Rail Review
Chairman warns that passenger numbers will decline if industry ignores findings of year-long rail review.
THE head of the Government’s Rail Review has warned MPs and the wider rail industry that failure to implement his forthcoming recommendations could lead to a long-term decline in passenger numbers.
Keith Williams said the current state of the rail industry meant that operators and government could no longer take the consistent trend of year-on-year passenger growth for granted, and that without making significant changes they could instead “drive passengers away”.
Speaking in Westminster on February 5, at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group, Williams referenced statistics from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) showing a decline in passenger numbers in 2017-18, following two decades of unbroken growth from 800 million in 1996 to more than 1.7 billion.
He also pointed to falling levels of passenger satisfaction which have now officially sunk to a tenyear low (see Network News, page 14-15).
“Passengers want to see a railway system that they can be confident in and they know who is accountable when things go wrong, which are not seen in these contexts today,” he said.
“There is a fear that if we continue as we are then we will drive people away from the railway over time. My observation is that we have taken recent growth for granted.”
The former British Airways chief executive is currently at the halfway point of a public consultation for the year-long review he was commissioned to undertake by Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling last September, in response to last May’s timetable meltdown on the Northern and Thameslink networks.
Williams confirmed that position papers presenting his arguments would be published over the summer, with a White Paper following in the autumn - paving the way for possible legislation in 2020. He is also due to give the annual George Bradshaw address to an audience of rail industry leaders on February 26.
Although Williams could not be drawn on what recommendations could be expected from his review, he hinted that solutions were likely to include rolling back the current functions of the Department for Transport, following consistent feedback that gave “a sense that the government micro-manages
the industry”.
The current franchising model is also likely to be overhauled, although Williams said that new models and the question of private or public control would “evolve and we should focus on where we want to get to first, and then how we get there will fall into place”.
He added: “There is a rush to how the industry should be structured. We cannot ignore that we have an industry subsidised by the taxpayer, but within that I don’t think from discussions I’ve had that government necessarily wants to play the role it has done.
“Some people have also said that franchise contracts they have bear no resemblance to where they started 20 years ago. Is that right, and does that lose the innovation we wanted when the system was introduced 20 years ago?
“There may well be more than one solution for different parts of the network, but we need something in place for the controlling mind that can do those trade-offs.”
Fares and ticketing is another area ripe for reform, with Williams issuing a strong call to action that his recommendations will be properly implemented, rather than any continuation of the status quo.
“If we’re going to have a 21st century railway then we need a fares and ticketing system that customers in future will really value. It is beholden to us to come up with something that passengers trust. Giving direction to that is very important.
“There have been something like 30 reviews since 2006, and there’s some concern that this will just be the 31st. I think there is a window of opportunity and we shouldn’t pull the blinds down on that. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a 21st century railway.”