Official Report 526KB pdf
Good morning, everyone. I welcome you to the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee’s sixth meeting in 2012. I remind members of the public and committee members to turn off their mobile phones and BlackBerrys, as they affect the broadcasting system. All committee members are here and we have no apologies.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to the meeting. I thank the Friends of the Far North Line and Railfuture Scotland for their helpful written submissions.
When we surveyed passengers on the type of franchise or railway that they wanted, the answer was that they want a railway that delivers value for money, punctuality and frequent services and that they want to be able to get a seat. How the franchise is run is of no great concern to the average passenger.
We do not favour two franchises. As we said in our response, our concern is that the economic franchise would walk away with the profits, whereas the social one would always be scratching around for money and would always be short of it.
Passengers’ View Scotland takes a different view. The economic franchise, if we want to call it that, would allow the franchise operator greater freedom to innovate. We always hear a great deal about how the private sector is good at innovation—let us give it the opportunity to do that and see whether it can innovate, increase revenue and decrease the subsidy. Financial targets would probably be set for the economic railway and the operator would be given considerable freedom.
Railfuture Scotland would tend to agree with the points made by Passenger Focus. Having one franchise removes the number of interfaces, and localism leads to a better understanding of the needs and expectations of people in communities.
As members of the committee will know, the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland advises Scottish ministers on the needs of the disabled passenger, and I have to start by saying how disappointed MACS was with “Rail 2014”. We have written to the head of Transport Scotland to point out that the needs of the disabled traveller receive only a passing reference, and I raised the same point with the minister last week when he discussed our annual report with me.
Yes.
The forum has enormous difficulty in getting information on rail services and stations. We would not like to see a system that broke up, in any way, our ability to approach the franchisee about the treatment of disabled rail passengers in access to stations, in the training of staff, in the assistance offered—I could go on for ever, although I will not. Committee members will be able to see why, for us, multiple franchises could cause a problem.
I want to pick up on a point that John Brandon has raised. The submission from the Friends of the Far North Line talks about the idea of community, not-for-profit ownership. Have you done any work on that?
No.
Will you be doing any work on it?
It went into our submission, but it is not an issue that we have discussed in great detail. However, we would like local communities to be much more involved in the line. The railway is 170-odd miles long, so it may be that someone from outside the Friends of the Far North Line would have to take the stations on. Our organisation is not geared up to do that—there are too many stations.
Robert Samson has mentioned community rail partnerships. As far as I am aware, such partnerships operate mainly in England and Wales. We do not appear to have the same set-up north of the border. When you talk about a localised element, I presume that you are talking about the consideration of a particular line, for which some forum or partnership could be established to take local decisions that could feed into overall decision making.
In Scotland, if we consider somewhere other than the Highlands, a specific example would be the Stranraer line. The viability and potential of that line have been much discussed. How best do we serve the populations of Dumfries and Galloway—Stranraer, Girvan, Barrhill and so on—now that Stena has moved to Cairnryan?
Do the regional transport partnerships, such as the north east of Scotland transport partnership and the Highlands and Islands transport partnership, form a basis for the localism that you are proposing?
They could be a basis for localism because they have regional transport strategies and so on, and that could be a basis for community rail partnerships. We represent rail passengers across Scotland, England and Wales, but local people on the ground will have a far greater knowledge of local needs than we do and community rail partnerships might be one way of getting to that knowledge.
How would that work with the franchisee? The franchisee has won a bid but might not know what to expect from the community rail partnership. How do you build that in?
It is working very successfully with the various franchises in England and Wales. There is the base timetable and community rail partnerships come up with various ideas such as group save tickets and ideas to boost tourism in the area. All those initiatives add value to the rail network and get more people travelling on the local line, which also adds value for the franchisee. The franchisees and the partnerships are working in harmony at the moment.
I am sorry to pursue the point, but are you including issues such as fares? There could be an argument that we need to establish a Ryanair-type approach to railways to slash fares in order to get people using the trains on the kind of line that you are talking about, such as the Ayr to Stranraer line. The way to encourage modal shift would be to slash fares, which would increase passenger numbers fairly dramatically. Would what you are advocating be able to accommodate that approach?
It would, but it would also require a review of the fare system. On the Stranraer line, for example, for historical reasons, Strathclyde partnership for transport sets the fares as far as Barrhill. I think that a passenger can get from Glasgow to Barrhill for £10, but Barrhill to Stranraer is another £15 to £20 because of the different fare structures. The fare is a deterrent for passengers who are travelling to or from Stranraer by rail. We would need a thorough review of the fare system to make it fair, open and transparent for passengers.
