Modern Railways – April 2019

http://www.modern-railways.com April 2019 Modern Railways 57

more extra seats on each service. There are 398 standard class seats in a ‘225’, but more than 600 in a 10-car Azuma formation. This represents an exciting competitive opportunity. The East Coast has long had some of the heaviest loadings of the inter-city routes, with LNER having an average load factor of 250 passengers across the day. With all the extra seats coming, the operator will be in a position to price attractively to win traffic from other modes, particularly air on the Anglo-Scottish route. Rail’s share is currently around 30% of the Edinburgh to London market; Mr Horne’s target is half the market.

PERFORMANCE DRIVE

While the Azuma fleet represents some enticing jam for tomorrow, LNER is getting on with delivering bread-and-butter performance today. Following the May 2018 disruption, when GTR, Northern and TransPennine problems had knock-on effects on LNER at Leeds and elsewhere, the operator has put maximum emphasis on minimising its own delays. There has been a drive on dwell times, with an increase in the number of platform staff helping to deliver the best dwell results for two years. At King’s Cross, ‘barrier bells’ have been brought back: a dispatcher on the platform rings the bell 90 seconds before departure to give the signal to the staff at the entrance to the platform that it is time to pull the Tensa barrier across and close the platform to late-running customers. Over the past six months this has resulted in a 20% betterment in figures for departures within 20 seconds of right time. ‘We’ve got a more collaborative approach to performance: how we can stop delays arising in the first place, rather than attributing blame over what went wrong in the past’ says Mr Horne. ‘So, with our colleagues at Network Rail, we ask: have we got all our resources in place for good performance today? Have we got 40 trains ready, all free of defects? Are all four motors working on our ‘91s’? Are all the temporary speed restrictions within the allowances of the working timetable?’

INNOVATION

Virgin Trains East Coast was one of the pioneers of the Department for Transport’s innovation in franchising scheme and ideas promulgated by the private sector operator are being carried forward by LNER. Innovations include the Explorer app, a wayfinding tool for King’s Cross station, which won the Railway Industry Innovation Awards small-scale project prize in 2017; with the RNIB, LNER is working on audio wayfinding that could be replicated in big stations all over the country. The Seatfrog app, which won the RIIA passenger experience prize last year, auctions spare first class seats to standard class passengers: around 600 upgrades a week are being sold this way, resulting in extra revenue and favourable customer feedback. Meanwhile, technology is being applied to gain some of the most accurate passenger loading figures to date. Seat sensors on HSTs and Mk 4s detect whether a seat is occupied, with information being relayed to platform information displays so that waiting customers can see where they are most likely to get a seat on an incoming train. The information helps Control reach decisions during disruption,

allowing controllers to see where a negative but necessary move will inconvenience the smallest number of passengers. Coming soon is a webchat facility on the LNER website, with a combination of artificial intelligence and human operators helping to resolve problems on line. All this is evidence that LNER is not marking time but is anxious to continue pushing forward as longer-term questions about the future of the route are resolved. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling earmarked the East Coast as a pioneer route for a new form of closer collaboration between train operating company and infrastructure owner, but with Mr Grayling’s attention on other matters at present, just where this will lead is yet to be determined. For the meantime, DfT Operator of Last Resort Holdings Ltd, LNER’s publicly-owned parent company, has a contract running to July 2020 that is likely to be rolled over as circumstances require. While the politicians pontificate on the best way of organising the industry, LNER is quietly getting on with running the railway. With new trains and infrastructure coming on stream, it is an exciting place in which to be. a

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