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By Andy Bagnall, Chief Strategy Officer, Rail Delivery Group

There is no part of the British economy that has been left untouched by the coronavirus pandemic and that includes transport which, like many other sectors, has been deeply affected.

For rail, this meant that overnight, demand that once resembled a Niagara Falls-like torrent dried up to something more akin to a dripping tap. Facing predictions of 250,000 deaths (1), we saw people’s personal freedom restricted to an unprecedented extent and as a result, passenger numbers sank to as low as 4% of normal levels.

As the country entered lockdown in March, an effort of war-time proportions commenced. Understanding the vital role the rail network would play in the national response to a deadly pandemic – getting doctors and nurses to their life-saving jobs and vital supplies to where they were needed – train operators, both passenger and freight, immediately agreed to work in close cooperation with government. As companies involved in running a strategic national asset, it was the responsible thing to do.

A cynic might say that with government stepping in to make up the shortfall in fares revenue – the result of that 96% drop in passenger numbers – there was little choice. But I am convinced that by supporting the national effort in its immediate response to coronavirus and by continuing to do so by aiding the government’s approach to easing the lockdown, the railway has enhanced its standing with the public, not diminished it.

Some have advocated in these pages that the rail industry should have ignored government advice to discourage travel, particularly by public transport. There are four reasons why such a view is mistaken.

First, to refuse to support the government’s initial message of asking people only to travel if their journey was really necessary would have been to ignore the delicate balance the government needed to strike between asking essential workers to continue their roles and keeping the country and those workers safe by controlling the pandemic through measures like social distancing.

This balance has continued through the first steps of a gradual reopening of the economy where the government needs to restart the economy but avoid a second spike – and that has meant social distancing in some form being maintained. 

Of course, this has meant a continued impact on rail, just as other sectors have experienced. In rail’s case, intensive demand management was necessary to ensure that trains could be kept clear for key workers and others returning where they couldn’t work from home.

Secondly, the views expressed benefit from a position of not inconsiderable hindsight. Written as they were one month after the first easing of restrictions, and with the railway not having experienced the negative media reports that were seen in London at the start of the lockdown, where people were packed shoulder to shoulder in carriages in the middle of a global pandemic, it is easy to say that rail should have adopted a less cautious approach to managing demand.

With the nation emerging from a period completely unprecedented in its history, it would have taken a very brave gambler to bet that train companies should risk people’s health by publicly ignoring government advice.

Thirdly, after the initial success in suppressing demand, the industry’s message quickly evolved to focus on asking people who had to travel to consider active options or going at quieter times – a softer position than urging people not to use trains altogether which helps to utilise end-to-end capacity.

I empathise with the concerns of people who care passionately about the railway’s future. This is a time of great uncertainty for every sector.

As a nation, we face a recession on a scale unseen for a century or more and in the rail sector, coronavirus means we also face the hastening of emerging trends - like home working and video conferencing - that will fundamentally alter the market for our services.

In such circumstances, it is understandably tempting to focus on the short-term commercial harm that may be done by a message that discourages train travel. But against such a turbulent and unpredictable backdrop, it is necessary to look to the long-term fundamentals of our sector and how they can be protected, and if possible, strengthened. That includes our reputation.

This brings us to the fourth reason why it is wrong to argue that rail companies should have ignored government advice. To do so would have looked self-serving in the extreme.

It has been said in many places - the public will remember for a long time to come which companies and sectors have acted responsibly during a time of national crisis and those that put their own interests first.

By asking people to consider whether their journey is really necessary, promoting active travel options and asking those who do need to travel by train to do so at quieter times, rail companies have put their short-term commercial interests to one side in favour of supporting efforts to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.

The rail industry has done – and has been seen to do - the right thing for the country and in this, it has done the right thing for itself, by protecting and strengthening its standing in the eyes of the public. It has built trust among its customers and potential customers.

This is borne out by polling of the general public carried out in late-May which found that trust in the rail industry is up 7% compared to January. The industry’s net promoter score – the proportion of people who would recommend travelling by rail to a friend - is up 5%. In comparison, trust in the airline sector – which has adopted a more aggressive approach to calling for the relaxation of coronavirus travel restrictions – has seen trust fall by 5%.

The rail industry, not renowned for commanding the trust of its customers, is emerging from the crisis with its reputation not only protected but somewhat enhanced.

