Official Report 596KB pdf
Good afternoon. I welcome you all to the fifth meeting in 2011 of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee. I remind members, witnesses and everyone else who is present that mobile devices should be switched off to avoid interference with the sound system. We have received apologies from Jackson Carlaw and Shirley-Anne Somerville.
I have a brief opening statement on behalf of First ScotRail and Network Rail.
I suggest that we proceed with questions. Further written evidence can be handed out a little later rather than disrupting things at the moment.
I will close my remarks at that then.
Okay. I open the questions by asking about the extent of closures across the rail network during the severe weather and in the period afterwards. What were the reasons for closures in particular places and for extended periods?
During the period of severe weather, we adopted what was called a key route strategy. My colleague David Simpson will take you through that.
Closures fell into two categories: one was planned closures and the other was unplanned closures. That second category involved situations in which the volume of snow overwhelmed the network, despite ploughing and other activity. For safety reasons, we took the decision to close routes until safety could be put back in place by ploughing and clearing lines. Those situations were few and far between. Routes in the far north of Scotland and one or two in the central belt suffered from those unplanned closures during the cold spell, but largely we were fairly successful in keeping the network open.
How far in advance are you able to make the plans for planned closures? Are they based on forecasts or on actual events as they unfold?
They are based on both. The plans exist; they are agreed way in advance. We spend a lot of time with industry partners preparing for winter. It is fair to say that the conditions that we experienced and their duration were way beyond what we had expected.
Some people have suggested that the possibility of penalties for services that do not run or that run late is an issue that could have contributed to the problem being worse than it needed to be.
No; that is certainly not the case. All the decisions that we took jointly with our customers were based firmly on what was best for the passenger. We took several decisions that we knew would increase the penalties that we would have to pay for disruption; for example, although we knew that putting in more station stops would delay trains and therefore generate a penalty, we felt that that would provide a better service for the communities along a line where road transport was variable. I would instance the Ayr line as an example in that respect. Throughout the period in question, commercial considerations just did not enter into our deliberations about what to run to any extent.
The mindset was very much about keeping people and trains moving.
Obviously, you cannot predict how severe a winter will be and it would be strange if there were nothing that with hindsight we might wish to have done differently. What, from Network Rail’s point of view, are the key lessons to be learned from this period and are resources available to make use of what you have learned?
In the review we are concentrating on three areas, the first of which is the infrastructure’s resilience to the extreme conditions that we experienced. Across the network there are point heaters, which are effective in clearing what I might call normal amounts of snow and ice but which became overwhelmed in the quantities that we saw. We are also seeing whether any lessons can be learned from countries abroad, many of which suffered to the same degree as Scotland, but we are looking at whether we can beef up some of the point heaters and make them more resilient.
I am particularly interested in the key route strategy as it seemed to impact quite significantly on my constituents in the north-east of Scotland; it certainly appeared to result in some of the Anglo-Scottish trains coming no further north than Edinburgh and to impact on First ScotRail’s Perth route. Obviously First ScotRail had a significant number of cutbacks but, significantly, CrossCountry Trains had 71 planned cancellations and all of its eight services to Aberdeen stopped at Edinburgh.
You are quite right to observe that some operators chose not to go west of Edinburgh but I must draw a distinction between the key route strategy, which keeps the network open, and decisions by individual operators about where they run services depending on the resources that they have. East Coast, for example, ran a reduced-speed service to and from London, which meant that there were not enough trains to run west of Edinburgh and serve other parts of Scotland. Although the company took that decision to serve its own core flow most effectively, it resulted in passengers having to transfer on to other operators in Scotland.
In correspondence with me, East Coast and CrossCountry cited the key route strategy as the reason for their disruption and did not say that they had made those decisions for themselves. What you have said is useful.
It is worth emphasising that the reasoning behind the key route strategy is the need to keep as much as possible of the network open and available for people to use. That means avoiding the use of junctions that are likely to seize up in the snow, ice or whatever and the decisions that are taken centre very much on the location of the bigger numbers of customers and passengers that we have to move around the network. The strategy recognises that and allows us to keep as many trains moving as possible.
Mr Simpson, you mentioned point heaters. With the severe weather warning, were all your point heaters switched on well in advance? Did they all function continuously throughout the severe weather?
We have a programme of pre-winter checks, which includes point heater operation. We perform those checks in a variety of ways, including aerial surveys with a thermal camera and surveys on the ground. I can confirm that the point heaters were operational during the cold weather.
Were there any problems with point heaters in the vicinity of Edinburgh Waverley?
Largely speaking, the point heaters were checked and were operational. However, as I mentioned earlier, the volume of snow and ice that we experienced often overwhelmed the heaters. That is not because the heaters could not melt the snow and ice, but because of blocks of ice forming between the blades and stopping the normal, safe operation of the points.
How much of the country is covered by heated points?
The whole country. The odd private freight depot or siding may not have them but they are standard on main line routes—the passenger network.
Including up to Thurso and Wick?
Yes, although I draw a distinction because on the far north lines, some of the points are hydraulically operated and therefore work by the train, so there is no need for heating. At the Inverness end, though, where there are more services, the points are heated.
