Official Report 493KB pdf
Item 2 is evidence from the ScotRail Alliance. Following the committee’s inquiry into access to Scotland’s major railway stations, Phil Verster, the managing director of the ScotRail Alliance, committed to updating the committee on the matters that were raised by the inquiry, as well as to providing a general update on the operations of the ScotRail Alliance. I welcome Phil Verster and invite him to make a short opening statement.
Thank you convener and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I found the comments and questions at the previous committee meeting helpful and I hope that our correspondence and the answers that we have given have helped to clarify some of the questions. However the committee is reconstituted in the new parliamentary session, I am keen to continue in the future to contribute to the workings of the committee and to take opportunities to answer questions or clarify issues about Scotland’s railways.
Does that conclude your opening statement?
Yes. Would you like me to pick up on a few highlights?
Please do.
I will pick up on a few of the key items that have been really important to us, so that we can build on the spirit of some of the things that we discussed at the previous meeting.
Haymarket station was discussed last time: we are now building a cycle hub there that will increase the current 22 spaces to 90 spaces. We had that really good conversation about that last time round. It has been about working closely with City of Edinburgh Council and Sustrans to make sure that consultation is done outside the so-called red line. We are very excited about that; it is really important to fix cycle facilities, especially at Haymarket.
As you are probably aware, we have found a way forward with Land Securities plc on the Buchanan Galleries development in Glasgow. That means that the Edinburgh to Glasgow improvement programme, the renewal of Glasgow Queen Street station and the Buchanan Galleries development can fit into a delivery timeline of the next couple of years. That was also a big development in thinking beyond the so-called red line and working collaboratively with Strathclyde partnership for transport and Glasgow City Council, as well as with Network Rail projects and Land Securities.
In respect of the major enhancement to the Aberdeen to Inverness line, we have created what we call informed groups. There is a huge focus on engaging local communities to make sure that our programmes and objectives have lots of visibility and clarity. There is also engagement with access groups, which is useful.
We have opened the north ramp at Waverley for cyclists, which is working reasonably well. Every now and again, we still get a delivery van that parks and blocks the cycling route, but it is a big step forward for cyclists and it is great for development of cycling access to our major station.
Edinburgh Gateway station is a fantastic new station that you will see on your way to the airport, close to Gogar. It is a fantastic new multimodal connection point for travelling around the Edinburgh area. We succeeded in getting a lot of access groups and others including the City of Edinburgh Council engaged with Network Rail to ensure that we have a development that is constructive and meets all stakeholders’ requirements.
Perhaps the refrain or message on what we have done since we last met the committee is about the huge focus on ensuring that there is significantly more conversation, discussion and clarity among the various interest groups with which we, as a railway operator, interface through the local community.
I will mention one more project. We propose to develop a taxi rank for Waverley in the New Street car park. It will be a drop-off and pick-up facility. We are working closely with the City of Edinburgh Council on that. It will give us a significantly better taxi facility than the one that we have at Market Street, which was a consequence of the decision a couple of years ago summarily to move the taxi rank. We have worked closely with the City of Edinburgh Council to ensure that we have better provision than the council and the taxi facilities offer currently.
The ScotRail Alliance has a massive focus on customers, who are the centre point of our road map and strategy. I am pleased to share with the committee that in the autumn 2015 national rail passenger survey we were rated as having 90 per cent of customers satisfied or very satisfied with our services. The national rail passenger survey is the definitive survey of customer satisfaction across all train operators. We are one of the big train operators—we operate 2,300-plus services a day—that scored best in that survey.
That does not mean that we have achieved everything that we must achieve—we know that we can still do loads to improve the railway. We have a huge programme: we are investing £475 million in our rolling-stock fleet, which will be important in addressing busy trains. We have punctuality programmes to ensure that our punctuality improves even more than we improved it this year, and to ensure that our customer satisfaction in the years to come is greater than it is now.
Thank you very much. You mentioned the railway interface with the general public and stakeholders more generally. How have you gone about improving that engagement with rail industry stakeholders, particularly with regard to the major redevelopment projects throughout the country?
I will divide my answer into two parts. Since we last met, we have formed a stakeholder advisory panel and a stakeholder equality panel. Those two panels are really important for us. We engage people from all over Scotland and the various sectors of life in both of them. However, they are not where business gets done: they are places where we can reflect and take stock of whether our strategy using equality groups, access groups and stakeholders in general meets the railway’s requirements. I am pleased that we have that mechanism in place because it is important for us not only to do tactical stuff, but to reflect on whether we are strategically keeping on the right track.
On a tactical basis, every enhancement project—or, as the convener called them, “redevelopment projects”—on the railway is allocated a communications team member, who facilitates interactions with local communities and access groups. I cite the Aberdeen to Inverness line and EGIP as examples. The discussions about what needs to be done to support what local communities require vary according to the project. The Edinburgh access panel was consulted on the Waverley platform extension, for example, and on top of that, key stakeholders were invited to a meeting in December to discuss access concerns and requirements. That has become less of a big thing: it is now part of our basic approach to all our programmes and I think that that will continue.
That is helpful. Your using Edinburgh Waverley as an example gives me a perfect opportunity to ask you about progress there. You mentioned opening the north ramp for cyclists, which has been welcomed by cycling organisations: full marks for that. You also say that there have been discussions with the Edinburgh stations accessibility forum in order to take on board the needs of disabled people. You mentioned that you are looking at the feasibility of a taxi rank at the New Street car park entrance, which would be an improvement on the existing arrangements. Have you done that as a result of discussions with disabled people—people with visual impairments, in particular?
