Terence Watson
passengers it’s the same weight as a latest generation ICE empty, which should leave a profound set of questions being asked that we would love to be engaged in the discussion of. Although energy consumption and weight are issues that are claimed to be top of the page, we want to make sure that debate is sticking, because if it ends up being all about price then these environmental questions become superfluous, which we think is wrong.’
Lessons from Europe, or not?
Fifteen years is a long time to experience the European rail market. And I wondered if Watson feels we have lessons to learn. ‘Yes and no. First of all it’s a private railway here and most of the others are either partially privatised or not. In countries such as Germany and Italy, you have one major interface with an opinion and a structural approach to strategy relating to technology, and we interface with those organisations very well. In Britain it’s not broken but it’s harder to find who owns that.
‘A state organisation can have longer-term strategies and can
optimise procurement. For example the way it sequences orders isn’t based around short-term franchises which end up looking like zig-zags, but they smooth it generally around what’s good for a region. So they say, ‘In this region we need 1000 trains’ – that’s a programme then and manufacturers can invent or re-create products around that programme. You can introduce technology faster when you’ve got a more secure and better view of the future. ‘In the UK, it’s more opportunistic: find the right partner
who happens to win the franchise and they happen to have bid with your technology. The original projections for East Coast in ridership were bigger than West Coast, so did the West Coast growth occur just because we had a brilliant franchise? No. Was it because track was upgraded? No. Was it the technology as well? No. But taken altogether, yes. So we’d like to see that replicated, but you can’t do that unless you get big enough procurements.’
Franchising system hindering new technology Given Alstom’s history in the UK and its selectiveness, I wondered about its relationship with the ROSCO’s. ‘It’s fine,’ said Watson. ‘It’s an enabler, but nowadays there’s quite a dissonance between the timing of new franchises, re-franchises, the progress of technology and the need for new trains. They’re not the same things at all, and the dissonance is quite severe now, so Alstom and the other manufacturers are in dialogue with all the stakeholders about how we square this circle. In fact we’re at the peak of dissonance at the moment I think - manufacturers may or may not be able to enter the market, and certainly can’t sell equipment to new train operating franchises based on all the technology. The good news is that the government, the RDG (Rail Delivery Group) and RIA (Railway Industries Association) and all the other stakeholders have ‘got it’ and they’re all looking at the problem together, which is good. ‘I was at a DfT round table recently and we decided to focus
more on the supply chain and technology, which Alstom really commends. Because if you look at where the railway discusses these things, apart from those types of venues it’s a second or third-level discussion. The first level is always about the Toc, customer service (quite rightly by the way), and daily operating issues. But where do you end up talking about new stuff?
What do passengers want from trains? Watson laughed heartily at this point. ‘The surveys we know about suggest they don’t actually want anything of a train in itself. They want to get to places on time and really easily. On the train itself, it’s very easy stuff - lightness, airiness, leg space. And we’re finding much more demand for on-board information and internet and Wi- Fi facilities. With the vestibule areas, which railway people look at as just being inconveniences, passengers are starting to say, ‘This is awful. What are you doing about this area? And that’s a valid point. It seems we’re just useless in this industry in creating a space that’s attractive and really useable. Ride comfort is something that’s less well appreciated. The trains in our market are obviously tested for that but don’t all have the same level. Passengers don’t know which ones are which and they don’t have any option anyway. But the
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faster you go the more that difference is recognised, which was one of the reasons we developed the Pendolino. Passengers also want a really quiet environment, and there seem to be a lot of arguments about fast on load and off load and very wide access doors.’ What Watson has observed as interesting is that the opinions of younger passengers are more ‘radically critical. And I like that.’ Referring to an event he had attended the previous evening held by Prince Charles at Clarence House for leading businesses to discuss their environmental responsibilities, he said: ‘Somebody said last night that the difference isn’t between men and women or races and so on, the real dramatic change in behaviour seems to take place at the age of 26 – because if you’re younger than that, you’ve pretty much grown up with the internet and a style of networking and social media relationships that people over that age don’t get so much. ‘What young people are saying is: ‘We’re sick to death of companies pretending they’re protecting the environment. We’re sick to death of companies doing the minimum and pretending it’s the maximum, and we’d really like to wake up in the morning and make a choice to use the train that’s greenest and the services of a company that’s environmentally responsible.’ And as an industry we haven’t really understood that. We’re working on it but we’re all over 26 I’m afraid.’ Thinking about Watson’s comment on ‘surveys that we know of’ I wondered if Alstom speaks directly to these ‘radical youth’ or through ROSCO’s? ‘That’s a very good question. Our customers are our Toc’s and ROSCO’s so we have their feedback and feed into them. We do carry out surveys if we have new things to test and go directly to passengers, but we have to be cautious about that because we’re doing it over the head of our customers if you like. But on matters such as ergonomics for example, or a prototype train, we absolutely don’t want the industry to go wandering around the train, we want to see how citizens feel. That happened with great success in Sweden, on the X40 trains. We created a mock-up as good as the final train and the feedback we got changed the interior design. Now it’s one of the most beautiful trains in Europe and Scandinavia, and one of the few that has a high level of appreciation by the operator, the driver and passengers.’
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