The Climate Crisis: An Interchat with Ben Plowden

What has to change inside government before anything changes on the street?

In today's Interchat with 𝗕𝗲𝗻 𝗣𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗱𝗲𝗻, 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗳 𝗘𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁, we discuss the machinery of government, why combined authorities should never be treated as a single category and the local transport authorities now spending 70% of their budgets on social care.

We also discuss my own despair about the climate crisis - and Ben's rather more useful answer to it.

Interchats are a series of short conversations recorded on the conference floor at Interchange 26 in Manchester.

The Climate Crisis: An Interchat with Ben Plowden

Thomas Ableman

You can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Spotify Podcasts.

Why Revenue is the right Target for the railway

Last week, I wrote about how punctuality is not a great proxy for customer experience - at least based on my own family’s experiences of the school holidays.

As a reminder, this graph shows the correlation between punctuality and the stressfulness of the journey. There is a relationship, but it’s not a perfect one.

This matters because the rail sector is hard wired to focus on punctuality above all else. If punctuality only explains a quarter of the stress experienced by customers (which, based on my family’s summer, it does) then what explains the rest?

And what do you need to focus on to fix it?

Well, I’ll start by saying that the focus on punctuality is actually right and should continue. Anyone who’s travelled in Germany recently, as I have, can experience a railway that seems to have just given up on running trains on time. My former colleague Marc Bichtemann, who runs a railway there, told me how much Germany would benefit from the UK’s performance culture.

So the focus on punctuality should remain, but it needs to be in the service of a wider target - something that captures the other three quarters of the causes of stress.

That one thing is… revenue.

So many of the things that caused my family’s stress (and made many journeys actively miserable this summer) are invisible to someone managing using a punctuality target alone. Or, to be completely accurate, most of them would be eliminated if every single train was perfectly punctual but given that there are always going to be delays, there’s got to be a way of incentivising the industry that doesn’t just capture the movement of trains but also captures the false cancellation emails, the silence at Euston, the crowds abandoned at Ramsgate, etc etc (reminder of the full story here).

The reason why a revenue target achieves this is because a stressed customer doesn’t come back. Unless they’re me, of course. But the number of times I’ve had to persuade my wife to stick with the railway, despite it being her strong preference! Most normal people have options. They can go by car or coach or plane or - above all - simply not make the journey. A railway that feels itself accountable for revenue is automatically accountable for every cause of stress, because customers react to each one.

Alex Hynes has been doing a great job in the last year pointing out that a nationalised railway will be an unusual public service as it will have the potential of generating its own revenue, and not being dependent on the taxpayer. He’s spot-on. But there’s a wider benefit. The act of trying to generate revenue is also a way of focusing on customer needs.

What about C-Sat?

Now, you may be asking, if we want better customer experience, why not gear the entire industry around customer satisfaction?

There are a number of reasons, but the most basic is that we don’t measure it frequently or widely enough.

If every interaction was star-rated, this can be fantastically motivational. I know because I’ve run a business that worked on this basis. I’ve written about it here. If GBR could work like that, then it would be great. And maybe it can in a decade or two, but it’s not going to be in place anytime soon. By contrast, revenue is collected every second and there are systems in place to measure and apportion it. So it can actually be used to drive both incentives and behaviours.

Revenue also has the advantage that it creates its own business case. Customer satisfaction can easily be seen as a cost, whereas focusing on revenue creates the potential for a virtuous circle.

To be clear, the case for revenue isn't that it's a better metric than customer satisfaction. It's that it's a better mission: a question everyone in the organisation is answering, all the time, and being measured on. Let me show you what that looks like in practice.

How can it work?

How would a train company that was genuinely focused on revenue work? Well, I’m lucky enough not only to have worked for one but also been part of a team that thought properly about how it worked in practice.

The company was Chiltern Railways. We had some of the highest punctuality and highest customer satisfaction in the rail sector, but the driving force of the company was delighting customers and generating revenue.

And, helpfully, we actually wrote down how we did it.

Do you remember how, just over ten years ago, there was a spasm of getting European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) accreditation in the rail industry? It was believed that DfT took it into account when awarding franchise agreements, so suddenly everyone needed to get accredited - and to get five stars.

It was actually a very useful exercise.

EFQM isn’t like ISO accreditations: it doesnn’t give you a template to work to. It’s simply a question of documenting how your organisation works.

What is it you’re trying to achieve?

What do you do to achieve it?

But within that apparent simplicity is a lot of hard work in actually figuring out the answers. Even in an organisation that’s succesfully doing the doing, it can sometimes be hard to step back and understand precisely how.

EFQM forced us to do it, and it was a very useful exercise.

At the heart of our “processes” section was this diagram on how Chiltern Railways worked:

As you can see, the Commercial Director was at the very centre. That was me.

But - and this is key - that didn’t mean I was in charge; this diagram was about the flow of responsibility.

I was responsible for the revenue line. But so was everyone else.

The Customer Service Director was responsible for delighting customers and collecting revenue, in service of that revenue goal.

The Business Development Director was responsible for making investments and setting a timetable, in service of that revenue goal.

These two people were, therefore, my key colleagues: as I would “define” the timetable, sales channel and customer service propositions that I believed we needed to deliver the target, and then we’d have a thoroughly enjoyable debate about what was actually possible in reality - given they had the human resource and cost targets that I didn’t. In one sense, the creative tensions in our professional relationships were key drivers of our success.

But even that doesn’t quite explain it right, as the tension was only between the fact that they had responsibilities I did not. But it wasn’t like we were trying to achieve different things: they felt as responsible for revenue as I did.

Then, on the right-hand side of this diagram, the chain of creative tensions continued.

The BD director’s timetable (which he set in creative tension with me) he also set in creative tension with the Ops Director, who actually had to deliver the thing. I’d want more trains, faster trains and the correct allocation of the right types of carriages onto the right service specs. The Ops Director knew his job was to do what I wanted but only as far as it was deliverable. The BD Director had to satisfy himself that the timetable was satisfying me as much as was possible, while still being deliverable.

The Ops Director, meanwhile, was having a similar relationship with the Engineering Director (who is shown on this diagram) and with Network Rail (who is not - but would be, if this diagram was being drawn in a GBR context).

So it’s not that we didn’t care about punctuality - we did. Hugely. The Ops Director’s responsibility was to deliver the timetable, and that meant the trains must run on time. It’s just that punctuality wasn’t at the core; revenue was.

HR and Finance were there to support all of us.

The reason why the arrows point inwards towards me / revenue is because everyone was working together to achieve that goal. And that’s genuinely how it felt.

One of the joys of revenue as a central organising mission is that it incentivises everyone to look under every stone for the things that might be getting in the way. If we’re losing customers because of poor information, it’s not a standalone goody-two-shoes effort to improve customer information - it’s core to the mission of the organisation. Same with so many of the customer experience features that can otherwise be seen as standalone projects.

The Chiltern Railways service was good for the same reason the Pret service is good: because our organising mission was to get customers to buy from us.

In the seven years I was there, we increased revenue from £100 million to £200 million. In the process, we retained industry-leading punctuality and customer satisfaction. Focusing on revenue didn’t distract us from punctuality and customer satisfaction - it created the incentive to focus on them.

Checks and balances

I’m not suggesting this diagram could necessarily be lifted and shifted into the world of GBR.

But I am suggesting that revenue could be made a core goal of GBR.

But for this to work, there need to be some checks and balances.

Fares

The first is around pricing. We inhabited a world of fares regulation, so I couldn’t simply achieve my revenue goals by putting the prices up. We really need a new fares regime for GBR. I am very worried that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater in moving away from the privatised system of fares regulation. I wrote about that here.

The people who should most want clear rules are the future managers of GBR. Otherwise, they’re going to find themselves forced to hold down fares by politicians, which will starve their service of investment (which is what’s happened in London - TfL’s not even got close to its asset renewals targets for a single year Sadiq Kahn has been Mayor. It’s going to have devastating consequences for the next generation of commuters, but not for Sadiq - I’ve written about this issue in more detail previously here)

A sensible set of rules can then liberate those managers to chase revenue, secure in the knowledge that social goals are protected.

Devolution

Revenue is a great goal for a railway as the cost base is largely fixed. Therefore, every additional ticket sold is additional revenue. Nevertheless, it’s also obviously true that a ticket from Newcastle Central to London is worth more than a ticket from Newcastle Central to the Metro Centre.

