Summary:
A series of proposals to encourage people back onto the railways once the lockdown is over, and to modify the current rail system to ensure it serves the needs of the population and is financially secure given the changes to work patterns likely to persist post-Covid. Suggestions are to re-imagine railway stations as destinations in their own right, create more holiday rail tours, carry freight on passenger trains, create an inter-rail-type pass for the UK, and start a hotel discount scheme to enable 2- and 3-day working away from home.
Policy:
Rail travel has disintegrated as a result of the restrictions placed on the UK during the Covid era, and many of the home-working patterns established during those restrictions are likely to continue after society reopens.
The railway system must adapt to get people back onto the rails and ensure short- and long-term financial performance. There is a lot of work required to achieve that, but the end of the franchise system potentially offers space for many beneficial changes to the national network.
I set out some suggestions below:
1) Re-imagine railway stations, particularly large terminus stations like London Waterloo and King’s Cross. These stations need to become destinations in their own right, as well as a means to get to other great nearby destinations.
Stratford station has achieved this in many ways with its Westfield shopping mall, and more stations should do the same, not only in London but around the UK. By way of example, creating museum exhibition spaces in large stations, food markets similar to those found at Borough Market, or bars where your drink is delivered by large-scale model train, such as exists in two bars in Prague.
St Pancras has done this to an extent, advertising that it has the world’s longest champagne bar. More large stations need to follow suit, focusing on becoming destinations and enjoyable places to visit in their own right, not just passing places for busy travellers. By doing so, stations can increase revenue and footfall, helping to increase train usage and shore up finances.
2) Run more holiday rail-tours and dinning trains on the national network, transforming it from largely a utility to get from point A to point B into a leisure space. In addition to dining trains, there could be spa trains, opera trains, and many other such ideas, all helping to enhance the perception of the railways and encourage more people to use trains.
Such trains should be especially targeted at less-used lines, to increase the numbers travelling on them to make upkeep of such lines more viable. Not all these trains need be phenomenally expensive; for example, running birthday parties on trains for children, having nightclub trains, and so on.
3) Adapt passenger trains to be able to carry some freight. Given how many packages are sent around the country with the increase in mail-order, the rail network should have a strong role to play in freight movements. Adapting carriages to be able to quickly take palleted freight on and off at particular locations, and possibly smaller packages too, could prove a useful revenue source for the railways and help reduce emissions from road transport.
This could be particularly useful for more remote areas and might enable a whole new ecosystem of start-ups delivering goods via trains, possibly linking into Deliveroo or Amazon-type last mile-services to move goods from stations to homes.
4) Create a train pass for the UK, allowing unlimited off-peak travel on the entire network, with further discounts on peak-travel as well. This would operate somewhat like the inter-rail pass in Europe, although there would be no extra charges for booking seats on long-distance trains.
The pass would be billed monthly, and holders would simply scan their pass on ticket machines to gain entry to platforms; this could also help the transition to a completely paperless ticket network. It would also help encourage people to travel off-peak, reducing pressure on trains, enhancing the experience, and increasing revenue as more people used off-peak trains.
5) The final proposal is to make long-distance commuting not only viable, but attractive, by dropping the cost and improving the experience. Railways should therefore work with hotels to create discounts for travellers booking mid-week hotel stays. That would enable people to commute into their office from afar, travelling off-peak and then staying one or two nights to avoid a long-distance commute each day, which would be intolerable and expensive.
By enhancing the experience of the commute, with space to sit and work off-peak, and only having to do the journey twice a week, instead of 10 times, more people would see rail as their preferred means of travel, and housing pressures could be eased as people space out around the country.
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