What did we learn from the National Rail Recovery Conference?

Co-chairman PAUL CLIFTON sums up his impressions after listening to the industry’s most influential people…

GREAT BRITISH RAILWAYS The best question was this: will Great British Railways be a ‘guiding mind’ or a ‘controlling mind’?

In other words, where will the boundaries lie between GBR and the rest of the industry?

Lots of words were used, with three of GBR’s directors contributing. But the question remained largely unanswered.

STRIKE THREATS

There is no doubt that the railway is in for a bumpy ride this summer. Everyone at the conference knew it.

That Rail Minister Wendy Morton mentioned the possibility of a national strike at all is an indication that the Government is worried at the highest level. But the Minister of State, in post for three months, read a prepared script (more of a statement, really) containing nothing new. And she left at once, without taking questions. Every other speaker present answered whatever the delegates felt inclined to ask.

Afterwards, one of them told me: “The optics of the strike are very bad. RMT action would stop most trains. The pandemic did not do that. Then, we got keyworkers where they needed to be. This time, we could not run enough services to keep those keyworkers moving.”

Another told me: “We haven’t agreed pay rises, and railway people face the same cost-of-living pressures as everyone else.

“The Treasury perception of a railway that pays itself more, but runs fewer services, would be very destructive. It would have the opposite effect of what the RMT wants. It would lead to cuts in jobs and more cuts in services.

“Public goodwill towards the railway is high. We had a good pandemic. But that public and political goodwill would very quickly disappear.”

DECARBONISATION

This year, the need to decarbonise took a back seat. Everyone knows the challenge, but there are more urgent priorities.

Not for Norman Baker. The former transport minister, and now Campaign for Better Transport director, showed a graph illustrating that in every year since 1997, the cost of travelling by train has risen faster than the cost of owning and driving a car… and the gap is getting wider.

He highlighted a divergence between what the government says, and what the government does.

It promises that public transport will be the natural first choice for travellers.

Meanwhile, fuel duty has been frozen for 11 years. And recently, Air Passenger Duty has been reduced, while the road building programme has not. One in four bus services have been lost in the last decade, while in 2022 we have seen the biggest increase in rail fares in nine years.

Mike Muldoon, head of business development at Alstom, and the man leading the company’s decarbonisation activities, said: “We’ve gone from being in rail, to being in sustainable mobility. We didn’t have to change anything for that. It came to us. Rail is the best form of sustainable mobility that we have.

“Even diesel trains are better for the planet than the electric cars we are all being told we must have. The bottom line is that you can be smug about your electric car, but you will still be emitting more than if you get on a train instead. We have to get people to understand these basic messages.”

THE TREASURY

Through most conversations, “The Treasury” was seen as the elephant in the room. The Government is clearly seeking to reduce the amount of money it spends on rail.

Will that prevent the industry grasping the nettle of fares and ticketing reform? Can it keep up with the pace of decarbonisation in other transport sectors, when the financial tap for rail is being twisted anti-clockwise?

EFFICIENCY

This year will be about improving efficiency, changing working practices, doing more for less. The number of employees will fall. Unless the unions win over management.

No one was left in any doubt that this is a critical year for the railway.