COMMENT
The role of community rail
Network Rail’s new ‘Alternative Solutions’ RUS, which is out for consultation, includes a major section on community rail. RTM discusses the current state of affairs – and ideas for the future – with Neil Buxton, general manager of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP).
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ommunity rail is becoming ‘mainstream’ and a key consideration for the TOCs, according to ACoRP general manager Neil Buxton.
He told RTM: “2012 has been very good as far as we’re concerned: the key success for me is the fact that when the new franchises have come out, there’s an element in each franchise that requires each bidder to pay due regard to the needs of community rail. In the past, it’s usually been me who’s been chasing the bidders – this time, it’s been the bidders coming directly to me. They’ve been coming with their own ideas, which has been really exciting.
“There’s a sense we’ve become ‘mainstream’ and the industry is really buying into what we’re offering.”
Although the potential growth of community rail partnerships (CRPs) is fi nite, for obvious reasons – there are only so many viable lines and routes out there – there have still been some good developments this year, he said, including the launch on October 12 at March station of the Hereward CRP, covering the Peterborough-Ely line.
Both Network Rail and the Department for Transport have units dedicated to community rail, and Buxton had nothing but praise, saying: “We get on really well with the DfT and with Network Rail. They are enormously helpful, and I’d say we’re now friends, not just work colleagues.”
He added: “It’s exciting that ACoRP is able to infl uence policy decisions: we’re not a lobbying organisation, but we are offering the industry and the Government something they all want to buy into, because we are delivering.”
Effi ciency agenda The 2011 McNulty value for money study
20 | rail technology magazine Oct/Nov 12
identifi ed community rail as a potential way of aiding the effi ciency agenda, primarily through boosting ridership and revenue generation.
Now Network Rail is seriously examining how community rail can add value to railway operations and meet other objectives, such as value for money.
In its new Alternative Solutions RUS, put out for consultation in September, it highlights the many successes of community rail, but also says: “There were expectations from the Strategic Rail Authority Community Rail Development Strategy (2004) that community rail would be able to reduce whole life whole industry costs. However, there is little evidence of cost savings being achieved.”
It goes on: “…because of the low yield per passenger and high subsidy requirements on many of these lines, it can be hard to demonstrate a good business case for investment to increase capacity. Geographical RUSs have not always been able to fi nd viable options to address the gaps raised. Alternative, lower cost solutions to conventional rail, in these circumstances, would be desirable. Community rail has the potential to allow greater fl exibility to incorporate local priorities and develop a service offering which meets the needs of the local community, suggesting service pattern and frequency changes.”
We asked Buxton whether members of CRPs were really interested in effi ciency and helping the railway save money – aren’t they really more interested in improving the quality and frequency of train services?
Buxton said: “No, they would like to improve the effi ciency and cost-effectiveness of the railways. As it points out in the RUS, there are many situations where it’s just not possible for us to do that – because of the industry’s structure, because it’s safety-critical.
“One example where we were involved was the Harrington hump: that was a direct link between the CRP and Network Rail, which has proved to be enormously successful.”
He said his own CRP at Esk Valley has been working on running steam services through to Whitby, noting that there are serious economic regeneration and modal shift reasons for doing so – it is not just train-lovers trying to get their way.
From volunteers to paid-for service providers
Buxton continued: “There are one or two things I think we could do better: there are opportunities for CRPs and others to be given non safety-critical work to do at railway stations for money.”
At Whitby, a major cleaning and catering company services the station, and he said: “They have no personal interest in the stations – I’m not saying they do a bad job, but wouldn’t it be better for Northern to pay the same amount or possibly even less to local people who will care for the station, look after it, and report problems immediately?
“In a way, we do do that already: we’ve got a contract with Nexus, who do the station quality regime: the CRP goes out once a week and checks the stations and reports back to Nexus.”
RTM suggested it would require a shift of mindset for some TOCs to embrace this idea of seeing CRPs as paid-for service providers, rather than volunteers.
He said: “A very small mindset shift. The TOCs do understand that the volunteers are an incredibly valuable resource, and they are very respectful of them, by and large. But it would need a bit of a new mindset for them to understand they’d have local people there rather than one big company.”
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