We will move on to achieving reliability, performance and service quality. That is something that the media tends to home in on when we are talking about the railways. I am looking for opinions on the public performance measure on train performance and reliability. Are the proposed measures robust or could they be improved? What are your general opinions of the PPM?
The existing measures have been pretty well validated and they give a reasonably clear indication of how a franchise is performing, but they are not particularly useful from the passenger point of view. Most people want to know how their train service works. Is it an average of 3.5 minutes late every day, so that someone can factor that into their plan for the day? Does it always run to time? We do not know those things. Paradoxically, the information is available. In building up the PPM, rail companies use existing real-time information, but they do not tell the passengers any of that, because they have not been asked to do so. What passengers want to know is the daily performance, the reliability and so on of their service between Tillietudlem and Inversneckie.
In response to question 10 of the consultation, Railfuture Scotland suggested that, beside having an index of late-running trains with a five-minute threshold for local suburban services and a 10-minute threshold for intercity services—which is probably okay—the number of people on the train should also be factored in. After all, a late-running Glasgow to Edinburgh train carrying 500 people will have a much greater impact on society and employers than a lightly loaded train. As a result, we think that there should be a mechanism to reflect the total inconvenience or disturbance with incentives to maintain better punctuality.
But will that not lead to disincentives on less well-used lines? Surely, as a direct result of such a move and given the concentration of rail services and investment in rail in the central belt, people in rural areas would be less well off.
I do not think that the two things are mutually exclusive; I am simply suggesting that we reflect the real world. A late-running train carrying 400 or 500 people should not have the same single index factor that a lightly loaded train has. Rural areas would not be disadvantaged, because the late-running index would still apply.
But what would be the benefit of such a move?
I simply think that we need a more sensitive reflection of the impact. If all you show is that X number of trains ran late, it does not show the magnitude of the impact or the number of people affected. It is just another weapon in the toolbox for measuring reliability and punctuality.
Reliability and punctuality are very important, as is comfort. However, we think that, for disabled rail passengers, a whole range of other factors should be measured. For example, is the rail company meeting their assistance needs? If you book assistance, does it turn up? If trains are running late, are allowances made for people with disabilities who had booked assistance and need to transfer to another train, bus or what have you? Are the staff well trained?
So last-minute changes of platforms, for example, are a problem.
Indeed.
Are such things measured at the moment?
No. I am not having a go at Passenger Focus, but we have just written to that organisation pointing out that its annual national passenger survey does not ask for disabled rail passengers’ views, that it could do so in future and that MACS would be very keen to help in that respect.
Our view on punctuality is different from Mr Sutherland’s, in that we believe that being on time should mean being on time. That was the case before the passenger’s charter came in in 1991 or 1992 and we think that that should still be the case. Passengers expect trains to be on time; they do not want trains that are up to five minutes—or even up to 10 minutes—late to be regarded as being on time, particularly given that, in England more than in Scotland, the final arrival time of many trains is artificially padded out to ensure that they have more chance of arriving within the terms of the charter. We think that we should return to the previous three categories: on time; between one and five minutes late; and more than five minutes late. That system worked very well. Indeed, it has been argued that the slacker you make the timetable, the less people are bothered to run things on time. The tighter you make the turnaround at the terminus, the more likely you are to be on your toes and get the train back on time. Things just slip.
Is that the reason why, as you say in your submission, the journey time from Inverness to Wick is longer than it was so many years ago?
There are a number of reasons for that. It is partly to do with the fact that the performance of the class 158s was not quite as good as the calculations suggested it would be, and partly because the recovery from speed restrictions going into and out of loops and at level crossings takes a bit longer than was calculated. As a result, the journey times were not realistic. We still think that some time could be taken out of them, but the issue needs to be examined intelligently. The loop speeds and level crossing speeds are the key. Although there is certainly some merit in increasing the line speed—after all, the units can do 90mph, but it is a 75mph line—you do not gain a great deal on greenfield; in fact, in order to save two minutes, a train would have to run at a constant 90mph rather than 75mph for 15 miles. By improving loop and level crossing speeds, you can gain many more odd half-minutes here and there, all of which can add up and shorten journey times dramatically.
