There will be a clear performance benefit from not restoring timetables to full pre-Covid levels – but this needs to be balanced with priorities of revenue and cost and the resources available to operators.
Chris Rowley, Network Rail’s Capacity Planning Director, shared some analysis regarding resilient timetables at the Golden Whistles conference. He described a resilient timetable as one which, on a good day when there is no major unplanned disruption, can withstand typical variations in train presentation without significant spread of delay between services and across service groups. This will be a function of both the content of the timetable and the resource plan. Clearly, he noted, before the pandemic the railway did not have a resilient timetable in most parts of the country.
