Nobody wants ￡50 ‘prizes’ or ‘surprise tickets’, we just want reliable trains
This year train companies have come up with all kinds of offers to boost passenger numbers, still below pre-pandemic levels at least in terms of revenue. Kids for a Quid on SouthEastern, Avanti West Coast’s Superfare scheme matching a requested day with quieter trains, Northern Train’s Travel Anywhere for ￡10 and most recently a “package of ‘surprise and delight’ events” from TransPennine Express (TPE).
TPE passengers might be offered coffee, cakes and ice cream at stations, and the recently introduced Charm app allows staff to dispense “random acts of kindness” in the form of a ￡50 voucher when appropriate. These will be issued when there has been a disruption to services, and there’s been so much of that on TransPennine that the timetable has been scaled back in the hope of achieving better reliability (Avanti has recently done the same on its London to Manchester route).
Less likely to delight TPE passengers is the withdrawal of their most modern trains, barely five years old, leaving services in the hands of diesel units well into their second decade.
These gestures do no harm, but they aren’t exactly what the former boss of Chiltern Trains, Adrian Shooter, meant when he said that operators had to “delight our customers”. Annual research by Transport Focus has repeatedly shown that passengers value punctuality above all else; as its Chief Executive Anthony Smith has said: “Just get the trains on time, and people will use them.”
Punctuality and cancellations have got worse during the past year, partly because of strikes, but the overall figures mask large variations between operators, with almost twice the number of Greater Anglia trains arriving on time compared with Avanti West Coast.
The causes of poor performance vary according to operator and geography: teething troubles with new trains, unreliable old ones, climate change-related problems with cuttings and embankments requiring speed restrictions, ageing bridges, low morale due to the lack of any strategic direction.
Even before the pandemic, the franchising model of running trains was broken, and the promised creation of Great British Railways on the back of the Williams-Shapps plan was intended to replace franchises with new National Rail Contracts. These would stipulate broad performance levels but also incentivise growth and correct franchising’s misaligned incentives and diffuse accountabilities.
How much can be achieved without enabling legislation is uncertain, but none is expected in the King’s Speech on November 7, leaving England’s railways to continue under the micro-management of the DfT – while publicly owned ScotRail and Transport for Wales report to the devolved administrations. In England, profit and loss accounts have been separated, with revenue going to the Treasury which leans on the DfT to reduce costs.
The ticket office fiasco is a case in point and a classic example of putting the cart before the horse. Had the long called-for reform of fares and ticketing been tackled first, reducing the 2,822 ticket types, a more limited reduction in booking offices or hours might have been accepted. Instead, the 680,000 responses broke all records for a consultation. Another example is the DfT’s threat to cut back on Wi-Fi provision on trains, undermining one of the main reasons why many passengers choose to travel by train.
While many European countries are putting railways at the heart of their transport policies in pursuit of net zero and cleaner air, the policy makers in the UK seem uninterested in railways and the potential of trains to reduce pollution. Part of the pretext for cancelling northern HS2 was so cobbled together that the Prime Minister promised to build two new lines that have been carrying passengers for almost 10 years, raising questions over competence as well as commitment.
Railways and their suppliers are long-term businesses and need certainty. In 2018 the government promised to provide that through an annual Rail Network Enhancement Pipeline to help the industry plan. Not one has been produced. In contrast Scotland has a rolling programme of electrification that builds on best practice and retains skills.
The kind of quality provided by other countries comes at a price, of course. In Switzerland, transport spending absorbs 2.7 per cent of national GDP compared with 1.7 per cent in the UK – but this is reflected in the Swiss travelling more by train than any other country except Japan, with all the benefits that brings.
To release adequate funding to maintain and enhance infrastructure and provide trains of quality that people want to travel in, it requires vision. To realise the win-wins that can come from integrating objectives within public transport, air quality, climate change and public health and wellbeing? That seems to be completely absent.
Until the UK policy makers rise to that challenge, we must watch on as countries such as Indonesia and Morocco open their high-speed railways, and wonder where it all went wrong for the country that invented the railways.