I support what Bill Ure from Passengers’ View Scotland said about the PPM. Our research shows that passengers want performance to be reported on individual routes; indeed, they want detail on the trains on which they usually travel. However, there is no correlation between the PPM’s five and 10-minute threshold for late-running trains and passenger experience. Commuters going into Glasgow, Edinburgh or indeed any city centre in the morning measure punctuality and performance to the very minute; for every minute of delay, passenger satisfaction falls by 5 percentage points. The industry might judge a train reaching Edinburgh nine minutes over time as being on time, but hundreds of passengers will be getting off that train dissatisfied at arriving nine minutes late.
As well as the PPM, there is the service quality incentive regime, or SQUIRE. How could that be improved?
It has been very effective. As you know, it was introduced by SPT and it was interesting to watch SPT inspectors crawling all over stations, measuring sizes of sweetie papers and so on. The regime is rigorous and, indeed, has been extended.
SQUIRE is quite a good quantitative measure. However, in its report “The First ScotRail Passenger Franchise”, Audit Scotland suggested that there should also be a qualitative measure. What is missing is what the passengers think about the franchise. How satisfied are they? What do they think about punctuality?
Is it fair to say that the rail franchisees take more account of SQUIRE measurements than they do of feedback from passengers on an individual, if not an anecdotal, basis?
We have similar issues with SQUIRE. We think that it is good, but it does not measure everything that is needed. For instance, it does not measure accessibility. As I said, I was very disappointed by how little reference to the disabled traveller there is in “Rail 2014”. About the only instance is where it says that 73 per cent of stations in Scotland are step free. Well, I know where you live, convener, and you know where I live, and I reckon that most of the stations that are not accessible or step free are between Perth and Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness, Inverness and Wick, Glasgow and Mallaig, and Aberdeen and Inverness. There are lovely, old-fashioned bridges—they are beautifully scrolled and what have you—but they are totally inaccessible.
Do the witnesses have other issues to raise about the reliability and performance of the current franchise? What other improvements are required, from the passenger’s point of view?
The SQUIRE regime can create perverse incentives, given the fines that can be levied on ScotRail. Passenger satisfaction at a particular station might be quite low, for various reasons, such as a lack of information, an inability to purchase tickets, a lack of ticket vending machines and so on. The operator’s focus is not on such issues; it is on how many sweetie papers are on the platform, because if there are too many it will get fined. SQUIRE is a good regime but it can have the wrong focus. Because of the nature of the regime and the fines involved, passengers’ major concerns are not being addressed at stations in the way that they would be if there was a more qualitative aspect to the regime.
In relation to consultation question 14, we think that improvement is needed in the ways that passengers can communicate their rage and uncertainty at the time when something happens. The majority of people get frustrated when a train runs late and they are given no information or conflicting information. When they get back home, they could and perhaps should put something in writing to Passenger Focus or the operator. Some form of modern technology—BlackBerrys, smartphones or whatever—and signage to tell people that they can register a problem would at least give customers the satisfaction of knowing that they could do something at the time when the problem occurred.
Steps have already been taken in that direction. For the Strathclyde area, there is a passenger control centre at Paisley—there is now also a centre at Dunfermline. All the stations have a help point with a call button. If a person is standing at a station and the train does not appear, as happens to me sometimes at Fairlie station, they can press the button and ask where the train is and a guy in Paisley will tell them. If the guys at the control centre are really smart, as they frequently are, they will tell you before you have pressed the button that the such-and-such from Largs is running five minutes late.
It is interesting to disaggregate ScotRail’s results on how well passengers think that it deals with delays. Overall, only about 37 per cent of passengers are satisfied, but if we disaggregate the results and look at rural lines, where services are less frequent, there is 90-odd per cent satisfaction. People get good information because the service is less frequent. However, in Strathclyde, to a large extent—despite the help points and the control centre—when things go wrong the information does not get out there. Only about 20 per cent of passengers on the Strathclyde network are satisfied with how ScotRail deals with severe delays.
The consultation document deals with one or two old chestnuts. One is that the big problem with rail services is that everyone wants to travel at the same time. There were suggestions in the consultation document about how to deal with overcrowding. What is the extent of the overcrowding problem on the Scottish rail service? How might we tackle it? I genuinely want to know what you think, taking account of suggestions in the consultation document and any ideas of your own.
PVS did quite a bit of work after the document was published. We did an analysis of all the train services in Scotland. Permitted standing time is currently about 10 minutes—except between Paisley Gilmour Street and Glasgow Central, where it is 12 minutes. We looked at the issue and asked what the effect would be if the permitted standing time was increased to 15 minutes.