Yes. With regard to the facilities that we have in Calton Road, for example, a direct consequence of the conversations that we have had with people with reduced mobility is that we have added a shelter and a better communications link to our mobility assistance team. We have also taken on board the views of access groups that deal with people with reduced mobility to deal with way-finding within Waverley, which has been improved.
We now regularly invite various disability groups back to Waverley to give us a running commentary on what they think still needs to be changed, so it is not as if consultation is a one-off event. I know that my customer experience director met a group from the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland at Waverley a couple of weeks ago to discuss the changes that we have made there.
So, there is a process of continuous dialogue and improvement to meet the needs of your stakeholders—in particular, disabled people.
I think so, and I think that we will continue to do that. I can say that when we meet with different groups, we get different information on nearly every occasion. The information is always useful and it allows us to reconsider our policies and our strategies and decide what we can adjust. It is more than holding a meeting to hear complaints—it is becoming something that will drive our policies in the future so that we are more focused on customers.
The feedback that the committee has received from disability organisations is that since taxis were denied access to Waverley station it has been far more difficult for disabled people to have a seamless journey from the taxi to the train or from the train to the taxi. Notwithstanding your commitment to engage constructively with such organisations, they still feel that what we have today is inferior to what previously existed. Would you be willing to consider allowing community transport organisations that operate in the city of Edinburgh to have access to the station? Have you looked at specific disability organisations and have you considered people being able to use taxis on a licensed basis? We could allow them to gain access to the station.
09:45
As we get closer to the work in relation to EGIP and the platform work close to the south ramp at Waverley, the challenge that we face is that vehicle access to the station will be very difficult. We have a very strong proposition. The New Street car park is a significant improvement for any group of people with reduced mobility, and we are working very closely with the City of Edinburgh Council to start work on that in June or July. We have consulted disability and access groups about the solution. The response has been constructive and positive. The plan is definitely an improvement on the current arrangement at Market Street.
That sounds like a “No” to access to the station for vehicles for disabled people.
It is a “No” for now—in the interim. I can take that away and think about it.
Mr Verster will recall that the committee took a lot of evidence on this. I and other colleagues expressed surprise about vehicles being denied access to Waverley, considering that other stations—for example, Aberdeen—allow cars to access the station directly. Are there security reasons for Waverley being treated differently to other stations across the network? There was a question about security issues, but I do not think that we ever got to the bottom of that. I accept that there is work to be done at the station, but why was a decision made—I know that that this was probably before your time—to remove taxis from Waverley when that has not happened at other stations?
Waverley has been treated like that because of the high footfall and the high risk that vehicles pose to customers and pedestrians in the area of the two ramps. If you look at any big national stations that are of similar size to Waverley, you will see that the interaction between road vehicles and pedestrians has been removed over a number of years. Waverley was the last station at which that interaction remained.
As I explained at a previous committee meeting, a safety concern was triggered by a pedestrian tragically losing their life because a vehicle that tried to use the access ramp reversed into them. At that time, I said that although I do not necessarily think that that incident was managed in the structured manner that it could have been, it is definitely not in the interests of pedestrians to have vehicles crossing the concourse area—which was, in effect, what happened. That was not safe, and we had to make it safer. The difficulty with reintroducing vehicles is in striking a balance between the features that we provide for people with reduced mobility and the safety risks that those features present to some people.
I understand that you cannot share security advice with us. However, can you confirm to the committee in writing whether the decision to remove vehicles from the station was based on security advice?
I will be able to confirm that.
Can you give the committee an update on the performance of the Borders railway?
I have not got the statistics with me, but I can say that the punctuality performance of the Borders railway has improved systematically over the past couple of months.
We expected there to be a period during introduction during which latent demand or interest in the newness of the railway would drive customer numbers, so we strengthened trains accordingly. We strengthened weekday trains on which we counted peak numbers of passengers and we strengthened trains on Saturdays and Sundays. On Sundays, we run strengthened trains throughout the day because the service, which is hourly, is so popular.
As I indicated to the committee the last time I was here, with a new railway there is quite a lot of newness to get through before you get to business as usual. Conductors and drivers have to understand how the routes work and our customers have to understand how to work gadgets like ticket-vending machines, and how to operate the doors, which do not open automatically, as they do on the underground, for example. It is surprising how many little kinks there are to iron out during that period, all of which have a potential impact on the service.
The service pattern is still really tight. Because it is a single-line railway, any failure of a train in a critical location has the potential to disrupt the service significantly. However, from my recollection, the line is performing in the high 80 per cents in terms of punctuality. The overall performance for ScotRail at the moment is around 90.8 per cent—that is where we expect to be at the close of this year—and we had an opening performance on the franchise of 90.3 per cent, so, in terms of punctuality, we are roughly 0.5 per cent better. The Borders railway is contributing to that. In terms of performance, we are where we expected to be.
I am keen to continue to strengthen the Borders fleet. In the next three years, as you probably know, we will have a fleet of about 800 carriages. We are adding around 180 new coaches and vehicles to our fleet and we have a £475 million train-renewal programme, which is the biggest rolling-stock programme that Scotland’s railway has ever seen. It is a fantastic programme. Over the next three years, as we buy rolling stock and deploy those vehicles across the network, we will continue to strengthen services in places including Fife and the Borders.
Concerns have been expressed about the class 158 rolling stock that is currently in use on the Borders railway. Specifically, it is suggested that more four or six-coach services should be run, and that refurbishment should be carried out as a matter of urgency. Do you recognise those concerns?
