Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines didn’t mince his words on train running performance when he addressed a press conference in January. ‘Every year we’re more optimistic about what we will achieve and every year we fail to achieve it. So we’re either in denial or incompetent. Either the inputs and the outputs don’t match up, or we’re trying to con people – or we’re conning ourselves.’
It’s the refreshingly blunt, uncompromising type of statement we have come to expect from the NR Chief Exec. There was more from him in this vein at our Golden Whistles 2020 conference, which you can read in detail on p70.
The railway is clearly struggling to accommodate the doubling or more of passengers that has taken place in the past quarter century. Lots of investment has gone in, in the shape of new trains and infrastructure, but the dividend of a better-performing railway stubbornly refuses to show.
‘The franchising system encourages operators to say they will introduce more trains, with better reliability – and it’ll all be cheaper’ opines Mr Haines. ‘Something that sounds too good to be true, generally is.’
He says we’ve seen it at Northern, TransPennine Express, South Western Railway and West Midlands Tr…