I largely agree with what Bill Ure said. Many of the problems with overcrowding arise from decades of underinvestment in the rail system. That started in the 1960s and 1970s, but we are paying for it today.
If we introduce punitive fares at peak times, we might push people to use the trains at different times—or we might push them back into their cars.
It would depend on the threshold. It may be for the McNulty report to suggest ways of driving down the cost of running the UK rail system, but there is a limit to what can be done. People have alternatives, and I feel that it is unfair to single out rail passengers in efforts to change how we live and work. People make demands at peak times on electricity, water and all sorts of other things—all of which are underused at certain periods. All kinds of measures should be tried.
I wanted to raise a point about rural commuting. Not all commuting is between Edinburgh and Glasgow; people commute to Aberdeen and Inverness, for example, and because there are so few trains, people may have no option but to use one particular train. A train leaves Kingussie at a certain time, and it is the only one that people can use to get to Inverness for 9 o’clock.
Our response to “Rail 2014” is that the same rules should apply in Scotland as apply in England. Standing should only be for 20 minutes and off-peak passengers should expect a seat. That was mentioned when we talked about changing at Perth, because people should expect to be able to get a seat at Perth.
Our research with rail passengers in Scotland has demonstrated over and over again that their top four priorities are value for money in ticket prices, a punctual service, a frequent service, and the ability to get a seat when travelling. One of the things that will deter modal shift is the constraints on the network’s capacity. Yes, it takes 10 minutes to travel at peak times from Paisley Gilmour Street to Glasgow, but if more and more people who are travelling on the trains are unable to get a seat, that will be a deterrent to modal shift.
To some extent, we have covered the issue of journey times and punctuality. I know how to run trains faster and more punctually—run them from start to finish and do not stop in between. That is very easy, but the trouble is that no one gets on the train. Do ScotRail’s long-distance services provide the right balance between stops and achieving short journey times?
I have done quite a lot of work on that area in the past. The answer is no, they do not. Things are much better than they used to be, but the services do not provide the right balance because it is a resource-led railway. That is a jargon way of saying that we have a certain number of trains and we have to make the best possible use of them. That is why we have happy things like 11 stops between Glasgow and Aberdeen on an intercity service that is meant to be competing with the car.
The interchange stations have to be good though. Perth is a nightmare. Please do not misunderstand me: I am not criticising the staff; the station itself is a nightmare, for example signage is poor and there is a long journey between platforms.
Picking up Bill Ure’s comments about journey times, I note that the 2008 strategic transport projects review promised an hourly service on the Highland main line with improved journey times. Indeed, when he visited Inverness, the First Minister confirmed that it would be introduced in the December 2011 timetable. All we got in that timetable was two extra trains but, because there have been no infrastructure improvements and because the Highland main line has long sections of single line, the move has had a deleterious effect on journey times—and will continue to have such an effect unless the infrastructure is improved. Originally, we were promised that the Highland main line would be upgraded with more loops—I think that there were to be three reinstatements and the extension of a double-track section from Culloden moor to Daviot by 2014, which was then extended to 2016. The latest date that we have been given is 2025, by which time, under current plans, England will have nearly 140 miles of brand-new railway, including substantial tunnelling, almost ready to open. All we are talking about here is upgrading an existing railway.
Following on from our discussion about through services and interchange stations, I think that we need to ensure that we do not send out mixed messages. One thing that passengers dislike about rail journeys is having to change. For many years, British Rail maintained the quite coherent argument that it lost 25 to 30 per cent of its passengers if they had to change during their trip. It is vital that the committee does its best to emphasise certain red lines, such as the maintenance of through trains from London to Aberdeen and Inverness.
That is right. Mr Sutherland made the case for through services from London to Aberdeen and Inverness. Disabled passengers do not want those to go; in fact, I should also say that they do not want the sleeper—
We are coming to that.
Okay. I just thought that I would mention it in case there was no time later.
Of course, time is marching on. Members and witnesses need to be quicker in asking questions and giving responses.
How well do members of the panel think that rail services connect with other forms of public transport?
I can answer that in two words: very poorly.
Are things improving or do we still have a lot to do in that respect?
I do not think that there has been any discernible improvement that anyone out there in, say, Princes Street could point to. We have been talking about the holy grail of integration for decades now; indeed, I remember a former transport minister saying that a person should be able to buy a through ticket from Paisley to Peterhead to use on buses, trains and so on.
