The North is in pole position

Saturday 16th September 2023

The Public Transport North 2023 conference held in Manchester on Tuesday and Wednesday included some fascinating presentations.

Tuesday was devoted to rail with bus on Wednesday for this second joint conference initiative from Modern Railways and Buses magazines published by Key Publishing. The first conference of this kind was held in Glasgow back in March.

As you can see, Tuesday’s agenda included speakers from Transport for the North, Network Rail, Great British Railways Transition Team, Transport for Greater Manchester, Northern, Merseyrail and others.

I’m always struck by just how many organisations are involved in overseeing and providing our railways. Also getting a mention during the presentations were the Northern Powerhouse Partnership and Northern Rail Partnership as well as Northern Powerhouse Rail but these might be different aliases for the same thing. They certainly all sound similar.

There were frank acknowledgments of the stagnant state of the rail industry from Jon Fox, Strategic Advisor with the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT) while Nick Donovan, Managing Director of Northern Trains Ltd set out some stark challenges his company faces.

Jon likened the post Covid rail industry’s position to a patient out of intensive care but still needing lots of out-patient appointments with revenue hovering around 85% of pre Covid levels. He noted the previous franchise based business model was now firmly bust but no-one had a clear picture of what the long term replacement will be with ‘rail reform’ (as per the 2018 Williams Review) stalled in the political long grass.

To add to the gloom the current industrial relations impasse shows no sign of resolution any time soon with continuing questions over what the industry can afford and the Government seemingly content to just let the strikes continue.

It seemed to me the patient was still very much on a hospital ward rather than at home recovering with the current lack of decision making in the industry obviously damaging short to medium term prospects. Despite the DfT ministerial team confirming a commitment to rail reform Jon acknowledged there were significant doubts whether the necessary legislative changes will be included in the King’s speech due on 7th November, meaning it may not even happen before a General Election.

Despite all this malaise and uncertainty an army of people are employed by GBRTT and one might well ask ‘what on earth are they all doing?’.

Jon explained the work falls into three headings. Work needed pre any legislation; work needed post any legislation and work needed irrespective of whether there’s any legislation or not.

Some things are progressing such as work on fares and ticketing reform to see what can be rolled out such as the recent extension of single journey pricing (ie no return tickets) on the East Coast Main Line. There’d also been the Great Rail Sale and Northern’s Flash Sale to fill off peak empty seats and Jon highlighted work taking place regionally with TfGM and TfWM on various ticketing plans including greater integration and the aspiration for pay-as-you-go planned for Greater Manchester in 2025 as part of the Bee Network with full integration of the local network by 2030.

It just all seemed rather depressing. And Nick Donovan’s presentation added to the feeling of a dysfunctional railway with the frank admission that 95% of the publicly owned company’s Sunday network west of the Pennines depends on staff volunteering to come to work on overtime. This is currently even more of a challenge than usual with sickness absence higher than before Covid as the turbulent industrial relations climate saps morale and motivation as Ministers show no signs of allowing managers to end the disputes any time soon.

Other fascinating statistics from Nick included 83% of Northern’s services are on an hourly timetable, 80% are operated by a single unit of either two or three cars (meaning fixed, track and staff costs per seat are high) and between 10-15% of passenger journeys are connecting to the wider network. Another frank admission was the need to modernise many work practices not least in some locations where fax machines are still in use to communicate key information.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. We heard about the considerable investment in the north of England, not least the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU), including relocating Morley station, hopefully opening soon, and restoring passenger trains to the Ashington line in Northumberland. Also getting a mention in the morning presentations were plans to electrify Wigan to Bolton and bring ETCS (European Train Control System) to signalling on the West Coast Main Line between Warrington and Carlisle which I made a note needs sign off from the Office of Rail and Road (another organisation involved in the railways).

We were given a fascinating presentation on the TRU by Hannah Lomas of Network Rail as well as an upbeat and positive story around the mobilisation arrangements for Merseyrail’s new ‘game changing’ fleet of Class 777 trains by Steve Dodd, the company’s Chief Operating Officer.