That’s why it’s absolutely critical that GBR is both a commercial entity seeking to maximise revenue, and a supplier of services to Combined Authorities and Strategic Authorities. The obvious way to maintain the revenue incentive but without losing focus on the smaller flows is to recreate something very like the Section 20 mechanism that existed pre-privatisation, which allowed Passenger Transport Executives to take revenue risk for local services. This excellent paper describes how it worked.

What needs to change?

This requires a very different culture from the one we’re used to. Being focused on revenue means the whole organisation focused on revenue. There’s a reason, in the diagram above, that the MD of Chiltern Railways wasn’t shown. That’s because his focus was on setting the culture that made this all possible.

These will be some signs that this culture is starting to work:

1) We’ll see (far!) fewer ‘do not travel’ advisories.

It’s become alarmingly common for train companies to react to a severe operational crisis by asking customers to go away. In the seven years I was at Chiltern Railways we never once did that.

Even when a landslide completely blocked the mainline at Harbury, near Leamington Spa, (one of the places on the route where there is no diversionary option), not only did we not send customers away but we did our absolute best to encourage them. We marketed the rail replacement service as a “step straight on” service, making sure there was always a coach waiting at the door at all times. We had staff checking each coach, and sending scuzzy ones back to teh operators. We gave each customer a goody bag as they boarded the coach as an apology. The goody bag included a chocolate brownie. Not a shitty corporate chocolate brownie; an artisnal nice one from an actual bakery.

Was it my idea, as commercial director, to buy artisinal brownies? Of course not. That’s what happens when everyone in the company knows that it’s their job to make sure we maximise revenue.

You can read more on our response to the Harbury landslide here. And if this is a topic that interests you, I recommend you do.

2) We’ll see much faster decisions.

Customers don’t move at our pace, they move at theirs. So if we’re doing things to attract customers, we need to be working at their pace and in their way.

In my post last week, I highlighted that we seem to have developed a habit of emailing customers to tell them their train is cancelled when it’s simply not serving the stop they booked (but, very possibly, is serving another stop in the same town).

I don’t know how long we’ve been doing that for, but my guess is that fixing it is delayed in a tangle of contracts - if anyone’s fixing it at all.

In a railway focused on revenue, you can’t hang around like that. We’re literally emailing customers and telling them not to travel on trains that are running!

3) Customer-facing problems will just get fixed

Most of us who travel by train know the constant run of petty frustrations experienced by users, because the systems train operators, managers and staff operate to have been designed around contracts and compliance, not around customers.

Once the whole industry is recalibrated to a goal that we need to sell as much as possible, everyone will understand that it’s their job to fix the things that make this harder. In the diagram above, everyone in the organisation is responsible for revenue.

This series of two posts started by asking the question how to achieve the Secretary of State’s goal for GBR to offer a better service to customers.

Perversely, the best way to achieve this public service goal is for it to act - in places - more like a private business.

Punctuality is not a good proxy for rail passenger experience

“A better passenger experience”.

These are the words that the Secretary of State has repeatedly used to describe what she wants from nationalisation, so it’s also an instruction to the rail industry to make it so.

Given the culture of the rail industry, for a lot of railway managers, that will translate to “Make the trains run on time.”

But is punctuality actually the right measure for a better passenger experience? And, if not, what is?

In this week’s post, I’ll illustrate why it’s not. Next week, I’ll say what is. And, despite the excellent work done by Transport Focus, I don’t mean Customer Satisfaction.

To illustrate why punctuality is not the perfect proxy for a better passenger experience, allow me to talk you through every journey taken by a family over the summer holidays.

That family is mine, and we made a mixture of business and leisure trips across the UK. For each journey, I’ll tell you how punctual it was, and give you a ‘stress score’ out of 10. The stress score is subjective, but I’ll explain my logic as we go. For punctuality, I’ll give the number of minutes late the train we were booked on arrived at our destination station. For trains that were cancelled, I’ll list how many minutes late we arrived in brackets.

For clarity, this shows every train journey made by members of my immediate family or me during the school holiday. If it looks like I’ve only chosen the bad ones, it’s because there were very few good ones.

I realise we travel more than most families, but it’s representative of what life looks like for a family trying to live car-free and make the most of seeing family and getting away. Which is, I think, what we want more people to feel able to do.

Helen’s Leisure Trips with the Girls.

The first weekend of the school holidays started with Helen taking the girls to Manchester to see family.

On Friday 24 July they went from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly. The 1233 train left on time, very crowded because the previous one had been cancelled. They were told they would be diverted via Birmingham, but not told what that meant for arrival time. Then they were later told that they wouldn't be diverted, but were 39 minutes late arriving anyway. The fact it boarded and left on time and the fact they had seat reservations meant it wasn’t too stressful. It was probably more stressful for my sister in law attempting to work out when to collect them at Piccadilly. Delay: 39. Stress Score: 4

On Saturday 25 July they attempted to go from Walkden to Salford Central, a short local journey in Greater Manchester. The 1042 train was cancelled at last minute and despite being a suburban line, these trains only run every thirty mins. Last minute scrambling for a lift. Thankfully Helen’s brother answered his phone and was able to drive them into town, otherwise they would have missed the event they were going to. Delay: Cancelled (20). Stress Score: 8

On Tuesday 28 July They returned from Liverpool South Parkway to London Euston (having been given a lift from Manchester to Liverpool). Helen checked on the Trainline app that afternoon and it showed the train 1454 from Liverpool South Parkway to London was on time. Except that later she got an email that it was cancelled. She decided to get the earlier train, and went to Lime Street so she could be on that start, given that she no longer had reservations. The ticket inspector questioned why they were on the wrong train and Helen explained. He didn't believe her until she showed him the email from Trainline as he said to his knowledge, Avanti trains were all running.

On investigation for this blog post, I discovered that the ticket inspector was right. The email saying that the train was cancelled was bollocks. Avanti had simply put a Pendolino onto the train which doesn’t fit the platforms at South Parkway. But the email didn’t say that: it said cancelled. So Helen and my girls had a stressful journey for nothing, when they could have simply got on at Runcorn (which is almost as easy to reach from her parents’ house).Delay: 24. Stress Score: 7

The next day, Wednesday 29 July, they went camping in Sussex. The 1059 journey from London Victoria to Haywards Heath was smooth and stress-free. Delay: 1. Stress Score: 0.

On Friday 31 July, they came back from Haywards Heath to London Victoria. They got on the train at Haywards Heath at 1347 and waited in the station for a while. Then they left but shortly afterwards, there was an announcement that due to trespassers on line at Clapham Junction, the train would be terminating at Gatwick. So they got off at Gatwick already 26 minutes late. All trains to Victoria were cancelled. After half an hour or so got on a train going to St Pancras. Delay: 26, then cancelled (45). Stress Score: 7

Then, towards the end of the holidays, Helen took just Sophia back up to Liverpool to see her parents again.

They were booked on 1243 on Tuesday 25 August on the 1243 from London Euston to Liverpool South Parkway. That morning, Helen got an email saying the train was cancelled. It’s pretty clear that it’s cancelled. Except that, thanks to my research for this article, I now know that this is nonsense. It means Avanti have put a Pendolino onto the train and can’t stop at South Parkway. So they ignored the cancellation email and got picked up at Runcorn. But that’s not what most passengers would do and it’s still very stressful being told your train is cancelled, having frenetic WhatsApp conversations with your transport expert husband and being convinced that you can just turn up for a train you’ve been officially told isn’t running. The system can’t work on the basis of customers needing to ignore what they’re officially told in order for journeys to work. Delay: Train: 0, though no stop at South Parkway. Stress score: 5.

I’m glad to report, however, that the journey back from Liverpool South Parkway to London Euston on Thursday 27 August actually worked (first of the three attempted this summer that did!). The 1155 ran fine. Delay: 0. Stress score: 0.

One of three phantom cancellations we encountered this summer. This train did run, albeit without a stop at South Parkway. But it’s much easier to be picked up at Runcorn than get a different train.

Thomas’s Week One Business Trips

The first week of the school holidays was dominated by business trips by me.