And that is all despite the fact that certain companies provide both bus and rail services.
Of course, that does not apply only in Edinburgh, Glasgow or other large cities. In our patch, if you took the train to Kyle and wanted to catch the Portree bus, you would not just stumble across the bus stop. Although the matter has been raised with the Highlands and Islands transport partnership, no bus stop sign has been put up. I know—and others around the table probably know—where it is because we have been to Kyle, but the average traveller would not. That is the case in many other places.
As a quick example, I point out that the Scottish Government controls both the ScotRail franchise and the Caledonian MacBrayne tendering process. However, the ferry does not meet the train and vice versa because, under the performance regimes for both services, the companies involved are liable to be fined if the ferry or the train runs late. Passengers are standing at Wemyss Bay watching the rear end of the ferry as it goes to Rothesay because CalMac does not want to be fined. Who is disadvantaged there? It is Scottish passengers and tourists who have come to the country. It does not make sense as far as passengers are concerned.
Let us crack on.
Yes. I have two questions but I will combine them so that I can get one answer and we can get on.
As we have said in our submission, the fare structure is quite grotesque. The price of a single journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow is 99 per cent of the price of a day return. If someone travels from Glasgow to Edinburgh and wants to stay overnight in Edinburgh, there is a £12 penalty. Those are two of the anachronistic aspects of the fare structure. I do not know whether ScotRail thinks that it is living with a 19th century captive market and that there is no competition, but someone who wants only a single journey is being punished. Perhaps ScotRail or the other rail companies think that they can milk a lot of money from customers who are forced to do those things, but the fact is that such people go by car or bus. Also, why should people be penalised if they do not come back on the same day? Those are two very simple things that the rail companies could consider so that they would get more people on to the trains.
Some disabled rail passengers have complained that the only way to get some of the cheaper fares is online, but a range of disabled people cannot use computers.
I was going to ask the witnesses whether they think that people get value for money for their fares, but they have kindly answered that.
Value for money is a mythical concept. What do we mean by it? We must set the value for money of fares against the alternative, which for many people is the car. Companies quote fares between two cities, such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, or Aberdeen and Perth, or wherever, but the additional cost to the passenger of getting to Perth station or to Edinburgh Waverley from Dunbar or wherever is not counted. The question is about value for money in relation to the alternative, which is door to door in the car’s case.
Value for money is linked not just to the price of the ticket but to the quality of service. Is my train clean? Is it punctual and reliable? Am I able to get a seat? Passengers use all those criteria when looking at value for money and deciding whether they are satisfied with the price of a ticket. It is not just about price; it is about all those other factors.
You are talking about the whole experience.
Yes.
We have already heard Anne MacLean’s suggestions about improving Scotland’s stations to make them more accessible. Anne, you mentioned excellent ideas such as lower machines that would help people who are in wheelchairs—selfishly, I had never thought of that. You also talked about access over stairs and bridges. Do you have any other suggestions?
As you will have seen, the 2014 consultation talks about the whole question of stations. One idea is good audio and visual signage. If someone cannot see, like me, they need to hear good and clear announcements. Someone who has a hearing impairment needs to have good, clear visual announcements.
In the “Rail 2014” consultation document, it is suggested that the cross-border services that currently extend north and west of Edinburgh could terminate at Edinburgh Waverley station, which would necessitate a change to a ScotRail train for through passengers. What impact would such an approach have on the Scottish franchisee?
We are totally against cross-border services terminating in Edinburgh Waverley. The approach would be a major disincentive for through passengers. Edinburgh Waverley is not—and will not be, even when the building work is finished—the easiest station to negotiate. Not every platform is at the same level. Some platforms are accessed through a barrier; others are not. Let me pick an example out of the air. If someone arrives at platform 7 and their connection goes from platform 10, they will probably wander halfway across the station before they realise that platforms 7 and 10 are the same platform.
The short answer is no, cross-border services should not terminate at Edinburgh Waverley. Part of the reasoning behind the suggestion, according to “Rail 2014”, is that if cross-border services terminated at Waverley and ScotRail provided services north and west of Edinburgh, there would be more revenue and therefore less subsidy for ScotRail. Surely a financial adjustment can be made instead of stopping services at Edinburgh and running additional trains north and west of Edinburgh. A financial adjustment is the answer, rather than an approach that would severely disadvantage the passenger.