I have some final questions for Network Rail on the provision of information to passengers. People understand that the weather cannot be wished away and that it will have an impact, but they need to know what that impact will be so that they can adapt around a changing, reduced or cancelled service. There were some severe problems with the provision of information, whether directly, face to face at stations, on the phone or online. Why did that happen and why were the information systems unable to adapt to and cope with the changing circumstances?
We have huge sympathy with that observation. We all use the network frequently, and we all get frustrated if we are trying to get from A to B in those conditions and the information is not there. A planned disruption is easy—we can upload the information into our systems and out on to the websites, the Twitter accounts and so forth.
The provision of real-time information online—whether people are seeing it at their desk or on their phone—is hugely valuable but only if it is updated with changes arising from delays, disruptions and cancellations. If the information is available only when everything is working fine, it is not hugely useful. Knowing which platform to go to might save someone a minute, but it is when things are disrupted that that information is of real value. You will appreciate the frustration that people feel when they are trying to get that information and it is simply not available.
That point is fully acknowledged. I am aware how frustrating it is if the board looks as though services are running normally when they are not, and if trains disappear off the board. We are trying to sort that out and to ensure that what people see on the board is reliable.
I offer a wee bit of context on that point. Obviously, as the train operating company, First ScotRail is responsible for providing a lot of that information to our customers. We have to understand the sheer volume of incidents that were happening at any one time.
Thank you. We move on to First ScotRail’s perspective.
I presume that First ScotRail, as the train operator, buys into the key route strategy.
Yes. We are heavily involved with Network Rail in how that will operate.
Is it catered for in the franchise agreement?
It is, in terms of where we are requested to have contingency plans for all types of event.
Will you be able to leave information with the committee about, for example, what the key routes are?
Yes, we can provide you with that information.
Do you charge slightly higher fares on the key routes?
No. It does not work that way.
How about charging slightly lower fares on the routes that are not key and which are liable to severe disruption if we get more severe weather?
When the weather was at its worst, we tried to provide the best type of service for all customers. For example, we were relaxed in how we let people use services. Some people could not use their home station, so we let them use their tickets from other stations.
You will appreciate that on the road equivalent, which is the trunk road and motorway network, there is no key route strategy, as far as the committee is aware, and that best endeavours are expected to try to keep as many parts of the network open as possible. That is a slightly different approach from yours, because you said that you would keep the busier routes open.
When we try to move customers about in severe weather, we try to hit the biggest city centres and move people from the main areas. However, it is much more difficult to operate in rural areas where there are fewer customers but long pieces of infrastructure that we try to keep clear. Network Rail brought out many resources on the day and I brought out a tremendous amount of additional resources. However, we were trying to tackle a type of weather that I had never seen in my 27 years in the industry. We must put our efforts into context in that regard, because the weather was beyond anything that we had had to deal with before.
Jumping back to Network Rail for a minute, and staying with the analogy of winter maintenance of trunk roads and motorways, can you clear up some confusion? At an evidence session in December 2010, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, Mr Swinney, gave the impression that snowploughs on railways were pretty much a thing of the past because of the gubbins that often lie between the rails. Subsequent to that, we have been informed through the clerks that Network Rail has a fleet of 10 snowploughs. So, when do you use—and, crucially, when do you not use—snowploughs on the Scottish railways?
Perhaps I can clarify that for you. I have read the evidence that was given and I think that what was referred to was the idea of ploughing down between the rails to where the sleepers are. It is true that there are lots of gubbins there that help the railway to operate safely.
Can you cite any examples from the severe weather operations of the effectiveness of your snowploughs in enabling you to get a route or part of a route reopened? Did they fire a shot in anger? Did they help?
Absolutely.
They ran throughout the severe weather. We have miniature snowploughs that patrol routes to keep them open and we have independent snowploughs, the larger of which are locomotives that we use to clear lines that become blocked. We use them frequently on the Highland main line from Perth through to Inverness, and we use them up in the far north on a daily basis. We also have two snow blowers, which we deploy in extreme conditions. They can be used to clear blockages such as the one that occurred when we had the avalanche in the west Highlands last winter. We have a full toolkit of snow clearance equipment that we use regularly, and we can call in more equipment should the conditions make it necessary for us to do so.
The first of the photographs that I have with me is of a fairly large snowplough. It is a perfect demonstration of the kind of equipment that we are talking about. They include photographs of snowploughs in operation. As the plough goes along, it looks as if a cloud of snow is being cleared from the railway. If I may, could I pass round the photographs?
We can circulate them during the break.
I have two quick questions on that front. It seemed that there was some difficulty with the 125s from the east coast main line using the main line to Inverness. You retreated to using the most ancient vehicles on the railway—the 158s—to get up the brae, so to speak. Is that the case? In future, what conditions will be included in the franchise to get vehicles that can work in all weathers?
As was said earlier, East Coast made its own choice not to run services beyond Edinburgh.
The three-car units that you purport to call expresses and long-distance services are really suburban units.
That is the fleet that we are asked to operate on those routes under the franchise.
I have one final question for the railways in general—First ScotRail and Network Rail—before we move on to the other modes. If the coming winter is just as bad, will we be ready?
