Discussion: Options for competitive tendering / privatisation of rail

[#Metro]

Queensland Rail has been skipping stations ... just like a "private operator" apparently...

Staff concerns over skipping stations rejected by Queensland Rail boss

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/staff-concerns-over-skipping-stations-rejected-by-queensland-rail-boss/news-story/e8c0f61fb4a6f8f67c5328adaf2bc739

The Courier-Mail can reveal that the tactic was questioned internally up to a year ago but QR has stuck by its policy of running some trains express past scheduled stops to catch up for lost time.

As revealed last week, stations that are skipped are being counted by QR as being on time in official statistics used by the State Government to measure its performance.

[#Metro]

PRIVATISE!

In a private company, the board decides what company will and will not do, not politicians. If the board makes the wrong decision, they are hit

with losses. Keep doing that and bankruptcy will remove you and install your competitor. This way there is constant pressure for performance.

Queensland Rail is such a mess because it is public - the constant intervention (both sides of politics)  by MPs has not been in the rail operator's

best interests. Bring on competitive tendering that will sever the link between MPs micromanaging QR and give the operator independence to

make the right decisions.

The communications – finally released after a seven-month Right to information battle by The Courier-Mail – show Mr Pitt's office in early December put pressure on then-Transport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe to sign a draft ministerial direction ordering Queensland Rail to sign-off on a new 12 per cent pay deal over four years despite concerns it was exorbitant.

However, the documents contradict this, confirming the train crew enterprise agreement was done outside of the "normal approval process".

It meant QR's Board was essentially cut out of early negotiations when an in-principle agreement was struck with the unions in October.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/state-election-2017/queensland-election-2017-curtis-pitt-pressured-minister-over-pay-deal-after-rail-fail/news-story/93f268bc42f54405757138cc5d7c4f88

[verbatim9]

It's a shambles. What land transport company in the world approves such a wage deal. Couldn't think of many. It's a shame that treasury intervened into the wage negotiations. The outcome not very good for the overall community unfortunately. 2020 competitive tender to run commuter trains in Qld!?

Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk

[#Metro]

Rail fail: QR attempts to keep union pay rise emails secret

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/rail-fail-qr-attempts-to-keep-union-pay-rise-emails-secret/news-story/a5b4cacfb0d53b207ad24de482009cf9

The Courier-Mail has spent nine months fighting to overturn a decision by the Government to hide ministerial emails showing its dealings with the Rail Tram and Bus Union during Queensland's "Rail Fail" in which a serious driver shortage caused a rail timetable meltdown.

In a private company, appropriate staffing levels, worker allocation, and remuneration are the company's concern, not the minister's. This reduces political interference and favoritism.

Yet another reason the SEQ Rail network should be put out to competitive tender.

[#Metro]

Rail Fail, 12 months on.

12 months ago, I raised the possibility of opening up the SEQ railway network to private train operators through competitive tendering. Even though I write "private" operator, many operators are actually public operators of other places that have commercialised their knowledge and experience in running trains.

Now, at the time, I may as well have suggested that we all go to the dentist and get a painful
root canal treatment instead. People wanted 12 months to see if things could be turned around.
Well, there is about one week left until that 12 months turnaround time is complete.

Here are the problems with public operation of Queensland Rail and a few other things.

1. It's a monopoly. Whether QR performs or not, the transport minister always signs off on the contract renewal.
This is the wrong thing to do. Renewal should be based on merit, not government or non-government ownership/operation.

2. Because of (1), TransLink, who is supposed to be the regulator, gets reduced to being a passive monitor.

This is bad. TransLink must become a true regulator - one that has the powers to hire, fire, fine and sue. (NB - this also has implications for BCC's bus operations, who have done all sorts of things, secure in the knowledge that they will always have their contracts renewed, no matter what).

3. When you are a minister, you can always press the "ministerial override" button.

This means you can create all sorts of chaos inside QR, such as overriding CEO selection, approving "mates rates" EBA deals,
firing staff in a public servant reduction programme, or even directing it to run allegedly illegal trains.

Hint: You can't do this if the operator is private and under competitive contracting.

As we saw last week, the QR situation can be successfully recreated in the Sydney train network by the minister
directing that a new timetable be applied before it was ready. The ministerial override button was also used
to direct QR to start running trains that are also allegedly not DDA compliant.

4. When you are a transport minister, controlling both the regulator AND the public operator, you can
decide not to enforce your standards.

Because you control both TransLink and Queensland Rail, the "contract" between the two is not worth
the paper it is written on IMHO. Should QR look like not meeting its contractual service standards,
the goalposts could be moved by the minister - deleting the offending services from the timetable -
so that that the statistic would be kept and the contract not technically breached.

Imagine trying to do that in Melbourne... they would boot you off the network.

You can then issue statements like "train services are 98% on time" even though the service is now
hugely degraded, there is a conga line of timetable changes, and Friday timetables don't align with
Monday-Thursday.

Hint: You could also do this if the operator is private and under competitive contracting, but you would
look very stupid and people would start to question who you were really working for. Connex Melbourne certainly
did not get concessional treatment.

5. EBA Negotiations

During EBA negotiations, you have union members on one side of the bargaining table, and elected union members on the other side of the table. It's hard to see how something fair and reasonable could come out of a setup like that.