I do, and the class 158 refurbishment programme is on-going. Part of our £475 million investment involves refurbishment of a number of fleets. The class 158 programme is definitely part of that.
The challenge for us is one of time. The companies that provide train refurbishment facilities for us have a certain capacity and, if we try to put in three or four units at a time to get the refurbishment done as quickly as possible, we become short of units to run a daily service. We try to get that trade-off right. We have agreed a programme for the refurbishment of the class 158 fleet with Transport Scotland that sort of reflects the practicalities of what we can achieve.
I agree with you that the class 158 fleet is critically in need of refurbishment to give it a more modern look and feel. The same is true of the class 156 fleet. You can look at the refurbished units that have come out. Unit 701, for example, is a fantastic product.
I have a question about cycle-carrying capacity, which will no doubt be returned to by others. Has anything been done on the Borders railway to expand cycle-carrying capacity?
I would like to set the context for the discussion around cycling. When I talk to customers, they always express different needs. The majority of our customers are keen for seats on trains. We have a trade-off decision to make between what space we allow for seating and what space we allow for cycling.
On the refurbished class 158 product, we have two designated cycle spaces but we have also agreed with the Department for Transport accessibility committee, which is the holder of the keys on all things accessibility related, that we can take the second wheelchair space on the class 158s and demarcate that area for the use of cycle spaces as well. That is on a single two-car train.
There have been a lot of letters, correspondence and questions in Parliament about what cycle spaces will be available. Sometimes the detail is where the answer lies. Having the two additional spaces in the wheelchair area as well as the two designated spaces can only work as long as ScotRail ensures that if there is a wheelchair user, they get priority to use the wheelchair space. In those circumstances, to be honest, our staff will find a way to move any bicycle that is in the wheelchair space and put it somewhere else on the train.
We will continue to provide the facility to move bicycles on all our fleets. To give you a sense of what will happen on our class 385 fleet, which is the new fleet that is coming in, we have two designated cycle spaces; we have a further two designated cycle spaces in the universal access toilet area, where there are flip-up seats; and then we have two more spaces in the luggage area for folding bicycles.
Our commitment to supporting cyclists is definitely there. However, I want to make a big point about cycling. We are much more interested in developing cycling facilities at stations and in developing cycling as a way to get to our stations. In the end, our trains are not really aimed at moving bicycles. We are putting 3,500 cycle spaces into our stations in the next three and a half years. That covers a multitude of stations. It also includes putting in very big cycle points in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stirling to allow a cycling services provider to maintain and resell second-hand bicycles and the like.
We are much keener on supporting cycling as an active mode of travel that people use to come to our stations than we are to have bicycles on our trains. Some cyclists, when they talk to me, say, “Yes, but I cycle to the station, I get on a train and then I cycle at the other end as well—do you want me to buy two bicycles?” I say, “Well, it would be nice if you could.” We have this difficult balance—I can guarantee you that if I ask a broad spectrum of my customers, “What should we do? Should we have two more seats or two more cycle spaces?” the vote would probably go to seats.
I appreciate that answer, thank you.
Scotland has a wonderful climate and a wide range of ways in which the weather can affect the rail network. This winter has been no different. Can you take us through some of the reasons for the closures and their underlying causes this winter?
10:00
Thank you, Mr Johnstone. Our railway is very exposed to environmental impacts. I will pick up on two of the biggest concerns and risks that we are facing, and I will give a few examples. The two biggest concerns are landslips and scour. Landslips are caused by repeated, long-duration saturation of soil levels that over time causes embankments to be unstable; and scour is a phenomenon whereby the foundations of bridges are endangered by significantly increased levels and rates of water flow. Those are two major risks for us. If something happens to an embankment during the night, the risk is that the first train out could hit a mud slurry on the track and derail; and scour obviously poses massive risks to bridge structures.
As an example of scour, I will talk about what happened to the bridge at Lamington. The incident there was huge for us in terms of its impact and the phenomenon itself. To give a rough indication of how the severity of the weather can affect us, the Clyde at Lamington is, on average, 0.7m deep. However, on 31 December 2015, when we started to see the damage at Lamington, the water in the Clyde was 3m deep. That meant that the water was right underneath the level of the deck of the bridge structure. Such a huge volume of water causes flows that are more intense and faster in the deeper levels of the river, and those flows undermined the foundations of one of the Lamington bridge piers, which was a big concern for us.
We have now deployed to Lamington and to the bridge structure at Dalguise in the Pitlochry area—unfortunately, disruption at that bridge often affects the Highland main line—a practice whereby when the water level gets above an amber marker, we caution trains to drive slowly and to be on the lookout for anything abnormal; and when the water level goes above a red marker, we close the structure and the line. There is no debate about that, because we prioritise the safety of the structure and the railway. Over December and January, Dalguise was affected multiple times, which significantly affected the service on the Highland main line. However, flooding away from Dalguise also affected the main line, and we had a wash-out in a different part of it.
To put it bluntly, the amount of water that we are seeing and the level of rainfall that we have had in Scotland in the past couple of years are steadily increasing. It is becoming a challenge for us to figure out what fundamentally we need to do differently in our renewal plans and in our planning for the strengthening of structures, embankments and cuttings in order to defend more robustly against the weather phenomena.
We have operational means to respond to severe weather. For example, when we get extraordinarily high gusts of winds, which are another weather phenomenon, we close part of our electric network; and if we get certain rainfall levels within certain periods, we send teams out to observe what is happening in landslip risk areas. We take as many defensive operational measures as we can in the event of severe weather.