A number of working parties are under way at ScotRail. We are looking at the fact that we had to bring in huge amounts of additional equipment. Steam lances are a piece of kit that we have, but they were totally inadequate for removing 3 to 4 tonnes of snow and ice underneath a unit. We had people chipping that off the side of units. We did experiments with poly tents and poly skips around trains. They worked and helped us to defrost units in four or five hours, when it had taken eight to nine hours to do it manually.
We always learn from any such event and, as a result of it, we will be better prepared than we were before the last event. Perhaps David Simpson can take the committee through some of the detail of the current thinking.
Again, it is about the three areas that I touched on earlier. We need to make the infrastructure more resilient to extreme conditions, which includes the use of point heaters. We also need to look at the ploughing regimes and other ways of keeping lines open when we cannot do so at the moment; that includes deploying resources to keep more routes open under the key route strategy.
I would like to concentrate on buses. We know that there was disruption in rural areas and housing estates—it was difficult for people to access buses. Did local authorities and Transport Scotland pay sufficient regard to clearing and gritting routes?
There is nothing to be gained by coming to this kind of meeting to name and shame. There was excellent practice in some local authority areas, but in some it was not so good. The important thing that we have to learn is that our operator members in the areas that did not work particularly well are in dialogue and are trying to improve things.
Can you elaborate on that? You said that in some areas the clearing and gritting worked and in some areas it did not. Are you saying that it worked in cities but not in rural areas? You said that you do not want to single anywhere out, but we are getting mixed reports from the people whom we represent. I am interested by what you mean when you say that it worked in some areas but not in others.
Mainly, there were good and bad examples of how people responded to the situation. From a bus operator’s perspective, we do not always see why that is. It could be because of the infrastructure within the local authority and its level of preparedness, or it could be down to working practices at grass-roots level within local bargaining agreements with the unions. We do not always have that visibility.
I am asking whether you are talking about cities or rural areas. You say “some areas”; what does that mean?
The feedback is that there were good and bad areas in cities and in rural areas. Not all rural areas were bad or good.
What communication did you have with local authorities, Transport Scotland and others?
In the good examples that were given to us, communication was a key part of the process. The operator has worked closely with the public transport unit in the local authority area, an open and on-going dialogue was conducted on road maintenance issues, and there was a quick response when a problem was identified.
That is obviously important. How will you do that?
We will, with the operators that have provided feedback to us, work centrally and with their local authority partners to try to address the issues.
At the recent Traveline board meeting, there was a long discussion about how we can best disseminate information. The situation was sometimes changing so rapidly that the individual operator websites and even the Traveline website were out of date as soon as information was on them. A meeting is to be convened shortly, in the coming weeks, to find a better way to collate information.
That is great for people who have a BlackBerry and access to new technology, but some of the people I spoke to who were standing at the bus stop certainly would not have that access. I know that it is difficult, but have you considered what could be done to speak directly to or communicate with bus users? There are some villages in my area where people did not get out for a week and there were no buses at all. How can you communicate with the people who depend on buses?
That is a good question. It is a difficult one to answer, because there is no easy way. If we had information points at every bus stop, that would be the ideal, but given the number of operators that use some of the bus stops it is just not practical to have that sort of infrastructure. It is possible where there is a closed network situation of the type that ScotRail and Network Rail enjoy, but with the shared infrastructure that bus operators have it is impossible to have that level of input to the customer or bus user. It is a good question. I am not sure that I have the answer, but we are working on it.
I would be really interested in what the answer might be in the future.
In general terms, most operators will have winter procedures that kick in at a certain point in the year to ensure that vehicles are ready for adverse weather. As colleagues have said, this was a somewhat unusual spell of bad weather. I am pretty confident that operators were geared up to get services into operation. Where they did not do so, it was because of traffic delays, congestion and road conditions. It is extremely difficult to get buses through in such scenarios. I am convinced that no operator would set out not to operate scheduled mileage. If it happened, there was a reason for it.
I will pick up on Cathy Peattie’s first point. We are not in the business of naming and shaming—that is fair enough—but the committee might say in its legacy paper that the issue should be followed up. Given that, it might help if you named examples of good practice.
One operator mentioned East Lothian Council and Midlothian Council in that regard. Scottish Borders Council was said to be extremely good. Members should not assume that, because I name those councils, all the others are bad—that is not the case. A wide range exists—from extremely good to pretty poor. If we can persuade people to consider bus routes in the context of main roads and as a high priority, and if they can direct their abilities to keeping those roads clear, operators will stand the greatest chance of delivering mileage.
That will help if a future committee wants to follow up the issue.
Contingency plans that prioritise bus routes are valuable. In my constituency, many people relied absolutely on the buses—they would not have dared to go out by themselves, but they were happy to take the bus and to put themselves in bus operators’ hands, which is good. Do we need to explore more radical proposals, such as winter clearways or parking restrictions on main routes? Is there sense in taking time to review such measures?
One or two of our members in different locations gave feedback that said that although local authorities might have done their best to keep roads open, they were hindered by vehicles that had been indiscriminately parked at the side of the road. Often, vehicles were parked on double yellow lines that were covered with snow. Snow clearways would be extremely helpful.
That is interesting.
I have further questions for the bus sector representatives. Are decisions made coherently on the services that are safe to run in extreme conditions? The major operator for much of Glasgow simply took services off, but one or two other operators’ vehicles—which were perhaps smaller and older—were jam-packed full of commuters and skidded all over the place. Whose job is it to decide whether it is safe to run old buses on certain roads?
