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I was in a similar situation on a London train (different line) this month. The problem is that the operators genuinely do not know how long things are going to

I was in a similar situation on a London train (different line) this month. The problem is that the operators genuinely do not know how long things are going to take. I agree that the TTR is obviously unacceptable, but the whole service is run on a shoestring budget and is constantly cancelled or late, so there isn't really the capital available to do better.

bombcar 3y ago
When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Whether that is telling passengers that busses will be there in two hours or whatever, you work it out. If something like this happens in a winter storm, it can become deadly.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  > When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. Most of the time it's just that someone has dropped their phone on the track and trains have been asked to stop so that it can be retrieved. Worst case scenario management is expensive and dangerous (e.g. walking on tracks) because the net risk or net cost is beneficial in the face of a bad situation. It is a good thing that we don't jump straight to these sorts of solutions as it would be in general more dangerous and our services would cost even more. Now, is 3 hours too long? Yeah probably. But these sorts of issues happen maybe once a year per line, it's hard to know when you're in one.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. While this is true, this would seem to be one of those cases where the people in charge should have known it was a worst case scenario fairly early on. In which case they should have activated the worst case scenario fallback plan much earlier. In other words, it's not a matter of treating every scenario as worst case, but of quickly spotting the ones that are so fallback plans can be activated much sooner to avoid stranding people for hours. > It's hard to know when you're in one. The passengers and the driver of that train obviously didn't know--but somebody knew fairly early on that this wasn't going to be a quick fix, and that somebody should be responsible for communicating that knowledge to all the affected trains and telling their drivers to evacuate because this isn't going to be fixed any time soon. The big question I would be asking is why that wasn't done and why it isn't standard operating procedure in cases like this.
  - addicted 3y ago
    I’d imagine when you’re minutes away from losing auxiliary power without any idea when main power will return that’s an easy trigger for worst case actions. Here it seems people were waiting 45 mins to an hour after that happened.
- midasuni 3y ago
  What winter storms in london would make a powerless train deadly in a few hours?
- vkou 3y ago
  If we approached life with a worst-case scenario mindset, I wouldn't leave my house without first putting on full body armor with steel plate inserts, and a bomb-squad helmet. Most of the time, it's not going to be a 3-hour stop, and anyone trying to walk the tracks is likely to create a safety problem for themselves and other trains. At the time of the stop, if nobody knows how bad the outage is likely to be, there is no point in time when making the call to have the passengers all walk out is the right thing to do.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
Transport for London has a budget of over 10 billion pounds, how is that a 'shoestring budget'?
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?
  - drexlspivey 3y ago
    TFL is actually profitable, you could google that in less time that it would take to write this comment, these wild hypotheticals are just noise
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      uxp8u61q's point is not a wild hypothetical, and is a valid point regardless of the profit status of TFL. - If your budget is $10 but it costs $100, that's shoestring. - If your budget is $10 but it costs $1, that's not shoestring. You need to know both values; shoestring is relative.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      TfL was profitable pre-covid. It is not currently profitable because remote work and such have lowered ridership, only running a surplus this year due to government support.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    > Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to? Other large cities with comparable transport infrastructure? You, or any passing reader, can just spend 30 seconds with a search engine and find dozens of papers, reports, presentations, etc... doing this kind of financial comparison.
samus 3y ago
That doesn't justify letting passengers sit in the dark for 3 hours. Most riders probably expect to last their trip half an hour, with the usual variance already factored in.
martinald 3y ago
What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included further upgrades on the GWML), and completely new trains on nearly every service were bought (at extreme cost). There must have been >£5bn spent on this line in the last decade. Per mile, it is probably one of the best funded lines in the world. GWML is having constant maintenance problems. I don't think this is a budget problem, I think it's NR totally dropping the ball on keeping on top of stuff. NR is extremely poorly run and wasteful; I know many people who used to work for them but left to rejoin via a subcontractor (at a hugely increased cost to NR), to do the exact same job, because NRs payscales are extremely concrete so they constantly lose vital people to this - this isn't a budget problem as they're actually paying way way more for the same staff this way. Subcontractors are also eating them alive because they have no senior, experienced management (see above problem). You have people basically straight out of uni "project managing" subcontractors for 7 or 8 figure contracts, completely clueless.
- YawningAngel 3y ago
  From my perspective as a passenger, trains constantly being delayed or cancelled due to problems with the track suggests the track is not being adequately maintained. It could be the case that there is sufficient money available and it is being poorly spent. I am not inclined to think this because there is a general trend of chronically underfunding public services, but I don't have specific knowledge about national rail. Incidentally, I don't think NR is free to set its own pay scales, so it may well be the case that the money wastage you describe is mandated by the same government that funds it.

