Mayors and regions need a bigger role in rail, says GBR chief Shoaf

Regions and elected mayors need a bigger role in railways because rail is not isolated from their agendas on subjects such as housing and economic growth, Shadow Great British Railways Chair Laura Shoaf has told the House of Commons Transport Committee.

The Labour Government is committed to deeper devolution of powers to regions. It is progressing an English Devolution White Paper and has promised a statutory role in the rail network for devolved leaders in Scotland, Wales and Mayoral Combined Authorities. However, it has acknowledged there could be tension between local ambitions and the wider network.

During an evidence session on Shadow Great British Railways, MPs asked Shoaf and Rail Minister Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill how GBR would work with regional leaders. Shoaf responded: “This Government’s devolution White Paper is quite specific about the roles of regions in rail.”

The Bill to establish GBR would provide more information and specifics. She foresaw a more powerful role regionally “for thinking about how we govern regional railways, how we manage, plan and develop them, and the role in and around stations”.

Shoaf is also Chief Executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority, and told the committee: “I know, referring to the job I do in the West Midlands as a co- signatory to our rail operator, just how important that is. Our Mayor chairs that board. We are holding to account on performance for our region, for passengers and for important issues around accessibility.

“Lots of regions have very clear visions about how accessible they want their networks to be – their whole network, as you say, from bus to tram to train to walking and cycling – and how we can work with regions to deliver their views for how it fits into their network.

“It does not stand alone in the day-to-day running of our economy or where we think about where we are planning houses or wanting to see economic growth. Rail is absolutely integral to that, so it has to have a bigger role for regions and mayors who are themselves democratically accountable and all have a vision for what the role of rail is in making their place a success, both for themselves and for UK plc.”

---

Join experts at Rail Stations + Property in March 11 in London: speakers from TfL, Network Rail, RDG, Chiltern Railways and WSP: supported local authority places available

---

Hendy said it was right that the increasingly powerful mayors will have a statutory role in the development and operation of train services in their areas. “That will be the means by which we produce the integrated transport that they need to produce economic growth, jobs and houses in their own areas.”

He acknowledged that there may well be disputes over the interaction of local services with regional and national services. They would be solved not by “some massive arbitration mechanism but by interaction between an informed client and an informed railway”.

Referring to his earlier role at Transport for London, he said that the London Overground extension to Crystal Palace and West Croydon had not prevented enough trains running from London Bridge to Brighton. “Actually, if you have an informed discussion between people who understand what the capability of the railway is, you come to a compromise about what can be done that will serve both markets.

“The interesting thing about that was that the net result of the discussion was not a diminution in the long-distance services on the main line to Brighton; it was an improvement in the timekeeping of those that ran because there was sufficient interaction to devise a train service that operated better than the one that was previously there. You can get some answers out of that.”

Mayors would not insist on a local service which devastated long-distance services to London because their regions were not “islands that do not need connectivity with London”.

Hendy emphasises the importance of common performance metrics

Collaboration has resulted in agreement on a shared approach to performance measurement across the rail industry, Hendy told the Transport Committee.

Currently Network Rail managed its performance with different metrics from train companies. “How do you resolve that issue? It’s bonkers – a technical term from the balkanised railway industry,” said Hendy. “If everybody knows what you are measuring, there is a fair chance that you can at least agree on what has gone wrong, or the quantum of what has gone wrong.

“I am absolutely passionate about that, if only because in my previous life I ran an organisation, at Transport for London, where everything that went wrong was my fault, and we fixed it, or we tried to fix it, simply because there was nowhere else to go. This railway has to get into the habit of saying, ‘This is our problem, and we fix it.’”

The agreement between Network Rail, the DfT and DfT Operator on a shared approach to performance measurement “is hugely important”, said Hendy. “We would never have got there before... because Network Rail was institutionalised with the regulator, and the Department setting the franchises out and DfT Operator were on a different plane.

“If you are going to fix performance, you at least have to measure it on a basis where everybody is measuring it in the same way. That sounds absurd, but it is a huge step forward and it has been achieved through collaboration. It has not been forced on anybody. That is one of the things that you could properly say is the result of the collaborative working.”