The issue is extremely difficult. The corporate homicide law is now in place. If vehicles that are clearly incapable of conveying passengers safely are put on roads, operators have a definite liability. However, the overriding objective during the severe weather was to get people to work and from A to B and to keep the wheels turning.
Is more of an overview needed? If someone drives a bus on a road that is covered in ice and might not be safe, and if so many people are standing up in the bus that the driver cannot see what is behind it, does that not present a case for saying that a constraint is needed in extreme circumstances? Most people want to get to work, but they also want to get home in one piece.
The dynamics of buses are distinctly different from those of heavy goods vehicles or cars. A car with a front engine and front-wheel drive has infinitely more traction than a car with a front engine and rear-wheel drive.
Okay. Maybe it just did not feel safer.
My questions are on air travel. Why were Scotland’s main airports, particularly Edinburgh airport, closed for periods during the severe winter weather?
The reason why we closed was the conditions that we faced. We too have in place plans for a typical Scottish winter—we have our contingency plans. Safety is the priority. We have plans that we agree up front with the airlines, handling agents and the Civil Aviation Authority for how we will deal with particular circumstances.
Have you made comparisons with other airports that suffered similar conditions but managed to stay open?
We have done analysis. We have looked to learn how we can improve our ability to stay open and reduce the length of time for which airports are closed. We have done analysis of UK airports and we have been to Scandinavian airports, such as at Oslo and in Finland, to look at what they do. We saw some differences. For example, one of the reasons why Scandinavian airports are able to stay open under more extreme conditions is that they have multiple parallel runways—they can close one runway and keep the other runway operational. Oslo airport closes its runways many hundreds of times, but the airport is able to stay open. Edinburgh does not have a parallel runway, so it does not have the capability to do that.
I would not have thought that increasing the number of runways was a solution for Scottish airports. Was there a particular reason why Edinburgh airport closed when other places did not?
The reason was purely the amount of snow. The amount of snow that Edinburgh had, particularly in late November and early December, was far in excess of the amount of snow that the rest of Scotland had. That is why Edinburgh airport was forced to close. If we look at where there were similar levels of snowfall at other UK airports, we see that there were closures. There were closures in continental Europe and the United States, too.
Thank you. What engagement did BAA have with Transport Scotland regarding decisions to suspend operations at Scotland’s airports and how that could be minimised?
The decision to suspend operations at an airport is currently taken at the airport, because it is a decision on safety. That is the prime consideration. It is not a decision that is taken in consultation with Transport Scotland, although we advise Transport Scotland of the situation as it is a key stakeholder.
Can you give us details of the meetings of the airport forum and the outcomes of those meetings?
Are you asking about the reviews that we have had with other airport users?
Yes.
We have had a number of meetings and reviews with the airlines and handling agents in the airports, to look at how we can work together to reduce the likelihood of closure and to increase the time to closure, as I mentioned earlier, as well as at how we can reduce the impact on passengers, improve communications to passengers and learn any other lessons.
It sounds like you are doing a lot. Are you confident about what BAA is doing to ensure that its airports can remain open during similar weather?
I need to sound a note of caution. Because there is only one core runway that we can operate, under extreme snow conditions we will always be forced to close. Any airport that has one runway is unable to guarantee that it can remain open under any conditions. We will be able to increase the levels of snowfall in which we can continue to operate. We will also be able to reduce the length of time it takes to get operational. However, we cannot say that we will not close.
I am interested in the effect of winter weather on links to the airports and on whether passengers can get to and fro. Have the bits between the trunk road network and the airports been a particular problem, or are both the trunk road network and the more local roads that access airports a problem in the kind of weather that you have experienced?
The links to airports have been a problem to a small degree. It is important for us that passengers are able to get to the airport, but it is even more important for our plans that snow-clearing teams are able to do so. One of the significant challenges that we faced was getting our snow-clearing teams to the airport. Their challenge was not necessarily the final part of the journey—it was getting across the Forth road bridge or rural roads in Fife, where a large part of our workforce is based. We had to look at plans either to put people up in hotels, so that we could guarantee that they were available for the next shift, or to send out four-wheel-drive vehicles to collect critical staff and so on.
We have explored in detail the difficulties of providing passengers with accurate and up-to-date information, using your services, but there was another, underlying problem. Even if the information had been accurate, people could not have accessed it because of the spikes in interest in your web information, in particular. What has each operator done to ensure that web and mobile information is able to cope with the sudden spikes in traffic that we saw?
We normally average about 26,000 hits on our website per day. On 6 December, that went up to more than 200,000 and our website fell down. However, the next day, using FirstGroup’s technology, we put in more resource and it can now take up to 400,000 per day, so we have solved that problem already. There certainly were spikes of people trying to find information on the website on that particularly bad day. I think that that was the day that the M8 and M80 were closed. Many people rightly abandoned their cars because they could not get home and came to railway stations. We carried an extra 5,000 or 6,000 passengers on that day and got them home.
Is the website more resilient now?
Yes—it has been fixed.
That is good to hear. What about other operators?
