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rail industry Is in trouble. In the moment it’s taken you to read this sentence, £400 of taxpayers’ cash has been put into the gap between how much the government spends on railways and how much passengers have to pay to travel by train in Britain. Over a year, this equates to £12.5 billion (excluding subsidies) Rising costs of HS2 project,
Cutting costs has always proved difficult, not least because rail unions are adept at extracting higher wages in exchange for increased productivity. The significantly slimmer timetable leaves only a sliver of cash, as the railways’ fixed costs are very high. But I fear we may soon see some major cuts in services to reduce the deficit.
How about approaching the goal of reduced subsidies from the opposite direction: increasing revenues?
Long-suffering travelers may tremble at the prospect of parity higher fareYet there may be painless ways to coax more passengers on board. That’s according to Thomas Ableman, mobility guru and former director of London Transport for Strategy and Innovation.
In his latest blogHe comes up with some revolutionary ideas.
Reservation for any train
If you book a specific intercity train like Bristol to London or Birmingham to Newcastle, you’ll usually get a seat reservation. But for short, high-density journeys there is no such certainty as to where you will sit – or whether you will sit at all.
Those of us who rely on rail probably already have an idea. trains It is likely to be the busiest. Arrivals during the first rush hour in London, which allows off-peak tickets to be used, are often packed. In contrast, most other trains will have extra seats. But people who occasionally travel by train cannot be expected to know this.
“The fear of not getting a seat is one of the biggest barriers to rail travel,” says Mr. Ableman. “You can use a car in which you own Seat – Or you may travel by train and possibly have to stand the entire way.
A smartphone app can sometimes assure users that they will get a seat from Winchester to Bournemouth or from Lancaster to Manchester Airport – and perhaps increase revenue by charging £1 for the privilege.
“This does not require special kit or special staff in trains, as it can all be done through mobile apps,” he says.
“Early in my career, reservations had to be filled out by hand as little slips of seatback paper. Now, they can be completed entirely digitally at more or less zero marginal cost. There’s no argument for sticking to the intercity-only rule. It only exists because these were trains with enough staff to set paper labels – a requirement that no longer exists.”
simple railcard
“Only single, childless adults aged between 30-50 years, outside the South East, without any disability and who have never served in the military are eligible railcard,” Mr. Ableman says. But, he says, the range of options and the conditions attached to each create such confusion, “People don’t understand what they can have and what they’ll get for it, so they don’t sign up.”
In SwitzerlandAlmost every rail passenger pays an annual subscription of about £180 for a “Half Fare Travelcard”. Only tourists like me bemoan (say) the cost of Swiss travel. From the far south of the country to the far northBecause tourists alone pay around £90 for the privilege. For everyone else it’s £45.
Thomas Ableman says, “A true loyalty product is one that people are willing to pay for.” “From one side railcard,
more first class
in recent years greater anglia And Southeastern has eliminated first class on its network to and from London. You can celebrate these developments as small victories on the path to a more egalitarian society. Yet Thomas Ableman says the railways should reinstate posh seats.
With a growing group of people willing to pay extra for higher quality, he described the gradual return of premium seating to the National Rail network as “a strategic mistake”, adding: “The first class market has basically given up on rail.”
“Almost every train in Switzerland has first class, even the local S-Bahn commuter shuttle in the suburbs of Geneva.
“As our society creates a growing group of wealthy people with high standards, railways need to be ready to respond. More first class and better first class.”
The challenge now: Will the government give train operators the freedom to test these ideas to see if they generate some much-needed extra cash for the railways?
Read more: A Brief History of the First Division