However, Lamington has brought back to us the reality that we need to think of how we invest in, for example, more scour-resistant techniques and a different renewals programme, in order to make our structures more robust.
We are certainly aware of the issue of high rainfall. I was on a train on the east coast main line between Montrose and Laurencekirk on a day when the railway was subsequently closed. The train that I was on had to slow to walking pace to go through deep water as the cuttings filled with rain.
You explained the action that you are taking in the short to medium term. Is there a long-term strategy that can be taken with the railways to try to make them more robust against the prevailing weather conditions?
There is. The long-term strategy that Network Rail put forward was considered a good strategy at the time. It secured a portion of funds over the control period. I cannot give you the exact number just now, but a figure of £240 million across the country comes to mind. We need to take that basic long-term strategy and continue to evolve it to deal with more of the scenarios that we are seeing.
To put that into practical terms, if I look at my operational strategy for landslips, I need to translate what I do currently, which is sending teams of people out to look at high-risk landslip sites, to something that uses telemetry and electronic measurement. Displacement of soil levels must trigger an alarm that gets sent back to our control centre. That requires investment, and it is the type of thing that is becoming more and more essential for us to put into that long-term strategy.
In our planning now for control period 6, which is from April 29 onwards, we are putting forward exactly that type of investment proposal to the funders, who in this case are the DFT and Transport Scotland. That would be part of our long-term strategy.
The two things that I have seen done on the railway to deal with the embankment problem are reinforcing with cages full of crushed rock and reducing the angles of embankments, which is more complex. Will that type of work continue?
That is a really good question. The angle of an embankment is generally a good indicator of whether something can be done, but it depends often on what soil is in the embankment. An embankment can have a fairly steep angle, but if the soil has a good, strong composition that is strongly supported by structural supports, that embankment could be perfectly fine as it is. It is often the less obvious embankments, where rubbish has collected over many years and which are less firm in their constitution, that pose the risk.
My route asset manager for earthworks has a map and a plan of each length along the railway that shows its condition, its material composition and the risk that it poses. We look at those earthworks on a rolling programme, control period after control period, to renew them and improve their condition. We have plans for that.
However, your question is still very pertinent. The plans need to be given a different shape and, in some cases, need to be sped up, in order to make the railway more robust in severe weather.
I was pleased to hear of the progress with EGIP in your opening statement. Are you confident that the service changes that are planned for the closure of Queen Street—the high-level station at Queen Street—will be able to meet demand while minimising delays?
I am very pleased that, when you referred to the closure of Queen Street, you added that it was the high-level station. An important message that we are trying very hard to get out to our customer base in Scotland is that Queen Street station is not closing. We are open for business. Our whole communications campaign is about “keeping you moving”, and that is our banner.
We have a big challenge with the new, revised timetable. I will give members a snapshot. On any weekday, I move around 39,000 customers into the high level, and around 5,200 of them come in at the peak. There are around 366 trains; that is the capacity. By the way, on any day when I move around 39,000 customers, I have a capacity of 75,000 seats running through the high level. That also takes the off-peak time into consideration. On a full-day service pattern, roughly one out of every two seats is occupied.
Our revised timetable is tough and tight. Around 20 per cent of the people who travel into the Queen Street high-level station travel end to end from Edinburgh to Glasgow; they are not intermediate station pick-ups. We have a very strong campaign to target that 20 per cent and convince them to use the Airdrie to Bathgate services or the services via Shotts. In a sweep, we want to shift 20 per cent of the capacity that went to the high level on to the four trains per hour via Airdrie to Bathgate or the two trains per hour via Shotts. We are redirecting 65 per cent of the remaining capacity through the low-level station. That brings the figure to 85 per cent. The low level will therefore be really busy. The services there will be from Falkirk High and Linlithgow, and the existing services from Helensburgh and Milngavie, which will continue to run through the station. They will all go through the low level. That provides the service pattern for us.
That service will be very dependent on customers punctually joining and alighting from the trains. Therefore, we have set up a systematic holding pattern on both platforms 8 and 9 on the low level. People are brought down to the lower level by train size, queued up and helped to get on to the departing train. We are doing everything that we can to minimise the dwell time and people’s transition on to and off the trains.
The timetable will be very tight. We spent hours with our teams figuring out what we should do. There is just no way that I cannot provide the service that is necessary for our customers. We have to provide that service for them, so we have to find a way to make that tight timetable work.
I wish that I could show the committee some of what we have done in real life. The Network Rail enhancement projects or infrastructure projects team, which is not part of the alliance, the alliance, my own Network Rail infrastructure people and my train operating company people have done readiness reviews. We have gone iteratively through different levels of detail to figure out what we can do better to ensure that things work on the day.
Only yesterday, I visited my teams at Queen Street. They have taken a whole room at Queen Street station and put all the scenarios on the walls. They use that to brief our employees and our people on how to respond, where everyone should stand, how the peak is dealt with, and what people should do in the off-peak period. They have role descriptions or role simplifiers that say what everyone needs to do.
Your question is pertinent. It will be challenging. We have plans. I expect that, in the first week or week and a half, we will learn more than we thought we were preparing for. The original plans will probably be a casualty in part and we will come up with new plans. However, whichever way you look at it, I have to continue to move those numbers of people. We are confident that the Winchburgh experience has taught us a lot about helping customers to make decisions on their journey options and we are reasonably confident that we have all the bases covered. We will see what happens in the first week—we will see what areas we might not have covered well—and we will adjust.
