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Network Rail is changing — punctuality will come first

Thirty years ago I started working on the railways, with a job at the left luggage office at Victoria. Nine months ago I was privileged to become boss of Network Rail — the national not-for-profit organisation that owns, manages, maintains and grows our railway infrastructure — stations, tunnels, tracks, signals, level crossings, bridges and viaducts.

Every day we move millions of people to work, to home, to their loved ones, to school, to the shops. We also transport 200,000 tonnes of goods and move daily, much of which ends up in thousands of London businesses. But many passengers have been left feeling that the system, and Network Rail in particular, has let them down. They tell us that, above everything, they want a punctual railway they can rely on and in recent years things have been getting worse, not better. That can’t continue.

Over the past decade the company has focused on building things — such as stations — to create much-needed capacity to enable new services and new trains to run. The Thameslink project, with its transformed London Bridge station, is one example.

That investment needs to continue, in order to serve today’s passengers better and to help drive and support economic growth in the future. Ultimately, however, Network Rail is not an engineering company — it’s a service company.

We have been making small improvements to our big stations — free toilets, new seating and water fountains — but this only goes so far when we don’t offer a train service that can be relied on. My promise is that, while we can’t fix everything today, we will focus on passengers and freight users and especially on punctuality and reliability. We need to treat those who come into contact with us with respect.

To help us do this, Network Rail is changing, from a big, slow, bureaucratic company to one that is devolved into smaller, regional organisations that are much closer to our customers. One where local managers are given the levers, along with the power and authority, to change things for the better.

Already, London’s railway system is getting better — punctuality is improving, new trains and services are arriving, stations are being upgraded — and our network will get better still. But more radical change across the industry will be needed. The current fragmented system, devised more than 25 years ago for a railway in decline, simply doesn’t work for the one we have today in which passenger numbers have doubled over the past 20 years and continue to grow at about three per cent a year.

A far-reaching review — the Williams Review — is under way, and represents a big opportunity to make changes for the better. It can provide a blueprint to join the railway back together again and give the industry the leadership and direction it needs. Londoners deserve and need a railway they can rely on. And that’s what I intend to provide.

  • Andrew Haines is the chief executive of Network Rail