Stefanie Foster says safety must come first as services increase.

A huge challenge ahead to restore public confidence

“Will the British public abide by such stringent guidelines about where they should stand, walk or sit…?”

WE’RE entering a new phase of this awful crisis… the end of the beginning and the slow start of a return to normal - whatever ‘normal’ is now.

And it’s going to be far from quick. Many things weren’t clear from the Prime Minister’s speech on May 10, or from the follow-up announcements and intended clarifications the following day, but it is evident that we cannot expect to enjoy most of the freedoms we were used to, certainly for most of the summer and probably beyond.

But despite the PM’s plea that people should avoid public transport, what we do know is that the railway has begun to bring service levels back up - under the expectation that many people will have little choice but to use trains as the Government encourages businesses which can reasonably comply with social distancing rules to reopen, in an effort to restart our crashed economy. The Government cannot afford for the railway to be any sort of impediment to recovery.

Ordinarily, we encourage people out of their cars and onto trains. Modal shift to rail has an environmental and productivity advantage. But those considerations have to take a back seat for now, in favour of the only one that passengers are really concerned about - their health and wellbeing, and crucially that of those working on the railway.

We have begun to measure an individual’s safety in terms of metres, but the reality is that keeping people two metres apart at all times is going to be well-nigh impossible. How safe people are will come down to their behaviour and their own common sense (as well as that of their fellow passengers), and how closely they follow the rules. Because they will largely have to self-police this - train operators and the British Transport Police will not be able to enforce the use of face coverings, for example.

You can find our full analysis of the methods being employed by train operators, Network Rail, the BTP and the rest of the industry to encourage compliance with social distancing on pages 6-9 and in Philip Haigh’s excellent column on page 56, but these methods are going to involve the most complex sets of rules ever implemented on the peacetime railway.

We’re already well used to making the most of limited space, managing demand, and controlling the flow of passengers through stations. But now the rules are much stricter.

The acid test: will the British public abide by such stringent guidelines about where they should stand, walk or sit in our stations and on our trains, when they have been used to a turnup-and-go railway where they enjoyed freedom having bought their ticket?

In Japan, such guidelines have been an everyday aspect of life for decades. Passengers have long been accustomed to queueing in orderly lines to board a train. But here in the UK, we tend to stampede from the concourse the moment the platform number is announced for the train we want to catch, crush round the doors, and then launch ourselves into the first available seat before our fellow passengers can take them all.

We’ve had to adapt to all sorts of new restrictions over the past few weeks, so there’s no reason why we can’t now be expected to follow new rules on the railway, too. And maybe it will bring unintended benefits - after all, Japan’s railways enjoy a near-military precision to their timetable with nearly 100% punctuality every day, despite operating some of the busiest stations and the fastest, most intensive, services in the world.

Much of Japan’s success depends on a culture of discipline and obedience, but they also make extensive use of ‘nudge theory’ to encourage the behaviour they want to see on their network.

Nudge theory (pioneered by behavioural economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein) surmises that you can subtly influence people towards decisions that are in their own (or society’s) best interests through gentle ‘nudges’ in the right direction. We even have our own government office devoted to nudge theory - the Behavioural Insights Team, run in partnership with the Cabinet Office and which has worked on projects with Transport for London and elsewhere on the railway.

We already have plenty of examples of ‘nudges’ on our transport network, such as those chevrons on motorways that advise you to stay at least two sets apart. Not everyone follows the guidance, but enough people do for research to indicate a more than 50% reduction in the number of accidents on sections where they are in use. All from painting white arrows on the road. No enforcement action necessary.

Another perfect example in the current crisis is the new social distancing roundels that have started appearing in stations across the rail network (there’s an example on our front cover this issue and in the interview with NR Chief Executive Andrew Haines on pages 28-35). Spaced two metres apart, they work in a similar way to the chevrons - nudging station users to stay at least that far away from each other.

But we do need to face facts. Even with a suite of rules and procedures designed to protect them, for many people returning to the railway after a long absence in lockdown will be incredibly scary (see Transport Focus’ latest survey results, pages 8-9). For weeks, we’ve been told to stay at home to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The threat that demanded our isolation has not gone away.

Before this all started, regular Underground commuters simply viewed a crowded Tube train with frustration and irritation. Now those trains have become a source of fear. It’s always been uncomfortable to travel on a busy train, but most of us have not often considered it as life-threatening (other than in the weeks following fatal crashes such as Ladbroke Grove in 1999 or Hatfield in 2000, and the awful terror attacks on transport in 2005 and 2017).

More than ever, the railway has an enormous job to do in proving to the travelling public that it is safe to travel on a train. For the next few months, those allowed to travel will have their movements dictated by lockdown restrictions. But as those restrictions ease, more people will want and need to start travelling again - and whether they return to rail will depend on if they feel it is safe.

Haines rightly believes we’re going to need a massive collective marketing campaign (no deckchairs please) to create confidence and bring people back to the railway when the crisis eases and more of us return to ‘normal’. We cannot take it for granted that passengers will come flooding back.

Now is the time to consider as an industry how we will encourage passengers back onto our trains. Quality of service is going to be more important than ever.

This is the perfect opportunity for the Rail Delivery Group to step up and shape that ‘single team’ voice it is there to provide.

Over to you, RDG…

Nigel Harris is away.