As far as I am aware, we did not have any issues with the airport website crashing. That side of things is resilient. We have been reviewing the provision of information on that website to ensure that it has the most appropriate information and that we can get it up there as quickly as possible. We have done that through internal reviews and working with our airline partners, who provide the data on what is planned with flights.
Network Rail does not operate the customer-facing websites, but I will comment on national rail inquiries. It upgraded its system following the January 2010 winter and the website largely stood up fairly well to the demand, even though it again experienced massive increases.
What about the bus operators’ websites?
There were no crashes. Traveline Scotland had a tenfold increase in web traffic. Transport Scotland experienced the same. The information was there. The thing that was pleasing in all that was that there was latent knowledge of where to get the information. If there is a tenfold increase in use, it is obvious that people know where to come to try to get information when they really need it. The technology was there to let the site function.
Has there been a growth in web traffic now that people have discovered those ways of accessing information or did it drop back off again?
It tailed off again. However, there was an uplift in usage through mobile devices such as iPhones.
The Office of Rail Regulation has announced that it will monitor the provision of passenger information during winter weather. How do FirstGroup and Network Rail intend to support that investigation? What dialogue do they intend to have about it?
We are presently working with the ORR and are involved in the reports that are being put together, so we have input. We are also working closely with Transport Scotland because the franchise goes through it. There is a lot of continuing dialogue, as there was prior to the severe winter weather.
There is a work stream in our industry called passenger information during disruption, which was in place for the severe weather. The Office of Rail Regulation is auditing Steve Montgomery’s team and mine jointly to determine to what degree we met the requirement on that, and how we need to improve provision for further spells of disruption. That is going on as we speak.
I will make a further point about communication—not so much external communication to passengers but communication between the different agencies. Steve Montgomery and I participated in the regular Scottish Government resilience room and Cabinet conference calls that were held every day throughout the disruption. They were extremely useful for being able to feed in information on the current situation and hearing what was happening on the other modes of transport, such as the roads.
I will ask about intermodal provision of information. If a rail service is disrupted or cancelled and somebody who has good local knowledge happens to work at the station, they may be able to refer passengers to bus services—or vice versa if the train is running and the buses are disrupted—but is there a systematic approach to improving that? Real-time information about a single service is useful but, if it is not running, people need to know what their other options are.
Our staff, particularly at the large stations, are provided with alternative bus transport routes in and around the major cities so that people can get home. Obviously, further out, we will not do that unless we are completely at a standstill. However, if there are short-term cancellations because of an incident in and around the main stations, we will divert people on to buses and the staff will have information about that.
So there is a process for keeping that information updated with impacts that the weather is having on bus services.
Yes. We try to look at how everybody else is working. During the extreme weather, it was very difficult to gauge that—things were changing on a minute-by-minute basis.
Another issue for us was trying to keep abreast of the condition of the road network. There were many incidents, for example trees falling across railway lines due to the weight of snow, and our ability to respond quickly to them depended on getting there by road. We found it challenging to keep abreast of all the conditions on the network and to get to such incidents. We picked up information through other websites and the police in making our response as effective and quick as possible.
Through the worst of the weather, it became blindingly obvious that the Traveline Scotland system could not cope with the amount of information that was coming at it. The journey planner was not linked to what was going wrong in the network. Traveline Scotland is currently working with Transport Scotland on a proposal to modify its journey planner system to take account of disruptions on the road network, which would have benefits 365 days a year. The bad weather really showed up the problem.
I will leave aside the Tweetie generation and turn to steam radio. There was a good example recently of wild information on the radio, which was that there was a disruption between Inverness and Wick, which is a distance of about 120 miles. Who tells the BBC where the disruption is, for example that it is between Brora and Helmsdale, or wherever it was? People who use the network can be mystified by such information.
From ScotRail’s point of view, that is done through our control centres working with Network Rail. We update the press, particularly in the morning and evening peaks. We have somebody whose purpose it is to feed in that information. They also have access to our information systems, which give them more detailed information on the location of disruptions. Instead of simply saying that a line of route is blocked, it gives information on the specific area. We update media sites.
The information was not very accurate in the case that I cited. We heard only that there was a broken-down train somewhere on the route. As I said, many people could have used the trains that were running on the route—trains were running between those two points—but people could not get information from the BBC.
We do provide that detail. We need to work closely with our media partners on how to get out the information.
I turn to people who are disabled in various ways. My question is on access in severe weather situations. Obviously, all modes of transport are a concern in this regard. Did you learn anything from the recent experience that will improve things for disabled people who want to travel in times of difficult weather?
I am not aware of any major problems that ScotRail experienced in respect of disabled or mobility-restricted customers who used our services when they were running. Again, many of the problems that people had were in getting to railway stations. That was an issue. However, we had no difficulty in handling people.
The situation was similar for the bus companies. The big challenge for people was in getting to the bus station.
Likewise from an airport experience.
Could the issue be highlighted in discussions with local authorities and others? The issue has been raised with the committee and me that when people cannot get to a bus stop, it is difficult for them to continue to travel, whether to a railway station or airport.
You make an excellent point. The main road might be cleared, but if the road into the estate is blocked, how do we get someone to the bus? The issue needs to be examined.
Gentlemen, I gather that more snow is on the way later in the week. Are you all confident that you will do even better when you are faced with the next challenge?
