Return to Archive -by date - by topic - 1998
Back in the 1980s, train builder Metro Cammell used to put the future operator's symbol at the end of each production line. And underneath the logo was a notice reading 'It's the customer that pays the wages'. After recent events we wonder whether it might be worth rummaging through the waste skips at Washwood Heath to see if one of those signs could be found for the railtrack boardroom
Customer focus was, of course, what all the nationalised industries, not least British Rail, lacked. And privatisation was going to change all that.
Now everyone in the new railway industry seems to be both customer and supplier. Which ought to result in true customer focus, since a bit of introspection never hurt anyone.
Sadly it seems that this does not apply in the case of Railtrack which, as both a monopoly supplier and monopoly customer is widely regarded as overbearing in one case and difficult in the other. As we report on Page x, the company has been campaigning for a new access regime which punishes operators more severely for late running.
It was inevitable that Railtrack would have an unequal relationship with what should be its customers. Not only do the TOCs have no choice of infrastructure supplier, they lack any effective financial clout, since 90% of track access charges are fixed and have to be paid come hell and high water.
Now, this is tough on train operators like National Express, Prism and Virgin who are paying Railtrack anything between £250million and £400m a year and instead of being treated like valued customers now find themselves being hectored for not using their purchase correctly. It is on a par with Marks & Spencers berating its customers for being too trendy and failing to buy its middle of the road products.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that Railtrack, which has a guaranteed income, is saying that the TOC's fixed subsidies, which even then are guaranteed to decline, are a bad thing and should be made more dependent on performance.
Not only does this display staggering insensitivity on Railtrack's part, it also suggests that the implications were not fully thought out. If ATOC was capable of joined up thought, it might start campaigning for the iniquitous fixed track access charge to be replaced with a charge per path. Then we would see how the city would regard Railtrack's borrowing power when its customers could reduce their costs by running fewer, longer trains.
Of course, the truth is that we are all in this together - John Welsby's famous zero sum game. And to date the fragmented industry has maintained a united front, muttering the mantra 'we are all here to serve the end customer, the passenger or freight shipper'.
But all it needs is that one organisation blames its troubles on the rest, for the overloaded lifeboat to turn into the raft of the Medusa. Then, as the stones fly, the glass comes tinkling down on everyone.
Connex broke ranks, blaming the owners and manufacturers of the Networkers for its troubles. That generated a retaliatory strike from one team of said owners and operators which, allegedly, produced an instant improvement by maintaining the trains properly for a change.
Hence, Gerald Corbett's ill advised attack on his customers' unreliability brought instant and massive retaliation from Thameslink, Silverlink and a slap down from the Rail Regulator.
And at the meeting with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott on 26 November, when our industry should have presented a united front, we can be sure that any TOC director worth his salt, or seeking to avoid a P45, had a detailed dossier on Railtrack's recent failings on top of his agenda.
Just why Mr Corbett though it appropriate to lecture the TOCs publicly was still being debated as we went to press. The Flashman theory is that if Head Teacher Prescott was threatening everyone with six of the best, thrashing Tom Brown in advance might endear you to the 00`beak
Another theory is that Railtrack sees its real customer as the Government. Since the TOCs and FOCs and mere channels for the Government's subsidy, you might as well cut out the middleman and try to renegotiate the size of the cheque, to your advantage, without all the trouble of meeting customer service aspirations.
Yet another theory, combines the first two and has Railtrack convinced that its 'rescue' of CTRL part 1, means that the Government needs to ensure a generous periodic review of track access charges if Railtrack is to fund the vital stage 2 into St Pancras one day. In which case, if you are teacher's pet already, why not beat up the oiks anyway, because the current high profile reporting of their poor performance might dent the share price.
Then, of course, it might be sheer lack of understanding of the realpolitik of the new railway by people from outside the industry. There has always been a tendency for newcomers to regard railway managers as, in Sir Peter Parker's phrase, ‘corduroy chaps'.
We know better. That a career spent running the railway creates rat catchers rather than bureaucrats and that if your back is to the wall of diminishing subsidy, and Railtrack efforts are hindering your business prospects, anything goes.
For sure, the end customers do not care whose fault it is. For certain, Railtrack gets it's money come what may, but that high flying share price is highly vulnerable to concerted spinning in the city by irate franchisees.
Time for Railtrack to mend fences, if it is not too late. Gerald Corbett might like to remind his Zone Directors of the old saying, that when a valued customer asks what time it is, the supplier replies ‘What time would you like it to be'.