On Monday 27 July, I got the 1933 London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly. The train left Euston late and there was absolutely no information at all, so we didn’t dare leave the concourse. That was a shame, as the concourse was horrifically hot. Standing drenched in sweat watching a “Delayed” notice with no announcements is utterly miserable. Not for the first time, I felt myself regretting just how often I choose to travel to visit my clients in person. Also felt bad for the UK economy, because if I think that, so will others. The train was actually only moderately late but the terrible experience at Euston made the journey utterly miserable. Delay: 27. Stress Score: 5.

The next day, Tuesday 28 July, I got the train from Manchester Piccadilly to Sheffield. Boarding at platform 13 at Piccadilly was as stressful as it always is, but no worse. There were plenty of seats on the Transpennine Express train, though it was somewhat stressful waiting as it’s not a route I know well, so I didn’t know if there would be. Enjoyed travelling through the Hope Valley. Delay: 0.Stress score: 3

On Wednesday 29 July, it was Sheffield to Birmingham New Street. The 1724 train left on time, though got progressively later as the journey went on. However, I was onboard by then, so it didn’t really matter. I’d booked a cheap first class ticket, which was good as the standard class catering wasn’t available. Delay: 11. Stress score: 2.

My final trip of the week on Thursday 30 July was Birmingham New Street to London Euston. I was booked on the 1717 train. It left on time, and arrived 18 minutes late. Delay: 18. Stress score: 1.

To and from Folkestone

We spent the core of August in Folkestone where our family has a flat. We had a Spanish family staying in our home in Walthamstow. So we did a bit of shuttling between London and Folkestone.

On Monday 3 August, Helen and Anna went from London St Pancras to Folkestone Central on the 1204. It ran four to six minutes late throughout. That could be worse, but the late arrival into St Pancras makes the boarding process a bit stressful. Delay: 4. Stress score: 3.

On Thursday 6 August, Helen brought Anna to London for the Penzance trip described below. She went from Folkestone Central to London St Pancras on the 1056 (Delay: 2, Stress score: 0) and back on the 1807 (Delay: 0, Stress score: 0).

On Monday 10 August, Helen needed to attend a hospital appointment in East London so got the 0956 from Folkestone Central to Stratford International. This is where the interaction between the NHS and the fares system wasn’t helpful. The only appointment time was the one they’d given her but to get the first off-peak train meant that it had to be precisely on time for it to work. It wasn’t - it was five minutes late, so she needed to get a black cab from Stratford to make her appointment. Still worked out cheaper than getting the preceding peak time train but the just-in-time nature made it more stressful than it would otherwise have been. Delay: 5. Stress score: 4

She returned on the 1714. Going from Stratford International to Folkestone Central in the peak is never stress-free because the train can arrive full, with commuters from London standing. But that’s less of a worry in August. Delay: 2. Stress score: 2

The same day, I brought Sophia down for us to join them from St Pancras International to Folkestone Central. We had been on holiday together and were coming back on a delayed Eurostar, so missed our planned connection. We ended up getting the 2207, which left eight minutes late and arrived seven minutes late. Given how late it was, keeping a tired child awake on the platform added to the stress levels a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. Delay: 7. Stress score: 2.

Helen and Anna returned to from Folkestone on Sunday 23 August at 1756. The train journey was fine, though Sunday nights on that line are always stressful because so many people travel back from the seaside that you can never be sure of a seat. That’s always more stressful when travelling with Anna because, being disabled, she really needs one. Delay: 2. Stress score: 4.

Sophia and I came back a few days later on Tuesday 25 August at 0956. Again, fine. Again, slightly stressful as it’s the first off-peak train, so is always somewhat stressful. Delay: 3. Stress score: 3

To and from Penzance

On Thursday 6 August, Anna went on her annual trip to see her Granny from London Paddington to Penzance. Anna is seventeen but she’s visually impaired and autistic, and finds travelling by train independently extremely difficult. Helen put her on the train at Paddington and my mum met her on the platform at Penzance, but we prayed nothing went wrong.

We’d got seat reservations lined up and Helen got to Paddington on time for the 1503 train. The train was shown on the board terminating at Plymouth. Helen went and asked a member of staff who said casually, “Yeah, it’s terminating at Plymouth. You can change there.”

That might be easy for some people: for a disabled girl travelling alone, it’s literally impossible. Anna had a panic attack.

Thank God, a member of staff (Niki) was absolutely brilliant and took charge of the situation. He stamped her Advance ticket for the next train at 1603. Anna calmed down and Helen got on with her to make sure she got a seat.

In researching for this post, I discovered that this was all unnecessary, as the 1503 train did, in fact, run through to Penzance. Delay: 17. Stress score: 10.

Penzance: the 1503 train was going here, even though my family were told it was not

The return journey on Monday 10 August from Penzance to London Paddington at 1020 ran 19 minutes late. But that wasn’t why it was stressful. It was stressful because it was massively crowded. It was too crowded for Anna to be able to reach the loo, which isn’t much fun on a five-hour journey. The guard kept announcing (in a slightly accusatory tone) that there’s another train behind and you can get off and travel on that if you don’t want to be on such a crowded train. But she never explained whether Advance tickets would be valid on that train (which it’s reasonable to assume most passengers, including Anna, will have on a long-distance leisure train); no one did. Delay: 19. Stress score: 6

The Kent Day Trips

On Tuesday 4 August, Helen took the girls from Folkestone to Broadstairs. This is a very easy hour-long journey with a simple cross-platform connection at Ramsgate. Except when it isn’t…

The 1105 Folkestone Central to Ramsgate left five minutes late and arrived 10 minutes late. This meant it arrived just as the connecting train left. There was no information, despite lots of people clearly all making the same connection. (Delay: 10. Stress score: 8)They figured out that there would be another train to Broadstairs 20 mins later, the 1221. It arrived late. As they were about to board, platform staff announced that the train would NOT be stopping as scheduled at Broadstairs, Margate or Herne Bay but would go fast to Faversham. This left most of the passengers on the platform as everyone wanted to go to the seaside on a hot sunny day in the school holidays! Again, no info was given about alternatives. Delay: Train: 0, though no stop at Broadstairs. Stress score: 8

Eventually, they got to go from Ramsgate to Broadstairs on the 1302. This ran on time but, of course, for Helen and the girls was part of the same extremely stressful and difficult journey. Delay: 0. Stress score: 8

I find this journey particularly interesting as, if you look at the numbers, you have one train that ran ten minutes late and another that ran on time. Hardly even worth noticing. But on the ground, crowds of holiday-makers felt stressed and abandoned.

Their return journeys on the 1633 Broadstairs to Ramsgate (Delay: 0. Stress score: 2) and 1646 Ramsgate to Folkestone Central (Delay: 2, Stress Score: 2) all went like clockwork, though their stress levels were elevated as a result of the morning’s experience.

Even though three of the four trains they actually travelled on that day were on time, their experience of the railway that day was extremely poor.

On Monday 17 August, we had another go. This time we went out to Margate. First we got the 1002 from Folkestone Central to Ramsgate (Delay: 1. Stress score: 0) and then experienced the cross-platform interchange that’s meant to happen onto the 1100 Ramsgate to Margate (Delay: 0. Stress score: 0).

The journey back was interesting, though. We came back from Ramsgate which has a station a good mile from the town centre. The station at the Harbour was closed pre-war and the tunnel to reach it turned into an air-raid shelter. Three consecutive buses were either delayed or cancelled, which caused us to miss two consecutive trains. So it’s no fault of the railway that our stress levels were elevated but, equally, it’s a fact that customers’ journeys don’t start and end with the train journey. We eventually made it onto the 1907 Ramsgate to Folkestone Central (Delay: 2. Stress score: 3).

Return To Oxford

The other day trip of the summer holidays was me alone, and it was for work. I needed to go to a meeting in Oxford on Wednesday 12 August.

I got the 0728 from Folkestone Central to London St Pancras, which was very simple and smooth. Delay: 2, Stress score: 0.

Then I was planning on getting the 0923 London Paddington to Oxford but when I checked, it was cancelled. Thankfully I checked early enough to divert to Marylebone for the 0906. This ran on time but, based on Chiltern Railways new policy of randomly assigning the trains with tables and plug points (sorry - a bit of personal legacy from me here: we put a lot of effort to making sure that the Oxford and Birmingham trains always had tables and plugs, and I’m sorry that this has been lost), my train had neither tables or plugs and I’d been planning on working. I still had to work, so I had a rather hunched journey. Delay: Cancelled (9). Stress score: 5.

