Written evidence from National Task Force (WRT 019)

 

A. Summary

 

  1. Britain’s railway continues to improve the way it responds to winter weather. We have taken steps to improve greatly the network’s resilience through technological innovation, such as extensive deployment of conductor rail heating, increased investment in treatment trains, improvements to rolling stock and investment in forecasting. Network Rail has spent over £52 million on the third rail network, and over £15 million has been spent improving fleet winter resilience. We have also introduced better processes to ensure that timetables are more resilient and that passengers and freight customers are better informed ahead of and during periods of disruption. The industry continues to work together to keep Britain moving throughout winter, and we welcome the Committee’s inquiry.

 

  1. This is a joint response by the National Task Force (NTF). The NTF is a cross industry body with senior representatives from Network Rail, Train Operating Companies, Freight Operating Companies, ATOC, DfT and ORR. It meets every four weeks with its primary focus on train service delivery.

 

B. Context

 

  1. Each season’s adverse and extreme weather presents unique challenges to the railway. Spring flooding, summer heat, autumn leaf fall and winter snow, ice and extreme cold all require an appropriate technical and organisational response. Recent winters, when there have been prolonged cold spells and periods in which heavy snow has fallen earlier than anticipated, have shown that the railway’s ability to deliver in periods of extreme cold is compromised. This problem is not unique to the railway; the same is true for other transport modes.

 

  1. Since 2009 we have made substantial improvements that we will measure ourselves against in future winters. Improvements to implementing contingency timetables, better passenger information, and technological improvements to track and trains should all substantially improve performance in adverse and extreme weather, and we are happy to be held to them. We have also done significant long term work in improving our asset knowledge and incorporating climate change into our long term planning. The winter of 2012/13, which was challenging in places if not at the level of 2009/10, provides some encouraging signs that these improvements are bearing fruit.

 

  1. We will always do everything we can to keep Britain moving. In extreme weather conditions, we consciously prioritise getting people home safely over punctuality. We also work to ensure that vital rail freight is prioritised to ensure that the supply of goods and fuel across the country is maintained. This is particularly important in prolonged cold spells when the country’s dependency on fuel for domestic heating is at its highest level. This does negatively impact punctuality as measured by PPM. We could protect punctuality by cancelling trains but have decided as an industry that ensuring passengers get home and freight gets through is more important.

 

C. 2011 Transport Select Committee Report recommendations and industry response

 

  1. The recommendations for our industry focussed on:

 

  1. The industry has developed and refined standard processes for dealing with disruption caused by winter weather over a number of years, but the Select Committee’s report and Quarmby review has spurred the industry to undertake further initiatives to improve our resilience to extreme weather and hone our response to problems when they do occur.

 

  1. We have made organisational changes. The legacy of our preparations for and working practices during the Olympic and Paralympic Games is evident in how we now work together and communicate across the industry. There are positive signs of culture change throughout the industry towards greater openness and collaboration. Related to this, we have made improvements to our passenger information processes. We know passengers depend on accurate and timely information during times when the network is under pressure, such as in extreme weather.

 

  1. Recovery from disruption is a related but different challenge. With extreme snowfall we are likely to see trains left in the wrong location or in need of repair, as well as some damage to parts of the network and possibly a flood risk from snow melting.

 

  1. Looking ahead, we recognise that the structures that we build now need to be able to withstand the climate changes that the rest of the century will throw at us, be they higher temperatures, fiercer winters or more severe rainfall and flooding. We now design our structures with this at the forefront of our plans.

 

  1. The winter of 2012/13 was long with some regions experiencing heavy snow fall. Train operator reliability during the season’s adverse weather conditions was 46% better than in 2009/10, 43% better than 2010/11 and unchanged from 2011/12 (which was a relatively benign winter) as measured by minutes per TRUST incident (TRUST is a system used to monitor the progress of trains on the network). These improvements have been achieved by stronger winter contingency planning and by implementing winter timetables earlier.

 

  1. Much of this response focuses on the third rail system south of the Thames. This is the most high-profile part of the network affected by this due to its particular vulnerability but also the level of traffic. Extreme weather can affect anywhere on the network, and particularly for freight has important impacts beyond London and Southeast commuters.

 

D. Your Questions

 

Question One - How resilient are the UK’s transport networks (including road, rail and air) to adverse winter weather?

