Reimagining the customer journey

The possibilities for improving intermodality are unlikely to receive immediate attention, according to the Reimagining the customer journey breakout session at the National Rail Recovery Conference.

A question from the floor asked how Great British Railways would improve the intermodality offering, to hopefully dissuade customers from using their cars for part or all of their journey.

Suzanne Donnelly, Passenger Revenue and Marketing Director at the GBR Transition Team, replied that while there is clear consumer demand for multi-mode options, the rail industry is “good at delivering the railway leg” of the journey “but not particularly good at dealing with the end-to-end journey”.

Donnelly continued: “While we don’t have the answers straightaway, it’s something we are committed to and needs to be in GBR planning, as this is one of the things that we need to address. But we really need to get the railway element working first.”

She concluded that “there is a lot of work to do” in that area, while panel chairman Anthony Smith added that it was his “gut feeling that you get the rail bit right first before you start spreading out into the bus industry outside of London - which is quite complex, to put it mildly”.

Smith, chief executive of Transport Focus, also noted that a lack of ‘right price’ car parking at railway stations had previously been put forward as “the biggest drag on revenue growth” on the West Coast Main Line.

Also discussed at the breakout session was: Is the railway really an enabler for ‘levelling up’?

The industry accepts that ticket costs are the biggest hurdle in the bid to attract more passengers, although a comment from the floor noted that ticket prices in deprived areas meant that many potential customers were simply priced out of the market. How could GBR tackle this?

Alistair Lees (pictured), chairman of Independent Rail Retailers, noted (partly in jest) that fares had been available for as little as 35p on some Northern trains during the recent Great British Rail Sale.

However, he immediately acknowledged that there are also many examples of train fares being “incomparably high compared to what it might cost to make the journey by car”.

He concluded that there was “no easy solution” to the problem, suggesting it would need either “further reductions for people with accessibility needs or a general reduction in the pricing we have. It’s a very hard nut to crack.”

Donnelly noted that some such discussion had taken place, but that there was “more scope” for it.

She recognised that with the Government and Treasury’s involvement, “changing fares en-masse overnight” is not possible.

And she said that building a live evidence base of how people would respond to fare offers, would help train operating companies to sell such ideas to the Government.