I’ve written before about some of Connex’s failures as a rail network operator. Today, however, I have mixed feelings. I’m talking about their latest trick to avoid contractual obligations, as reported in The Age Online this morning.
In summary, they are dodging the performance requirements in their contract by running services that officially do not exist. How does this work? Well the Department of Infrastructure dictates that a certain portion of scheduled train services must run on time. The problem?
- The rail network is extremely crowded in peak periods.
- Adding more trains makes it hard to keep all services on time.
- Late trains equate to more fines for Connex, and unhappy customers.
Their solution?
- Axe a few services here and there.
- It is then easier to ensure remaining services run as scheduled.
- Insert extra, unscheduled services whenever possible between the official, scheduled services.
- Trains are less crowded, scheduled services run on time, and (almost) everybody wins.
The obvious downside here is that there are less reliable services, so commuters that were depending on the axed services to get to work will be unhappy. Some of these people may have to catch earlier trains. But I imagine the number significantly inconvenienced by this would be pretty low.
The other problem is that the practice seems a bit dishonest; Connex still tells customers informally that there are services running at about x time on most days, but because they’re not officially scheduled, there are no penalties for late or missing services.
But is it really all that bad? At least they’re not pretending that these services are reliable. And yes, they can only do it because of a loophole in their contract, but if they’ve come up with a model that works better for customers, should we really care? The effect of this strategy is that officially scheduled services will be more reliable, and Connex will be able to make better use of the tracks, dynamically allocating extra services wherever possible. This should reduce crowding at peak times, and actually get commuters where they want to go faster.
As little as I like to admit it, I think they’re really onto something here. So what can I say? Bravo, you sneaky bastards!
