Very little best practice IME▸ .
There’s little incentive for the operators to do anything more than the bare essentials as it usually costs money and all the money they may take is then taken from them in return for their fixed operating fee.
That might not matter too much if there was a coherent quality/growth strategy from government/DfT» . But there’s very little sign of that (with a few notable exceptions like reopening that were mostly already quite advanced in the planning and funding stages pre-Covid).
They are thinking the opposite and are working on very short term cost saving strategies, be that a reduction of carriages, staff or services (or a combination of all three).
Is it short term though?
Business travel, which was the "bunce" is in decline and will inevitably continue in that trajectory. The genie is out of the bottle.
Revenue is 28% down on the pre Covid period but costs rise inexorably.
This could be the shape of things to come. I'd like to see more leisure services, more ability to cope with major sporting events etc, and a more agile, modern and customer focused industry generally but, to quote another regular correspondent......"oooooooooos gonna pay for it?".......the answer is "the taxpayer" and I'm afraid that ship may already have sailed in another direction under this Government, and quite possibly its successor?
