LU detrainment dispute

That is disgraceful.

LU kill someone by instigating an unsafe procedure and their attitude is: "We'll shelve the procedure for a bit and then bring it back again".

'Cretinous' is one word that springs to mind. 'Irresponsible' and 'callous' two more.

Of course, if you simply don't care about the deaf, non English speakers, or people wearing headphones, you're quite likely to support LU. They clearly don't.

Couple of questions-
If a train is reversing, as different from stabling, it's going to leave that siding within a fairly short period. Yes? (the risk is a disruptive passenger, not an abandoned one)

If a train is to be reversed, are station staff always on-hand to tip out the train? What when they're not available?

Like many things, it seems like there are subtleties that aren't brought forward.

Far from it. This has been a desire of senior management for some time.


Senior management's view is the risk is low and they are prepared to own it.


And yet they still managed to get through this "solution" and onto the platform when a panic occurred at Holland Park.

Link to RAIB report


The procedure LU want to bring in does not involve any staff physically tipping out a train that is reversing via a siding.


Such as?

There's nothing hidden in the detail about this one. It's very simple. Currently a train reversing via a siding is physically checked to make sure its empty. LU want to remove that physical check. That's all of the detail.

Great.

So now they are just more successful at trapping a passenger in a space in which they do not wish to be. Given the fact that being intoxicated is a very good reason for missing an announcement, a half asleep drunk, determined to get out of a train, will take some containing.


How lovely for them. I bet that will be a great comfort to the family of the last person to die in one of these cost cutting experiments. And the families of any others who die in the future.

I hope that the managers responsible will be held personally liable if anyone else dies because of this (I believe a change in the law is pending to allow that). A few years in jail might help to focus the minds of others in industry who are minded to take a cavalier approach to the safety of others.

Both, to speed up reversals and remove the detrainment staff.

I did.



I'm sorry you're struggling. (Perhaps you believe the occasional death of a deaf person or a non English speaker is acceptable if it saves LU some money.)

But I would have thought it would be an easy concept to understand.

People have already died as a result of LU's actions to reduce staff, one, apparently because of this very change.

So they come up with some half baked 'safety' procedure (It has already been shown to be flawed: see post by Colin Advisor above).

Then they try and re-implement a clearly dangerous procedure.

Thank God the ASLEF have got our backs on this.

In the past there have been proposals for the T/Op to check the train is fully detrained by scanning all the saloon CCTV images on a cab monitor. One might think this a potential solution if the images give adequate coverage and image quality. Also relying on good audio and visual CIS to tell passengers to get off.
Clearly current Bakerloo trains are nowhere near any of this yet....

Is it OK for LU to implement a dangerous procedure if it only kills people (possibly frightened, confused, or drunk people) who do something stupid?


Straw man argument. Nobody suggested they did. It's just been demonstrated that they are ineffective if anyone is determined to get out of a train.

They aren't, but ultimately everything has a cost associated with it. There is no way that we can make anything 100% risk-free; all that can be done is to continue to assess risk and ensure that the situation is controlled so that to do more would be grossly disproportionate to the benefit it would provide.

I have explained all in the post I linked to previously. You might not like it, but that's the way things are.

Good stuff there on how a CCTV check would need really good quality images and coverage. I wasn't trying make a specific claim about S stock.

I think there's quite a difference between a short trip to a reversing siding where the train comes back to the station only a very few minutes later e.g. Rayners Lane, and the case of a detrainment for stabling or where the total time for the reverse is longer. There are complicating factors though, like the time of the day and propensity for passengers to be in an aggressive condition, also the ease of them still being able to get their onward connection.
I was surprised at so much 'anti' opinion about inner intercar barriers. They may not be perfect but they do add deterrence that can save at least most passengers from attempting something silly and hazardous.
I'm not operating staff and I acknowledge the issues raised as valid concerns.

Basically yes. Train operator got the door closed visual and didn't check the (poorly sighted) shunt signal.

Various factors made it worse including hearing points throw and/or a SB train leaving the siding roads, leading to anticipating signal clearance. Coupled with the very short distance to the points there was a not-insignificant derailment risk and there were suggestions that a derailment there had only been narrowly avoided on several occasions.

There are actually multiple separate, but closely related issues that need to be considered - (1) the likelihood of someone being over-carried, (2) the reaction of that person and (3) the actions available to the driver upon becoming aware of the person.

I think it is unarguable that the likelihood of someone being over-carried is greater under the new procedures than at present (for all the reasons mentioned in the thread), but that in isolation does not increase the risk to the driver as that depends on the other factors.
That majority of rail enthusiasts intentionally carried into the sidings and people arriving there accidentally should pose no physical danger to the driver, although they may be delayed changing ends if they have to explain what has happened, provide reassurance and/or deal with an emergency alarm.
The risk comes from the minority of passengers who either attempt to self-detrain and/or become violent towards the driver. In the latter case, on stock with individual cars then the connecting doors may provide some limited degree of protection and/or delay until the driver can retreat to the nearest cab and await assistance (which may or may not be close by), on walk-through stock then the cab will be the only place of safety - and depending where on the train the passenger is could be some distance away. Inappropriate comments, harassment, etc and pressure for cab rides or similar need to be considered as well as just physical violence of course.
A successful self-detrainment is almost certainly going to present the greatest risk to the passenger and the only one likely to cause a fatality. Obviously the first staff member to become aware of it will radio to get the juice off ASAP, but the time taken to become aware is very much a how long is a piece of string question. Unsuccessful attempts could lead to frustration or even panic which could be taken out on the driver and/or lead to passenger injury and/or damage to the train.

