In railways shake-up, UK embraces technology

Failed fran­chis­es, dis­as­trous timetable updates and a gap­ing north-south divide: Britain’s rail­ways reg­u­lar­ly gar­ner bad head­lines. But it’s the most recent cri­sis – plum­met­ing demand amid the pan­dem­ic – that’s cred­it­ed with launch­ing a long-await­ed gov­ern­ment over­haul of the flag­ging sys­tem.  

The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, out­lined in a May white paper, hopes to lure dis­con­tent­ed com­muters back to the rail­ways, while also fur­ther­ing the government’s ‘Lev­el­ling Up’ agen­da, aimed at address­ing inequal­i­ties between the north and south of the coun­try.

The shake-up scraps the cur­rent decen­tralised fran­chis­ing sys­tem and replaces it with a new cen­tralised pub­lic body – Great British Rail­ways – which will run most aspects of the net­work, includ­ing fares and tick­et­ing. 

“This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to unpick some of the com­plex­i­ty behind the run­ning of the rail­ways,” explains Simon Moor­head, chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer at the Rail Deliv­ery Group (RDG), which rep­re­sents rail pas­sen­ger, freight and infra­struc­ture com­pa­nies and deliv­ers nation­al tick­et­ing, infor­ma­tion and reser­va­tion ser­vices. “It can then be stuck back togeth­er in a more effi­cient and cus­tomer-focused way, help­ing the indus­try to grow post-pan­dem­ic.” 

Streamlining rail services 

Since British Rail was pri­va­tised in the 1990s, the sys­tem has large­ly con­sist­ed of dozens of frag­ment­ed organ­i­sa­tions, each with silos and indi­vid­ual pri­or­i­ties that don’t always work togeth­er. 

The new plan shifts away from this dis­joint­ed approach. While it doesn’t go as far as nation­al­i­sa­tion, it intro­duces a more cen­tralised and coor­di­nat­ed sys­tem. Train oper­a­tors will no longer be rev­enue-based but sim­ply paid to run a ser­vice. 

Although the white paper lacks much detail on the ‘how’ aspects of the over­haul, the plan clear­ly aims to fos­ter tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, such as inte­grat­ing dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems and ser­vices like tick­et­ing. 

The gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced an invest­ment of £360m to roll out pay-as-you-go tick­et­ing across the mid­lands and north over the next three years. The under­stand­ing is that even­tu­al­ly this could be stream­lined across the entire coun­try as part of an effort to end com­plex pric­ing struc­tures. 

Giv­en that fares will be set by Great British Rail­ways, rather than train oper­a­tors, this should be doable. How­ev­er, it will mean work­ing with oth­er, more localised ser­vices, such as bus­es. 

“This is not tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult – we already have mech­a­nisms by which we allow smart card use across the coun­try,” explains Moor­head.  “But first we must agree on a fair sys­tem and com­mon set of rules, whether it be region­al­ly or nation­al­ly. This will allow us to prop­er­ly inte­grate smart tick­et­ing tech­nol­o­gy.” 

Open data access 

Oth­er reforms are also excit­ing indus­try. Since pri­vati­sa­tion, pas­sen­ger data has been a close­ly guard­ed secret due to its com­mer­cial sen­si­tiv­i­ty for fran­chis­ing. But under the new plans, most rail data will soon be ‘open by default’. Hav­ing access to this infor­ma­tion could improve the run­ning of the rail­ways, incen­tivis­ing trav­el at qui­eter times and the devel­op­ment of new ser­vices. 

Trans­port for Lon­don (TfL) – a nation­al leader in smart tick­et­ing – has pub­lished open access data for a decade. An inde­pen­dent review found the infor­ma­tion has informed over 600 apps used by 42% of Lon­don­ers and gen­er­at­ed annu­al eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and sav­ings of up to £130m for trav­ellers, Lon­don and TfL.

RDG is learn­ing from TfL and plans to set up a £5m Rail Data Mar­ket­place, a sin­gle-access data plat­form. Infor­ma­tion access and increased digi­ti­sa­tion is also expect­ed to improve infra­struc­ture main­te­nance, man­age­ment and con­struc­tion ser­vices. It could ben­e­fit sup­pli­ers, too, who could use it to cre­ate new val­ue propo­si­tions. 

Jake Cart­mell is a senior con­sul­tant and head of pol­i­cy at engi­neer­ing ser­vices com­pa­ny Ricar­do, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked on the Rail­ways Act 2005 and with the Depart­ment of Trans­port. While the rail­way net­work already has many sys­tems in place that can com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and col­lect data, Cart­mell believes stream­lin­ing this work across regions will be a chal­lenge. How­ev­er, it will pro­vide economies of scale and bet­ter data col­lec­tion.  

“For dif­fer­ent region­al rail net­works, a com­mon tech­nol­o­gy approach, rather than sev­er­al dif­fer­ent con­nect­ed inter­faces, would cre­ate sav­ings when buy­ing sys­tems or pay­ing for main­te­nance,” he says, while also lead­ing to data stan­dard­i­s­a­tion across the board.  This could help the net­work achieve the white paper plan of mak­ing sav­ings of around £1.5bn a year, adds Cart­mell. 

The Williams-Shapps plans envi­sions con­tin­ued work on dig­i­tal upgrades for sig­nalling sys­tems. How­ev­er, the scale is dif­fer­ent says Tim Whitch­er, dig­i­tal ser­vices lead for rail at WSP, an engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices firm. The rail is cur­rent­ly divid­ed up into micro con­trol areas; under the white paper these will be made big­ger, increas­ing project com­plex­i­ty. 

As mechan­i­cal lega­cy parts of the rail are replaced and aggre­gat­ed, Whitch­er thinks tech­nol­o­gy like dig­i­tal twins – which use sen­sors and data analy­sis to mod­el com­plex sys­tems – will be adopt­ed to cre­ate a sin­gle source of data while achiev­ing ful­ly sim­u­lat­ed oper­a­tions. 

“Ulti­mate­ly, shift­ing to com­plete­ly com­put­erised con­trol sys­tems – from traf­fic lights to in-cab­in dis­plays – will see more flex­i­bil­i­ty built into sys­tems and even­tu­al­ly increased automa­tion, with a per­son remain­ing in the loop,” he says. 

Public benefits

The Williams-Shapps plan could see a bet­ter, more stream­lined nation­al rail ser­vice that costs less to run, the experts agree. It’s still uncer­tain whether these cost sav­ings will be fed back to con­sumers. How­ev­er, as the gov­ern­ment looks to entice peo­ple away from more pol­lut­ing forms of trans­port in line with cli­mate change com­mit­ments, it’s cer­tain­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty. 

Cart­mell also cau­tions that train oper­a­tors no longer reliant on tick­et sales rev­enue could kick-start a ‘race to the bot­tom’ as they look to boost income with effi­cien­cies and cost sav­ings. 

The shake-up, how­ev­er, won’t deliv­er much on the government’s lev­el­ling up plan, giv­en that scant ser­vices and infra­struc­ture is the main prob­lem fac­ing the north and mid­lands. New region­al ser­vices and capac­i­ty were announced as part of the fol­low-up Inte­grat­ed Rail Plan. This deliv­ered part of what north­ern lead­ers had asked for but also cut key planned HS2 routes in the region.