Chairman's Blog

Happily at present we only see rail replacement buses planned for late evenings every 6th week. Not at all would be even better, but it appears Network Rail have a contractual right to demand these.

Less often, we have unplanned (emergency) services when things go wrong. The most recent occurrence was on 17 February when a freight train broke down at Knutsford.

We recently had our 8-weekly (though it’s the first for 3 months) Mid-Cheshire Rail Replacement Bus QIT (Quality Improvement Team) meeting.

Members of the QIT are Northern’s Bus Co-ordinator from York, Northern’s Station Manager for our line and a senior manager from First Rail Support (FRS), the company who source the replacment buses, as well as me from MCRUA.

For the first time in any of these meetings we found very little to talk about. Given that we (MCRUA) have been working away trying to persuade the train company (First North Western, followed by Northern Rail) to get these services right since 2002, we decided to give ourselves a “pat on the back” whilst we had the chance. Hopefully, it won’t come back to bite us!

Over the last 2 years or so, we’ve:

- reviewed the journey times and updated the timings to reflect realistic journey times for planned buses

- introduced Route Guides for the operators. FRS have distributed these guides to operators that cover the route and the operator has also had to sign to say that a) that they have received the guides and b) that that their drivers sign the route

- introduced bus buddies – a new concept for Northern in deploying customer service assistance on difficult lines of route – they travel on the buses to check platforms and provide direction to drivers (who had complained for years they couldn’t drive and read maps all at once)

- introduced destination labels (after I brought some examples back showing how SNCF do it!) These were trialled on our line first for pre-planned work. It’s pleasing to know that FRS now send out destination labels to all operators that are working on Northern’s pre-planned weekly bus operation

- worked out point to point timings for unplanned (emergency) buses. FRS put together the timings for both the all stations and the semi fast services on our line. They’ve subsequently also produced point to point timings for all other Northern lines of route. These timings are now available on the FRS website and all Northern staff, as well as Virgin at Stockport and ATW at Chester have access to this website and know about it

- revised the (Unplanned) Emergency Rail Replacement Guide – the Mid Cheshire route was agreed with both elements of Northern, FRS and me. It was then provided to both Northern and FRS Controls, who were briefed last January, and

- the timings are now shown on the National Rail Enquiries website, being first used on 17 February when a freight train broke down at Knutsford blocking both directions until rescued 3 hours later.

Given that (lots of fingers crossed!) we seem to have just about everything covered apart from overall industry problems like intending passengers often not being aware of when trains are planned to be replaced by buses which ATOC is supposed to be progressing, we’re not going to have our next (8-weekly) meeting until June.

I thought you would find it useful to know what we’ve been up to.

Personally, I would like to thank those involved from Northern as well as FRS for listening carefully to our users’ concerns, and managing to improve the service provided so dramatically from such a very poor place.