 

  1. Many rail journeys involve other modes of transport, such as driving to the station or public transport. This means that the reliability of all modes impact on passengers. Roads in particular are important for ensuring our staff, such as signallers, are able to make it to their posts to enable trains to run safely.

 

  1. The rail industry has two specific definitions of weather other than normal:

 

Adverse weather - weather that is bad but not unusual. In winter the definitions include more than 2cm of snow in London and the southeast or 5cm elsewhere with a warning about accumulation or drift risk, 60mph winds or temperatures below -3ºC. All normal years have periods of adverse weather. During adverse weather the industry plans to run a full service but punctuality may be a few PPM points lower than on a normal day;

 

Extreme weather - rare weather that is seen once every ten or twenty years. In winter this is defined as more than 15cm snow, 70mph winds and temperatures below -7 ºC. During extreme weather the industry seeks to ensure all customer journeys are completed safely, and punctuality is not prioritised.

 

  1. Given that the last five winters have seen several spells of extreme weather, we are aware that what we consider to be extreme might in time have to be redefined as our climate changes. A cross-industry project is considering the impact of climate change and reports regularly to the NTF.

 

  1. The timing of seasonal change can present challenges when autumn lurches suddenly into winter. We may well face heavy leaf fall shortly followed by extreme snowfall in the space of a fortnight or less in some years. Having geared up for heavy leaf fall it can be a challenge to then rapidly switch to dealing with snow and ice.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: Delay minutes due to winter weather on the third rail network

 

  1. Looking at figure 1, the sharp contrast between the number of delay minutes in 2009/10 and those in 2011/12 illustrates just how big a difference in the severity of winter weather can make to the network’s performance.

 

  1. 2012/13 was a more severe winter than 2011/12. On the Sussex route the level of snowfall in 2012/13 was not far off as that in 2009/10, yet the network’s performance was far better. This is an encouraging sign that the investment and improvements made are having a positive impact.

 

  1. As noted above, Britain can experience many days of adverse weather throughout any given year.  Incidents of extreme weather are far rarer. In recent years, the UK rail network has managed to maintain an average of around 88% PPM (public performance measure, the standard measure for punctuality across Europe) on adverse weather days. This means that about 17 000 trains arrived on time across the country. We believe that this can be improved further in the short to medium term, and our aim is to eventually deliver ‘normal weather’ performance on adverse weather days.

 

  1. Given that the number of adverse weather days is much higher than the number of days of extreme weather, we believe that this focus will be of greater benefit to passengers than concentrating our efforts on dealing with rarer, extreme weather.

 

  1. Technically, if we had unlimited resource, it might be possible to build a railway that could run in all weather conditions. However, the reality is that the cost of weather-proofing the entire network for events currently predicted to happen just once every ten or twenty years is unlikely to be good value for money for the industry, for passengers or for taxpayers. Improving our ability to perform at near-normal levels in adverse weather, however, is of great benefit.

 

  1. In its last report on this issue, the Select Committee urged the DfT and the industry to look at replacing the third rail DC system with overhead AC supply. This has a considerable cost attached to it and, while we are looking at this as a long-term investment, it would be misleading for us to link directly these plans with winter weather. The benefits of converting DC to AC are much more to do with train performance and maintenance costs than with the impact it would have on performance during adverse weather.

 

Question Two - What lessons have been learned since the severe weather experienced in the winter of 2009-10? What practical changes have been made to ensure the UK is now better equipped to deal with severe weather?

 

  1. The rail industry has made very substantial changes, both technical and organisational, to our approach to winter weather since 2009/10. Much of the focus of this has been on making the third rail network south of the Thames more resilient, since this is the part of the network most severely affected by winter weather, and on improving passenger information both in general but especially during disruption.

 

  1. The railway industry’s Weather Resilience and Climate Change group, which includes Network Rail and ATOC and reports to the NTF, covers preparations for each season as well as longer-term work on improving our capability to respond to a variety of weather and climate challenges. It has developed a four-part strategy to improve how we respond to extreme weather and plan for the effects of climate change. This comprises:

 

 

i. Understand

 

  1. The Select Committee’s previous report supported further investment in weather forecasting, and we are pleased that the level of information available to us has improved. For example, the Met Office and British Geological Survey were very helpful in sharing data for research, particularly into landslides. This has led to new operating procedures being put in place in Scotland for dealing with landslides that are now going to be rolled out to those other parts of the network that are vulnerable.