We are aware that snow is on the way. Our plans are in place and we expect to be able to cope with what is thrown at us.
I thank the witnesses for taking the time to answer our questions and for the offer of supplementary written evidence, which we can circulate among members.
We are joined by our second panel of witnesses. I welcome Keith Brown, the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure; Jim Barton, chief road engineer and director of trunk road and bus operations at Transport Scotland; and Frances Duffy, director of rail in the Scottish Government. I invite the minister to make brief opening remarks before we begin questions.
Thank you, convener. I welcome the opportunity to speak to the committee on a number of transport issues, the first of which takes us back to the severe weather conditions that we experienced at the end of last year and into the beginning of this year.
You have covered many of the practical issues that members will want to raise in questions. I want to ask about Transport Scotland’s internal procedures and policies. Has there been any attempt to look at refreshing those to adapt them to or learn from the lessons of the recent severe weather? What needs to change or what could be improved about the way in which Transport Scotland operates as an organisation during such conditions?
I will answer first and then ask whether any of my officials has anything to add.
I listened to the comments that were made earlier, and we need to put them into context. Last year’s weather conditions were unlike anything that anyone who has been involved in this work for many years could recall. I have been director of trunk road operations for 10 years, and I had certainly never experienced anything like it, nor had people with 20 or 30 years of experience.
Minister, you mentioned an on-going review. I am sure that our successor committee in the next parliamentary session will take an interest in that. Can you indicate the timescale within which that review is intended to report? Is the Scottish Government considering any form of independent review that is similar to the one that the United Kingdom Government has commissioned?
It can be confusing, given the number of reviews that are being done. The roads review has arisen out of the Audit Scotland report. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is conducting its own review, as is the train operating company and Network Rail.
Is an independent review being considered that is similar to the UK Government’s Quarmby review?
No. The general review of winter resilience and the roads review are not independent reviews, although they draw on independent witnesses. The performance audit group report, which has been mentioned in evidence to the committee, draws on independent witnesses, but our reviews are Government reviews.
Okay. In your other answers you probably addressed my other questions, so we will move on to Charlie Gordon.
We turn now to rail, minister. What was the nature of the interaction between Transport Scotland, Network Rail and First ScotRail during the severe weather?
As well as the regular interaction between those organisations, there are people in Transport Scotland such as Frances Duffy whose job is to maintain relationships with the other organisations. As I said, there was daily liaison. On the first day that I got this job I met you and Andy Kerr, then I went straight from that meeting to meet Steve Montgomery and Ron McAulay, who have just given evidence to the committee. At least once a day there was regular contact with such people. A large number of Transport Scotland officials participated in the Scottish resilience room meetings, as did Steve Montgomery and Ron McAulay. However, a lot of discussion took place outwith those meetings as well. The contact that I know about alone was substantial and daily, but perhaps Frances Duffy can give you more information on that.
We ensured that we had regular updates for the morning and evening peaks so that we understood what was happening in the services as far as we could, then we fed that back through the SGoRR meetings. Members of our staff were down in the central control room along with Network Rail and First ScotRail staff during the worst of the weather to ensure that we kept the communication flow going as much as we could so that we could report. That gave us opportunities when we discovered particular problems around rail freight and so on, because we could interact with the operators quickly to try to resolve issues.
You will be aware that we heard from the rail operators during the previous evidence session. Without going over everything that they said, which presumably you support, you will have heard them promise at the end that they will do better. The guiding philosophy that came through was one of key routes, which it is fair to say is a slightly different approach from winter maintenance on the trunk road and motorway network. Minister, are you comfortable with that approach, whereby Transport Scotland effectively decides well in advance that if there is severe weather, it will try to keep the busier routes going, but that other routes may be shut for a longer time?
That was the first time that that approach had been tried, although I think that it was reflected in practice down south and in some cross-border services. I suppose the analogy is that when you get cold your blood goes to the centre of your body. There was an element of that with the rail service in that it concentrated on core routes.
Notwithstanding the acceptance of the key route approach, are there sanctions that might apply to franchisees or Network Rail for their performance during the recent severe weather?
There are sanctions, which are applied by the Office of Rail Regulation. Network Rail was sanctioned prior to the severe winter weather and I think that I am right in saying that the ORR is currently considering the winter period. I think that the ORR has said that it has concerns about how Network Rail and First ScotRail dealt with the winter weather.
Of particular interest is that when we met the ORR and Network Rail recently—we have regular tripartite meetings—we flagged up the key route strategy. We want to ensure that we are adopting a sensible approach and that we are stretching the industry so that it does all that it can do to provide services. The ORR will consider the matter.
I take Frances Duffy’s latter point and the minister’s point about the ORR being the lead regulator for Network Rail. However, the Scottish Government has powers of direction over Network Rail. I fully accept the minister’s point that it would be better to have a devolved sanction that did not send income from fines out of Scotland.
I do not think that we can be happy with it. As I said, we had a system in place to deal with certain conditions, and in some vital respects it failed to deal with some of those conditions in December, which meant that rail travellers faced substantial disruption.
On that last point, minister, the new rolling stock did not perform well but the old stuff that was in mothballs did rather better.
