Northern’s back on track

Sunday 22nd June 2025

Cast your mind back to March 2020. That’s when Arriva was stripped of the Northern Trains franchise and control passed to the Government’s Operator of Last Resort (subsequently becoming DfT Operator). Poor beleaguered Northern never recovered from the May 2018 timetable meltdown nor the strait jacket of a no growth franchise when the reality was a whole lot different leading to a reputation for overcrowding, cancellations and old trains.

It’s just over six months since Alex Hornby made the modal career shift from bus to rail, taking on the role of Northern’s Commercial and Customer Director, having previously been well known for his customer centric approach in high profile roles with Go South Coast’s Bluestar, Trentbarton and Transdev Blazefield.

I caught up with Alex in Leeds recently to find out how he was getting on with the transition to track based public transport and how Northern was doing five years on from its nationalisation.

Northern is the largest train operator outside of London with 376 trains (100 of which are relatively new Class 195 and 331s) and around 7,000 staff including 23 crew bases of which Leeds is said to be the largest such base in Europe.

The corporate statistics tell me for 22 hours a day, Northern’s trains depart from a station every 30-40 seconds serving more than 500 stations as far south as Stoke-on-Trent and Nottingham and as far north as Carlisle and Alnmouth on a comprehensive network of journeys. You get an idea of the scale of Northern’s operations by studying the excellent network map recently redesigned in colour by another bus to train career convert, Matt Harrison, who’s done an excellent job making the network easy to understand.

Maybe TfL would like to commission Matt to make the now impenetrable London Underground map as easy to understand and follow?

Alex told me he and his colleagues at Northern are relentlessly pursuing three priorities.

To improve performance; to reduce net subsidy by increasing revenue particularly through growth in passenger numbers; and to keep customers at the heart of the business.

The ambition for performance is to achieve 90% punctuality with only 2% cancellations by 2027. Alex explained part of the challenge is changing a general perception of poor timekeeping on the railway across the north when parts of the network are already preforming very well, including some lines attaining 98% ‘on time’ (defined as up to three minutes late) with consequential rising customer satisfaction.

A case in point is the Leeds, Bradford, Skipton triangle of routes. They’re nicely self contained and provide excellent performance, while at the other extreme some of Northern’s routes share congested corridors with long distance operators, presenting much more of a challenge. And that may not get any easier for Northern when the long awaited East Coast Main Line upgraded timetable begins in December with LNER taking extra paths on an already busy line.

For its part, the Northern team are focusing on fleet and traincrew deployment as well as adding resources to engineering, control and operations where they’ll make a difference, together with implementing a new operating model and a ‘fit for purpose’ structure.

To make his point, while we were chatting, we took a snapshot (literally) of the departure board in the evening peak at Leeds station and it impressively showed a complete full house of ‘on time’ departures on display bar just one exception (a Cross Country to Edinburgh, eight minutes down).

It was the same the next morning when everything was showing ‘on time’ with my onward journey from Leeds along the wonderful Settle Carlisle line also impressively spot on time the whole way, as was every train passing in the other direction.

As with a number of Train Companies, Northern has challenges over long standing agreements with trade unions on Sunday rostering. A temporary timetable is currently in operation in the North West as managers work “to stabalise performance” and Alex describes the situation as “one of our biggest priorities to resolve”.

I’m sure we’re all hoping a resolution is found but I can’t help thinking if I was a trade union officer I’d take my time to change any agreements especially with Great British Railways “coming soon”.

The second priority of increasing revenue so the net subsidy reduces is all about enticing more passengers to travel as well as ensuring everyone pays the correct fare. With regard the latter, train conductors are monitored to ensure they are selling and checking tickets regularly during journeys while Northern also employs a team of 172 revenue officers across the network. These report to Alex and he’s been impressed with their balanced approach when dealing with passengers who have obviously made a genuine mistake and those who are willfully defrauding the company. Transport Focus staff have also been out with the team to be sure that balance is being maintained.

Alex told me how impressed he’s been with the rail industry’s sophisticated insights when it comes to data analysis and seeking out areas for potential revenue growth. It’s much more extensive than anything he’d experienced in the bus industry, mainly because, by nature of its size and high profile, the railway can employ more data specialists and attract experts from outside the industry who can bring valuable insights into yield management and revenue growth.

Although Northern’s network is huge it’s really the summation of a lot of smaller individual markets each with their own characteristics. Increasingly the company is looking at aligning its markets with the Mayoral Combined Authority areas which is obviously the ‘direction of travel’ (as they say) but not forgetting Northern benefits from a range of attractive routes it can position to the burgeoning leisure market. I’ve already mentioned Settle Carlise, but not forgetting the Cumbrian Coast line, the Tyne Valley line, the line to Buxton and the Peak District and many more.

Northern’s busiest line by volume is between Blackpool North and Manchester now run with Class 323s and their additional capacity.

The Leeds/Nottingham via Wakefield, Sheffield and Chesterfield corridor is also a key route in the network. It’s particularly attractive to commuters heading to work at both ends of the line. Another key route experiencing growth is one Alex knows well from a previous role – the Harrogate to Leeds market. Five trains an hour now run in the peaks (including LNER) giving commuters a good modal choice alongside the six buses an hour on bus route 36.

Newest line is of course the recently reopened Northumberland line between Ashington and Newcastle which reached a milestone of 250,000 passenger journeys by the middle of April and has now passed 350,000. Busiest week was the May half term when the 20,000 barrier was breached.

Another interesting observation is the significant number of what can be termed ‘white collar’ workers who use Northern’s network around both Leeds and Manchester for commuting whereas ‘blue collar’ workers are dominant elsewhere.

Alex is well placed to oversee Northern’s third priority – ensure the business is always putting the customer first. His track record in the bus industry is renowned for developing customer service standards ever higher. Alex told me how impressed he’s been with the approach of the whole team at Northern towards making customer service a priority.

Managers are encouraged to travel on trains as often as possible and Alex has set his team a target of completing a minimum of 100 journeys in a year (with a maximum of 50 being a commute to and from work) and submit a full feedback report on each and every journey.

The company is continually keeping its fleet deployment under review to ensure it matches changing customer travel patterns. Back in May some trains were lengthened to cater for increase demand as coaches were redeployed from lesser used trains.

Encouragingly, Northern and TransPennine Express (both owned by DfT Operations of course) have begun introducing simplification of fares and tickets with Northern only tickets now able to be used on a TPE train as a default in the event of any disruption or cancellation. Alex also highlighted Northern’s promotion of LNER’s recent uplift to a two-hourly frequency between Leeds and Bradford alongside its own frequent journeys. LNER also being part of DfT Operations.

It’s good to see such closer working already evident without waiting for the “coming soon” Great British Railways.

Alex also highlighted Passenger Assist arrangements between Northern and TPE have been streamlined.

But perhaps most impressive of all is the ’30 by 30’ target under which Northern is aiming to grow passenger journeys from the current 100 million in a year by 30 million to reach 130 million a year by 2030.

I did point out to Alex that’s quite a tough target with 2030 only five years away but he was undaunted and is clearly relishing the challenge.

With franchising taking a hold in much of the bus industry over the next five years and decision making on matters relating to timetables, fares, tickets and customers removed from many bus company managers, I can now understand why passionate public transport professionals like Alex are jumping ship from bus to train (to mix my modal metaphors). And as GBR gets going you can imagine the potential it will hold for customer centric managers.

In the meantime, five years on from that ‘no growth franchise’, Northern is certainly back on track.

Roger French

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