What train operators say…

Train operators are anxious not to be heard talking out of turn, nor biting the hand that feeds them. They have to protect the interests of their staff and passengers. So, here are the views of some of the most senior industry figures, given to RAIL strictly off the record:

Train Operator One

We are not in any talks. First time around, DfT did all their thinking and then brought proposals to the train operators that were “take it or leave it”. We received our offer on a Friday and on Sunday we accepted it.

In reality there was not a choice. Given the speed of the pandemic and what had to be done, I don’t criticise that. Everybody jumped into the lifeboat because there wasn’t any other option.

I know the DfT and the Treasury are now working through what is likely to happen when the Emergency Measures Agreements end in September.

It is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious that revenue will not have recovered by then, and a statement of the obvious that for most operators, if they went back to their previous franchises, they would all go bust within a few days.

What the DfT purchased is stability. We are all running as many trains as our resources allow. It has bought absolute transparency - they know how many face masks we sourced this week and how much hand sanitiser we are due to get delivered next week. It has bought complete control of the industry.

It has also bought security for our staff and passengers, and we can only thank them for that intervention. But we have only three months to find the next step, and therefore the only real possibility is a derivative of the EMA.

I don’t think we need to run 100% of our timetable. If we run 90%, we could focus on punctuality. We could cancel fewer trains every day because we would not be relying on a high level of rest-day working, and we could save some cost in track access charges, energy use and staffing.

The sweet spot coming out of this will be less than we are capable of running - just as I cannot see buses, airlines or cruise ships operating at 100% for the foreseeable future.

And some operators might not have a choice in that. They’ve had their driver training interrupted since the middle of March, leaving them unable to run a full service anyway.

The EMAs have come at a price. But they have brought cohesion of a level I haven’t seen in many years. And they have brought pace. We’re on a fifth timetable in four months. We have apps offering information we never had before. Two weeks ago, we didn’t have face coverings. Now we do. We have tens of thousands of signs at stations and on trains advising people of the changes to social distancing.

This era has brought some very good things. This EMA solution gives the Government some of the benefits of privatisation - it keeps existing private sector leadership teams, marketing and competition skills, it brings a customer service ethos, and it brings innovation.

But it does so without asking the franchisee to gamble. It gives the DfT most of the advantages of the private sector without the risk transfer; something that we all know has not worked well in recent years.

Train Operator Two

We are preparing for an extension to the EMA of at least another year, but it is challenging. We cannot spend any money without Treasury sign-off. We can’t actually pee in a pot unless the Treasury says we can.

But we still have no idea what