Bosses come under fire at public showdown
IT will take rail bosses ‘months and months’ to rebuild the public trust lost in the Northern fiasco, according to the boss of a passenger watchdog.
David Brown, Northern MD, TransPennine boss Leo Goodwin and Network Rail’s routes director Patrick Cawley all faced condemnation at a public showdown chaired by Passenger Focus in Manchester yesterday.
Much of the ground covered was a rehash of well-versed explanations and apologies and some questions, including how much the chaos has cost Northern, remained unanswered.
But the meeting did highlight how the crisis has eroded public trust in the rail industry.
Among questions asked from the audience were: “Are the timetables all lies?”, “How can we have confidence the rail alliance is telling the truth?” and “How will you liaise with Transport for the North (TfN) to bring some accountability for the people of the north to the trains that we rely on?”
After the meeting, Anthony Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus, said: “The rail industry has shot itself in the foot quite spectacularly with this.
“We don’t want it to happen again – we want to rely on the trains.
“Passengers’ trust in the railways is built round their daily experience – did the train arrive this morning? Did it get me home tonight?
“I think passengers will trust the industry again when it delivers. They will choose rail again and once the improvements are in place with new trains and track, I think you will probably see more passengers coming back, but it’s going to take months and months.
He added: “We need honest promises. We can cope with the truth. If there are going to be delays just tell us. Don’t sit on it until this terrible crisis breaks out.”
Meanwhile, rail bosses did their best to paint a brighter picture of the future.
Apologising, David Brown, Northern boss, said a compensation package was needed that would ‘re-establish trust in the system’ and that this had been a focus in the north west.
He said a review was underway and they were working on the December timetable. He said their franchise was already ‘50 per cent devolved’ to Transport for the North which would hold them to account.
Asked by the Transport Focus panel why they ‘couldn’t just get on and do’ the special compensation, Mr Brown said they were waiting on approval from the DfT and TfN. He said their priorities were now a compensation package, reintroducing the proper timetable on July 29 and ensuring future timetables are introduced in a more efficient way.
Patrick Cawley, director of routes sponsorship from Network Rail appealed to passengers ‘not to lose sight of the benefits’ of the Great Northern Project, aimed at improving efficiency and boosting capacity.
Blaming the Preston route delays on poor ground quality at Bolton, he insisted they had now ‘broken the back’ of north west electrification works and that they would be complete by September, with a ‘stable network’ back by November.
He added: “Please rest assured that we have an open and honest relationship and we see an awful lot of each other in terms of how we manage projects.”
Mr Goodwin, who also apologised for disruption, said the rail parties worked in ‘close collaboration’ and said an inquiry would establish how the crisis had been managed.
Mr Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus, added: “We’ve had lots and lots of stories from passengers about their disruption to their ordinary lives that the timetable problems have caused.
“It’s a real mess, we all build our lives around these services and they’ve got to be reliable.
“It’s really important that we heard direct from the rail industry a big sorry, a recognition of what went wrong and why so it won’t happen again.
“Thirdly, there’s a plan to make services reliable again – that’s what passengers want to hear.”
Mr Smith added: “Passengers want to trust the railway again.
“They need to know it’s understood what went wrong, it’s not going to happen again and the basic issues with the timetable are going to be put right.”
But he stressed it would take months to ‘sort out’.