For the return journey from Oxford to London Paddington, I was planning on getting the 1501 but, yes, it was cancelled. So I got the 1519 to Marylebone instead. This train was only 5 minutes late but was one of the most stressful journeys of the summer. As the train continued, it got hotter and hotter and hotter until it genuinely started to become hard to breathe. I’ve never felt like I was somewhere where heat could be a safety risk before, but this was one such moment. Delay: Cancelled (53). Stress score: 8.

Finally, I got the 2207 from London St Pancras to Folkestone Central. This train was on time and smooth. Delay: 0. Stress score: 0.

How was Our Summer?

As a family, we attempted to get 33 trains.

Of these, 29 ran and 4 were cancelled.

Of the 29 that ran, nine were on time and 11 ran within a minute late. 20 were within five minutes. Just eight journeys were 10+ minutes late. The average lateness of the trains that ran was just 6.8 minutes and the median just two minutes.

Looked at through a punctuality lens, we had a pretty good summer.

Yet I’m sure you’ll agree with me, having read the experiences, that it didn’t feel like that.

Just eight of the journeys were stress-free; fewer than one in four.

Only four were both punctual and stress-free.

12 journeys were highly stressful (a stress score of five or above).

The average stress was 3.6 across all journeys, though 7.0 for those that were cancelled. (Cancelling trains is really stressful!).

This graph shows the relationship between punctuality and stress for my family’s journey. If punctuality was a good way of measuring “a better passenger experience” (as requested by the Secretary of State) then these dots would form a neat line from bottom left to top right. Do they?

Well, there’s a correlation - but it’s not a strong one.

Delay explains only about a quarter of the variation in my family’s stress level when travelling by train, and much of even that comes from the four trains that were cancelled outright.

Among the trains that actually ran, minutes of lateness explained barely a seventh of how stressful the journey was.

The biggest delay of the summer (39 minutes) scored just 4 for stress; the highest stress of the summer (10) was a train that ran well. At the extremes, they barely correlate at all.

Lessons to learn

Well, you might - reasonably - say there are no lessons to learn as my family is one family, and probably atypical. That’s not an unreasonable point: I doubt most families travelled on 33 trains over the summer holidays. But even if we travelled more than most (and largely to places our family live), I suspect our experiences aren’t totally atypical.

One thing that I’d love to know is whether my family’s experience with phantom cancellations is typical of a wider issue. Over the summer, my family was told by the railway seven times that our train was cancelled. Of these, three were trains that actually ran - two missing a single stop, one running its full route exactly as booked. The missed stop at Liverpool South Parkway may be interpreted by railway systems as a ‘cancellation’, but it’s not what a passenger means - as they could simply get on at a different stop in Liverpool. How often is this happening?

The second thing is hardly a new discovery - the biggest issues were all caused by a consistent theme: inadequate or wrong information. It wasn’t the delays that caused the stress, it was no announcements at Euston, no connection information at Ramsgate, false cancellation emails and announcements that turned out to be wrong.

But the most important lesson is that if we attempt to deliver a better passenger experience by focusing solely on punctuality, we’re going to fail.

I’ll come back to that next week.

The Bee Network - An Interchat With Vernon Everitt

How much of the Bee Network's success is franchising, and how much is just money?

In today's Interchat with Vernon Everett, Transport Commissioner for Greater Manchester and chair of Transport for Wales, we get his answer, along with the numbers behind it: reliability up from 65% to over 80%, ridership up 30% in the first franchised area and eight commuter rail lines joining the network from the end of 2026.

Vernon is candid that franchising is probably not for everybody. But if you want genuine integration across every mode, he argues, you cannot do it without control of the buses and the fare revenue.

This is the first Interchat recorded by Katie English, my Freewheeling associate.

Interchats are a series of short conversations recorded on the conference floor at Interchange 26 in Manchester.

You can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Spotify Podcasts.

The Bee Network - An Interchat with Vernon Everitt

Thomas Ableman

You can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Spotify Podcasts.

Britain's hokey cokey economic cluster

I spoke about the risks to the Oxford Cambridge corridor at the Transport Select Committee in June

---

As a project of national significance, the Oxford–Cambridge corridor has been in, out, in and out of fashion as successive governments have changed.

George Osborne's National Infrastructure Commission championed it as the "Arc" in 2017. Theresa May's government backed a million new homes along it. Then it drifted: the spatial framework was quietly shelved in 2022, and for a while the whole idea seemed to have been filed under "things the last lot believed in."

Today it is firmly back in fashion, sponsored by Lord Vallance, the science minister better known to most of us from the Covid briefings.

The idea is to create a new global economic cluster.

It's a thoroughly good idea.

And it's probably about to fail.

What's a cluster?

The purpose of a city is to connect lots of people to lots of opportunities. The ideal city has lots of skilled jobs and lots of people who can do those jobs. By having plenty of both, a giant sorting process can take place. People with the aptitude to become scientists can work in a lab, those who are good at legal work can become lawyers and those who can code can join a startup.

Preferably, there are plenty of each kind of job, so that people can have the confidence that they can switch between employers.

This is why big cities generally do better than small ones, unless, as in Switzerland, the Netherlands or western Germany, the small cities are well enough connected to develop the characteristics of a larger one.

It is this dynamic the Oxford–Cambridge corridor seeks to replicate.

The potential

The potential is so great because Oxford, Cambridge and Milton Keynes are all fast-growing places with rapidly developing science and start-up sectors.

What they don't have is enough people, or enough houses.

If places could be found to build lots of new homes, you could start to see some of the economic effects more typically associated with bigger cities: high productivity, fast growth and dynamism.

But for this to be possible, people need to be able to travel easily around the corridor. Otherwise they won’t be able to reach the jobs.

The railway

During a previous period of the corridor's favour, it was decided to rebuild the Oxford–Cambridge railway as East West Rail. That creates a spine of connectivity for the corridor.

But the railway isn't enough.

And the reason creates a catch-22.

Let me explain using two different scenarios for how the railway stations are built.

Scenario 1 is the Car Park scenario.

Worcestershire Parkway is a good example of a Car Park station

In this scenario, each station is surrounded by a giant car park. That means virtually no one lives close to the station, because the places close to the station are a giant car park, so everyone needs to drive to the station. That in turn means each home needs three or so parking spaces, because both adults will probably be driving, as might a teenage child. Each new community along the railway therefore gets built to a density of perhaps 20 homes per hectare. The largest settlement along the railway, the 1,200-hectare new town at Tempsford, would then end up with a bit over 20,000 new homes.

Replicated along the whole railway, you end up with a total number of new homes far below the maximum potential, significantly undermining the ability of the new cluster to develop.

So let's look at Scenario 2.

This is the High Street scenario.

Moseley Village is a good example of a “High Street” style station.

In this scenario the stations are built rather like the way suburban tube stations once were: on a new parade of shops, served by buses. The space around the station is used for housing rather than parking. Because there is nowhere to park at the station, people either walk from the nearby homes or arrive by frequent, high-quality bus from the more distant ones. With just one parking space per home for the family car, you can achieve more like 60 homes per hectare. That is the absolute lowest of the range of densities used for new housing in London, which typically runs from 60 homes per hectare up to 400.

The High Street scenario therefore enables around three times as many homes as the Car Park scenario, significantly boosting the economic vibrancy of the corridor.

But here is the rub.

It will only work if the frequent, high-quality bus services I mentioned are not just provided but guaranteed to be provided, because the housing developer needs the confidence to build homes with less parking. They will need that public transport provision written in blood before they do it.

And they’re not going to get it.

Another Select Committee clip: why integrated transport is hard. These issues won’t get fixed here without someone fixing them.

It's the governance, stupid

The problem is that our Shire county governance model is not built to provide a guaranteed bus.

You might think this is a question of powers, and that the powers are now sorted. Since December 2025 every local transport authority in England has been able to franchise its buses, specifying the routes, frequencies and fares it wants and contracting operators to deliver them. On paper, a shire county could now do exactly what a developer needs: commit to a service and hold it in place.

But a power is not the same as a guarantee, and this is where the problem stops being about legislation and starts being genuinely hard.