10:15
I have dug myself into a bit of a hole on the committee because, on a previous occasion or two, I have quoted a bit of poetry. The line that springs to mind on this occasion is the one from Robert Burns—I do not know whether you are familiar with him—that says:
“The best-laid schemes o mice an’ men
Gang aft agley”.
I can see that you have given the matter very serious thought indeed, but have you retained a bit of flexibility? Do you have a bit of spare capacity that you can play with if you find that the plans have not quite got it right?
I do not.
You do not?
I do not. There is no spare capacity. I will give you a sense of the situation: I am hiring in crews from other train and freight operators to help me with transferring some of the services from Aberdeen and Inverness into Glasgow Central. It is “all out”, and it will be all out for the 20-week period. It will be a huge effort from our side.
We have to find ways to create the robustness that spare capacity could have given us. I will give you an example. With the way that I am cycling rolling stock and services through areas from Bellgrove through to Hyndland, if I have a train failure there, the daily service plan will be dead. That is just the way that the network is, so we will put into the stations train fitters who normally work on trains in the depots. If a train shows a hiccup, we will get a fitter on to it to see whether they can diagnose the problem, fix it and get the train to run. We will not have to send a fitter to site. I will also have infrastructure engineers who will look after the signalling system in those areas, and if anything creates a hiccup, they will be on hand to deal with it.
We will deploy people who would typically do other duties to give us a robust service on the day. I will be honest: the plan is tight and it will be tough, but we are excited about it, because it is a once-in-50-years event and we have to fix the tunnel, so we have to just do it.
Are you confident that the work can be completed within the 20-week closure period? If not, do you have some contingencies for an extended construction period?
Yes. The work in the tunnel is more manageable and better understood than the vagaries of what can happen on an operating railway during the 20-week blockade. I am very confident in the Network Rail infrastructure projects—IP—team.
Some time ago, I suggested to the people on that team that they should do some trial working and they did that successfully. Over the Christmas period, when services were down, they went into the tunnel and experimented with their technique for breaking up the concrete and removing it from the tunnel. As you know, thousands of tonnes of concrete must be moved—I have the figure here somewhere. For the 1,800m of slab that must be removed, they need a technique that they can time so that they can say how many hours it is going to take them to drill so many holes, break the concrete out and ship it. They did that in December, and that gave them a high degree of confidence that they will be able to deliver what is required.
I know how critical it is that we deliver that on time. You can imagine how nervous we all are about the scope of the work, because quite a lot of it is unknown. We can dig in one part of the tunnel, but then, when we get to another part of the tunnel, we can encounter different rock formations and stuff like that. The nature of a large part of the work is known—we can plan for it and we understand it, as we fitted the same slab track in the Winchburgh tunnel and the guys learned lessons about how to fit it—but there is still uncertainty about a proportion of the 20-week programme. That is also going to be exciting, and we are going to have to deal with the challenges as they emerge.
I will keep my fingers crossed.
I have one final question. We know that a wider redevelopment of Queen Street is planned. Can you outline that for us? How are things going with that?
That is the bit that I referred to at the beginning. We had a very tough situation about six months ago, when it appeared as though the Buchanan Galleries development and the redevelopment of the station were going to be mutually exclusive rather than mutually inclusive—it appeared as though we would not be able to complete them at the same time.
I must be honest with you and say that the committee has played a role in helping organisations to figure out what they should be doing in the community. Typically, the rail authority would have focused just on building a new station and would have asked everybody to get out of the way while it did that. However, I think that we are now in a better place, because we now think differently. Queen Street station is not about the railway; it is about Glasgow. We have worked very closely with Glasgow City Council—with Annemarie O’Donnell and her team—and with SPT—with Gordon Maclennan and his team—and I am pleased to say that we have found a way forward whereby we can accommodate the development of the station as well as the Buchanan Galleries development.
There is also an on-going discussion with Land Securities to ensure that we achieve both developments, and we are close to concluding a deal with Land Securities about a south cutting part, which will allow some of the development to proceed. That part of the process has come together much better than was the case six months ago, when there were heads banging together in terms of the two developments.
I will talk more about the station itself. We could do more to show committees such as this one what we are planning, which is a fantastic change to the station. There will be quite a lot of glass frontage that will change how George Square is perceived and how it is drawn into the station. The really exciting bit is that, during the blockade that will start on 20 March, we will start to lengthen the platforms to the seven-car and eight-car lengths that we need; therefore, there will be a huge increase in the capacity of Queen Street station.
The biggest challenge for us in the phasing of works for the station redevelopment is the need to provide a retail offer that is acceptable for a station of that size. If we could have succeeded in getting Buchanan Galleries to integrate perfectly with the Queen Street development, we would have had a Buchanan Street class of retail right at station level. However, because those developments will now be slightly shifted in time, we will probably not have that. We are working with Transport Scotland to put in the station retail facilities that are sufficient for the commuters who will use Queen Street.
I will leave a thought with you, because there will be a lot of public consultation and discussion on the project. If you think about Glasgow Central, it feels like a destination station; the retail facilities there are superb. However, if you think of Queen Street, you realise that most of the super-attractive retail is actually outside the station. The retail proposition is therefore perhaps slightly different—it probably does not have to be the same as the retail offer in Glasgow Central—but it still needs to meet the needs of our people. We feel very excited about what Queen Street station will look like.
That sounds good. Thank you for such comprehensive answers—I hope that all those projects go well.
Thank you very much.
Good morning. I want to ask you about the new Hitachi electric trains. I am very excited—as I am sure many members of the committee are—by the prospect of those trains coming on line. Given the interaction of transport with climate change, it is vital that we look at higher targets for electric trains.