 

  1. This work has also helped identify more precisely the tipping points at which various assets, both infrastructure and rolling stock, start to struggle. This, combined with more localised weather forecast information will help us deliver a more refined and targeted approach to weather resilience, for example doing extra maintenance or checks on vulnerable assets in vulnerable locations.

 

  1. Network Rail and train operators have been working with their forecaster MeteoGroup to provide better rail-specific forecasts. Better knowledge of particularly vulnerable points on the network enables us to then use our improved understanding of our assets to prepare and check key assets more thoroughly and ahead of cold weather. For the future Network Rail are considering improving this even further with their own weather stations, although no decision has yet been made on this.

 

ii Eradicate

 

  1. The railway’s ability to respond to severe winter weather has obviously been enhanced by the equipment we have invested in since 2009/10. More of the third rail network south of the Thames now has conductor rail heating, and we have capacity to treat more of the network with anti-icing fluid and de-icing fluid. Working with TOCs and FOCs, Network Rail runs empty trains through the night to prevent frost or ice forming on the conductor rail.

 

Infrastructure

 

  1. Since 2009/10, Network Rail has invested over £52 million in winter resilience for the third rail network. This includes:

 

  1. The most significant change since 2009/10 for the third rail network is the very substantial rollout of conductor rail heating. Combined with anti- and de-icing equipment, this maintains the network’s ability to power trains by keeping the conductor rail warm enough to prevent frost, ice or snow forming.

 

  1. Trains can keep going in icy conditions provided they reach approximately 30 mph. However ice or frost on the rail, which occurs every winter, can cause a train to become stuck when it stops at a station or a signal. Once one train is unable to move it blocks the line, causing substantial delays. Conductor rail heating has, therefore, been deployed across the third rail network at locations where trains have to stop and are therefore most at risk of becoming stuck.

 

  1. It was first installed between Hastings and Tonbridge, and has now been rolled out across Kent, Sussex and Wessex routes to key locations. It is used for enough distance to allow a train to get up to running speed from a standstill before going onto track that may be frosted, rather than heating the rail for the entire network.

 

  1. The Kent route is most vulnerable to problems with the third rail because of its colder climate and geography, so has the most heating installed (65 000m). The lines that carry metro-style services tend to suffer less than the rural part of the route, since traffic prevents frost forming and the temperature is slightly higher in London than in rural Kent. Sussex, a smaller route, has 37 000m of heating while Wessex, with a slightly warmer climate and far fewer vulnerable spots has just 2 000m.

 

  1. The industry is also pursuing a number of projects in research and development for future years. These include research into the effectiveness of snow blowers.

 

  1. Overall, this investment should deliver an improvement in performance in adverse weather as well as extreme weather, delivering noticeable improvements throughout every winter rather than just in the rarer extreme conditions.

 

  1. Beyond the third rail network our investment in snow ploughs and points heaters will also help deal with heavy snow, although the network is less vulnerable, and in many cases local communities are much more used to heavy snow than in Southeastern England.

 

Fleet

 

  1. As a community, fleet maintainers use the fleet Reliability Focus Forum (ReFocus) to review the previous winter’s performance, communicate progress with winter preparation, identify lessons learned and improve plans for future winters.

 

  1. 2009/10 and 2010/11 were notably bad years for fleet winter performance. Figure 2 below shows a significant dip in fleet reliability from circa 4 800 Miles per Incident to less than 3 000 Miles per Incident during severe winter weather. Figure 3 shows fleet impact minutes per 1 000 train miles increases from circa 7 minutes to in excess of 14.

 

  1. Whilst winter 2011/12 was considered mild, 2012/13 was considered comparable to winters surrounding 2010 and so demonstrates how fleet performance has improved.

 

Figure 2: Winter and Autumn performance

 

Figure 3: Winter and autumn performance

 

  1. The fleet community has a 20 point plan with a good practice guide for fleet reliability improvement which has had a section added following an extensive review in 2010-11 of winter preparations, including extreme winter recovery plans based on lessons learned from previous winters.

 

  1. This provides a check list of things maintainers should consider to ensure fleet performance in winter.  The key finding from this review was that activities to prepare vehicles for winter should be programmed into the Vehicle Maintenance Instructions so that preparation is performed in a standard manner to schedule. The majority of maintainers have now implemented this good practice and have an agreed plan to prepare vehicles which is based on previous winter’s experience.  

