Striving for a simpler, better railway for you

Blog by Jacqueline Starr, CEO of Rail Delivery Group.

Our purpose at the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) is to create a simpler, better railway for everyone in Britain – but what does that mean when you break it down?

And how are we working to continually improve your experience when travelling by train?

It’s often difficult to do justice to all the varied ways in which our dedicated staff make a difference to your journey.

I’d encourage you to watch our short animation to give you an insight into just some of our activities.

But that animation is just the starting point.

I am proud to work for an organisation which is involved in so many aspects of how people use the railway, and I wanted to highlight some of those things below which you might not be aware of.

We help you book a seat on trains across Britain.

We provide the real-time data that tells you when your train will arrive and at what platform.

We oversee retailing of train tickets.

We support discounted train travel through our many National Rail Railcards, with 5.6 million used by customers last year alone.

We promote the benefits of travelling by train – from the fact it is one of the most sustainable transport options on offer to the way it uniquely connects people across Britain.

We strive to make the railway accessible for all through Passenger Assist – whether you book in advance or turn up and go.

We help bring in and train new talent within the industry through schemes such as the Rail Engineering Graduate Scheme and Traincrew Programme.

But this list goes on. RDG is the home of decades of rail expertise helping us to learn from past experience, while innovating to create an improved customer experience in the future.

And that for me is what it’s all about, improving customer experience.

As an industry we need to make life simpler for you, the customer.

Whether that’s through introducing more Pay As You Go routes where you can simply tap in and tap out or simpler single leg pricing.

I also know we need to provide a better experience when travelling.

That includes everything from making the railway truly accessible to all, to our recently introduced anti-sexual harassment campaign to help make people feel safer when travelling.

I’m a regular rail customer myself and I make a point of talking to a variety of customers to understand how we can continuously improve their experience on trains across Britain.

I genuinely believe RDG and its staff do play a positive and critical role every day in creating a simpler, better railway for everyone in Britain.