I have a couple of points on capacity issues, although Mr Ingram has—not for the first time—stolen my thunder. There are some issues around the ability of those trains to carry bikes, although I take on board the earlier points that you made in that respect. Perhaps you can touch on that issue first, after which I will ask some follow-up questions on the Hitachi AT200s.
Would you like me to pick up the point about cycling?
Sure.
“AT200” was the original Hitachi codification—the trains will be class 385s, going forward. When I talk about class 385s, you can put those in the same bracket as the AT200s; they are the same thing.
On the class 385s, we will have two clearly designated cycling spaces. In the area of the universal access toilet, we will have another two cycling spaces. Those will not be in the same place as they are on the 158s—they will be in an area where there are flip-up seats, as I have explained—so they will not be subject to the priority of another user. In addition, the luggage space area will be able to accommodate a further two folding bicycles. That is the capacity per unit; it feels like pretty reasonable coverage for cycling.
So you are saying that, in comparison with your more traditional rolling stock, there is an enhanced ability to carry bikes on trains.
Yes: there is more capacity. Let us look at the class 380, for example, which is the Siemens Desiro product that operates widely—as you know—in the Strathclyde area and through to Edinburgh. It has two designated spaces, and there are another two spaces that can be used in an area that is similar to the wheelchair area. However, there is a restriction there, as we do not have a derogation like we have for the 158s. When the law changes and insists that wheelchair spaces are used for wheelchairs only, we will not be able to put bicycles in that area, even if we could. It is only on the 385s that we will be able to take two more folding bicycles.
That is positive news—I appreciate that.
I want to touch briefly, as time is tight, on an industrial relations issue. I understand from the relevant trade unions that there is an unofficial overtime ban in response to plans to downgrade conductors on the new electric trains. Can you update us on that? Is that correct? Can you advise us whether there are such plans?
10:30
To be absolutely clear, we have no plans at all to downgrade conductors, to use that language. Conductors play an immensely important safety role on our railway.
In simple terms, a conductor on a train closes the doors and dispatches the train. In the Strathclyde area, we have not used that practice for decades; we have used the practice of having a ticket examiner on a train and a driver who controls the doors and dispatches the train. That is a safe working method that we use in the Strathclyde area and that can be used elsewhere. As long as we have two people on a train, we still have a safe product.
We have engaged with our conductor colleagues and given them a proposal whereby we are guaranteeing that we will use conductors on the Falkirk line between Edinburgh and Glasgow and that we will continue to use conductors on all our diesel services. What could potentially be seen as a move towards having fewer conductors on our railway is not such a move.
We are developing our service proposals for the Aberdeen to Inverness services in the future, and with our fleet plans as well as our network plans, if we can engage our conductor community to work on Sundays as part of their working week with us, we can guarantee that we will have the same number of conductors that we currently employ.
How did we approach this as an industrial relations issue? Instead of working out a proposal and putting it to our trade unions, we have worked with a number of the different local teams and have discussed with them what proposals could work for them; we have discussed an implicit memorandum of understanding; and this week we have published what we call a fact sheet that contains a rough outline of our proposals.
References have been made in the press to what you referred to as an informal overtime ban. I cannot really comment on that. It is up to individuals whether they decide that they will not work overtime or do not want to work overtime—overtime is not something that they are committed to work in any case.
I am extremely positive about the opportunity for conductors to continue to have massively important roles in our business, but we will now go through a process of consultation with our unions on the proposals and I hope that we will get an agreement in the coming weeks.
Unfortunately, I do not have time to pursue those points, but perhaps you can keep the committee up to date on that particular issue.
I can.
I will move on to the draft “Scotland Route Study”, which was published in December. Can you explain what the outcomes of that exercise have been?
The route study is based on what we expect the railway’s impact and growth to be in the next 25 years. You will have seen from the study that we expect traffic to increase by around 114 per cent in Edinburgh, by around 108 per cent in Glasgow and by around 151 per cent in Aberdeen over the next 25 years.
The route study proposes options, which are available for consultation by communities, interest groups and all stakeholders in Scotland. There is a consultation process that I think will be completed by the end of March. Once that consultation process has been completed and feedback has been received, that will get packaged up and discussed with the funders.
The funders—Transport Scotland—will then make a decision on which of those opportunities are the highest priorities and where to steer the investment for the next couple of control periods. In brief, that is what the route study tries to do.
I want to raise a parochial Highlands and Islands issue that is important to me. I have had correspondence from Mr Richard Ardern, who is very interested in rail issues. He said:
“It was impossible to respond properly to the Scotland Route Study because we have not been told what HML”—
Highland main line—
“enhancements are being proposed for CP5”—
control period 5—
“ie by March 2019.”
Will you respond to that issue?
That is an interesting point. The Highland main line is such a good example of why what we are doing in Scotland is so different from what we are doing in the rest of the United Kingdom. Let me explain what I mean by that.
The plan for the Highland main line was to make a couple of interventions on it to achieve the output of about a 10-minute improvement in journey time. That was proposed a couple of years ago by a route study and by Network Rail. When Abellio ScotRail secured the franchise, it said that it wanted to run high-speed trains. The assumption in the original Highland main line proposal was to have class 170s. However, you need to consider who travels on those routes, so I dare say that a class 170 is more of a commuter product than a long-distance product.
What is beautiful about what we are doing in Scotland as an alliance is that we have brought together the two worlds and said, “Oh—hang on. If we’re going to run HSD”—high-speed diesel—“trains, do we really need to spend that same amount of money on a Highland main line with those same options or can we do something different?” We could have a different train with different speed and acceleration. At the end of April, we are publishing our group 3 stage, which is the concept design of where the interventions on the Highland main line need to be.