In the coming weeks and months, as the economy further reopens and train operators become more confident that they can safely balance increased capacity and demand, the message to customers will evolve again. Instead of asking people whether they really need to travel, the emphasis will shift to how people can travel safely and to promoting the steps the industry is taking to enable them to do so. In due course and when the time is right the railway, like many other sectors, will mount an offensive to start attracting back its customers.

Of course, an enhanced reputation alone will not guarantee our success but it will make the task a little bit easier. What’s more, with enhanced trust comes the opportunity for the industry to build back better, because it has greater scope to confront fundamental challenges which involve difficult trade-offs - like capacity and punctuality, or fares reform - the fixing of which has the potential to create a virtuous circle of improving trust.

That’s why supporting the nation during coronavirus will make the railway stronger in the long-term.

1. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196234/covid-19-imperial-researchers-model-likely-impact/

Published in RAIL magazine 908 (1-14 July 2020)

Learn how the rail industry contributed to the national war effort.

Introduction

VE Day 2020 marks 75 years since guns fell silent on Europe, and represents an opportunity for countries around the world to reflect on the sacrifice, courage and willpower of those who gave their all, both on the front lines, and at home.

The rail industry has used this historic occasion to remember those who worked on Britain’s railways during the Second World War.

Keeping Britain moving

Arguably, the most important role played by the rail industry during the war effort was the transportation of key goods such as food, fuel, munitions, parcels and troops. Without the rail network, vital supplies would not reach the front lines, with trains travelling from across the country to ports and factories - and further into Europe.

Statistics put the work and importance of freight during the war into perspective. At this time, the freight rail network ran across 133,440,000 miles of track, with an equally extensive rail fleet of around 19,577 steam locomotives, and 2,002 rail motor vehicles. By 1940, around 500 extra freight trains ran every day on one railway, helping to move 254,496,000 tonnes of goods, and in 1939, the railway delivered over 90,556,000 parcels across Britain.

Rail also acted as a lifesaving instrument, playing a large part in the evacuation of soldiers from Dunkirk, where 600 hospital trains transported around 319,000 troops from Dover to hospitals throughout Britain.

The Southern railway bore the burden of the work and ran day and night to evacuate the troops. They then handed the trains over to Great North Western and the North Western rail companies to take the men to medical centres. Without this mammoth effort to keep the country moving, Britain’s forces would have been considerably weaker.

Staying at home

Civilians were also expected to play a vital role in the war effort.

By taking unnecessary journeys, the public risked slowing down the system, taking up needed cargo space and depleting valuable fuel reserves. Their job was simple – to stay at home. The railway had a responsibility to relay this government message so in 1939, the Railway Executive Committee introduced a number of measures to persuade the British public to stay at home and cut down on non-essential travel.

When the Committee first took control of the network, hoardings were immediately cleared of most advertising material related to leisure travel. In 1942, further dramatic measures were introduced such as the withdrawal of cheap day tickets, closing routes to coastal towns and cutting the frequency of commuter trains. The committee also developed an advertising campaign, with messages encouraging people to ‘holiday at home’ appearing throughout the country.

Different initiatives were introduced for those working across key jobs on the home front. To relieve the strain on the significantly reduced commuter system, businesses operated on staggered operating hours, so that stations and trains could cope with the influx of workers.

Kindertransport

The Kindertransport was an organised mission by the British Government which helped 10,000 Jewish children escape from Nazi occupied territories. As persecution continued, there was a rise in the number of Jewish families aiming to leave Germany. The Kindertransport mission provided an opportunity for some of these children to seek temporary refuge in the UK.

Following Kristallnacht, the arrests of 30,000 Jewish people, and the destruction of 267 synagogues throughout Germany in 1938, the British Government oversaw the first Kindertransport journey from Berlin, helping to deliver 200 children to safety in Harwich.

Over the following nine months, as German forces advanced, Britain extended their Kindertransport rescue to children in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Poland, bringing thousands more children to safety.

London Liverpool Street Station became established as the main destination for the Kindertransport. Here, the refugee children were met by their volunteer foster families or were taken to temporary shelters across the country by rail.

By 1939, rail had helped to protect 60,000 Jewish refugees from religious and political persecution. Many brought their skills and knowledge forward to help in the British war effort, with thousands taking British nationality after the war ended in 1945.

Women in rail

Women were paramount to the success of the railway throughout the Second World War as they took over the responsibilities traditionally undertaken by men on the railway. As the railway faced increasing pressure, women were urgently employed to carry out manual and clerical tasks.