Minister, you said that on the whole you were happy with the key route strategy, which significantly disadvantaged some of the rural areas. I understand the thinking behind it, especially over short periods of disruption, but will you look again at prolonged periods of disruption? At what point do you say, “Actually, we need to start serving the rest of Scotland as well”?
What I said was that I saw the logic of the key route strategy—I think that it was well intentioned. It is not just about favouring one area over another, although, as the title suggests, the strategy favoured the areas in which the greatest volumes of traffic were to be found, which is understandable. However, you are right to say that the strategy caused disruption. People found themselves on a railway that would have worked fine but had no trains running on it because they were running elsewhere. That presents challenges. Those challenges might have been becoming apparent the previous winter, because there were issues with rolling stock then, but they were never as bad as they were this winter. Trains had up to 3 tonnes of accumulated snow and ice underneath—which was unheard of in many people’s experience.
I find that reassuring.
The communications usually arose as and when we were told what was going to happen. We made our feelings known about the implications for us. I am not sure that the matter has been followed up in any great detail since then. Frances Duffy may know a bit more about those communications than I do, but mainly they were when we were told what was going to happen. To be honest, our main concern was to see what we could do to fill the gaps, as you have suggested.
We had discussions with the Department for Transport, which has responsibility for those franchises, to ensure that it fully understands the implications of such decisions. Some of the steps that the cross-border services took were disappointing. Although we try to impress upon the DFT, where possible we look to ScotRail to pick up the implications for Scottish passengers.
When there were problems at Heathrow, I raised with the Secretary of State for Transport the point that it seemed as if traffic to Scotland was one of the first services to fall off the end. I encouraged him to use London City airport for Scottish travellers. He said that what the airlines tended to do was to take off passengers who had alternative means of getting to their destination. At that point, the east coast and west coast main lines were in trouble, and at one point buses could not pass through the north of England to come to Scotland. He and I had what was perhaps a bit of an educational discussion about the problems that we have in Scotland.
The performance audit group found that BEAR Scotland performed at a level that was in accord with contract requirements. The group noted that a smaller amount of snow was forecast on 5 and 6 December than was actually experienced. The coincidence of the increasing amount of snow and the morning rush hour created a huge problem. Has Transport Scotland reviewed the terms of BEAR Scotland’s contracts for winter service duties?
It has reviewed them in the sense that, as different things have come up, some of the working practices that are implicit in the contracts have been changed to adapt to the winter that we have just had. That has been done in collaboration with the trunk road operating companies.
With regard to changes in contracts and some of the specific things that happened, there seems to have been no contractual obligation on BEAR Scotland to patrol the M8. Why is that?
As you will appreciate, motorways have very high traffic volumes and, generally, they are well covered by sensor equipment. For that reason, patrols were removed from motorways in the last round of contracts. A lack of patrols in itself does not mean that the winter service is inefficient, but we have decided that, especially on the tier 1 network, new patrol routes would further enhance the service to the travelling public. The role of the vehicles is not just to patrol, because we recently fitted some of them with ice-sensing equipment.
I am told that the road surface temperature sensor on the M8 near Whitburn was out of action before 5 December. How long did it take to repair?
It was certainly until well into January, partly because of the very bad weather itself and the disruption that replacing the sensor would cause, but also because the materials that would be used to replace it would not have set in those cold temperatures. Perhaps Jim Barton can give a more precise date for when it was eventually done.
The contractual requirement is for the sensor to be repaired within one month of it being found to be defective, and it was just on the limit of that. Under normal circumstances, we would want it repaired much more quickly than that in the winter but, as the minister said, given the amount of snow at the side of the road, it was deemed to be a safety hazard for vehicles to stop and repair it. In any case, as the minister also said, it is not possible to fix the sensor when the temperature drops below a certain temperature.
Okay. On weather forecasting, BEAR Scotland receives a service from Vaisala and the Scottish Government receives a service from the Met Office. When those two forecasts were provided, were there any differences between them?
Do you mean on a particular date?
Yes—on 5 and 6 December.
I think that you have the materials from the trunk road operating companies—the log and read-out from the PAG. I do not think that they were different in significant respects that would have led us to do something differently, but there were differences. Maybe that is part of the virtue of having different providers, because we can pick up those differences. It is true to say that other trunk road operating companies use the Met Office, as we do, but there were no significant differences that would have led us to do something differently.
I make it clear that Vaisala makes the ice sensors. The information goes from the ice sensors to the operating companies. I am pretty sure, but I can check for certainty, that Meteo—rather than the Met Office—provides the weather forecast information for BEAR Scotland.
I did not catch the name of the other weather company.
It is called Meteo.
Just Meteo?
Yes.
I thought that I heard a word before that.
No. One operating company receives information from Meteo and another receives it from the Met Office. I am pretty sure that BEAR receives forecasts from Meteo. However, the forecasts are based on similar systems.
There has been quite a debate about how the technical information that the people who keep the roads clear require is translated into simplified information for the public on the radio, television and so on. Did the need to translate specialist information into more general information create a problem? How were the public affected by what was on offer?
The Met Office, which provides information through most major media outlets, is well used to presenting information to be understood by the public. The trunk road operating companies—some of which use the Met and some of which use other firms—require more specialist and precise information.