From the point of Abellio winning the franchise, the Network Rail and design teams had to look for a different solution. The commentary that you have had from your constituent is accurate. We now know that the two interventions will be at Aviemore and Pitlochry; they will not be at the locations that were in the original plan, because the rolling stock allows us to intervene in different places with a more simple solution.
It is a valid comment but in the next couple of months when our proposals for the Highland main line are published, and through this year, your constituent will have a better sense of where we are going to invest. They will then be able to fit that into the route study.
Certainly an important objective for that route is to reduce journey times, particularly going south. You will know from my parliamentary questions that the average time improvement has been 1 minute going south—if you take away one of the Sunday journeys—rather than 18 minutes. I do not have the time to pursue that issue with you, but I am sure that you will be aware of it when you are considering improvements.
I want to ask about the draft “Scotland Route Study” before you move on, David. Have you finished asking about that topic?
Yes.
Another proposition in the consultation is a proposal to electrify and enhance the Edinburgh suburban railway. You will know that I am particularly interested in that. The proposal is for existing freight traffic and the diversion of passenger routes on to that route. There is renewed interest in reinstating the former Edinburgh south suburban railway for passenger use. Work is at an early stage; we do not yet have a feasibility study that would provide the green light for that. If the electrification works were to be included in the next control period up until 2024, would that future proof the route for possible passenger use?
Electrification, wherever it is deployed, future proofs partially or fully whatever developments come afterwards. Tram-train solutions are typically electrified solutions, because you do not want to run trams in city centres with diesel engines. Those days are long past.
The structured logic of your question is definitely accurate. Electrification on the south suburban route would be for freight as well as to help with diversionary flows for any disruption on the western side of Waverley. That can be installed in a way that will make provision for a future extension in respect of a tram-train solution. Tram-train solutions must be on the cards for so many big cities in the UK; they present a practicable solution to the need to get stations and footfall off the heavy rail network.
The business case for opening the south suburban line for passenger transport is key and must first be agreed with Transport Scotland.
Am I right in saying that prior to your role with the ScotRail Alliance, you were involved in the development of the first ever UK tram-train, in Sheffield?
Yes, I was.
I learned that when I visited Sheffield recently to learn more about that project. Were there to be a feasibility study, would the ScotRail Alliance stand willing and ready to make its expertise available in order to take the work forward?
Yes. The work would predominantly be led by the Network Rail infrastructure projects team, which is not part of the alliance. However, we will act as a client for that team, on behalf of Transport Scotland. We will steer that.
Sheffield had its challenges and many lessons have been learned from that, which will help us to avoid repeating some of the problems that occurred.
What involvement has the ScotRail Alliance had with the Shaw review, which, as you know, is the UK Government review of the future shape and financing of Network Rail?
I participate in the review, as do one or two members of my team. We met Nicola Shaw individually as well as in the context of a working group. There was quite a lot of interest in what we are doing in Scotland. In Scotland, we have the Network Rail route team, which does maintenance and operation of the railway, paired up in alliance with the Abellio ScotRail franchise. They are two different legal entities, with two sets of accountabilities, but they have one management team and an aligned strategy to deliver what is right for both businesses. That is just common sense.
The Shaw report will be published in a couple of weeks’ time. All the reports have one thing in common, which is that the railway industry needs to focus on three important things: customers, customers and customers. If we get those three important things right, a lot of what happens behind the scenes will align itself properly to deliver a growing railway.
We cannot predict what will come out of the Shaw review, but we can speculate, as politicians like to do. There could be full privatisation of Network Rail. You have a close relationship in the current set up, so how would your operation be affected if that was a recommendation of the Shaw review and was accepted by the UK Government?
I do not take a view on whether privatisation or non-privatisation of parts of Network Rail is right or wrong; I do not see that as the core issue facing the railway. The core issue is the need for a clearer, simpler and stronger—in some areas—regulating function. The regulator must have a clearer role, which would probably be different from the role that it has today, involving an unambiguous alignment of objectives to focus on customer issues at the front end of the industry. Neither of those issues has an impact on or is affected by whether a decision is made to privatise the asset base.
The decision about Network Rail’s structure and whether private finance is invited to own parts is neither here nor there. For us, the focus is simply on taking our current asset base and operational methods and maximising the benefits for the customer.
10:45
Are you absolutely confident that the outcome of the Shaw review and what is accepted by the UK Government—irrespective of what it is—would not have an impact on the day-to-day working of the ScotRail Alliance?
Given the way that my team and I run our business, it will not have an impact. We run our business with a focus on the objectives that are set for us by the Scottish Government, whatever assets, policies and operations we have. That is it. We base our decisions on each of the objectives that the Scottish Government sets. We focus on delivering that.
And you have given—
We need to move on.
With that telling off, I will leave the questioning. Thank you.
Good morning, Mr Verster. There are three areas that I want to cover with you, the first of which is safety. The UK railways have a good safety record. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to attend an event hosted by the Scottish Youth Theatre. ScotRail was delivering a series of workshops to primary 5 and primary 6 children, which covered electrification of the line. I was very impressed with the skills that were being taught to the young people, as well as the safety message. Are you doing anything like that, or do you intend to do anything like that in future?
We have a very active programme that includes a rota of visits to schools. We have a very active programme about level crossings, in which level crossing managers engage with local communities about level crossing safety.