Many women took on vital engineering roles, maintaining switchboards after station bombings and fitting and repairing locomotives, while others were trained to become station guards and porters.

Southern Railway employed 8,000 women to take the place of the 9,000 male workers conscripted to take part in the war, with the Mid Hants Railway employing women as signallers. Betty Chalmers, a worker at LNER York Station worked to repair a damaged switchboard after the station was bombed in 1942.

The war gave women the opportunity to assert their value in a traditionally male dominated society, proving women’s worth across the railway as they carried out physical tasks to a high degree. As the war continued, women were trusted with more challenging work, such as operating cranes transporting containers.

By the end of the war, 10,899 women were working across the railway, a significant increase from the 635 women employed at the beginning of World War Two.

Stations and depots

Although it was the railway workers and locomotives who were commonly hailed as the heroes of the industry, the efforts from the network are often forgotten.

Stations themselves were transformed to operate differently, and staff worked tirelessly to maintain the lines. For example, areas of London Bridge station were used as mass canteens to feed hundreds of thousands of servicemen passing through. Waterloo station was allocated to act as an air raid shelter during the height of the Blitz.

To prepare for the threat of an enemy invasion, the Railway Executive Committee painted out station names in an attempt to confuse any potential attackers.

Stations and routes suffered heavy bombing throughout the war – however, the industry continued to keep services running. Charing Cross was one of the key hubs to experience significant damage - at 8.50am on 8 October, the German Luftwaffe dropped three bombs on the station during rush hour, inflicting 48 casualties, including eight fatalities. Despite this, Charing Cross was not out of service for long, thanks to the resilience and bravery of the station staff.

To maintain the infrastructure across Britain, strategic materials were stockpiled at key locations throughout the railway network, so that war damage could be repaired swiftly.

Evacuees

The railways played a significant role throughout the war, transporting child evacuees from British towns and cities to safety, as air raids became a more frequent threat.

As part of the official Government Evacuation Scheme, the London County Council requisitioned trains in preparation for the first period of official evacuations in 1939. Ahead of this, railway operating services - including Southern Rail - produced posters outlining a train schedule, aiding the evacuation of women and children.

Over the first three days of the evacuation effort, railway workers helped to deliver 1.5 million evacuees to safe rural locations - including 673,000 unaccompanied school children - two days before the declaration of wartime.

Thousands of people volunteered to assist the railway’s 1,589 assembly points across the country, with trains leaving London’s main stations every nine minutes for nine hours.

Railway stations all over the country hosted the Women’s Voluntary Service, who greeted and provided help to evacuees arriving in the station halls. In total, the railway transported over 3 million individuals to the countryside and helped to reunite children with their families after the war was over.

Joint rail industry open letter - published in The Sun on Sunday, The Sunday Times and The Observer 22 March 2020

These are exceptional times. COVID-19 is changing how everyone in the UK lives, works and travels. But we know that Britain’s railway is a vital artery that keeps the economic and social lifeblood of the nation connected through this challenging period.

That is why, in order to keep essential services running over what may be a prolonged period of disruption for the country, we have worked with government to switch to a reduced timetable from Monday. It is not an easy decision, but it is a necessary one which will allow us to match the number of services available to our reduced workforce. It means that key workers like nurses, police officers and firefighters will continue to be able to get to their jobs over the coming weeks and months. It means that freight trains will continue to deliver the goods that keep our supermarket shelves stacked and our power stations running.

The reduced timetable will have around half the number of trains running compared to a normal weekday, with early morning and late evening services where possible to support those doing shift work. It won’t be perfect but we are monitoring journeys closely and should it become necessary in the weeks ahead, we will adjust services to ensure they’re being delivered to where they’re needed most. We advise anybody who has to travel to check the time of their train on the National Rail website before they set out.

If your journey is essential and you need to travel by train, please follow public health advice: if you need to cough or sneeze please ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’. If you or the people you live with have symptoms, you should stay at home. Protect yourself. Protect others. Protect the NHS.

We would like to thank all passengers for their support as we work through this time of extraordinary national challenge. We would also like to thank all our colleagues in the rail industry who, like other key workers, are to be commended for putting the needs of the country first, and whose safety remains front of mind. Together, they are keeping the country connected.

For the latest travel advice, please visit nationalrail.co.uk.

