Issues Facing Rail Transportation

Issues Facing Rail Transportation

At a time of great economic uncertainty, the Office of Rail Regulation is seeking to provide as much certainty for Britain's railway industry as possible, with the publication of its five-year corporate strategy.

Recent years have seen an unprecedented boom in passenger numbers, in what many have seen as a new golden age of the railways.

In the period 2009-14, there will be massive investment as part of the largest programme of capacity enhancements seen on our railways in decades. New stations are being opened, new services operated, and more trains than ever before will be required to run on time. And our scrutiny of Network Rail's plans means that the funders of the railway will get ever better value for the money they are putting in.

New railway infrastructure does not come about overnight, and that is why we have all taken a long-term focus on the needs of future travellers in planning improvements.

One thing that is not flexible, however, is our insistence that railway safety must continue to improve. For example, in our strategy we have set down our views of what long-term success would look like for Britain's railways. This should mean zero workforce and industry-caused passenger fatalities, as well as an ever decreasing overall safety risk. Other aspects include high levels of passenger and freight customer satisfaction, and efficiency levels that compare favourably with the best railways around the world (Emery, 2009).

Through our work in the next period, we will continue to promote safety and value in Britain's railways.

The key challenge for train operators alongside their industry partners is to go further than before in delivering customer delight. The good news is that we start from a position of strength. Train operators are carrying more passengers than at any time in the last 60 years, while meeting new highs in reliability and passenger satisfaction scores of 80%.

However, insufficient capacity is a major constraint - often experienced by passengers as overcrowding on many parts of the network at certain times of day. The industry has responded, for example, through timetabling to get better use out of the network and trains alike, or completion of major projects such as modernisation of the West Coast Main Line.

But we need to go further. The government is committed to see an additional 1,300 vehicles by 2014; we now need to deliver these and synchronise their introduction with relevant station and depot investment.

There is also a major network investment programme to implement over the next five years (for example, at Reading and Birmingham), while minimising the downtime for engineering work and thus inconvenience for passengers, particularly at weekends (Roberts, 2009).

The challenges go wider, in that tackling issues such as better quality of information (particularly at times of disruption) are also key; and all types of improvement need to be done while driving out inefficiency and cost, to help ensure better value for money to fare payer and taxpayer alike.

Finally, the welcome investment due to take place to 2014 will add ...