It would be a nightmare for the disabled passenger. You have heard it all; I will not repeat it.
We have got the message, Anne.
Bill Ure mentioned that a new fleet of electric trains would come in through the EGIP programme, which will enable a lot of diesel units to be cascaded to other parts of the network. I have a three-part question. Does the current rolling stock meet the needs of passengers? Could the diesel units be altered to address the current limitations of the rolling stock and so meet their needs? Alternatively, do we need to invest in new rolling stock to improve accessibility for disabled people or address other issues?
The rolling stock is a bit like a curate’s egg: it is good in parts and bad in parts. For example, in Ayrshire, where I am fortunate enough to live, the excellent new class 380 Siemens electric trains have been brought in. People who are usually critical of everything comment favourably on them.
I love it that all these men can tell me what sort of trains they are. I did not have a train set when I was a kid.
It is a chap thing, Anne.
It must be.
Do you agree that the type of train that we need for an hour-long commute is very different from the one that we need for a journey of more than an hour and a half?
Yes.
Yes.
People who are travelling from Aberdeen who are not time constrained opt to take an east coast main line train because the carriages are better. Why are we not urging ScotRail to use a different type of carriage from Aberdeen and Inverness to Edinburgh and Glasgow? It has to be a different type of train that is more comfortable and more suitable for a longer journey. Quite frankly, the type of carriage that ScotRail is running at the moment is horrible.
We have suggested that Scottish intercity trains should be of at least mark 3 quality. Much of the intercity rolling stock that has been introduced since privatisation is nothing like the quality of the mark 3. It is not at all comfortable. Its ambience is wrong and it does not look right, whereas a mark 3 does.
I have to say that I prefer to use the east coast service but I advise people not to try to get a guide dog and a human being into one of the lavatories.
I am not here to defend ScotRail, but when the franchise was let originally, there was urgency to get moving quickly and there was a fair shortage of cash. That is why we ended up with the class 170 diesel multiple unit trains that service Aberdeen. Transport Scotland and ScotRail have long recognised that those trains are not designed for long intercity journeys of two to three hours, and they want to do something about it.
Nothing has been done about it, though.
Nothing.
We did some research with passengers on those routes and asked what they wanted from the rolling stock. The research was published last year, in conjunction with Transport Scotland; I will send the committee a copy. Passengers want different things, depending on the type of journey. Business users travelling from Aberdeen want wi-fi, power sockets at all seats, coat hooks, comfortable seats and so on. Leisure passengers want luggage space and so on. All the information is on our website and we will send the committee our report.
I want to ask about the passenger journey—in particular, about comfort and safety. To save time, I will roll my questions together, then witnesses can come back to me. What are your views on catering services, on-train wi-fi and first-class seating? Are there safety concerns? We know that there is closed-circuit television in most stations and on some trains. Is there any way of improving rail-travel information, especially during delays when things happen on the line?
One of the major bugbears for passengers is how well the train operating company deals with delays. We are working with Transport Scotland, Network Rail and ScotRail to try to improve that. Passengers want information as soon as possible, so they need a joined-up response from Network Rail and ScotRail. Things are improving, but they should and could be much better. There is nothing worse for a passenger than sitting while time goes by on a train that has come to a halt. They need information. Even if there is nothing more to tell passengers, they should be told that the train is delayed and that the crew will get back to them as soon as they can with a reason: passengers want reassurance. The train operating companies can improve on that and I hope that they will.
I have said my bit about catering. If it can be delivered for disabled people, that would be fine.
If you can get somebody to pass that on to us, that would be helpful.
Okay.
I have a point on a micro-sized item, if you like, regarding passenger information. I have laboured for years to get ScotRail to do something to bring its train timetable notice boards into the realm of real life. If you go to any station, you will see people looking at the timetable board and within seconds their eyes glaze over and they then go and ask somebody. It is stone-age technology; you get a red marker line under the home station, and it is as simple as could be. I am not denigrating the steps that have been taken on electronic signboards for trains, platforms and so on. However, the basic paper notice on a board is absolutely incomprehensible in its present form. That could be remedied by the stroke of a pen, literally.
The last section of “Rail 2014” is on environmental issues. Obviously, in general terms rail travel is environmentally friendly, but there are still issues about carbon footprint, waste and so on. What more could be done to reduce the environmental impact of rail services?