A franchised network on the scale the corridor needs has to be paid for, and the revenue funding for rural bus services is precarious in a way that capital funding for a railway is not. It has to be specified, procured and managed by people with skills most Shire counties have never had to build, because for forty years the private market did that job for them. It has to be held stable across a planning horizon measured in decades, while the authorities responsible are reorganised, merged and re-bounded, and while their revenue budgets are fought over line by line every single year. It has to survive the awkward geography of the corridor itself, which crosses several authorities, none of which has an incentive to underwrite a service that mostly benefits the others. And it has to find a local authority (or series of local authorities) willing to take on the financial risk of the regional bus network at a time when local authorities can’t fund adequate social care.

So when a developer decides today whether to build at 60 homes per hectare or 20, they are being asked to bet that a bus will be running reliably in fifteen years and still running in fifty, guaranteed by a body that may not exist in its current form by then and which can’t afford it.

Faced with that, the rational developer builds the car park, because the car park is something nobody can take away.

That is the challenge.

The dense, productive corridor depends on a guaranteed bus. The guaranteed bus depends on an authority willing and able to underwrite it for the long term, across boundaries and across budget cycles. And the authorities along the route are, as currently constituted, the ones least able to do so.

There are several ways through, and none of them is simple:

• As discussed, the counties could use their new franchising powers. The powers already sit with the body that also controls planning and roads, which is an advantage. But that does nothing about the money, the missing capability, or the instability that makes the long-term promise hard to believe, so on its own it is unlikely to give a developer the confidence required.

• The corridor could be given its own transport body, an Arc-wide authority built to think in the timescales the railway and the new towns actually run on. That could deliver permanence and focus. But it means primary legislation, a fresh argument about boundaries and accountability and a new institution that the existing authorities will have reason to resist, none of which is quick.

• A new Development Corporation could be set up for the Arc, which can take on franchising powers. There are advantages to this beyond transport but it’s neither simple nor cheap. The costs are swamped by the benefits of making this corridor actually fulfil its potential, but the country doesn’t seem to be in a short-term-pain-for-long-term-gain kind of place right now.

• Or central government could tie its money to the outcome, releasing funding only where a guaranteed bus is part of the deal and underwriting the revenue so the guarantee does not evaporate when a council's budget tightens. That works with the structures we already have. But it asks the Treasury to commit to decades of revenue spending, which is precisely the commitment the Treasury is built to avoid.

In practice the answer is likely to be some combination of all three, assembled deliberately rather than arrived at by accident, and that combination will not fall into place by itself. It needs someone with the authority and the will to hold these moving parts together long enough to give developers a promise they can actually believe. That is a leadership problem as much as a governance one, and it is the part nobody has yet taken on. Lord Vallance isn’t really talking about transport beyond the railway - as always, integrated transport risks falling through the gap.

I say no-one: one person really is thinking about this; the person who highlighted the problem to me. Naomi Green leads the local sub-national transport body, England’s Economic Heartland. You can hear her explaining the scale of the problem to me on this episode of the podcast. She has also set up an Integrated Transport Taskforce for the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, which I’m part of.

The problem is that this needs central Government leadership to cut through the governance challenge.

let’s not miss this

The Oxford–Cambridge corridor is a genuinely global-scale opportunity; the kind that comes round perhaps once in a generation. We already have the three cities, the science, the start-ups and now the railway to connect them. We will not get another spine like East West Rail built through this kind of landscape of opportunity in our lifetimes, or our childrens’. The choice between a corridor of 20,000-home + car parks and a corridor of dense, productive, well-connected towns is being made right now, in the planning decisions being taken this year. The opportunity will not stay open for long.

What stands between us and the prize is not a single missing decision. It is a genuinely difficult knot of funding, capability, institutional design and competing geography, and untangling it will take sustained political leadership of a kind this corridor has not yet had.

This is a huge potential opportunity for Andy Burnham to demonstrate Manchesterism on a national scale. There is a worry that Manchesterism means that Burnham is going to be the Prime Minister of Manchester; basically using the rest of the United Kingdom as a kind of colony to attempt to enrich the North.

I don’t think that’s likely, not least because colonial projects tend not to work out so well if you let the natives vote. Instead, I think Manchesterism means the approach he adopted in Manchester of using public investment and leadership to turbocharge private sector investment. One of the most important building blocks of Manchesterism was not playing one part of the region off against each other. Far more investment went into Salford than Rochdale, but that’s OK because you have to go where the opportunities are.

The Oxford Cambridge corridor isn’t in the North. It’s in the South. It’ll either be a success in the South or a failure in the South. If it’s a failure in the South, the only impact on the North will be lower tax revenues to the Exchequer. So best for everyone that we make it a success.

So this is a plea to the people who can still shape it. Lord Vallance, the corridor's sponsoring minister, the leaders of the authorities along the route, Andy Burnham: the railway is being done. The work that actually determines whether this becomes a cluster is the slow, unglamorous business of constructing a bus guarantee that a developer can believe in, out of institutions that were not designed to give one.

Do that work, in whatever combination of the routes above you choose, and the corridor becomes what it could be. Leave it undone, and Britain's great new economic opportunity will end up as three cities, a railway and a very large amount of tarmac.

Innovation in Transport - an Interchat with Erika Lewis

Transport finds innovation hard. It is fiendishly complex, but the. Connected Places Catapult is trying to help people navigate their way through it. In this Interchat, Erika Lewis, the Catapult’s CEO, tells me how they try to connect an incredibly challenging sector - and how her career history in complex sectors has helped her do that.

Oh, and she tells me precisely what a Catapult is as well!

Interchats are a series of short conversations recorded on the conference floor at Interchange 26 in Manchester.

You can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Spotify Podcasts.

Transport Innovation - An Interchat with Erika Lewis

Thomas Ableman

You can subscribe to The Freewheeling Podcast at Apple or Spotify Podcasts.

What Vision-Led Planning Means for Transport People (Preview)

NPPF

The National Planning Policy Framework is the overall instruction document for England’s planning authorities.

A new version was published in December 2024, and this is what it says:

This is important stuff. Vision-led transport planning is a very different approach from what we’re used to.

As we discussed in last week’s post, transport planning in the UK is typically infrastructure-led.

This turns the approach on its head.

To understand what this means, let’s look at what changes for each of the key stakeholders involved:

Planning Teams

These are the folk whose lives are going to change the most.

Vision-led transport planning means that there needs to be a vision to lead the transport plan. And, crucially, it’s not a transport vision - it’s a holistic place-based vision.

It describes the aspirations of local people (e.g. kids able to play out, able to reach local services on foot, easy access to work, a sense of community, an attractive streetscape), many of which have transport implications - but which go far beyond.

The vision is anchored in a future date. This is important. A vision is about the destination, not the incremental steps from today’s reality. It says that “By xxxx date, yyyy will be true”.

It’s not an intuitive process for most of us. Currently, we do transport planning the way we do our own career planning. We look at how things are, and think about the next steps from here.

Vision-led planning is like learning from Michael Heseltine.

For younger readers, Michael Heseltine was an ambitious young Tory who was famous for having written a career plan as follows:

25: Millionaire.
35: MP.
45: Minister.
55: Cabinet.
65: Downing Street

(he achieved every one of these goals, though he only made it to Downing Street as Deputy Prime Minister).

Vision-led planning is about setting out where you want to get to first, and then figuring out how to achieve it.

This means that producing the vision requires lots of iterative work with the transport team and local infrastructure owners, as the vision needs to be ambitious but realistic. What is possible by a date requires work to establish, but the process starts with defining what good looks like as an end-state.

I can’t emphasise this enough: the vision is outcome-based, not project-based.

It doesn’t list schemes, it lists deliverable outcomes for residents and the economy.

Obviously, to produce a viable list of outcomes, you’ll have worked through some schemes with the transport team that would deliver those outcomes, but the outcomes are key.

A role model here is General Eisenhower. A quote to keep in mind is:

Plans are useless but planning is essential.

What he meant by that was that the goal was to reach Berlin. To achieve that, he had a fully worked-up plan. He’d done lots of planning. But he wasn’t wedded to a plan. As circumstances changed, he’d adopt a different plan. As long as he reached Berlin.

While the vision will have targets, it’s got to be human-centric, not metric-centric. It describes the place as opposed to the numbers. That doesn’t mean there won’t be measures, but it’s got to be clear why.

So, for example, you might want very safe streets. You might want a target that there will be zero serious road deaths or injuries. Good target. But the why is because kids need to be able to play in the street.

