“Huntingdon to Woodwalton, Werrington, York North Throat, the freight loops further up the line - they were part of the connectivity fund. They were part of a fund that the DfT said NR and the industry should spend as they see fit. So those were projects that we’d progress in the Control Period, but not necessarily committed outputs. I think that message has got lost. I believe it was broadcast, but it was not emphasised enough. It wasn’t emphasised enough that we were talking about a fund that was given to the industry for it to consider how to spend.”
That’s disappointing news for those looking to see an improved ECML. McIntosh continues: “It’s been a very interesting exercise being part of that, because part of the reason we aren’t going to deliver as much in the Control Period as we probably originally planned to do is because it’s been very hard to get the industry to agree on what you might spend that money on. The industry is very complicated and each stakeholder has a different perspective and different needs. Trying to get the train operator and the freight operator to agree on what they need to do on the East Coast Main Line - other than completely separate from each other, which isn’t physically possible - is a real challenge.”
Back to his route and devolution. It’s clear this journey is just starting, but where would McIntosh see it by 2019, at the end of the current five-year Control Period?
“We want the route to be in a place where it can be independently regulated. We don’t underestimate the challenge that brings, but we see the route becoming very much devolved, being responsive to the needs of the communities, the Local Enterprise Partnerships, the councils, the combined authorities that we serve, and able to make decisions that serve those people.
“Back to the point on regulation, I don’t think it’s taking today’s regulation model and dividing it by eight routes and saying now regulate those eight routes in the same way that you regulated NR. I think we need to work with the regulator and the industry to say ‘how do you regulate a Network Rail route?’”
So if it’s not a simple division of today’s regulation, how does McIntosh see it being done?
“My thoughts now are that it would be dangerous to start defining how you might do it. We need to get together with the regulator and the stakeholders and begin to have the conversation, and go back to the first principles of what is regulation and who are the customers that we’re looking to protect in this thing, because I think that regulation is about protecting the customer but also the taxpayer.
“It’s about having that conversation with bodies like Transport for the North, which is running the TransPennine and Northern franchises. You have the combined authorities and you have quite progressive city councils like Newcastle or Leeds or York, all with a lot of dependency on the railway that Network Rail is a custodian of. They will have to have a view on how we are regulated in their interests. So I think we have to engage with everyone who’s involved, to start to define how we should be regulated. But it isn’t about how we’ve been regulated so far - I don’t think that’s the answer.”
That could lead to a different model for each route, with its attendant complications. This point has McIntosh thinking, and so he answers slowly: “That’s an interesting point… different regulation for different routes… so the routes are pretty different. They are different in their make-up, they are different in their railway, they are different in the age of their railway.
“The East Coast Main Line is without a doubt the one of the main arteries that’s had the least investment in recent years. We haven’t really done much with it. So I don’t think you need to regulate the route differently, I think we need to regulate the routes under a simpler framework that allows them to be responsive to the local needs of their routes.”
Whatever form devolution takes, it’s clear that the railway will need to change to better reflect local needs. Changing culture has always been harder than changing track layouts.
“When I talked earlier about the centralised hierarchical culture of Network Rail, part of that is that within the routes they are very much used to being done to. So culturally within the route a lot of my people are used to being told what they can and can’t do, rather than arguing very strongly for what they think is right.
“We’re on a journey of changing people’s behaviour in that respect, and starting to grab hold of what might be perceived as an old, centralised policy or issue that doesn’t suit our needs. This is what we need to be done more locally. So that’s about how people behave and about giving people leadership and some support, to start being bold and doing what they think is right rather than sometimes being used to being told what to do.
“On the projects side of things, the first thing I did when I became RMD was to create a new investment function. The old route organisation was set up (and is set up) to focus on the day-to-day operation of the railway and deliver our performance targets in line with our determination. That’s enough of a job in itself, I assure you. I didn’t appreciate how demanding that actually is.
“But we’re not set up to do anything else. All this stuff I’ve talked about - stakeholders, engagement and investment delivery and discipline - we’re not set up to do that. One of the first things I did was to create an investment function and put a senior person in charge of it.
“We’ve completely restructured our sponsorship organisation. There was one principal sponsor looking after all three of the main route programmes. Whether it’s Midland Main Line, East Coast Main Line or Trans-Pennine, it was just one principal sponsor. We now have three with teams underneath them, so we’ve pulled the bench strength up. We’re now turning our attention towards how we create a team that’s able to go out and attract and enable some of that external investment. We didn’t really have that before.”