We actively engage with communities about electrification programmes such as Edinburgh to Glasgow, and about the risks of the new railway. Electrification brings two big threats: the risk presented by electricity and the risk presented by quiet trains. People cannot hear electric trains coming and, therefore, footpath crossings—not even level crossings across the railway—can become very unsafe. Part of our community engagement programme is extensive engagement across the community on those topics.
You have discussed the plans for new stock in 2017. The growth in passenger numbers is to be welcomed but, given that growth, how will you ensure that people—particularly those with young children or those who have a disability—can get access to trains with overcrowded status, as reported in the statistics from ScotRail in 2014?
There is no doubt that we have busy trains. As we start to roll out our new fleets, some of those trains will become less busy. The new fleets cannot come quickly enough. This year, we have put a lot of effort into finalising contracts to get the HST fleet in place, and to deploy the class 385 fleets.
I will take a moment to explain this. I started an approach in our business that I encourage our leaders to do more of. I go on trains all week, morning and evening, and once or twice a week I go on a train and announce myself to the customers. I say, “I am Phil Verster. I’m the managing director. Please tell me everything you want to tell me about what is wrong and what is right about the service.” That exercise is amazing. Yesterday morning, I travelled to Haymarket from Queen Street and 99 per cent of the comments about our staff and how they help people—including children and people with reduced mobility—were extremely positive.
Our staff are fantastic. They do not need to be invited, managed by a process or told what to do; they have a natural inclination to help people on the railway. Therefore, I am confident that, whatever circumstances our staff, our employees and our people encounter, they will respond positively and deal with the demands of the day. It is my strong impression that we are currently meeting those requirements.
Thank you for that reassurance. If I am lucky enough to be returned after the election, I will look forward to a drop in the number of emails that I receive about overcrowding as the new fleets are rolled out.
An unintended consequence of the Forth road bridge closure was an increase in the popularity of the route between Fife and Edinburgh. Given the fact that the increased number of passengers on that route seems to be being maintained, have you given any thought to how you might improve parking at the stations, giving people the opportunity to transfer from car to train when they travel to Edinburgh?
Parking is an area in which we need a lot of support from local authorities. Ensuring that people can park around the railway is not always fully within our gift, whether the issue is the availability of land or access for parking. Parking becomes part of the local authority’s roads and transport strategy, and the fact that there are lots of dimensions to it makes it more of a joint issue and much less of a railway issue.
I can say unambiguously that the more parking that we have at stations, the better. We encourage local authorities to work with us and, as part of our franchise, we are delivering more parking facilities in many places across the network over the next three or four years. The development of parking at key nodes is a commitment that we have signed up to and that we are working intensely on with local authorities. You are right in saying that there are many stations where parking would benefit railway users.
We take the feedback that we get from communities and feed that back to local authorities. We have formed what we call an economic development unit, which is a team of people who do everything in their power to get councils to invest in parking where it would benefit local communities. We have neither the funds nor the property to do all that ourselves, so it has to be a joint solution.
Thank you. My final question is about train and station standards. During the period between July and September 2015, ScotRail was fined £265,282 for failing to meet service standards for the quality of the trains and stations. The areas of concern included toilet facilities, graffiti, passenger information displays and the seat reservation system. What are you doing to address those service level failures and move towards a better service?
Thank you for that question, which is a very good one. I will put my cards on the table. The scheme that those penalties come from is called the service quality incentive regime, or SQUIRE, which is an immensely powerful scheme. The scheme requires a 94 per cent performance if we are to achieve zero fine. Can you guess what we achieve? We achieve around 91 or 92 per cent—we are about three percentage points short. The level of the fines depends on the schedules that they are in, and some of the fines are really tough. For example, if someone does not arrive to open a booking office in time, it is curtains for us and there is a big fine. However, that is reasonable. I can honestly say that the SQUIRE system is driving performance, which is manifesting itself in our score of over 90 per cent.
I think that the quality of our trains, both inside and outside, our stations and our staff’s service is just fantastic, and SQUIRE has made a major contribution to that. The £260,000 figure that you mentioned becomes the headline, but a much more important headline is that SQUIRE is super-powerful in driving customer service quality. We have put everything in place to catch problems and to reduce that £260,000 payment. For example, induction loop systems that help hard-of-hearing people to hear what someone is saying have to be tested regularly, and if one of those systems fails, it is replaced as quickly as possible. All such little niggly things become a focus for our service quality drive, which is really important for our customers. I think that that is massively good.
It is perhaps useful to make one observation that is very positive in terms of how Transport Scotland is approaching the SQUIRE scheme: whatever payments we make get reinvested into the railway for the benefit of customers. I can assure the committee, on behalf of the ScotRail Alliance, that the penalty figure of £260,000 does not mean that we are neglecting or ignoring SQUIRE. If we did so, the penalty would be a ginormous amount of money. We actively engage with SQUIRE and think that it is a really positive scheme, particularly because any penalty payments get reinvested in the railway.
Members have no further questions. Is there anything further that you would like to say, Mr Verster?
No, thank you. I am pretty exhausted as it is. [Laughter.]
On that note, it remains for me only to thank Mr Verster for attending today’s meeting and to acknowledge that this might well be his last appearance before the committee—in fact, it is undoubtedly your last appearance before the committee in this parliamentary session. I thank you for your commitment to maintaining an open and constructive dialogue between the committee and the ScotRail Alliance. I am sure that I speak for the whole committee when I say that I hope that that relationship will continue with our successor committee.
I suspend the meeting briefly for a changeover of witnesses.
10:57 Meeting suspended.Next
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