 

  1. Significant investment has been put into fleet winter resilience including £15m from the performance fund:

 

  1. Depot infrastructure has been improved to support maintenance in winter:

 

  1. The operations and fleet engineering community have also come together to help RSSB publish guidance for preparation and operation in winter (GE/GN8628) which includes information from the 20 point plan for fleet reliability but additionally covers elements such as weather prediction, frost and snow alerts, contingency planning, general staff guidance and preparedness for winter.

 

  1. The fleet community is also represented by ATOC on the Weather Resilience and Climate Change Steering Group. The fleet managers have produced a report identifying how weather affects fleet performance. TOCs have been asked to identify schemes in CP5 which can enhance winter resilience and long term Key Train Requirements are being developed to ensure new and overhauled rolling stock is fit for the evolving environment.

 

iii Mitigate

 

  1. Organisationally, there have been improvements since 2009/10. The Day A for Day B system for putting contingency timetables in place earlier has improved. Network Rail is now able to pre-load ‘off the shelf’ pre-prepared contingency plans to National Rail Enquiries by 20:00 the evening before service to provide timely information to passengers about amended and cancelled services that will be running the next day meeting a need expressed strongly by Passenger Focus in its response to 2009/10. 

 

  1. TOCs and Network Rail routes are working together to prepare further ‘off the shelf’ timetables in our Train Planning System to align with agreed Key Route Strategies. These will be implemented in the case of severe weather. This process was implemented successfully in January this year for South West Trains and Southern, providing accurate information on National Rail Enquiries by 17:30 in the evening, giving passengers more time to plan their next day’s travel. It should be noted that it takes a lot of resource to rewrite timetables in this way; it is a big commitment on the part of the industry.

 

  1. We have also made substantial improvements to passenger information. We recognise that this will involve a long-term culture change as well as require detailed short term work on our systems, and it is perhaps one of the most important legacies for us to come from our preparations for the 2012 Games. Information is important at all times for passengers, but it is during times when the network is not running as it should that it becomes both more important and more challenging to deliver accurate, timely and useful information to our passengers.

 

  1. Using National Rail Enquiries’ Darwin system to power front end customer information systems improves the accuracy and consistency of information into the public domain. Darwin takes in a number of data feeds from  industry systems before putting out one single version of train running information to all National Rail Enquiries channels, various apps and also some customer information screens (CIS) at stations. This will extend to all stations with CIS by end March 2015. National Rail Enquiries has been working alongside third party retailers such as The Trainline, Red Spotted Hanky and other journey planning systems, including operator websites, to ensure that passengers can get up to date information, from the journey planning system of their choice.

 

  1. Network Rail has developed plans for its managed stations to ensure that when disruption occurs all the relevant staff are in the right place and information is moving through the right channels to passengers. These plans have been shared with TOCs at these stations so all railway staff at major stations know the plan before disruption happens. In addition, Network Rail has amended the customer service training provided to staff at its managed stations and increased the emphasis placed on this area during recruitment.

 

  1. National Rail Enquiries, through the National Rail Control Centre in Doncaster, provides a ‘Core Message’ disruption feed to 13 TOC websites and disruption emails to all TOCs, therefore providing a consistent message to TOC staff and customers. National Rail Enquiries also provides TOC specific twitter services for train operators across the country, ensuring that social media users have up to date information about their journeys.

 

  1. TOCs are committed to ensuring that their staff are able, and have the tools, to keep passengers informed during disruption. They have briefed and re-briefed staff on responsibilities for passenger information during disruption (PIDD) and have adopted a more flexible approach to their use of staff during disruption; for example, the use of  Revenue Protection staff to assist in providing information during disruption. Through investment in better communications, passenger information screens, smart phones for frontline staff, information screens at train crew locations and radio microphones for station based staff TOCs are working together with Network Rail routes to provide the most up to date information for passengers. Network Rail has conducted initial benchmarking work against comparable transport providers, both in the UK and Europe on passenger information in general, and is coming out well. More in depth follow up visits are currently being planned.

 

  1. ATOC and Network Rail are also developing the industry’s new GSM-R radio network to allow TOC control centres to make direct point-to-point calls via the train radio to customers on Driver Only Operated services, using a train’s public address system.  This will ensure timely, up-to-date and accurate information is available to passengers direct from the nerve centres of operations.  It is anticipated that this development will be available in the next 12 months.

