I wish I understood Network Rail better and that I felt they were open and communicative with the end users of the infrastructure, major station and signalling services that they provide. As it is, I don't personally feel that I know if they're doing a good job or not, and I wonder if what little we're told via the
TOCs▸ is going to be sugar coated because the TOCs can't afford to fall out with or upset their only option on providing infrastructure.
Criticisms of Network Rail may be justified, or they may not be - but I don't think that the public has enough information on which to judge them, and whilst that's the case there is little data to answer for them in explaining breakdowns and overruns, or in explaining apparently higher costs and longer timescales than some might feel are justified
Network Rail works through and reports to the Department for Transport and the Office of Rail Regulation and is also repsonsible to its "members". See
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/721.aspx . Recruitment is carried out on an annual basis - see
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/5624.aspx (it's December 2014 now, but that page hasn't been updated for a while and refers you to a process starting in March 2014). The membership selection panel appears to comprise people who are members of other bodies such as the Audit Commission, the Committee of Standards in Public Life, the Competition Commission, and work at places like the Department for Industry and the Office of Fair Trading.
I'm interested in what Network Rail does and how it works - not only in relation to the TransWilts, or even to the Great Western area necessarily - and I'm not totally convinced that they have the right (or indeed a nearly-right) setup and accountability for their tasks. They may well have, but the members selection panel doesn't inspire my confidence that they's choosing people to represent the direct and indirect customers, and public members seem conspicuous by their absence in the press and publicity output of Network Rail, or indeed at rail user groups and in forums such as ours. Indeed, Network Rail have declared redundant the two employees who use to link the organisation to Community Rail, and who have been instrumental in getting little things that made a big difference done. One wonders if those little things bringing big difference should instead have been supplemented on more major rail routes by doing medium sized things suggested that could make a huge difference.
Bearing this in mind, I submitted an application earlier this year, going through the process, to become a member of Network Rail. I wasn't surprised to fail to get even beyond the initial application - rejected by an
annadine (is that the right word) anodyne email which gave no clue as to who or how the decision had been made. It might well have been a good decision, but again it's not transparent. What I feel it does do, though, is to allow me to be a little more active in my comments about the organisation, having asked to take a responsible but more knowledgable role with them, as a user of train services and someone who'se learned a little about what the consumer wants over the years.
I believe that it would be wise for Network Rail to have representation of service users at the governance and decision level - if only to provide gentle inputs - wind into their sails to help inform decisions, and to pass back some of the why and wherefore. I'm not suggesting that the lunatics take over the asylem, but if us lunatics were a bit better informed as to why things are as they are, we might just be better able to accept some of the decisions made, and indeed to inform our own constituency of members as to what's going on so that we can change our travel plans / habits at appropriate times, and manage our expectations, to the mutual benefit of all of us.
A challenge, as this is a public post.
If you are a public member of Network Rail, or a member of the board or the member selection panel, please answer some of my concerns. Please follow up some of the posts where Network Rail is being talked about in an unknowing way to help us gain knowledge. And please help us ease things forward so that your user community is truely represented in your govrnance, or at least privvy to why things are as they are.
Thanking you in anticipation.