Simon Elliot, Head of Rail at Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) also gave a very positive report on aspirations to integrate local rail into the Bee Network acknowledging the challenges of doing so where tracks are already congested with wider regional and inter-city trains and admitted we won’t be seeing yellow liveried trains any time soon but there is a target for pay-as-you-go integration with a pilot encompassing Glossop and Stalybridge being worked on for 2025.

Which brings home to me the wildly different timescales between anything happening on rail compared to bus.

And in that context it was interesting to see campaigners for the reopening of the Skipton to Colne line as well as Derby to Manchester (Peaks and Dales) attending and handing out literature to promote their causes.

In all we heard from nine speakers who all gave interesting and thought provoking presentations with pertinent input from the audience during the discussion sessions.

It was my pleasure to chair the second day devoted to buses with a packed agenda of 14 speakers timed to a very tight schedule but thankfully some slack had been built into the generous layover time over lunch so we were able to keep to time not least as our first speaker, Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, kindly stayed longer than scheduled to answer questions from delegates.

You can’t cut short a Mayor who’s excitedly on the cusp of proudly introducing his long aspired for Bee Network and nor would anyone have wanted to with a very positive story including an acknowledgement that past disagreements on the merits or otherwise of the regulatory regime were now firmly in the past and he very much appreciated the positive partnership approach (yes, he mentioned the P word) now evident with bus operators who he praised for their huge and effective mobilisation arrangements to ensure the new era beginning next weekend is a success.

Indeed we heard from Nigel Featham, managing director of Go North West about the lengths the company has gone to recruit large numbers of new drivers to ensure the company is fully staffed from day one of the new contracted regime when the company takes over Bolton depot from Diamond and Wigan from Stagecoach.

The company pursued an unprecedented and innovative high profile media campaign to encourage applicants which has led to a target of 300 recruits joining so far and during the first 12 months.

TfGM staff have also been busy mobilising all the back office functions as explained by Stephen Rhodes (Director of Bus) and Anne- Marie Purcell (Bus Reform Director), not least a Bee Network website and app which are launching on Monday (18th September) as well as technical matters such as CCTV and customer facing matters such as lost property.

I’ve written more about the Bee Network in Buses magazine due out in a month’s time and will also be blogging about it after the official launch on Monday 25th September so I’ll leave it there for now except to say there’s no doubting the huge efforts that have gone into the new regime for buses in Greater Manchester with a huge commitment to make it work.

All eyes will be on Greater Manchester over the next few months. I hope it all goes well as we all want to see buses succeed.

We also heard from Matt Goggins (Assistant Director Bus) about plans to reform buses in Liverpool City Region with an announcement expected very soon from the Metro Mayor (Steve Rotheram) confirming future arrangements for bus operation in the Combined Authority following a recent public consultation on plans. The safe money is on a franchise regime similar to Great Manchester not least as the Authority already oversees the local rail network.

Other fascinating presentations included from Zach McAskill at Stagecoach on “inspiring the next generation of young people to join the industry”; Ben Wakerley at Warrington’s Own Buses telling us not only about the company’s fantastic new depot but exciting plans to introduce a whole new fleet of battery electric buses, also covered in a presentation from Phil Kershaw of E O Charging, the company installing and maintaining the charging infrastructure.

Ben Gilligan gave a hugely informative presentation of how his East Yorkshire company has adapted post Covid and the challenges it, and all other bus operators, face (which makes you realise why a franchised regime where the local authority takes all the revenue risk is now becoming an appealing prospect for many) and Andreas Schörling (Managing Director UK) of FlixBus told us of his company’s significant recent expansion with more to come across the north.

We also heard from Matt Lawrence of Alexander Dennis on the company’s exciting new zero emission fleets as well as keeping production of Euro 6 buses going and Adam Cross and Lee Sands from Hexagon ALI and Sapphire Systems talked about the importance of “Digital Asset Management” which resonated with anyone struggling with data overload.

The final speaker was the much respected Graham Vidler, CEO of the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT), who left us with “five keys to improving bus services, whatever the regulatory mode” and which I will similarly leave blog readers with, not least with a General Election in the offing in the foreseeable future CPT’s expert lobbying skills will once again be to the fore to promote to aspiring politicians what the bus industry can deliver.

It was a very enjoyable two days.

Roger French

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