 

Freight

 

  1. Freight traffic on the network has become increasingly performance critical over time as the sector’s customer base has changed. Rail now moves more goods on a just-in-time basis than it did historically. The rail market features a significant proportion of retail goods which keep store shelves replenished for consumers. It also delivers time sensitive fuels - particularly biomass – that are critical to robustness of electricity generation, particularly during peak winter energy demand. To add resilience to the delivery of freight Network Rail has created a new national freight control with particular responsibility for pro-active management of the most critical trains and co-ordination of national freight movements across Network Rail’s Route Control boundaries.

 

  1. Contingency plans for freight have also been strengthened and the transit of freight on rail will benefit from all the infrastructure robustness improvements that benefit the movement of passengers in severe weather.

 

  1. Network Rail is also working with the Freight Train Operators to ensure the improved resilience of their traction and rolling stock during severe weather.

 

iv. Planning for the future

 

  1. As well as improving what we do now, there is also work ongoing looking at what we will need to do to mitigate the effects of climate change. This is an uncertain task since the detailed impact on the railway is not simple to predict from changes in temperature. It is, however, reasonable to expect an increase in the range of weather experienced, and this is likely to make many of challenges we face now more severe.

 

  1. In its High Level Output Specification (HLOS) for CP5 the Government required the industry to address the issue of adaptation to climate change. Network Rail has since recruited a full time specialist on climate change adaptation and has been developing a plan as part of planning for CP5. The ORR is also watching this work closely.

 

  1. The railway includes structures that are well over a century old that were not designed to cope with increasingly extreme weather. We are working across the industry to develop a long-term strategy to understand how climate change will affect these structures and the network as a whole.

 

  1. Much of the work for climate change builds on improving weather-proofing the network today. In CP4 Network Rail has worked to embed understanding of these issues into asset management and to improve performance. As part of the Asset Management Excellence Model, the weather resilience and climate change score improved from 28% to 52%. While clearly there is more to do, weather resilience and climate change are becoming embedded in the industry.

 

  1. On behalf of the industry, RSSB is managing a research project looking at climate change to show the impacts and how the sector should respond. This had input from across the rail sector. The first stage, known as adapting to extreme climate change (TRaCCA) is available.

 

Question three - How well prepared are the Government, local authorities and transport providers for adverse winter weather? What more should be done to ensure a coordinated response?

 

  1. Having had milder winters since 2009/10, the improvements we have made are yet to be fully tested nationally. The winter of 2012/13 did see some parts of the network experience weather approaching that of 2009/10, and the experience in Sussex in particular suggests that the railway will cope better in future episodes of extreme weather. With more and better equipment, the substantial investment in conductor rail heating and the work we have been doing on improving passenger information, fleet and winter equipment means we are in a better place than ever before to deal with severe weather.

 

  1. This does not mean that we are complacent or do not have further room to improve. In particular, we see scope to improve our performance in the adverse weather days that happen every year. We would still expect disruption to services on extreme weather days.

 

  1. As an industry, we are committed to keeping Britain moving in extreme weather. We have made a conscious decision to sacrifice punctuality for capacity in extreme weather, to allow as many people as possible to get home safely even if services run late as a result. This also has significant financial implications for the industry. When airports have closed we have put on as many services as possible between Scotland and London, for example, to take the extra passengers.

 

  1. This commitment is not solely about passengers. Freight services such as those carrying coal or biomass supplies to power stations become even more important during periods where people are trapped at home in cold weather or likely to need to heat their homes significantly more than usual.

 

E. Conclusions

 

  1. The rail industry is making great efforts to improve its resilience in winter weather. During extreme weather periods we continue to focus on getting as many passengers home safely as we can rather than on maintaining punctuality. Since we last appeared before the Committee on this issue, we have worked hard as an industry to improve our ability to keep the network going during winter weather, and we have changed our practices to ensure that we can respond more effectively when weather does impact on our ability to run trains.

 

  1. The rollout of conductor rail heating, special treatment trains, modifications to rolling stock and improvements in the contingency timetable process will see a substantial improvement for passengers the next time we face a winter of the same severity as 2009/10. Equally, the long-term work on passenger information and customer service will be invaluable in cases of extreme weather in the future. In extreme weather, the railway industry will always work together to ensure that passengers and freight get to their destinations if at all possible.

 

October 2013