Williams Review
The Williams Review must deliver a thorough examination of the rail industry that underpins improved reliability and value for money, says Transport Focus Chief Executive ANTHONY SMITH
Transport Focus Chief Executive ANTHONY SMITH discusses what passengers want from the Rail Review.
Most passengers on Britain’s platforms today have not been waiting for the Williams Rail Review, or for Professor Glaister’s report on the summer timetable chaos. They are waiting for trains, hoping that they arrive on time. They are hoping to get a seat, or to at least stand in comfort. They want the train to be clean and for the journey to offer value for money.
It must not be forgotten that the railway has experienced extraordinary growth over the past 20 years, with some 1.7 billion passenger journeys being made in 2017-18. However, after the summer’s events, with fare rises and more timetable changes looming, and with ongoing patchy performance in many areas, it is clear that something has to change in the way the railways are run, funded and led. Welcome investment is proving extremely painful to bring to life - should it be this difficult?
The Glaister report lays bare the run up to, and development of, the cringe-making timetable chaos. What should have been a D-Day-like operation turned into a Dunkirk. Blurred accountability, over-optimism and missed deadlines incubated into a massive crisis.
Our research shows the impact on passengers, with many Northern, TransPennine Express and Govia Thameslink Railway passengers unable to rely on the railway to get them to work and home again. Any passenger reading the report will wonder how the railways run at all.
The Williams Review has to sweep up the developing themes from Glaister, the joint Rail Delivery Group and Transport Focus fares review, and all the other reviews that have taken place in the last few years. While the overall issue has great complexity, the themes and key questions seem quite clear.
How can the structure, planning, funding and ownership of the industry be changed to help improve reliability, and boost capacity and value for money for passengers? The Review must be consumer-focused. Some main issues loom immediately:
Should train and track be brought closer together? If so, how?
How much competition should there be in the system, and where should it occur? At franchise replacement, on track, or in the supply chain?
How can industrial relations be improved? More employee involvement?
Devolution of Network Rail routes and to local authorities: how can they mesh?
Contract lengths: stability versus competition?
Ownership models: who is best placed to own and run parts of the network?
All these issues must be seen through one prism: the user. Passengers now pay the lion’s share of the industry’s day-to-day running costs. Their voice should be paramount, and we will work to ensure it is.
There have been reviews before: Brown, Hendy, Shaw, Bowe, McNulty and others. While they led to some change, there is a sense the findings were not followed through.
All eyes are therefore on this review. It cannot just be tinkering, it cannot be a whitewash. Passengers will want to see a thorough review of the industry to help underpin better reliability, change- management and value for money. Something has to change to underpin confidence and trust.
HOW DO PASSENGERS SEE THE RAILWAY?
We last looked at this in 2004, for the last wide-scale review of the railways. As with any industry, once the details of its operations are explained, consumers are left somewhat baffled. However, there really wasn’t much sense that passengers cared who was running which bits of the railway - they just wanted it to work. We are in the process of repeating that work, to see if passenger views have changed in the intervening years.
It is worth noting that the franchise that delivers fast services on the East Coast has gone through many hands, both public and private. What has remained remarkably consistent is passenger satisfaction - as measured by our National Rail Passenger Survey, which remained unchanged in the spring of this year compared with a year before (at 87%, which is good). Not surprising really: same trains, same staff, pretty similar ticketing, and barely a different timetable all tend to suggest that the financial machinery in the franchising process is more at fault than the delivery mechanism.
On the back of massive investment in trains, satisfaction scores from Thameslink passengers for both trains and stations were going up… before the timetable black day of May 20.
Having to speak up for passengers in September, during a two-hour Transport Select Committee evidence session on the timetable crisis, has made us reflect again on what happened. How change is planned and managed within a system that has many actors and incentives seems to be far more the key issue going forward than who runs and owns different parts of the railway.
Passengers’ views from 2004 on the structure of the railways still look relevant, and still make good reading:
Passengers want to see improvements to their rail services - this review must focus on outputs to achieve this. Passengers accept the need for change, but the review must not become a distraction or an excuse in itself. Change must be communicated to passengers and phased in gradually.
Passengers want a clear sense of strategic direction and the assurance that ‘somebody’ has a strategic vision for the railways. A single point of decision-making should exist to determine strategic investment priorities and overarching rail policy. Within this context, there is scope for more of the non-strategic decision-making to be devolved to national and regional administrations. Funding should follow this.
Passengers also want a sense that there is ‘someone’ in charge when it comes to the delivery of services to passengers. A single ‘delivery unit’ - separate from the strategic decision-making body - should have the authority to procure top-level train company and infrastructure outputs. Within this structure, train companies and Network Rail should be judged and rewarded according to the delivery of services for passengers, and
Train companies and Network Rail should be judged and rewarded according to the delivery of services for passengers, and not the delivery of services to each other.