Highly Commended
Merseyrail
At the due diligence meeting, Merseyrail was personally represented by the Managing Director, who was accompanied by the frontline station manager for Liverpool Central station (which, incidentally, serves more passengers per day than Liverpool Lime Street, the city’s main line terminal station).
The Merseyrail presentation highlighted the company’s positive track record of good communications with its passengers and with the communities that it serves. Furthermore, its new focus on right-time delivery in terms of performance management demonstrates a clear spirit of continuous improvement, because while Merseyrail is regularly top of the league in terms of the Public Performance Measure, it is not yet the best in terms of right-time performance.
The company has built up a very strong partnership with concession provider Merseytravel, as evidenced by the commitment to major investment programmes including rolling stock replacement, station control and enhancement, and ticketing modernisation.
Despite the inclusion of Merseyrail in the RMT’s industrial action to resist the implementation of driver-only operation, Merseytravel has fully supported Merseyrail in its commitment and ability to continue to operate services during industrial action.
The judges felt that Merseyrail’s success in being very highly valued and recognised by the community on Merseyside, and for the dependable quality of the services it provides, makes it well worth a Highly Commended award in 2017.