GBRTT - CfE - section 2 - Meeting customers’ needs

[whole diary]

[grahame]

return to http://www.passenger.chat/25896 for the master thread

Section 2 - Meeting customers’ needs

Rail industry customers broadly fall into two types: passengers and freight. The rail network provides important benefits to the customers who rely on it. The Plan for Rail says that passengers must receive high-quality, consistent services day in, day out. This means accessible, reliable journeys that are well connected with other transport services and include new customer offers at stations and on trains.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the rail freight industry has shown its resilience and agility, working to transport food and medical supplies around the country. This example, and others given in the Plan for Rail, highlight how important rail freight is to our economy now and in the future, and how we will develop growth targets for freight that will be included in the Strategic Plan. The Plan for Rail says of freight: ‘national co-ordination, greater opportunities for growth and strong safeguards will put rail freight on the front foot.’

When considering your responses, please take account of the likelihood of changes in levels or patterns of passenger and freight demand over the next 5, 10 and 30 years, what that would mean for the rail system, and what will the interventions be over that period that will provide the maximum value for money.

Question 2

a) Passenger: how will rail passenger expectations, including accessibility requirements, evolve over the coming 5, 10 and 30 years, what will be the driving causes of these changing expectations, and how can they be most effectively met by the rail sector?

b) Passenger: in your experience, how can we most effectively monitor and assess customer satisfaction? What is a stretching yet realistic ambition for this objective and what measures can we most effectively use to consider success over the coming 5, 10 and 30 years? What evidence can you share to support your view?

c) Freight: what evidence can you provide regarding the advantage(s) of transporting goods by rail and what evidence can you share for how that could develop in the next 5, 10 and 30 years? What do you consider to be the most effective role for rail freight in the existing supply chains served and those that it doesn’t? How could this change over that period? In answering, please explain and take account of likely developments in technology and in the wider economy.

d) What is a stretching yet realistic ambition for this objective and what measures can we most effectively use to consider success over the coming 5, 10 and 30 years? What are the interventions over that period which will be the maximum value for money, and what evidence can you share to support your claim?

[broadgage]

2a customer expectations, are in my view best met by getting the basics right. A reliable service of full length trains.

Recently the emphasis has been on various forms of priority boarding, and use of apps and other electronic complications. No amount of such complications compensates for a train that is absent or too crowded.
A printed timetable in both poster format to exhibit at stations, and in pocket sized format for customers to keep handy, is in my view far preferable to a continually updated on line timetable that changes at random but frequent intervals.

Having published this printed timetable KEEP TO IT in all but truly exceptional circumstances such as sea walls washed away or serious pandemics.

Simplify the fares structure, with only a limited number of fares for each journey. No more "searching for the best deal" but simply buying a ticket. I see no merit in selling discounted advance tickets for trains that going to be overcrowded, nor in charging a punitively high fare for walk up travel on a lightly loaded service.