Management will have done risk assessments and concluded that the likelihood of each of the possible outcomes occurring is low enough, and the risk of fatality or (serious) injury (to passengers and staff) low enough that the overall risk is acceptable. That doesn't necessarily make the risk assessments correct - the likelihood of something occurring is always going to require some assumptions and (educated) guesswork, especially when the likelihood will change as a result of whatever it is you are risk assessing. If the people doing the risk assessment are basing their assessments on faulty or incomplete data (for whatever reason) then the outcomes will also be wrong (garbage in, garbage out). For example I was reading something recently where a risk assessment was done on the basis of a condition happening on average once every 10 years, whereas in reality it happened multiple times per week but wasn't being reported up the chain.

Finally, risk assessments are not the only criterion by which a proposed change should be judged. Personally, I value the human checking each vehicle, having been woken up at Epping multiple times and on one occasion at Bank DLR so lost in a good book that I was completely oblivious to the train having arrived and other passengers leaving.

And herein lies the issue with management's risk assessments for this.

They say that based on recorded data, overcarries are a rare occurrence. Well they would be! Trains are currently physically checked and anyone remaining board is asked to leave.

For whatever reason (likely a member of staff not doing their job diligently) the odd one does slip through the net - indeed it happened at Barking on a H&C train last night - and I suspect it is these that management are basing their risk assessment on.

What they should be doing is observing some real world detrainments and noting how many people have to be asked to leave a train. Afterall it is those that will be overcarried under the new procedure. I can pretty much guarantee that every single H&C train at Barking will have at least two or three people sat on it that the detrainment staff have to ask to leave.

A couple of Saturdays back we were tipping out at Becontree in relation to the introduction of CBTC. I was an assisting I/O on the platform for drivers but I also helped the detrainment staff tip out the first couple of cars. Every single train had people still sitting on them despite my colleagues making announcements that train was terminating and the displays showing not in service. Several "customers" swore at us aggressively and one in particular threw a glass bottle which smashed on the platform. I'm sure we were all safe according to the risk assessment though.

I can also tell many stories of tipping out at Parsons Green and having to kick people off that are completely oblivious to the fact the train has terminated. And although they're a slightly better class of "customer" at the west end of the line, I've still been sworn at aggressively on many occasions here too.

Note that these "customers" swear aggressively when being asked to leave a train in a platform. Now imagine they realise they've ended up in a siding and driver comes walking past whilst changing ends. They make enquiries and are informed it will be 10 minutes (or maybe longer) before they are able to leave the train (ie, once it gets back to a platform), and that will be the wrong platform for the direction they are travelling in. Lets hope it doesn't progress beyond just swearing aggressively. On the plus side, LU's risk assessment says it'll all be ok so no need to worry.

Now let me add in my own personal experience. Some of you may recall I was assaulted at Barking back in 2011. I was knocked unconscious on the platform by a couple of "customers" after they held the doors open on my train. To this day I have little memory of the incident other than having made several PA announcements, it was a mexican stand off. I left my cab to either find out if there was an issue or to reason with them to let go of the doors and was met with some aggressive swearing. I only know what happened next cos the CCTV footage ended up on BBC's Crimewatch program.

As a result of my incident I had a fair amount of time off work, a SPAD following an incident at Upminster where I was followed by an aggressive "customer" (caused flashbacks of the Barking incident) and had to have two bouts of counselling at LU Occupational Health.

You can imagine why I might be personally be concerned at the thought of this proposal, and why some of my colleagues on the District that remember my incident may also be concerned. Management can wave all the risk assessments they like, it doesn't make us feel any better.

I'd previously only been considering the passenger side of this (since ASLEF were dealing with the driver side).

But the idea that LU management are prepared to risk the health and safety of their staff in this way is all but incomprehensible.

They may be prepared to accept the death of a passenger every couple of years as 'unavoidable collateral damage' to their cost savings, but if this hare brained scheme goes ahead it appears that there will be instances where drivers have to deal with trapped customers on a regular basis, and it's almost certain that some of these will result in assault at least, and battery at worst.

The thought of some small, slightly built, driver having to deal with a couple of drunk louts whilst trapped inside a train is not pleasant.

If ASLEF cave into this demand, I hope it will be on the basis that the first time a driver suffers physical injury (whilst the managers are safely sitting behind their desks), everyone that signed off on this is unceremoniously booted  out of LU (with no pension).

If they are that confident of their 'risk assessment', they should have to problem agreeing to that.