By joint management (with the DfT) of the Northern and TPE franchises from April 2016, Rail North and its local staff will become accountable for day-to-day performance. If the outcomes revealed in a study of London Overground and Merseyrail (Going Local: Lessons for rail policy from London Overground and Merseyrail, Campaign for Better Transport, 2013) are replicated, the passenger experience should be significantly improved.
The success of local accountability in transforming services is evident in the way the profit-sharing concession of Merseyrail Electrics has shed its ‘Miseryrail’ image since 2002, to become one of the consistently best-performing TOCs. Merseyrail Electrics is managed locally by the Passenger Transport Executive, Merseytravel, and the franchise specifications are much tighter than other comparable rail franchises, stipulating such quality measures as overcrowding, maximum standing time for passengers and station staffing. WMR also sees huge opportunity from local management of the franchise agreement by people who use the railway on a daily basis, and the local politicians who have to answer to the electorate.
The revival of the North London and West London Lines by London Overground (LOROL) is a similar story, with annual use of the West London Line more than doubling in ten years, from 12.4 million in 2005/06 to 25.3 million in 2013/14.
It also helps that many LOROL and TfL head office staff use the trains to reach the Swiss Cottage offices, giving a daily insight into operations. Hobbs points out that the statistics on service quality showed an improvement almost from day one in November 2007, before even a penny of investment influenced perceptions.
The fundamental object of transport devolution must be better public transport services that reduce car use and improve the quality of life. Post-industrial cities are increasingly recognising that to attract inward investment they need to offer a high-quality environment, part of which invariably means cleaning up the air by traffic restraint and encouraging non-polluting modes. The creative thinking behind the 38 devolution proposals conveys a new sense of purpose and optimism in what might be achieved.
Modal change has been a driver of Centro’s policies for a long time, hinged around large, free car parks at stations. A key aspiration of WMR and TfN is to improve the frequency of evening and Sunday services, to reflect economic realities.
Devolution allows much quicker adjustments to services. The chairman of Merseytravel, Councillor Liam Robinson, points to the way a Boxing Day service was introduced in 2015, without time-consuming discussions with the DfT. He also cites the flexibility to respond to the demands of the region’s one-off events, such as the Cunard’s Three Queens ocean liner event in Liverpool which attracted over a million people in the summer of 2015 and the yearly Grand National, as well as regular football fixtures.
A simple illustration of the kind of local fine tuning that increases revenue and reduces cost is the overnight stabling since 2015 of trains at Llandovery and Llandrindod Wells on the Heart of Wales Line. This allows them to operate early morning commuter services into Swansea and Shrewsbury, instead of both starting at the opposite end of the line and running almost empty for more than half the journey.
Often it comes down to a simple timetable adjustment through a change of priority, such as focusing on the needs of Sellafield workers in the morning and late afternoon rather than Cumbrian Coast connections at Carlisle.
Devolution also offers the chance to improve the coherence of marketing and the stability of branding. Merseyrail Electrics is an unusually long 25-year franchise - most are much shorter, and TfN research suggests that this inhibits brand recognition and confuses passengers.
It is to counter this that WMR wants to create a brand throughout the region that will transcend changes in franchising arrangements. Besides cementing the identity of transport providers in passengers’ minds, it obviates the wasteful rebranding of stations, trains and information every time a franchise changes. Malcolm Holmes, consultant for WMR, highlights a wish “to realign incentives so that franchisee marketing budgets are not devoted to high-yield routes, which is perfectly understandable, but leads to under-promotion of many lines”.
Re-opening lines may move up more regional agendas, such as the North East Combined Authority’s commitment to examine the business case for reviving passenger services on the line between Benton Quarry Junction, Blyth and Ashington.
All devolved authorities have station improvements in their sights, intent on overcoming the historic reluctance of short-franchise TOCs to invest.