The extra resilience report that ministers have asked us to produce deals with communication. The three important elements are communication, decision making and the treatments that we undertake.
That is helpful.
The discussions with the Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association have been constructive. Initially, they were concerned about whether HGVs or other goods vehicles would be penalised to benefit other traffic—about whether those vehicles would be pulled to one side while the rest of the traffic went merrily on its way. However, we have successfully engaged with the industry on the number of incidents that caused major problems, particularly on 5 and 6 December. One such incident involved a vehicle that jackknifed—I am told that that is no longer the proper term, but we all know what it means.
There was, of course, an issue with Christmas deliveries far south of your jurisdiction, which has yet to be explained.
It is fair to say that the RHA thinks that that is the case. If a driver of an HGV commits a misdemeanour, there is no reason why drivers of other vehicles will not also do so. The RHA has said that it feels that that is the case.
Charlie Gordon has a supplementary.
Minister, in your opening statement, you mentioned the development of the multi-agency response team. I am not clear how often that meets—you can tell us in a minute. It has on it eight police officers from the different police forces, who I presume are all traffic officers. During the recent severe weather, I was aware that, across different police boundaries, police officers might have made slightly different operational judgments. Mr Barton’s team might have had a view that a trunk road that was closed should have been open or vice versa. Has it been made clear to the police through the multi-agency response team that, given the cross-boundary nature of trunk roads and motorways, it would be in everyone’s interest if there was greater consistency of operational decision making?
To the extent that, rather than representatives of the eight forces, we have a representative for the eight forces, usually the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland—
I see. I had misunderstood that.
That person will speak to each of the eight authorities, and that has happened. If issues arise overnight in a certain part of the country that that officer does not know about, they can quickly get on to the right person in the right force to get that information out. It would probably be impractical to have representatives of all the eight forces on the team.
The committee took evidence from the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, which raised real concerns about people with disabilities accessing public transport. I think that it felt that their problem was exacerbated by people clearing snow from cars and driveways on to pavements. There were also issues for other pedestrians, such as older people and people with young children.
The vast majority of footways will be the responsibility of local authorities, which does not apply in relation to trunk roads, by and large. A number of people have made the point that if a road is cleared, but a pensioner, for example, cannot get down the pavement to where the bus stops, that is not much good. In my experience, most authorities have priority routes that they want to clear first. Some are able to get round to the pavement network more quickly than others.
Should the Government consider changing the information that people have to do with clearing driveways, keeping vehicles off footpaths and so on? There is a bit of ambiguity about what is right and wrong and about whether people are at risk if they clear their pathways. Should the Government issue some guidance on that issue?
As I recall, we issued some guidance, mainly to try to avoid the confusion that had been created by some statements—I must be careful here—that suggested that, if a householder cleared their pathway and it became slippery, they could become liable. If we issued guidance on the general issue that you raise, we would have to do so in conjunction with our local authority partners, because by and large this is an issue for them. However, we should consider such a measure as part of the review of the severe winter weather. You are right to say that this was a big issue for many people. It took some time for us to get a clear legal position for the statement that we were able to make—Jim Barton may be able to say more about that—but we should look at the matter.
The minister is right. We issued advice on behalf of the Scottish salt group, which covers COSLA, SCOTS and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, so the advice was collaborative.
A number of organisations have expressed concern about the fact that it is difficult to cycle on an icy road. You spoke about materials that may be useful in the future. We are keen to hear about those. You also said that they were expensive. I wonder about the costs and availability of such materials, if we find ourselves in the same situation in the next two or three weeks.
One material that will be of particular interest to you is a by-product that is made at Grangemouth. There is no problem with supplies of that material. I do not want to give the names of such materials, because they are proprietary names. I think that the one that we tested is from Holland. It is around 12 times more expensive than salt, but it is mixed with salt, which reduces the price. It worked extremely effectively on a road on which there was packed ice and snow. The material was laid down and left for some time; afterwards, it could be ploughed straight off. However, at a cost 12 times that of other materials, it will be prohibitive, unless more people want to access it and the price is driven down or we place an order that allows us more supplies.
The salt to which the minister referred was refined salt that we received from INEOS down in Cheshire, with linkage through the Grangemouth operation. That was mixed with grit to provide an effective combination. The people who produce such alternative materials have made some interesting claims. They suggest that, as well as being more effective at lower temperatures, the materials stay on the road better and, in one case at least, are more ecologically acceptable. We want to test all of those claims. As the minister mentioned, the materials might be better at staying on the road in wet conditions and preventing problems such as hoarfrost. We want to establish which materials offer best value for money and how much of them we should use.
All of that is good news, but I am interested in how quickly we can react. Is there a timescale for tests to take place? How long will those take? Do local authorities have the resources to be able to purchase or use such materials?
On the timescale, we placed that material on the tier 1 road network at strategic locations after we carried out the initial test, but I do not think that we have had cause to use it since then. Even for the trial that we carried out, it took us some time to find a road that still had those ice and snow conditions; the trial took place up in Huntly. The ability to test the material in real conditions depends on having that weather there.
As there are no final questions for the witnesses on that theme, I thank them all for their time in answering questions. I suspend the meeting briefly for a comfort break before we move on to agenda item 2 with the same witnesses in place.
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