Peer review: Paul Plummer
Chief Executive, Rail Delivery Group
The ‘railway problem’ that Michael Holden opens with has been turned on its head. We are no longer managing long-term decline, as had been the presumption 20 years ago. Rather, we are dealing with consistent and unprecedented growth in the use of the rail network to support our economy.
That growth has focused the attention of train operators on the need to improve customer experience and specifically deal with the need to change outdated practices. For example, ambitious proposals to modernise train tickets in the next three years will finally send the familiar but outdated orange paper ticket on the way to retirement, as smart and mobile devices become the norm.
Our piloting of a flexible barcoded m-Ticket covers more than 230 stations in the north of England, Scotland and the Midlands, allowing people to switch between different train operators’ services on a single journey. More than 40,000 have been bought so far, but we need to do more, so we are working with the card payments industry to explore how people outside London could use contactless credit or debit cards as a ‘token to travel’.
Michael says season tickets are under-priced. They can be great value for money, especially in terms of the wider employment, business, housing and leisure opportunities that they enable. But that view won’t necessarily be shared even when the most recent fares increase (at 1.1%) was the lowest in six years. We must be seen as reformers - creating a system that is simpler, more flexible around passengers’ individual needs, and easier to understand. Fundamentally, it needs to be a system that passengers trust. The reality is that increasingly, revenue can and should fill the funding gap - and that government funding will go more directly and transparently to subsidising investment for services that would never be commercially viable but which are socially, economically or environmentally important.
We also need change in the parts of the railway to which our customers have less direct exposure. An open and increasingly busy network means that difficult decisions have to be made about when to carry out renewals and enhancements. The Rail Delivery Group works to enable railway companies to make choices that optimise the trade-off between weekend closures or longer possessions at other times. Neither is ideal, and what we need is the right balance.
On the bigger questions of the railway’s finances and its efficiency, we want to not just cover the total cost of day-to-day operation, maintenance and renewal, but also support the costs of developing the network to increase capacity and capability. When extra money is created, government has greater flexibility to decide how much it wants to invest in improving services and at what level it wishes to set regulated fares.
Michael is concerned that Britain’s stations aren’t receiving the attention they often deserve, with much attention rightly having been focused on infrastructure and rolling stock. While Birmingham New Street, Manchester Victoria, Reading, London St Pancras, London King’s Cross and Edinburgh Waverley have all received huge investment in recent years, we know that a long-term plan is needed for those medium-sized and smaller stations in towns and cities across Britain that haven’t had the attention they need, for various reasons. But the detailed thinking that we need has been happening - our Vision for Stations is on the RDG website, and we are working hard to embed it in the thinking of the industry and other relevant partners. We want Britain’s stations to be inclusive and welcoming, and to encourage everyone to travel by rail. It’s a vision that will be enabled by those working at the station, by the innovative use of technology, and by the involvement of the communities those stations serve.
Michael rightly points to the inter-relationships between the many challenges facing the industry and the various reviews currently under way. The industry strongly supports the changes being made within Network Rail to devolve accountability locally to the Routes within a national framework, supported by an effective system operator with a strong and confident regulator. The Shaw Review provides an opportunity to look at these issues and gain support for the way forward over the next few years.
The RDG will do everything it can to help railway companies to be successful in delivering better outcomes for passengers, freight customers and taxpayers. Our priorities are around improving punctuality and value for money, while modernising ticketing and improving door-to-door journeys.
We also need to improve industry structures to enable excellence, and to plan better for the railway’s future - whether that is manifested in HS2, the Digital Railway, new rolling stock or the challenges of climate change. And as with ticketing and fares, we are informing the Government’s choices on franchising and the role of open access operators (the RDG’s members have business in both types of operation). Above all, to achieve what everyone wants from the railway, we need a clarity of accountability, with a clear line of sight to end customers.
