Why do crew shortages cause one in 10 train delays?

[timelesstable]

A National report but look where First Trans-Pennine Express are but for balance Virgin East Coast had the lowest (best) rate

Crew shortages cause almost one in 10 delays and cancellations on Britain's railways, the BBC has learned.

They accounted for 9.42% of 1.93 million delays and cancellations from 1 April 2013 to 12 December 2015, figures from the Office of Rail and Road show.

Govia Thameslink Railway - which operates Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express services - had the highest rate, at 13.59%.

London Midland and First Transpennine Express were the next worst on 13.53%.

Virgin East Coast had the lowest rate, at 2.63%, while Virgin West Coast's was 3.69%.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35293307

So just another BBC rant or is there a significant underlying problem?

Just before Christmas Southern Rail offered an explanation for crew shortages. Disruptions elsewhere led to staff being "displaced", it said.

"However, one of the underlying factors is that sometimes we do not have enough train crew to carry out both day-to-day operations," the company added, "and the large amount of training required to enable long-term passenger service improvements, without asking train crew to work rest days."

[deerfold]

That Period looks like it contains the work to rule from Thameslink staff staff when they weren't volunteering for Sunday working.

Thameslink staff don't have to work Sundays. The service is usually covered by overtime.

[deerfold]

Of course you could say 81.6% of delays and cancellation are not caused by crew shortage. Why waste money focusing on that?

[stevieinselby]

It's typical nonsense rock-bottom journalism ... here's something that looks like a big number, it must be a big story ... but that's all we seem to get these days. There's no money in doing it properly, clickbait is both cheaper to write and more lucrative.

10% of cancellations and delays are because of staff shortages ... so what? That means 90% of problems are caused by something else. But guess what ... all these problems have to be caused by (or at least attributed to) something. Even if one TOC had only ten trains delayed over the whole year, and one of those was because half their staff were off with flu, that would still show up as 10% of problems being caused by staff shortages. Without any frame of reference around what proportion of services were disrupted because of staff shortages, these numbers are meaningless.

Does the fact that Grand Central scored a very low proportion of services disrupted by staff shortages mean that they are great because the employ enough staff, or does it mean they are crap because they had hundreds of cancellations where the train broke down? Are GoVia shite because they had lots of trains cancelled because of not having enough drivers, or are they great because they've got every other aspect of the service sewn up? I don't know, and this data won't tell us. Bin it, burn it, it isn't worthy of being on the Beeb.

[Burnside]

What hasn't helped Northern lately is the problems on the S&C line.

When the line was still open north of Appleby, trains were being delayed waiting for the single line section heading north, arriving at Carlisle up to an hour late and the already delayed departure back towards Leeds being held up further as the crew were due their breaks.

[northerner]

Feb 12, 2016 16:10:10 GMT 1 Burnside said:

What hasn't helped Northern lately is the problems on the S&C line.

When the line was still open north of Appleby, trains were being delayed waiting for the single line section heading north, arriving at Carlisle up to an hour late and the already delayed departure back towards Leeds being held up further as the crew were due their breaks.

The situation with Northern now is much better than it was 18 months-2 years ago when they had a severe issue with crew shortages. As well as causing cancellations it was also delaying the next service due to passenger volumes and in some cases extra station calls added.

One thing the article doesn't make clear is how many of those delays were caused by outright crew shortages and how many were caused by incidents delaying crew and causing them to be out of place