Peer review: Richard McClean
Managing Director, Grand Central
uietly and in the background, the East Coast Main Line has progressively and incrementally enhanced its capacity and capability year after year. The next chapter of the ECML story is about to start - and what a great story it is, with the prospect of the fastest ever Anglo-Scottish services, fleets of new trains, more direct services to London from more regional centres, and a massive upgrade to the commuter services into London. Just what the Northern Powerhouse needs.
At the heart of this success story has been the dramatic and continued growth in the number of passengers attracted by the high level of customer service and good value offered by the inter-city operators.
It is right that capacity on the route should be expanded to allow this good news story to continue, rather than to see it choked off just at the moment when rail is able to take a good shot at the last major domestic inter-city market that hasn’t been transferred from air to rail.
In this context, there are two separate debates:
- Which service proposal delivers the best product to that key market - a ‘more of the same’ option, or one that raises the bar to the point where rail is the natural option for Anglo-Scottish travel, just as it is now for Yorkshire and the North East?
- Is it better to serve these highly commercial markets through state-sponsored monopolies, or by opening up the opportunity for passengers to have a real choice between operators?
Network Rail’s capacity study shows how it is possible to develop strong timetables that maximise the benefits from the investments made on the route, balancing the requirements of different service types and the needs of different end users.
We shouldn’t be too surprised at that, as it has been happening for years. We have operated mixed traffic routes with everything from 60mph freight trains through intense suburban service patterns to long-distance high speed trains. Despite suggestions to the contrary, it has not been necessary that all the trains are painted the same colour, or are subject to the rigours of a single “guiding mind”.
Of course, there is the real question as to how the commercial services running on the network pay a suitable contribution to the total costs of the infrastructure they use. There is no doubt that they should, and efficient ways of achieving this can be found through looking at how access charges are structured or the establishment of direct levies on commercial operators.
However, it is also clear that using a process that was designed to subsidise socially necessary services that can’t cover their own costs through direct revenue is highly inefficient, places massive risk with the taxpayer, and deprives passengers the palpable benefits of real choice in the services they can use.
The ECML has the capacity to provide the best service ever offered to passengers, and it has a host of world-class operators queuing up with innovative service plans that will blow the socks of passengers. It would be a crying shame if the internal bureaucracy of the rail industry got in the way of unlocking all of this!
