FEATURE: CHRISTIAN WOLMAR
Words: Christian Wolmar Sub-editor: Deborah Maby
here’s been something of a Dutch invasion on the railways in recent years. Abellio, the company owned by the Dutch state railways – NS – has gradually been picking up franchises. Starting in 2001 with Merseyrail, the company acquired the much larger Northern franchise and won the short-term Greater Anglia deal last year, beating the incumbent, National Express.
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Abellio executives like to stress that the company brings an innovative and different approach to the industry compared with domestic operators. According to Jeff Hoogesteger, the boss of Abellio Group, that means “looking at things in a long-term way” for both passengers and other stakeholders. Given the short-term nature of franchising, that is not always easy in the UK environment, but nevertheless Abellio has introduced a couple of interesting innovations.
On the forecourt of Leeds station, for example, there is a circular building that is the company’s first CyclePoint. Essentially, CyclePoint offers a secure, staffed storage facility catering to rail passengers who can get their bikes repaired, or hire one or even buy one. The core idea is to integrate the two modes, cycling and rail, which is routine in the Netherlands. The staff provide a rapid service to ensure people catch their trains, and there are even screens in the building showing real- time rail-travel information. Already, plans are progressing for further CyclePoints at Northern stations, and it is hoped that the concept will be picked up by Network Rail with, for example, a CyclePoint at King’s Cross. This is not necessarily a profitable enterprise but it is a useful service as well as attracting favourable publicity and generating some new traffic for the railways.
While many companies pay lip service to the idea of corporate social responsibility, Abellio’s commitment does seem to be genuine
and sustained, reflecting its Dutch origins. As well as thinking long term, Abellio pays considerable attention to its environmental impact. So, for example, at most of its stations, it has installed energy meters that monitor electricity and gas use in great detail, which has so far helped reduce consumption of electricity by 11 per cent and gas by 15 per cent. This is part of the wider Northern Rail Environmental Sustainability Strategy that seeks to turn the company into a genuine “low carbon business”. The company has, too, managed to reduce its emissions in train operations on both Merseyrail and Northern through the introduction of energy-efficient
While many companies pay lip service to the idea of corporate social responsibility, Abellio’s commitment does seem to be genuine and sustained, refl ecting its Dutch origins.
driver training. In order to further reduce consumption, the idea of installing energy meters on Northern’s train fleet is being considered. However, this is more expensive and complicated than fitting them to buildings and so far the initiative is only at the trial stage.
The results of Abellio’s approach have been impressive. The company has managed to achieve satisfaction scores on its franchises, with the numbers improving slightly at Northern and achieving the highest ever passenger satisfaction scores at Merseyrail
with 98.6 per cent punctuality. Greater Anglia, with its heavily used commuter lines into London and a very short franchise has posed different challenges, with, of course, the Olympics topping the list. Hoogesteger is particularly proud of the way the company handled the event. Taking over the franchise just six months before the Games, he was surprised that there were no plans in place to deal with them, apart from a timetable, even though Greater Anglia was the main operator since its trains served both the key stations; Stratford and West Ham. “We put on 20 per cent extra trains but in the event much of the capacity was not needed because people were told to go on holiday or change their commuting patterns. Nevertheless, we are very pleased how it passed off,” he told me.
For the longer term, Greater Anglia’s alliance with Network Rail has resulted in a fresh look at infrastructure closures, which so often deter people from using trains at weekends. Instead of one every two weeks there will be just eight in the whole of 2013, making it possible to rely on the service in a way that was impossible before.
There is no doubt that Hoogesteger is trying to use the company’s good record to seek further expansion in the UK. The company already operates buses in London and Surrey but it is rail where he harbours most ambitions. Abellio failed in its recent bid in the West Coast bidding process which collapsed in October, coming bottom of the four bidders as the company refused to base its expectations on market growth as optimistically as Virgin and FirstGroup. However, Hoogesteger expects that common sense will return when the rebidding process is launched or that,“The Department will be forced to change its procurement procedures”. Therefore expect bids for all the upcoming contracts with promises of the same kind of typically Dutch approach seen in its existing franchises.
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