You might want a high share of public transport journeys. But the why is that you want all residents to be connected to economic and social opportunities, regardless of access to a car.

Starts with the lives people want to lead and the economy you want to create.

About business cases:

The reason the outcome is crucial is that when we create projects, we need to be able to articulate a rational explanation of why the project will lead to the outcomes. This is important because you need to be able to measure the business case for the projects.

We’re not going to do this using a traditional transport BCR. What we’re going to do is measure whether the projects will lead to the outcomes described in the vision. That’s why it’s so important to be able to be clear on the why.

For example, if we’re saying that everyone in residential areas needs to be able to access jobs and opportunities without a car, that’s how we’re going to measure the projects.

Two final warnings to planning teams:

1) Don’t allow your transport colleagues to simply pitch you the schemes they’ve always wanted to do. We’re doing vision-led planning. That means the vision is in charge.

2) Don’t simply hand over tracts of land to developers and allow them to build what they want. The transport plan only works if the housing that’s built is designed to deliver the vision. Just as you can’t deliver the vision without transport solutions designed to deliver it, so it also requires that the housing (or offices or retail parks, etc) are absolutely and rigorously designed to deliver the vision.

Transport Teams

The great news is that your job is about to become much more interesting!

Forget a lot of what you’ve learned so far, and focus on iterating and problem-solving to achieve the vision.

It’s a much more fun job!

However, there are certain things you’re going to have to do in order to make this work.

Firstly, step away from the models - they won’t necessarily help you. Most transport models were designed for the traditional predict and provide / incremental-from-where-we-are style of planning.

Instead, you’re working iteratively with your planning colleagues to create plans and projects to deliver a vision.

About business cases:

It’s at this point that you need to be imaginative about business cases.

Combined Authorities (and future Strategic Authorities) either have or are likely to have large capital budgets for transport schemes. So money is available. But we’ve got some hard-grained assumptions about what we can and can’t spend money on, and we need to change this.

Vision-led schemes DO NOT need positive BCRs based on the old way of doing things. This point can often worry people, so let’s be absolutely clear. Listen to my interview with Jonny Mood, Director of the National Audit Office, on my podcast. He couldn’t be clearer - you need to be able to demonstrate that the scheme delivers the vision, not that it ticks an old-style BCR benchmark.

That’s why your iterative work with the Planning team is so important - the schemes need to deliver the vision and the vision needs to be deliverable by the schemes.

Even though you can build a business case out of the vision, that doesn’t guarantee the funding.

Vision-led planning doesn’t create a magic money tree - a scheme that costs £80 million in the old way of doing things will still cost £80 million in this way of thinking.

So you also need to think imaginatively about costs and revenues.

Can you deliver the scheme at a lower cost than would be done traditionally? Look at the Very Light Rail scheme in Coventry, which is in the process of proving a method for delivering trams at a quarter of the normal UK cost.

Look at tram-train schemes in Sheffield and Cardiff, which are creating lower-cost models for connecting places to the national rail network.

Look at the traffic circulation plan in Ghent which made the whole city centre largely car-free at low cost, simply through a handful of street closures.

The examples are out there, but a traffic model won’t help you find them: so focus on the real world.

As well as being imaginative about the project, you also need to be imaginative about the funding.

Does your vision include new housing? I expect it does. Can you fund some of the transport with land value capture? You can hear how this was successfully used on the Northumberland line on my podcast.

Moreover, it’s likely that the vision will be generating fare-paying customers. Assume them in business cases: and don’t be too cautious. The Northumberland line has seen five times as many passengers as forecast, which means a much higher proportion of the cost could have been covered by land value capture if that had been assumed.

Be entrepreneurial about funding your solutions to deliver the vision.

Now, the warning for you: you’re going to have to become a really good ring-leader.

Do you remember the episode of Yes Minister in which Jim Hacker meets representatives of the road, rail and aviation industries? Each one lobbies him for funding, claiming that only their mode can deliver the country’s transport goals.

That’s your life in future.

Previously, you’ve been able to sit back and see what National Highways or Network Rail dropped from the sky onto your patch, and then react.

That won’t do going forward - you’ve got to proactively work with each to work out what they can do for you to deliver your vision.

It’s complex and iterative because they’re talking to every other authority at the same time.

That’s OK - iterative is fine.

Just be demanding on behalf of your vision.

Infrastructure Owner and Transport Operator

OK, this is the tough one. Vision-led planning requires a real change in approach for infrastructure-owners and operators.

As I wrote about previously, the vast majority of transport investment in recent decades has been initiated by Network Rail, National Highways (etc) trying to solve legitimate problems (generally insufficient capacity for demand).

This has resulted in more and more infrastructure being concentrated on fewer and fewer corridors, while the places where people live get less and less public transport.

Infrastructure owners have a vital role in initiating, developing and delivering projects.

But these projects need to be initiated to deliver the visions of the places they serve.

This is a complete reversal of how infrastructure owners currently plan their projects.

Currently local places are expected to react to centrally-created plans. “Oh, Coddleswap station is getting direct trains to the City of London thanks to the Superspeed Programme. What can we do with that?”, “Oh, the Northern Powerplant means we’re getting faster trains to Manchester. Cool, is that an opportunity?”, “Oh, the Silver Ring roundabout is getting an upgrade. Shall we put a business park there?” etc

In future, the infrastructure planning needs to be much more bottom-up and connected to local places.

Obviously, each infrastructure project can’t meet everyone’s needs. But it needs to be designed around the place-based visions.

It means infrastructure owners need to be much more connected to the visions emerging in their vicinity. That’s a new job.

As an infrastructure owner, if you have a need yourselves (e.g. capacity) be (highly!) imaginative about coming up with ideas to solve your problem that also achieve the visions of the places you interact with. 

Also, remember that you can use your own real estate to deliver the local vision. Maybe you can reduce demand on a rail line at peak times by using local land for new employment?

And, if you’re Network Rail or TfL or a bus company or a Combined Authority transport team, remember that the local vision is likely to be about getting you more customers.

Approach it in that spirit! Be imaginative and flexible about creative ideas to make it work.

DfT

The most important change required is from DfT.

They need to be willing and able to apply the spirit of their own Government’s framework and approve schemes based on the vision.

That means doing exactly as the NAO require (do listen to Jonny Mood if you haven’t done so!) and judging not based on the DfT’s own appraisal methodology but on whether the scheme achieves the objectives that the local vision has set. It’s not for central Government to overrule the vision, as long as it’s broadly consistent with Government policy.

This is a big change as it requires civil servants to accept that you do sometimes have to judge between apples and pears, because some places want apples and others want pears.

See yourselves as the clearing house of experimentation. Some imaginative business case methodologies will fail and others will overdeliver. Can you help smooth the risk and reward for authorities without feeling the need to apply a central methodology?

This is a big change but will make you one of the most powerful agents of positive change in the sector.

What it all means

Vision-led planning - done right - could lead to dramatically better transport outcomes.

The danger is that a sector used to models will attempt to create models to deliver it.

Vision-led planning isn’t about models: it’s about… vision.

The task now is for everyone in the transport ecosystem to focus on the skills necessary to make the most of the opportunity.

Those are the skills of collaboration, iteration, experimentation and long-term strategic thinking.

Step away from the model…

Place, Timetable, Project - not the other way round (Preview)

Do you remember the famous Morecambe and Wise sketch?

“You’re playing all the wrong notes”

“I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”.

The reason why transport in the UK is in a mess is that we sometimes make the right decisions, but we take them in the wrong order.

Underperforming

Firstly, when I say transport in the UK is a mess, what I mean is that it underperforms against its potential.

We have one of the best public transport networks in the world. But given we spend £40 billion on transport, we bloody should do.

The problem is that we could get so much more at little or no extra cost, if we simply made decisions the right way round.

What we should do is plan places, then timetables, then projects.

We tend to do the opposite.

Infrastructure-first

Transport investment in the UK typically starts with a scheme to solve an operational problem: generally a lack of capacity.

• “Thameslink trains through London are at capacity”> The Thameslink Programme

• “The West Coast mainline is full” > HS2

• “Manchester Piccadilly is crowded” > Ordsall Chord.

Looking down the list of transport investments of recent decades, virtually all of them are about increasing capacity (which, as per last week’s post, tend to increase demand on existing high-demand corridors, making public transport provision ever-more concentrated).

