Interview


‘HS1’s four stations top the Passenger Focus list of favourite stations’


key thing for the whole of the UK about the Olympics is showcasing London and the UK. ‘Overall, reputation depends on people being able to


get to the Games to see the events and that they are not standing at their transport hub in London. It’s a great service and it is going to be fantastic. Southeastern are all over it. They know exactly what they are going to do. Network Rail is raising the platform at Stratford, so we can run international trains as well as domestics. And it has done lots of signalling work, so we know we can take the capacity. ‘We have done lots of work on how we are going to


manage the queues and what the environment is going to be like here and at Stratford. Everybody is pulling together. It is going to be perfect, but we know that people are going to want to do different things on the day, so we are working really closely with TfL and others, talking about how we can make sure that people know where the best place to go is at any time.’ She left FirstGroup in June 2010 and did not take up


this post until nine months later. There were rumours that she walked out in a fit of pique after failing to be appointed Sir Moir Lockhead’s successor. But she says: ‘Everybody needs a rest sometimes but that wasn’t the reason I did it. I had done a lot with the bus company and I think it was the right time for me to move on and do something different.’ With spells at the Office of Rail Regulation and


the Strategic Rail Authority as her main experience of the rail industry, she says it is nice to be working on infrastructure. ‘Some things are very similar in the industry to how


they were when I left. There are a lot of the same faces around – you can have proper conversations. Some things, I think, are more sophisticated. But I think we still need to work on being properly forward-looking and thinking about how the railway stays at the kind of quality you need to keep the customers happy.’ Many railway managers would give their pensions


for a 30-year concession, but that has its own challenges, she says. ‘HS1 is about really good quality delivery and we’ve


got to make sure that we keep thinking about how to keep it that way. Over a 30-year concession, what looks great now won’t necessarily be what people perceive as great in the future.’ High Speed Two, you would think, would be closely


related to HS1. But Shaw insists: ‘Connection to HS2 was not the premise of the investment in HS1 at all. The premise is a stand-alone asset. On the other hand, we would be mad not to want a connection to HS2 because that does open up new possibilities. That is going to be


AUGUST 2011 PAGE 21


towards the back end of our concession, so it matters, but it’s not the driving force.’ We should not be surprised to find a female


incumbent of such a top job these days but you can’t resist asking what it is like being a woman on the railway. There is steel in her cut glass accent as she patiently


explains: ‘I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman in this industry because I’ve always been one and I’ve always been in transport. What it is like versus another industry, I can’t say. I have never found any problem anywhere in being female in this industry. ‘People do ask that question but if I asked you what is


it like to be a man in the rail industry, you would give me the same answer, I think. I’ve always done it and it’s never been a problem. Every now and then you have a double take when there is more than one woman in the room because you are so used to it not being that way.’ If she was ever to encounter a ceiling, you would


back her to break through it pretty quickly because her passion for the industry – held since her days at Oxford – is truly impressive. ‘When I was a student, somebody said to me, “Why do you want be in the transport industry? It’s dead”. ‘Well we are absolutely not dead, are we?’


Curriculum vitae 1969


1990


Born in Kent. Attended King’s School, Canterbury


1990 BA in modern history and economics at Oxford University


London Transport corporate planner


1993 MSc in transport at MIT, Boston 1995 World Bank (transport) 1997


1999 2002


2005: 2011:


Associate at Halcrow Fox, consulting engineers for public transport in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi Deputy director at the Office of Rail Regulation Business development, Bechtel


2003 Chief operating officer at the Strategic Rail Authority, in charge of management of franchises Managing director, UK Bus, First Group Chief executive HS1


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