New Year Keynote - looking ahead for rail in 2021

It's been a difficult holiday period for public transport providers, and with (thank goodness) a much reduced demand to travel too. Other threads summarise the issues involved - a post here to look a little ahead.

We start from a position of extreme changes - it seems that virus tier restrictions are changing every week, and (personal guess) I would not be surprised to see more in the short term, such as those of us remaining in tier 3 moving to tier 4, and further restrictions being brought in too. Those could involve further school and university delays or closures, which would knock on to a requirement for less transport. In any case, long distance journeys are decimated at present.

And so - with a limit of staff available, with running costs, and with a need to catch up or avoid a further backlog of training and maintenance, it does make sense to trim capacity / frequencies. But care needs to be taken to do this in such a way that it neither removes needed journeys, nor elongates them unreasonably, nor prevents services being re-instated at fairly short notice once we climb out of this. Watch not only frequency, but how connections are provided between trains that are running less often!

In "due course" ... as, perhaps, the virus gets reduced with an "R" once again below 1.0, and as the vaccinations progress to the point to help that reduction of indeed people's likelihood of being infected, people will want to travel again. How much suppressed want/need there is, how much people will simply resume what they used to do, and how much people will have been driven away from travel is an open question. But we can be pretty certain that travel demand will grow significantly from where it is today, and most likely in a pattern that's very different to it was a year ago.

This is a time when those of us who use the services, and those of us who input to consultations, make suggestions, help keep stations spick and span and friendly and market / promote rail travel need to work with all parties in a positive way - the (sometimes) critical friend.

Phase 1 - Local knowledge shared can help ensure the that the services, even with their cloth cut, continue to provide maximum customer journeys with are reliable, frequent enough and not elongated. And we can help spread information so that we reach people both on advice on how and when they can and should travel, and when services are running for them.

Phase 2 - With services at a lower level again, there is another opportunity to tune what returns and make it better. Sadly, GWR^▸ 's intent of running the mid-December timetable until May looks to have been unduly optimistic, but that must not put us off a further and better return as the days get longer and warmer and the immunity pool grows. And at such times of change, a common and sensible voice from passenger communities such as ours may - just may - provide the impetus to help tune things for the better.

Phase 3 - the zero carbon, sustainable, climate agenda. Huge, huge issues wrapped up in soundbites that do them little justice. But very much there as the strategy that the tactics in phases 2, and perhaps 1, will consider and address.

I am writing this as a New Year message and no doubt we will all come back (this is a forum after all) and add flesh onto the bones over coming days. Looking at timetables, fares, marketing, industry organisation, investment into the future, and more aspects. We are in for a year which has great risks, but also great opportunities, and I suspect a great deal of work in promoting them too.