Once we’ve got the project, then we plan the timetable. 

Then timetable

It’s often a disaster. 

The Thameslink Programme’s infrastructure turned out not to support the timetable envisaged. The routes were too complex and caused conflicts with other trains. As a result, places (like Littlehampton) that were promised Thameslink trains never got them, the full capacity was never delivered and the launch was a humiliating disaster for the railway.

HS2 is the most expensive railway ever built (almost certainly globally) but still doesn’t have a viable timetable. We’re literally building a railway and don’t know how we’re going to use it. This is how the Swiss would have done it.

The Ordsall Chord cost £100 million to connect Piccadilly and Victoria stations in Manchester but for which no viable timetable exists as using it actually increases crowding at Piccadilly by repurposing a train path through the busiest platforms. Andrew Haines, former Chief Executive of Network Rail, described the phenomenon well:

"The Ordsall Chord is a classic example of a fantastic piece of infrastructure which has unlocked great new journey opportunities ... but where the new infrastructure was not supported by a sufficiently rigorous operating plan. Nobody really looked at how we would reliably operate 15 trains an hour, across six flat junctions in the space of a few miles, with disparate rolling stock, much of which will have travelled for several hours picking up potential delay on the way."

Time and time again, we start with the scheme, then move onto the timetable. Finally, we look at the place it’s in.

Finally Place

Place being at the end of the food chain is how we end up with the absurdity of the Thameslink Programme and Elizabeth line turning Farringdon into the best-connected business location in Britain (direct trains to three airports, the City, Canary Wharf, the Excel exhibition centre and Stratford).

Why’s that an absurdity?

Well, Farringdon is one of the few places in London where it’s virtually impossible to build high-rise buildings due to the Protected Views of the dome of St Paul’s from Primrose Hill and Parliament Hill, and the listed streetscapes of Clerkenwell.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting changing these protections - just highlighting that Farringdon’s a slightly daft place for… Farringdon station to be.

Farringdon is a bonkers place to put Britain’s best-connected business station

HS2 is creating the second-best located business zone in Britain in Old Oak Common (direct trains to two airports, 7 of Britain’s 10 largest cities, the City, Canary Wharf, blah, blah). But the railway had already made all kinds of irrevocable decisions when the masterplan was created. And the masterplan focuses on new homes, despite the potential for Old Oak to be a better Canary Wharf than Canary Wharf. 

All over the country, spectacular new infrastructure doesn’t deliver for the places it’s in because we drop the infrastructure as if from the air, but it’s not an integral part of the place it serves. 

The £18 billion Elizabeth line serves stations like Taplow that are surrounded by fields and not earmarked for houses (the houses that are gonna be built at Old Oak Common, perhaps?). 

In Ebbsfleet, we had the potential for a sustainable new town. But the station appeared where the high-speed line wanted it, even though it doesn’t connect with the local line that passes just north of the site, nor with any local transport (other than buses) to connect people to the new houses being built. As a result, Ebbsfleet consists of low-density, car-dependent houses, barely acknowledging the station for which it was built. 

The Manchester - Liverpool Railway (part of the newly announced Northern Powerhouse Rail) is another piece of spectacular infrastructure created without really considering place. What trains will run on it? Who knows. What is it designed to achieve? Dunno. You get the strong sense of a scheme that results from wrangling between Mayors, not because we know what the timetable will be.

Now, for clarity, all of these are useful. I’m a fan of new transport infrastructure. We need more in this country. Anything built will end up being used: it always does. (Find an underused railway opened post-war. There are precious few). So if the Liverpool - Manchester railway gets built, I’ll be cheering.

But we could do so much better. 

What we want is transport infrastructure that’s useful, with a timetable that works, supporting housing that’s attractive and sustainable. 

The way we get that is by reversing the order.

Instead of Project >> Timetable >> Place, let’s try Place >> Timetable >> Project

Place first

Let’s imagine that instead of Ebbsfleet being built around the station that the High Speed line provided, let’s imagine that first of all, it was decided what a sustainable new town in South East England would need. 

Let’s imagine we started with what we want life there to be like. i.e. what would the residents want? Well, even though there aren’t any residents in a non-existent town, we know from both research and from property prices what people want. 

They want an attractive, spacious house with green space for their kids to play in.

They want really good quality local services within a short walk of their front door.

They want a sense of community and to know their neighbours. They want to be able to get to shops and services without having to drive, to be able to walk home from the pub, not to have to ferry their teenager to parties, to be able to commute to the office comfortably and quickly. 

Given that we know that’s what people want, our starting position should be to write that down and say that what we build must give it to them.

Immediately, that makes some decisions for us. A sense of community and good local services means a certain level of what is called “gentle density”. It’s just economics: if you want a local shop and a local pub (and a local train service!), there need to be enough local people to be the customers.

The desire for green space and the need for gentle density means most of the space must be either housing, gardens or parks - so we can’t have lots of car parking. Again, these are decisions that make themselves.

Luckily, our people don’t actually want to have to own lots of cars: their preference is not to need a car at all. So that means we need reliable, plentiful public transport and great quality active travel. 

Oh, and the requirement for an easy commute means that the local travel network needs to connect to a train into town.

What we’ve done here is written out a “vision”: it doesn’t say where each street needs to go, or even make the transport choices. But it’s set some parameters for what we need to build. 

Once we’ve got our vision, we can then start thinking about the timetable. 

Timetable

We do this before we plan the infrastructure, as we need to know that everything connects up. 

Transport is a system. It’s no use building a rail line from our new town if there’s no capacity on the mainline for trains to run off the branch. (Like the Ordsall Chord)

It’s during this phase that we learn whether we need a tram or a light rail line or a railway branch or an autonomous shuttle or a caravan of camels. We’re interested in whatever transport solution can meet the vision. That will be different in different places. 

In London, which is better than most of Britain at this stuff, similar developments at Barking Riverside and Thamesmead naturally lend themselves to being connected by Overground and DLR respectively, because each is close to an existing line of one of those modes. That’s fine. This stage is about optioneering to fulfil the vision. The key thing is that the vision is king.

Once we have a timetable that we’re confident stacks up, then we develop our chosen scheme. 

Project last

Finally, we work out what transport we need. Maybe Ebbsfleet station as built is perfect. Maybe we should have had a station better integrated with the local rail network. Maybe that extra gentle density housing could have generated enough revenue to enable us to put a local tram to connect Ebbsfleet station with the surrounding area - possibly from Gravesend to Bluewater via Ebbsfleet, so people can have access to their local market town and to the shops without a car. I don’t know - I’m no expert on Ebbsfleet. The point is that it’s only now we figure out the transport.

One of the things that might be shocking for transport people is… it’s not all about us. What I mean by this is that transport problems might be solved with place-based solutions.

Let me give you an example from a place I know: Walthamstow.

In 2009, £6 billion was spent upgrading the Victoria line to the highest-capacity metro in Western Europe. In the peaks, a train runs every 90 seconds. It can move nearly 40,000 people every hour. It’s a transport triumph. 

Maybe we didn’t need to do all that, though. 

Let’s imagine that when the managers of London Underground in the mid 2000s had been faced with operational problems (the Victoria line trains were so full that they were causing delays and the kit was life-expired), they had not automatically reached for the lever of upgrading capacity, but instead had said “We’ve a business case to invest billions to solve our problems. How can we best spend those billions in a way that best enhances the vision for each place that we serve and solves our operational problem?”.

In Walthamstow, most commuters go on the Victoria line because…. that’s the line we have. Quite a few go on the Overground because… we also have that. They don’t use the lines we don’t have.

I mean, obviously.

As a result, no-one goes by train to the megahub of Stratford, despite it only being a few miles away.

Because you can’t.

However, the Overground from Walthamstow crosses the line to Stratford in Walthamstow Marshes.

It would probably have cost around £80 million to connect them up. If people could get jobs in Stratford, maybe fewer would need to go on the Victoria line. That would make Walthamstow better, despite us not getting our tube upgrade. 

What would it have looked like to try to meet the visions of each place on the Victoria line?

Maybe we could have entirely avoided the need to increase capacity on an existing route. 

That’s a huge mindset shift. 