John Thomas, Director of Policy at the Rail Delivery Group, explains why Network Rail and train operators pay each other if performance is better or worse than expected – and why headlines about profit from disruption aren’t all that they seem…

Everyone working in the rail industry – from colleagues in offices to those at stations and engineers working overnight to the driver of your train - wants everything to run on time. We work together every day to make this happen. Train companies and Network Rail work closely together to plan train services while investing in improved infrastructure, new and refurbished trains, and new technology, to keep disruption as low as possible.

However, like any transport system, there is disruption and we know it’s important to get services back to normal as soon as possible. That’s why rail companies have systems in place for disruption, both planned (such as engineering work, which as far as possible is carried out when the railway is quieter, and so disruption is minimised) and unplanned (such as signalling problems or severe weather).

You can check what compensation you’re entitled to if you’re on a train that is disrupted by visiting the train operator’s website or reading a summary on the National Rail Enquiries website. Train companies have actively increased efforts to make customers aware of compensation arrangements like delay repay leading to an 75% increase on the amount train companies have paid to passengers in compensation over the last three years.

In this blog, I explain about what happens behind the scenes in the industry when there’s disruption – and also, when performance is better than expected.

Encouraging good performance

Network Rail is responsible for maintaining the track, signalling and other infrastructure. The independent regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), sets a benchmark level of performance for Network Rail that train operators can expect for the access charges they pay. Equally, ORR sets a benchmark level of performance for train operators in relation to things under their control (train faults, staff availability, etc.). This is because delays caused by one operator can impact negatively on the performance of other operators.

When Network Rail’s performance falls below its benchmark level over a set period of time, train operators face more delays and cancellations and therefore cannot run their services as expected. There is strong evidence to suggest that if passengers experience disrupted journeys, they will be less likely to travel by train in the future. If fewer people travel, because they have experienced delayed and cancelled journeys in the past, then income from fares will be lower than expected, which undermines the assumptions train operators make when they bid for a franchise, run an open access service or carry freight on the rail network. In these circumstances, Network Rail will make compensation payments to train operators.

Similarly, if a train operator’s performance falls below its benchmark it will make compensation payments to other affected train operators via Network Rail. If Network Rail’s performance is better than expected they will be paid bonus payments by train operators on the basis that more people are likely to travel by train.

One of the principles of the performance regime is that operators are no better or worse off as a result of changes in performance that are outside of their control. This includes changes in the performance of other operators or performance of the network (whether those changes are in the direct control of Network Rail or not).

Why does Network Rail pay compensation for events out of its direct control, for example relating to the weather?

This is consistent with the principle of operators being no better or worse off as a result of changes in performance that are outside of their control. It removes the need for operators to increase costs to passengers, freight users and/or taxpayers to account for the risk of unexpected disruption that they have little or no control over. It also incentivises Network Rail to consider investments or improvements to mitigate the impact of such situations.

In summary, the payments made through the performance regime in track access contracts are designed to reflect reductions in industry revenue when performance gets worse and increases in industry revenue when performance improves. The Office of Rail and Road says that this incentivises Network Rail and operators to keep unplanned disruptions to a minimum and reduces the risk to train companies of operating and investing in the industry, thereby reducing the cost to the taxpayer.

Planned disruption

Schedule 4 compensation accounts for the impact of planned disruption. For example, when trains can’t run because of planned engineering work. Because planned disruption is announced in advance, train operators can take some steps to reduce the compensation required from Network Rail, but compensation is needed to arrange alternative train services or alternative transport and to take into account the impacts on their business, such as fewer customers taking the train.

Given that some planned disruption is inevitable to maintain, renew and enhance the network, it is known in advance that Network Rail will have to pay some compensation and therefore Network Rail is funded for the forecast amount of compensation it will pay. If Network Rail can undertake all its work whilst causing less disruption to train services than forecast, it will pay less compensation than the funding it receives and vice versa.

The future

Preventing disruption to customers is better than having to pay compensation. The two regimes described above are intended to provide a financial incentive for the whole industry to work together to minimise disruption whether planned or unplanned and we are committed to continually improving.

However, we recognise that there are always improvements that can be made to facilitate and encourage more effective collaborative working between industry partners to enable improvements in performance. That is why we worked closely with the Government’s Rail Review team, independently chaired by Keith Williams. We hope his recommendations will include many of the industry’s bold proposals for reform that will deliver significant improvements for both today’s and future customers, as well delivering value for money for taxpayers.