Priorities for Train Planners – and Differences from Management 111

The section above indicates that railway managers’ objectives for the train planning

process are predominantly about cost effective delivery of reliable train services. ‘Hands on’ train planners, perhaps unsurprisingly, indicate that they have a different agenda. As part of a Quality Improvement initiative undertaken within what was then British Rail, aimed at improving train planning processes, the following set of priorities was developed by the train planning function, ranked in order of perceived importance:

1. “Achieve all timetable production timescales 2. Achieve shortest production timescale 3. Adopt best practice

4. Robust to perturbation 5. Meet customer expectations 6. Error free

7. Achieve service reliability standards

8. Economically efficient in the management of resources required to prepare, deliver and operate the plan.” (Willis, 1992)

This list was used as a prompt in later interviews and it was found that priorities had not changed over the intervening period.

That production timescales (1) dominate the thinking of train planners should come as no surprise. Timetable commencement dates (the date that new timetables start from) are agreed in Europe years in advance on an international basis and there is little scope for delaying this date, even on a local basis, due to the knock on implications for other railway operators and other parts of the planning process. Railway budgets and planning cycles are all focused on making changes at these pre-determined dates.

Achieving a shorter production timescale (2) is also an on-going objective - aimed at being more customer focused by enabling railway marketing organisations to make service changes at shorter notice, currently it is not atypical for marketing specifications to be required by the train planners at least a year before the new timetable commences.

Best practice (3) was and is about getting train planning offices to improve the effectiveness of the train planning process. There are many different processes employed to undertake basically the same function. As an example, there are different practices regarding display of timetable data: some train planners requiring ‘line graph’

representation, others preferring numeric tabulation.

Robustness (4) gives the first match between management’s and train planners’ stated

objectives, with managers being aware of the adverse impact on revenue and costs of persistent poor performance and train planners having the added incentive of wanting to avoid criticism from their operations colleagues and the potential need for an urgent

‘rework’ of the train plan.

Meeting customer needs (5) is another objective that the evidence indicates that management and train planners share.

The train planner looks for an error free (6) ‘perfect solution’, in the sense that there must be no conflicts, errors or omissions remaining before starting to attempt to improve the efficiency of the solution: offers to help produce a more effective solution will only be of interest if it can be shown that a ‘perfect solution’ is obtained as well - so simplifying assumptions or approximations are unlikely to be acceptable. Having said this, under more detailed questioning train planners will reveal that they habitually ‘break the

planning rules’ themselves to achieve workable solutions (e.g. by reducing the turnround time at terminus stations below the norm).

Delivery of service reliability (7) again matches with management’s stated objectives.

Perhaps the biggest mismatch is that ‘economic efficiency’ is only ranked 8^th by train planners, whereas management see this of prime importance.

Of as much significance as the ranking of these objectives is data provided by train planners regarding their level of achievement of these objectives. Train planners noted that it is not always possible to achieve production dates; on other occasions they only achieve (1) and (4) of the priorities outlined above, and the latter just to the extent that they succeed in avoiding negative feedback from the day to day operational staff.

Documented examples were given of where these basic priorities have not been met, c.f. Wolmar 1996: the ‘Great Timetabling Disaster’, where train planners ran out of time, with a timetable being published before the timetable planning processes had been completed, with the inevitable consequence that many alterations had to be published subsequently in ‘supplements’. Timetablers explain their inability to reliably hit

production dates as being caused by uncertainty and unpredictability regarding the size of the task and by late changes imposed by management. They note that the task size

varies dependent upon the number of conflicting train service requirements to be processed (i.e. where two or more train services would be on the same piece of track at the same time) and the difficulty of finding a solution that adequately meets the needs of the businesses asking for those services, it is sometimes not possible to predict in advance whether there is in fact a solution that will satisfy everyone.

It is a point for discussion that of the objectives and needs of railway management and train planners do not at first appear to be compatible. However, resolution of the immediate issues for the planners of production timescales and quality of the process (best practice and error elimination) leads to the list of needs converging.

5.5.3 Trade-offs between conflicting objectives

Railway managers and timetablers were asked how trade-offs should be made between objectives. It quickly became apparent that, for the most part, they do not explicitly make trade-offs. As a result there are few generalised rules currently applied. Certainly quantification, of the sort needed to set objective weightings in a timetable generation tool, is not available.

When asked how decisions could be improved, bearing in mind this lack of generalised rules, one respondent highlighted ‘optioneering’ as the pragmatic approach to take, that is, generating a number of different potential timetables with emphasis on different objectives and then appraising each of these against a ‘basket’ of criteria, including public interest benefit, ‘fare box’ revenue, investment and operating cost, value for taxpayer’s money, robustness.

In discussion, it became apparent that this is currently the only effective method of making trade offs. In time, rules for making trade-offs and explicit objective weightings, must emerge.