Hint: With a private operator, pay isn't negotiated with the minister and the union cannot be 100% certain that it can capture 100% of whatever extra money is put on the table, as the presence of investors means that any extra benefits could be taken by the company instead and paid out as profits to shareholders. That's probably why they keep talking about how bad profits and shareholders are...

6. Public ownership means immunity from fines, which means you can be confident when doing naughty things

By simple virtue of its public ownership, any fines placed on QR are implicitly guaranteed to be paid for by the Queensland Treasury and taxpayers. Queensland Rail has dutifully carried out instructions that it run DDA-noncompliant trains. It is unconcerned that it may be fined - the taxpayer will pay - hence why the NGR trains  are out running across the network with no DDA exemption on it.

Hint: A private operator that did this would likely be fined, and possibly go bankrupt or have its contracts terminated.

7. "But we can vote at an election!"

Yes, you can. Indeed, we just had one. What good did that do??

Competitive tendering doesn't stop anyone voting at an election - it provides an additional layer of accountability through contract termination and fines.

8. "But we can hire a consultant!"

Yes, you can. And we just did - QLD literally paid Deutsche Bahn AG to tell QR how to run trains. We could have just got Deutsche Bahn, rather than a report from Deutsche Bahn.

And paying an external private train operator is an admission that there is value in their international experience.
Value and experience worth paying for. Because we just paid for it.

TransPerth (or any other operator) is not going to come to Queensland and run trains for free or at cost. It is just too much effort to organise for no extra reward. If TransPerth (or any other operator) is going to come along, they need to be paid for their time and effort. And that is the reason why when a firm is contracted, they are generally paid a profit margin.

Conclusion

It is time for TransLink to stop being a monitor and start being a regulator through increased powers to hire, fire
fine and sue.

Operators should only have their contracts renewed because of maintaining service standards and good conduct, and
the absence of a better operator. It should be an open and fair contest. Contracts should not be renewed on the basis
of "its government owned and that's Labor policy".

Contracting out SEQ rail services will not violate Labor's policy on asset sales. It is not a sale of assets, and
the operations are not creating a profitable income stream for the state. It is not a sale, because in a sale the
buyer is paying money to acquire the asset. Anyone going around saying "it's a sale" should be asked the question,
"so how much is the buyer paying?"

In any case, contracting out operations is a reversible process. You either tear up the contracts due to breaches,
or you let the contracts lapse and don't renew them, converting them back into publicly operated services.

[#Metro]

(from 4 Feb 2016)

Putting Sydney ferries in private hands was a good idea, report finds
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/putting-sydney-ferries-in-private-hands-was-a-good-idea-report-finds-20160204-gmlihj.html

The state's acting Auditor-General, Tony Whitfield, has found that the decision to privatise the ferries was justified, pointing to about $100 million in savings since 2012 and a good service record.

The report, released on Thursday, found the private consortium's contract price was about 12 per cent a year less than the one for the state-owned corporation that previously ran Sydney's ferry fleet.

Update

Private operator to take control of ferry services
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/private-operator-to-take-control-of-ferry-services-20120502-1xzfp.html

Members of the Maritime Union of Australia working for Sydney Ferries have already agreed to go to work for the new operator under an agreement that provides for no compulsory redundancies for at least two years, as well as one-off bonus payments of up to 30 weeks' pay.

Commuters can expect little change, initially at least. Most existing staff have agreed to keep working for the new operator, which will also retain the colours of the existing fleet, and assume the Sydney Ferries name.

[#Metro]

A really interesting story out today about the government-owned French Railways SNCF.

Interesting parallels with what is happening at QR in some regards... processes and root causes may be general.

The Macron government wants an agreement on scrapping special employment benefits enjoyed by rail workers, including job-for-life guarantees and early retirement, before discussing how much SNCF debt the Treasury absorbs.

Kind of reminds me of this very interesting report in the Courier Mail:

A RAIL union official who stepped back into a coveted train driver job at Queensland Rail after a decade-long break has denied favouritism accusations, arguing he never technically left.

Rail Tram and Bus Union organiser Shayne Kummerfeld took unpaid leave from QR for a paid union job back in 2006, ...

I can only imagine what the boss would say if anyone here put in an application for unpaid leave for the next ten years... or indefinitely.


http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-rail-union-official-back-in-drivers-seat/news-story/4f64312ee691df37ca678dc8eb0ff9f9

Discontent towards Macron's reforms spreads beyond French railways
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/discontent-towards-macron-s-reforms-spreads-beyond-french-railways-20180404-p4z7ov.html

French PM takes hard line on rail reform, unions decry 'arrogance'
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-reform-sncf/french-pm-takes-hard-line-on-rail-reform-unions-decry-arrogance-idUSKCN1HC0PL

[#Metro]

From 2009:

New train, tram operators for Melbourne
https://www.smh.com.au/national/new-train-tram-operators-for-melbourne-20090625-cxgx.html

She said the change in operators would not affect current train and tram employees, who would be transferred to the new companies.

The contract will also include a 50 per cent increase in funding for rail maintenance.

Connex asks for second chance on trains
https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/06/30/1182624239500.html

TROUBLED public transport operator Connex wants to run Melbourne's trains for another 11 years.

The company has already sought a 30-month contract extension which would leave it running Melbourne's trains until at least 2011.

But outgoing Connex chairman Bob Annells said the company would apply for a five- to seven-year contract, which could take the company's management of the train system to 2018.