Merseyrail Head of Rail Wayne Menzies is looking at propositions for developing stations on Merseyrail and beyond, including all the lines into Liverpool Lime Street and the city’s flagship station itself. Standards at Merseyrail stations have already been raised, with a Bike & Go scheme installed at some, but many stations could and should be more than just a place to catch trains.
Holmes stresses the need to apply appropriate incentives to improve and maintain stations, especially when the subsidy is high and the commercial returns are low. Each of the 120 stations in the WMR area will require a different approach, but the potential of adoption and greater community involvement - exemplified by many Community Rail Partnerships - needs to be realised , and in the suburbs and inner cities, not just the more rural places. Such stations increase patronage, engage local residents, reduce vandalism and make the station more relevant to the life of the community.
Bray cautions against the hasty sell-off of railway assets to plug funding gaps, as Network Rail is currently under pressure to do. Many authorities regret the excessive zeal applied to station rationalisation schemes at a time when passenger growth was unthinkable. Losing control of the way stations are developed or the ability to raise the standards of retail outlets, as at St Pancras and King’s Cross, may be regretted. Station rationalisation prevented more considered developments such as the recent exemplar of Wakefield Kirkgate, where restoration has improved integration with buses, and created new facilities for passengers as well as a source of income from commercial office space for local businesses.
Dramatic reductions in franchise subsidies, or even payments to the Treasury, characterise recent franchise agreements (aided by planning for growth). Funding for infrastructure improvements or new construction is helped by devolution, which attracts greater investment in transport. As Bray points out, regions attach greater importance to transport than Whitehall, and can be creative in assembling a host of funding sources.
The £14.8 billion required for Crossrail could only have been raised from multiple sources: central government; TfL (using bonds backed by future fares revenue); a business rate supplement graded according to distance from the railway; direct contributions such as BAA’s £230 million for the junctions at Stockley; and Canary Wharf Ltd building the station box at the eponymous station; Section 106 grants from developers; and the sale or lease of premises built over stations.
Elsewhere, funding for the Borders Railway was helped by a levy on new housing along the route, thanks to a growing awareness among developers that good public transport raises the value of housing in a way that roads no longer do.
Nottingham’s tram lines 2 and 3 were part funded by a workplace parking levy, an idea that Cambridge and Oxford are looking at. Haymarket station on the Tyne & Wear Metro was paid for by developer contributions.
Only the Scottish Parliament has full powers to decide how much it spends on transport. But the transfer of multi-year budgets is vital to plan and fund projects on the scale of Crossrail or the Tyne & Wear expansion and new train plans. It is probably only a matter of time before congestion charging and business rate supplements, which provide funding for TfL, return to the agenda in other cities.
Not since John Prescott was a transport minister has integration been a watchword, despite continental paradigms proving its efficacy. The Full Speed Ahead report was emphatic that a multi-modal, joined-up transport network required “thinking long-term and making difficult (and sometimes unpopular) decisions in support of public transport”.
Co-ordinated planning and control of public transport levers is vital for such aspirations. As Bray says: “Devolution is key to bringing back integration into the city regions - by specifying rail fares, ticketing, branding and joining up with buses, you can achieve something that looks more like London.”
The North East Combined Authority officially describes itself as the “UK’s first fully integrated transport system, with the ambition to bring together responsibilities for rail, local highways, metro, buses and ferries, for both urban, sub-urban and rural communities”. Transport Scotland is committed to partnership working with private bus companies, but is working to deliver a single smart ticketing system across all public transport.
Emulating the rigour applied to modal integration in Switzerland will benefit rail and buses/light rail, and help to reverse the damaging consequences of bus deregulation that has led to a near-universal decline in bus use and the loss of more than 2,000 routes since 2010.
In Wales TrawsCymru, the new bus brand owned by the Welsh Government, specifies franchised services designed to complement and connect with rail services that are shown on TrawsCymru’s network map. The ability to reverse years of decline is illustrated by the T1 route between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen - passenger numbers have grown from 100,000 two and a half years ago to 300,000, and the average subsidy per rural Wales trip has been reduced from between £3 and £5 to 57p.
