FUTURE OF RAIL CONFERENCE
The future of rail ‘I
RTM’s Sam McCaffrey reports from the Future of Rail Conference in London.
nnovation’ was the word of the day at the Future of Rail Conference 2014, as more than 150 delegates from 88 organisations examined the future of the industry and asked the all-important question: how do we get from here to there?
as rail minister Claire Perry and her shadow counterpart Lillian Greenwood put forward their parties’
competing visions. Perry
predictably spoke out against nationalisation but also called for more clean, compliant criticised the government’s “mismanagement” of rolling stock, blaming them for the lack of diesel units.
Once the politicians had concluded their business it was time for an in-depth look at strategic planning director for Network Rail, took to the stage.
Engaging and energetic, it’s easy to tell he told us so. “It’s my job planning railways for the future and I love it. I’m really delighted to be able to talk about it. I’m also delighted that it’s a story about growth: a common theme throughout my presentation,” he said.
own generally-good safety record, he recently found out that some of the company’s suppliers have a worse safety record when working in the
30 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 15 Shifting the technology mindset
What really caught the audience’s attention was a subject that’s been getting lots of Railway’ initiative, which will see the upgrades previously envisioned for a 40 year roll-out delivered in the next 15.
It is the brainchild of Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne, who challenged his new employees when he joined the company to bring forward their plans to digitise the rail network.
associated digital opportunities, but he said ‘that’s just too long’. It’ll take too long and we the supply chain won’t engage because it’s not seen to be an opportunity to shift our technology mindset – let’s do something about that.”
Network Rail plans to focus on the ‘digital passenger’, with broadband data on trains,
rail industry then they do in other industries they’re active in.
“Given that safety is our objective, our core something about that, we have to change the culture in the industry even further because it’s perceived to be good already but we need to be excellent.”
e-ticketing, dynamic pricing and better travel information. It will also see the start of the
Through CP6 and CP7 this will be accelerated so that conventional signalling will be removed and by 2029 all 64,000 miles of track is to be
“It is a big challenge, Mark knows it’s a big challenge, but I think we need to rise to that
The compressed timescale will have several bottlenecks on the network, which it is hoped will remove the need for some major disruptive enhancement projects.
It will also put the UK “ahead of the game” so that it has the most advanced digital railway in the world, providing Network Rail with an export product for Europe and the rest of the world.
But what are the biggest challenges of the scheme? “I think the technology side of it is the least of our worries – it’s the ‘how we deploy does the industry change its ways? It’s a change project; how do we change our culture to adopt this?”
(ORR) chief executive Richard Price, who was Rail’s current failings and how the ORR plans to regulate and incentivise the company over
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