But let’s imagine that replacing the life-expired trains and signals would have cost £ 3 billion, and the other £ 3 billion had been spent on a mixture of small projects (like in Walthamstow Marshes), new bike lanes, shared bike docking stations and investing in local employment options to make it easier to live and work in the same place, that would have reduced demand for travel back down to the existing capacity and made all the places on the Victoria line better places to live.

That would be a better way to spend the billions, right?

Moving Beyond Predict and Provide

The transport paradigm of “predict and provide” is associated with excessive motorway expansion.

“Just one more lane will solve it” has been tested to destruction in Los Angeles, though parts of the M25 are competitors.

It still happens (constantly!), though there’s been a consensus for decades that predict and provide is not suitable to plan roads. 

But the public transport sector is also fond of predict and provide.

In fact, it’s the primary public transport planning approach used in our country. I wrote about this last week.

Look back at the big list of projects up top (Thameslink, Victoria line, HS2, etc) and they’re all Predict and Provide projects. 

But it’s officially consigned to history, even if - as is so often the case - the old has died before the new has been fully born.

The new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) issued last year says:

View fullsize

That means that it’s not just my opinion that we need to switch the order of decision-making: it’s Government policy.

Now we just need to do it.

Next week, I’ll go into more detail on Vision-led planning.

Icons

Don’t tell anyone but Cycling in London is now rather good

As we unlock, I’m starting to have more in-person meetings.

One of the curious things about this is that, with lots of people working from home, these tend to be in suburban coffee bars as opposed to central London offices.

The other day, I did a veritable tour of London; starting in my home in Walthamstow, then visiting Spitalfields, Bermondsey, Stoke Newington, Clapton and back to Walthamstow.

That day, I cycled 20 miles across North, South and East London and felt entirely safe. Pretty much the entire journey was either on dedicated cycle lanes, or quiet roads deliberately closed to traffic but permeable to bikes.

It made me realise that we’ve now reached the tipping point in which London is a great city to cycle round; at least in significant parts.

Yet, bizarrely, almost no-one knows.

Had I relied on CityMapper for my journey planning, I’d have ended up going down the A10:

At least Citymapper had me cross the Thames on London Bridge (which has a cycle lane). Google would have me crushed between the traffic and the fence on Tower Bridge:

While specialist app City Cyclist would have had me wheel my bike down Joiner Street as part of my trip. Unfortunately, Joiner Street is the least streety street in London, as it’s actually part of London Bridge station:

By far the worst was TfL’s own journey planner. (I think TfL Go may want me dead). Waltham Forest received £30 million of TfL funding for cycling infrastructure a few years ago, yet TfL’s app sends me on a route that avoids all of it.

Leyton High Road is just one of miles of utterly unsuitable roads that the app navigated me along, despite alternatives being available. No-one would take a second cycle ride if they attempted to follow the route suggested by TfL’s own app for their first:

Despite it being possible to do my full 20-mile journey in ease and safety, every mainstream route planning app would have sent me along roads that were dangerous, unsuitable or both - at least for part of the journey.

This is symptomatic of a curious thing: TfL has done a superb job in achieving the Mayor’s active travel goals, but it’s not so easy to discover.

The problem comes into three categories:

1) Data

2) Legacy

3) Coordination

Data

There is no single dataset that grades roads according to how suitable they are for cycling. As a result, every journey planner uses its own set of rules.

By far the best (and the only one that came up with truly safe routes) is the Cycle.Travel website run by Richard Fairhurst, but it is barely known to the person in the street. Richard and his team have had to put vast amounts of effort into manually adjusting their rules to compensate for the lack of simple datasets.

Given the prevalence of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, this is made all the more important as - frequently - the best routes to cycle along are not main roads with dedicated cycle lanes, but residential streets with a flowerpot in the middle.

It’s frustrating, as TfL have created what they report is the world’s largest cycling database. It surveys every road in London and includes both binary data (e.g. cycle lane yes/no) and 480,000 photographs. Unfortunately, the data and photos largely date from 2017/8 and are now out of date. Excellent cycle routes are avoided by journey planners using this data because the data doesn’t know that they are excellent cycle routes. In many cases, TfL’s own database isn’t aware of improvements made with TfL funding.

Moreover, the tickbox nature of the database just doesn’t work. As an illustration, look at the photo below (this is one of the roads TfL Go routed me down on my way to Spitalfields). According to the TfL database, it benefits from an advisory cycle lane in a differentiated colour, cycle signage and cycle road markings.

And, of course, it does indeed have all those things. But it’s entirely irrelevant as the signage is out of date, the cycle lane is buried beneath parked cars for its entire length and the road markings are ignored:

Legacy

This data problem is hugely compounded by the fact that there is a dataset for a London-wide cycling network. It’s called the London Cycle Network (LCN) and it was a project that ran from 2001 to 2010. During that period, a 900km long London-wide network of signed cycle routes was created. The signs are largely all still in place and many mapping companies incorporated LCN data. Apple Maps is one of them which is why, I suspect, I was sent down the road photographed above, as it’s a London Cycle Network road.

But the LCN is now entirely out of date. The photo above shows a road in Waltham Forest, in which TfL have invested £30m upgrading cycling infrastructure on virtually every other road except this one. This is almost the only road in Waltham Forest you wouldn’t want to cycle down - but it’s the one the TfL app sends you down, because it’s relying on a provider that is using a legacy dataset.

It’s absolutely critical that the LCN is reactivated and updated. The road photographed above should not be considered part of a cycle network but until the LCN is formally updated, it will remain so by default.

Coordination

The third big issue is that the London-wide network of cycle routes has been developed in dribs and drabs through different projects and funding pots; and they don’t gel together.

On my journey from Walthamstow to Spitalfields (i.e. the way I actually go, not the way any of the apps would send me), I start on the C23 cycleway and then move onto the Q2 cycleway. The Q2 was a TfL project delivered by the boroughs, while the C23 was a borough project delivered using TfL funding. As a result, the C23 stops on the border of Waltham Forest, around 30 yards from the Q2. Someone cycling up the Q2 would have no idea that the C23 (an outstanding route with dedicated, segregated cycle lanes its entire length) starts just out of line of sight.

If you go onto the TfL website to look for a map of cycle routes, you will easily find one. It’s the TfL “Cycleways” map and it shows all the TfL Cycleways. But only the TfL Cycleways. In Walthamstow, we are also served by the National Cycle Network Route 1 but this entirely traffic-free route is missing from the TfL map as it is not a TfL Cycleway. As are many other safe routes that happen not to have been created as a TfL cycleway.

One of the most useful cycle routes in central London is the East-West corridor across Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia along Torrington Place (and a bunch of other roads). It comprises entirely segregated cycle lanes in both directions but it pre-dates the Cycleways programme so doesn’t make the map:

All over London, lack of coordination means that cycling feels more like a series of individual schemes than a coordinated network.

Sweat the small stuff

Cycling in London at the moment is a bit like trying to use the bus network if none of the buses had destinations and only some of them had numbers. It’s perfectly do-able but it’s a lot more effort than it should be, and most people - frankly - won’t bother.

Given that in 2016 TfL committed to spend £154m per year on cycling infrastructure and then increased it further during the pandemic, it’s a real shame that so much expenditure and effort is underutilised.

Getting a single version of the truth dataset would not be super easy as definitions of cycle quality would need to be created that reflect actual experience as opposed to just infrastructure. But cycling benefits from a passionate lobby and if the definitions were right, the data could be crowdsourced. Updating the London Cycle Network requires ongoing operational investment.

To be honest, in terms of usage, spending what it takes on getting the data right (and to update the London Cycle Network) would be a much better use of the next tranch of cash than building more infrastructure that is hard to find - and it certainly wouldn’t take £154m.

It’s cycles + buses, not cycles or buses

I’ve written on these pages previously on this point, so I won’t repeat myself. Suffice to say that it’s all about alternatives to the car. That means that more cycling is good and more buses is good. The challenge is making sure that new cycle infrastructure is at the expense of cars (thus creating an incentive for modal shift) and not at the expense of buses.

A bus lane is not a prospective cycle lane; it is a bus lane and we need more of them. Given that bus speeds have been falling in London for much of the last decade, it’s critical that the new cycle infrastructure is an enabler to car-free living (which will benefit all modes of transport). When schemes are developed, the detailed choices made on each occasion must have as the goal to maximise the attractiveness of the high density and low carbon modes of transport. That means buses and bikes - and not cars.

Do you Tweet? Here’s one ready-made