bombcar 3y ago

When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Whether that is telling passengers that busses will be there in two hours or whatever, you work it out. If something like this happens in a winter storm, it can become deadly.

danpalmer 3y ago
> When you have a situation like this you run a worst case scenario and put in effect immediately. Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. Most of the time it's just that someone has dropped their phone on the track and trains have been asked to stop so that it can be retrieved. Worst case scenario management is expensive and dangerous (e.g. walking on tracks) because the net risk or net cost is beneficial in the face of a bad situation. It is a good thing that we don't jump straight to these sorts of solutions as it would be in general more dangerous and our services would cost even more. Now, is 3 hours too long? Yeah probably. But these sorts of issues happen maybe once a year per line, it's hard to know when you're in one.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Almost all of the time it's not a worst case scenario though. While this is true, this would seem to be one of those cases where the people in charge should have known it was a worst case scenario fairly early on. In which case they should have activated the worst case scenario fallback plan much earlier. In other words, it's not a matter of treating every scenario as worst case, but of quickly spotting the ones that are so fallback plans can be activated much sooner to avoid stranding people for hours. > It's hard to know when you're in one. The passengers and the driver of that train obviously didn't know--but somebody knew fairly early on that this wasn't going to be a quick fix, and that somebody should be responsible for communicating that knowledge to all the affected trains and telling their drivers to evacuate because this isn't going to be fixed any time soon. The big question I would be asking is why that wasn't done and why it isn't standard operating procedure in cases like this.
- addicted 3y ago
  I’d imagine when you’re minutes away from losing auxiliary power without any idea when main power will return that’s an easy trigger for worst case actions. Here it seems people were waiting 45 mins to an hour after that happened.
midasuni 3y ago
What winter storms in london would make a powerless train deadly in a few hours?
vkou 3y ago
If we approached life with a worst-case scenario mindset, I wouldn't leave my house without first putting on full body armor with steel plate inserts, and a bomb-squad helmet. Most of the time, it's not going to be a 3-hour stop, and anyone trying to walk the tracks is likely to create a safety problem for themselves and other trains. At the time of the stop, if nobody knows how bad the outage is likely to be, there is no point in time when making the call to have the passengers all walk out is the right thing to do.

MichaelZuo 3y ago

Transport for London has a budget of over 10 billion pounds, how is that a 'shoestring budget'?

uxp8u61q 3y ago
If the cost for maintaining the infrastructure in 10x that, then it's a shoestring budget. You have to compare the budget to a baseline, you can't just evaluate it as an absolute. Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to?
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  TFL is actually profitable, you could google that in less time that it would take to write this comment, these wild hypotheticals are just noise
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    uxp8u61q's point is not a wild hypothetical, and is a valid point regardless of the profit status of TFL. - If your budget is $10 but it costs $100, that's shoestring. - If your budget is $10 but it costs $1, that's not shoestring. You need to know both values; shoestring is relative.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    TfL was profitable pre-covid. It is not currently profitable because remote work and such have lowered ridership, only running a surplus this year due to government support.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  > Yes, £10B looks like a big number, but what do you compare it to? Other large cities with comparable transport infrastructure? You, or any passing reader, can just spend 30 seconds with a search engine and find dozens of papers, reports, presentations, etc... doing this kind of financial comparison.

samus 3y ago

That doesn't justify letting passengers sit in the dark for 3 hours. Most riders probably expect to last their trip half an hour, with the usual variance already factored in.

martinald 3y ago

What are you talking about with "shoestring budget?". Over £2bn was spent on electrifying the GWML, nearly £20bn spent on the Elizabeth line (which included further upgrades on the GWML), and completely new trains on nearly every service were bought (at extreme cost). There must have been >£5bn spent on this line in the last decade. Per mile, it is probably one of the best funded lines in the world. GWML is having constant maintenance problems. I don't think this is a budget problem, I think it's NR totally dropping the ball on keeping on top of stuff. NR is extremely poorly run and wasteful; I know many people who used to work for them but left to rejoin via a subcontractor (at a hugely increased cost to NR), to do the exact same job, because NRs payscales are extremely concrete so they constantly lose vital people to this - this isn't a budget problem as they're actually paying way way more for the same staff this way. Subcontractors are also eating them alive because they have no senior, experienced management (see above problem). You have people basically straight out of uni "project managing" subcontractors for 7 or 8 figure contracts, completely clueless.

YawningAngel 3y ago
From my perspective as a passenger, trains constantly being delayed or cancelled due to problems with the track suggests the track is not being adequately maintained. It could be the case that there is sufficient money available and it is being poorly spent. I am not inclined to think this because there is a general trend of chronically underfunding public services, but I don't have specific knowledge about national rail. Incidentally, I don't think NR is free to set its own pay scales, so it may well be the case that the money wastage you describe is mandated by the same government that funds it.