations do have a very large number of doors though. For me the biggest issue is the fact that ongoing growth means risks will change over time and also spread as people travel at different times in larger numbers than before. This poses problems for all operators as well as those responsible for infrastructure. At what point does it become ridiculous to tolerate long trains on curved platforms with enormous numbers trying to board and alight from those trains (e.g. Clapham Junction and bits of East Croydon) given the associated safety risks? Who then picks up the cost of a very expensive rebuild? The DfT are acting as if a shift in responsibility between guards and drivers "fixes" this forever and it quite clearly doesn't. The issue never goes away.

One point that I don't think has been mentioned, but which I find interesting.


It has been outlined above that the cameras/screens don't give a good enough image to safely despatch the train and this is the thrust of the argument put forward by the unions. However, I'm yet to be convinced that a (perhaps poor) shot of one carriage is worse than the eyes of one human being ten carriage lengths away.

If cameras/screens were provided to Guards and the TOC insisted that they are used by a Guard in place of an actual look along the train, would the unions still complain that they are unsafe - or would they embrace this technology as making the railways safer.

When I Guard trains in the Talyllyn, if the train is anything longer than three bogie carriages I don't give the Right Away from standing by the van, I walk partway up the train; there's no way I can be satisfied that the front door of a five carriage train is securely shut when I'm standing at the back. The risk of me falling over trying to get into the moving Guard's Van is worth it for knowing that the passengers won't fall out of the leading compartment.

What I cannot understand is why that is a problem, on the underground as soon as the picture is not satisfactory and the driver cannot see the whole train looking back from the cab the train does not move without assistance.

To move the train while unsure it is safe to do so renders the driver liable to prosecution. This must be the same on the main line so if drivers followed the rules DOO would be unworkable anyway.

I think you've got your figures the wrong way round. And it's not over 30 years, it's over 10 years. I personally found 8 dragging incidents during a cursory glance through the RAIB reports archive, and 7 of the 8 were DOO. On the 8th one the guard was found to have been grossly negligent and a prosecution followed.

There's a few things that a guard standing on a platform can do that CCTV can't, one of which is hear someone screaming "STOP!!!!" Another is that they can see the actions of people out of line of sight of a camera and react to their reactions.



--EDIT--
"it restricts the freedom of movement of EU citizens because of Gatwick airport rail station" (or something to that effect)"

Southern taking the Union to court using a piece of EU regulation... that's going to cause Daily Mail readers to go into meltdown-they won't know what side to take!