A lengthy interview with Andrew Haines, Chief Executive of Network Rail, in The Guardian.
Interesting his choice of example where there ought to be consultation with passenger groups.
Part of his prescription for change is simply to consult more; for example, on the biggest scheme that Network Rail will be tasked with in this period, the TransPennine upgrade. Haines says passenger groups should be clearly informed about the years of closures and disruption it will entail on the line between Manchester and Leeds, and given a choice: “Do we want to get the pain over and done with, very intense pain, or prolong it?”
We have been asking everyone in the railway industry, up to and including the erstwhile Secretary of State in person, what the Transpennine Route Upgrade will involve and what outcomes it will deliver. No-one is prepared to answer what ought to be simple questions. If they are being especially communicative they will say that everyone is sworn to secrecy under pain of death. More often they avoid eye contact and change the subject.
The nearest Network Rail have got to any consultation with the communities most affected by TRU is a letter from their NE Regional Director which was leaked to several media outlets in Yorkshire (almost certainly leaked to gauge reaction) http://www.smart-rail.co.uk/?p=1780, followed by a year of silence.
In our view, leaking documents to gauge public reaction is not a proper form of consultation. Since then, nothing.
If Mr Haines is serious about passenger consultation, then the answer is simple. Instruct his managers at regional level to start communicating with passengers’ groups such as ourselves, and start answering the simple and straightforward questions.
[Article from The Guardian, 18th August 2019, follows.]
Network Rail’s Andrew Haines: ‘We’ve stopped the rot a bit’
A year into the job, chief executive is making cultural changes centred on listening to passengers
[from The Guardian, 18 August 2019]
Call this a crisis? There may be outrage at ever-rising fares on a railway system beset by problems but the last time Andrew Haines, who has just marked his first anniversary as chief executive of Network Rail, took on a fresh job, he made front pages as “the man who closed Britain”.
His tenure at the Civil Aviation Authority was marked early on by the ash cloud crisis that shut down UK airspace. Haines can still fluently reel off the name of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, whose eruption stopped aeroplanes flying over the UK for six days in 2010, briefly causing the kind of panic about essential imports that was novel before talk of a no-deal Brexit.Haines now occupies a pivotal role in a sector gripped by stasis of a different kind. He took charge of Network Rail, which manages the railway’s track and infrastructure, at the tail end of a five-year budget term during which its free spending was abruptly reined in, and further projects put on ice.
The deaths of two rail workers in south Wales – “a stark reminder of how, despite big strides in safety, the job is far from done”, Haines told staff – has put the safety record of Network Rail under fresh scrutiny, and other failings into perspective. Passengers have at least been kept largely safe in the UK, with more than a decade since a fatal train crash.But much rail investment of the last few years appears to have backfired, Haines suggests.
“What passengers want more than anything else is a punctual, reliable train service, and yet it’s been in decline for the last seven successive years. We’ve turned it round in the last eight months and stopped the rot a bit, but we’ve a long way to go,” he says.
The trouble caused by July’s heatwave, electrical line failures and most recently the National Grid power outages are “painful reminders”, as Haines puts it. The nadir for rail was the disastrous introduction of a revised timetable in May 2018, for which Network Rail admitted to some blame, though Chris Grayling, then transport secretary, admitted to none. It did, however, prompt Grayling to commission an all-encompassing industry review. Figures across the industry have clamoured to affirm the need for change and Grayling’s successor, Grant Shapps, has promised to respect the recommendations of the inquiry chairman, Keith Williams.
It would be a dereliction of duty for me to sit back pending someone else’s view
Haines, though, isn’t waiting. In June he launched plans to transform Network Rail from “a big, slow, bureaucratic company” into devolved, regional units where local managers have been told to listen to their customers and act as they see fit.
Suggestions that he is pre-empting the inquiry’s recommendations get short shrift.
“How much of your life savings would you bank on Keith Williams’ review being implemented in a hurry?” Haines asks.“It would be a dereliction of duty for me to sit back pending someone else’s view. It’s everything I’ve criticised my industry colleagues for, waiting around for other people to solve problems.”
Haines, whose reorganisation of the CAA was bitterly opposed by some staff, insists that the rail shake-up will not affect frontline work.
Restructuring, he says, “is often code for cutbacks. But it is absolutely not in this case”.
Haines credits a plain-speaking approach to his upbringing in Merthyr Tydfil, where his mother and some family still live, and a graduate rail trainee job working in the left luggage office in London’s Victoria station. Returning after a decade to the railway industry where he spent the first 24 years of his career, Haines makes pithy observations about its failings.
“We’ve become really introspective,” he says. “We’ve lost sight of why we exist.”
Plans such as the rebuilding of stations and the introduction of new timetables have been implemented without sufficient concern for passengers, he adds.
“In any normal business you wouldn’t even have to think about it – if you don’t look after your customers, they go somewhere else.”
Part of his prescription for change is simply to consult more; for example, on the biggest scheme that Network Rail will be tasked with in this period, the TransPennine upgrade. Haines says passenger groups should be clearly informed about the years of closures and disruption it will entail on the line between Manchester and Leeds, and given a choice:
“Do we want to get the pain over and done with, very intense pain, or prolong it?”
That cultural change in decision-making is crucial, he says:
“On a corny level, it’s having an empty chair in every meeting and thinking what would a passenger say if they were here; how would they want to be treated.”
However, rail does need structural reform, too, he says. He refuses to spell out a prescription for Williams:
“The rest of the industry might automatically disagree if it thought Network Rail was peddling an answer.”
A structure saying the secretary of state should be accountable for operational decisions on the railway is barking mad
But, he says, it needs to be simpler, less contractual. The industry is still run on rules drawn up in 1994, pre-privatisation.
“They were only ever meant to be transient. If you’d said to the people that designed the structures and contracts that they’d still be in place 25 years on, they’d have laughed at you.”
The fragmented railway they drew up lacks “clarity of accountability”, Haines says, with only the government notionally answerable for the whole system.
“Do we really want a politician accountable for the timetables? Don’t we need some competence?
“A structure that says the secretary of state should be accountable for operational decisions on the railway is barking mad.”
Sanity may be some way off, with long-term train operators withdrawing from rail, and franchise competitions alternately scrapped or awarded to firms teetering on the brink. Even on the vexed issue of rail fares – confirmed last week to be about to rise by 2.8% in January – a desire for reform has not led to industry proposals being enacted, Haines says:
“We’re all circling around, but no one really has to get a grip of it. And it contaminates people’s view of the railway.”
Link to article is
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/18/network-rail-andrew-haines-stop-the-rot-passengers