Electric trains are more environmentally friendly than fossil-fuel trains. We suggested in our response to “Rail 2014” that any line that has an hourly or more frequent passenger service should be electrified.
Network Rail’s document “Initial Industry Plan Scotland” recognises that the industry must endeavour to think holistically. It is true that electric trains produce less carbon than diesel trains, but it is recognised that the whole situation must be looked at—for example, what happens in depots regarding engines idling or disposal of waste. There is a substantial opportunity if all the rail industry’s activities in that regard were pooled, because they are separate at the moment. Those who manage depots have no concern about waste or about what happens at stations. However, the industry is starting to recognise that the whole situation must be looked at. If responsibility for the whole carbon footprint is given to one part of an organisation, the footprint can be reduced substantially. That is really a job for the industry and it is starting to recognise that.
Anne MacLean will be pleased to know that my last question has a specific point on the Caledonian sleeper. Events have moved on since “Rail 2014” came out; the UK and Scottish Governments’ announcement of the £100 million support is relevant to the discussion on the sleeper service. You will know of the options that have been outlined. How should the sleeper service be developed?
Can I respond on that? I have been doing some work in the area. I am sorry, Anne.
That is all right. I know my place.
It is on the sleeper, in a first-class berth.
Okay.
A window of opportunity is opening. The £50 million contribution from each Government is primarily to renew rolling stock. At the same time, with construction of the high-speed line out of Euston, we will lose the platforms there. Euston is the only station north of the Thames that has platforms that are long enough to accommodate the sleeper service. Waterloo International station is lying idle at the moment. It has four very long platforms that are used occasionally—one is sometimes used by a three-car Windsor service—but which are basically sterile, and it has been suggested that the Caledonian sleeper service operate into and out of that station, which can be accessed from the west coast main line through Kensington and so on, and that the Penzance sleeper service come out of Paddington. That would, in effect, create a UK sleeper hub at Waterloo.
There is great symmetry in connecting Waterloo with Brussels.
Indeed. There is a good historical precedent.
We will certainly take that on board.
This is not necessarily a point about disabled people, but one might ask whether tourists who are going to Aviemore for skiing want to get off a train and cart their equipment across Waverley station when they could leave London at half past 9 at night and be on the slopes at half past 9 the next morning.
We want the sleepers to run as they do at the moment; indeed, we do not think that the introduction of high-speed rail will necessarily mean the end of the lowland sleepers. When high-speed diesels started to run on the east coast line in 1978, we were told that there would be no need for sleepers any more, but we still have them because they are still valuable to people who need to be at their destination cities for 9 o’clock in the morning or earlier and who have to make a journey before they get on the train. After all, not everyone lives in the middle of Edinburgh, the middle of London, the middle of Glasgow or the middle of Inverness; many people have to make an initial journey and the sleeper is the only way they can get to their destination to be ready for a meeting the following day.
The sleepers issue is a kind of Pandora’s box; all these wonderful ideas come out when it gets raised. From passengers’ perspective, money could be spent on improvements such as en suite toilet and shower facilities but we should not forget price sensitivity with regard to seated accommodation. Many passengers are travelling on a budget, want to get bargain prices and do not necessarily want to upgrade to some totally swish Orient Express class.
I will make a final remark. As I touched on earlier—this is raised in “Rail 2014”—there is a question whether the sleeper services should continue to be part of the ScotRail franchise or be separate from it. My idea of moving sleeper services to Waterloo International, which I mentioned earlier, would create an opportunity to have a separate sleeper franchise. Such companies have started on the continent; for example, a Paris to Madrid sleeper has been in operation for the past two years and a sleeper to Milan has been introduced. I believe that, among other things, the £100 million for new rolling stock that is floating around could attract the entrepreneur, and we should examine the possibility of putting together a separate sleeper franchise for the United Kingdom, particularly if it incorporated the European element. Such a move would allow ScotRail, for which the sleeper service is a bit of an aberration, to concentrate on delivering services in Scotland.
I have done some research on that. The sleepers in Scotland are all maintained in Inverness, whereas Night Riviera Ltd sleepers are maintained in Penzance. The formations of the trains are completely different because the business is completely different. For a start, the Penzance train has five seating vehicles, which apparently are often full, and only four sleepers, whereas all the Scottish sleepers have six sleeper segments, one seating vehicle and one lounge. On the face of it, the synergy looks good, but the formations of the trains and where they are maintained might cause employment problems in Inverness and Penzance.
The problems are not insurmountable.
Previous
Attendance