Use data and technology to refresh transport strategy.
DATA and technology must “lead the way” in the rail sector postCOVID-19, according to Maria Machancoses, director of Midlands Connect, the sub-national transport body for the Midlands.
She advised rail operators to use the downtime caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to review data and to analyse what factors affect reliability the most - and work out how to fix them.
“Lack of reliability is the biggest reason passengers turn their backs on rail, and post-pandemic we need to welcome passengers back to the railway in larger numbers than ever,” she said.
“We can now use this opportunity to re-examine timetables and service levels to maximise performance.”
Midlands Connect is using data to help refresh its transport strategy and to balance competing priorities, Machancoses told the National Rail Recovery Conference.
It is also working with local partners on a region-wide ‘tap and cap’ smart ticketing system for public transport, which will allow passengers to travel and pay for journeys on buses, trams and trains via a credit card, smartphone or travel pass.
“Not only will this boost confidence, convenience and hygiene, due to contactless payments, it will also provide better value for commuters and travellers who no longer work from nine to five, Monday to Friday,” said Machancoses (pictured).
“It will allow passengers to travel seamlessly across the region on multiple modes, increasing the attractiveness of end-to-end journeys by public transport and, crucially, encourage more people to leave the cars at home.”
Data will play a role in looking at how demand changes on different routes, and how the offering can be adapted with extra seats where they are needed most or by suggesting alternative routes when disruption occurs.
Data can also be used to justify to Government the need for investment, she suggested.
Martin Tugwell, programme director at England’s Economic Heartland, explained how the sub-national transport body had developed its transport strategy by putting together a database and using new tools, which allowed it to think about some of the bigger opportunities or trends and their impact relative to other scenarios.
EEH has looked in detail at the type of people it has across the region (which includes Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire) and their pattern of movements and why they make journeys to understand how to “change the nature of travel moving forward”.
Its newly published transport strategy, which will now be submitted to Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps, aims to achieve net zero by 2040 - ten years ahead of the Government’s legal requirement.
“We’re very clear that the railway system and the railway services has a vital role to play in helping us achieve that,” said Tugwell.