LNER tickets, trains and tests.
PHILIP HAIGH learns about how the operator intends to improve passenger satisfaction
YORK’S new railway offices are rather smart, tucked into the vee of York South Junction where the freight lines diverge to avoid the station.
I and 100-or-so other ‘stakeholders’ gathered there on a chilly November morning to hear from LNER in its annual conference. Absent from the event was Managing Director David Horne, who was on a study trip to Japan, so it fell to his senior team to explain (or not) what LNER was doing to increase passenger satisfaction.
Engineering Director John Doughty led off with an overview of the company’s new fleet of train - branded Azuma, but essentially the same Hitachi train being used by Great Western Railway, TransPennine Express and (soon) Hull Trains.
Notwithstanding November 13’s collision and derailment of one Azuma at Neville Hill depot, LNER has 22 in service and expects to have the full fleet of 65 by next summer. This fleet is larger than its traditional Class 91s and HSTs that are now being withdrawn, and allows an expanded timetable from December 2021.
Doughty admitted to some teething problems as people became used to the new trains. That’s fair - the trains are different for both staff and crews. Other areas might take a little more work - not least because of the complicated contract that governs the trains, whereby Hitachi builds, owns and maintains them in return for a daily fee for each train supplied.
One of the changes needed is to luggage provision, which is proving inadequate - particularly for international tourists travelling to Edinburgh. While LNER’s older trains had space in the guard’s compartment or the DVT, the new trains are more constrained with much more of their overall length devoted to passenger seating.
This change is coming, as Horne revealed to the hardy souls gathered in a dark and wet Aberdeen on November for that city‘s Azuma launch.
One conference attendee raised the challenge of cycle provision. She complained that it was difficult for women to hoist their bicycles into the vertical racks provided on the trains. While Doughty promised to look into this problem, his claim that bicycle design had changed since the trains were designed was unconvincing.
But it was his claim that the Azuma’s seats were ergonomically designed that had the audience chortling. He added that LNER was receiving feedback that the seats were uncomfortable and said that improvements were coming in First Class.
Seats are a very subjective area. Comfort to one person is not to another. I’ve taken a couple of long trips on the new trains, in Standard Class and in First Class, and I think the seats are certainly firm but not uncomfortable. Mrs H prefers them to the seats on LNER’s HSTs and Mk 4 coaches.
Doughty also copped for a question about the operator’s failure to meet its T-12 deadlines for confirming timetables and thus selling advance-purchase tickets. This isn’t the usual fare for engineering directors, but he took it on the chin and explained that having four different types of train was causing problems with the company not knowing which services would run with which types.
They all have different internal layouts, making it difficult to give passengers the required seat reservation coupled to their AP ticket. At least he didn’t take the usually easy route of blaming Network Rail and its engineering work for late confirmation of timetables.
Long lunch queues came before a presentation looking at commercial aspects. Few will be surprised to hear that LNER operates in the discretionary market, with only 3% travelling on season tickets. More than half its passengers travel for leisure purposes, 37% for business, and 4% are international visitors.
Commercial Director Suzanne Donnelly confirmed that she sees cars and planes as the competition, with rail holding 33% of the
London-Edinburgh market and 41% of London-Leeds.
To win more passengers, December 2021’s timetable adds 40% more seats. Donnelly explained that they would be combined with lower fares, transformed catering, cleaner toilets and a welcome at the door. She also promised improved accessibility, although Azumas, with their high floors, have locked in the need for passengers in wheelchairs to ask staff to deploy a ramp before they can board or alight a train. This is a flaw that’s beyond LNER’s ability to change.
Donnelly just managed to slip the word ‘advance’ onto the end of her pledge that London-Leeds fares would never be above £29 - she’d paused for just long enough for her audience to think a really radical fares cut was coming.
Nevertheless, I thought her mention of family return tickets for £99 between Leeds and London represents very good value. They are good for two adults and up to four children and are valid on peak and off-peak services.
Chief Digital and Innovation Officer Danny
Gonzalez revealed that LNER is to start testing (at King’s Cross) a novel method of opening ticket gates, by detecting when a passenger’s phone holds an LNER ticket on the company’s app.
He was keen to push further uptake of LNER’s app, not least because it allows the company to learn more about passenger travel habits. There are also advantages for passengers in automatic delay repay refunds for advance purchase tickets. Gonzalez also revealed that LNER is to use artificial intelligence techniques to identify potentially fraudulent claims for further investigation.
The emphasis on delay repay struck me as curious. Certainly, LNER should make passengers aware that they can receive money back for late trains, but the stakeholder day had more emphasis on this than on reducing delays.
Attendees heard little (if anything) about how LNER intends to lift its performance from the bottom of the league position that recent Office of Rail and Road statistics show for longdistance operators. For the first quarter of 2018-19, LNER delivered 41.0% of its trains on time, down 1.5 percentage points on the same quarter the year before.
There’s certainly more disruption coming as Network Rail installs its first major deployment of cab signalling on a main line. To counter the easy view that NR must be crazy to deploy cab signalling first on a busy line such as the East Coast is the realisation that it has largely new trains that are already fitted with the equipment they need.
Deployment starts with the short branch to Moorgate, which at least gives the prospect of diverting into King’s Cross if there are problems. From 2021-22 the first sections of the ECML proper will have the new signalling, and LNER reckons that driver training will start in 2024.
NR Programme Director Toufic Machnouk told stakeholders that the new system would bring benefits “phenomenal around performance” and explained that it would cut the impact of problems.
Preliminary work has started to remodel King’s Cross, with weekend closures. The first was last summer and there’s more to come, with the next on January 25-26 and February 29-March 1.
NR expects the new layout to be finished by March 2021, a month before it finishes building the dive-under at Werrington (just north of Peterborough) and almost a year after Stevenage receives its new platform. Less visible will be two upgrades to the power supply to cope with the extra trains that LNER and other operators plan to run. The changes all feed into December 2021’s timetable on which LNER is about to start consulting passengers.
Coming sooner are TransPennine Express’ Edinburgh services, for which it has been training crews on its version of the Azuma, the Nova 1. TPE Managing Director Leo Goodwin told stakeholders on November 25 that TPE was “bringing an inter-city network to the North”.
They start from December 15’s new timetable with a roughly hourly service from Liverpool via Manchester, Leeds and York. I wish the new service well, but wonder how it will perform given the punctuality challenges on TPE’s route through Manchester and over the hill to Yorkshire, as well as the East Coast Main Line’s own challenges.
For TPE, this move represents a major expansion of services beyond its traditional Newcastle limit. It’s bringing change on the West Coast Main Line, too, with direct trains between Liverpool and Glasgow for the first time in decades.
These Glasgow trains are a year later than promised, but TPE is delivering its extended Edinburgh East Coast services as planned. It means that the route north of York will have three major operators as far as Edinburgh, giving passengers more choice and more trains than ever before. Let’s hope it all works as planned!
“The emphasis on delay repay struck me as curious. Certainly, LNER should make passengers aware that they can receive money back for late trains, but the stakeholder day had more emphasis on this than on reducing delays.”