Network Rail

PROJECT DIRECTED BY Lee Phoenix

WRITTEN BY Laura Watling

Network Rail / TFL

Keeping the Country Moving

Spanning the length and breadth of the country, the National Rail network is a British institution. Behind the scenes of that service, which is made up of many train operating companies (TOCs), is Network Rail.

Passenger trains approaching the platform at Reading Station

Network Rail is the owner and infrastructure manager of a majority of the railway network in the UK, functioning as a public sector arm’s length body for the Department for Transport (DfT).

To put that into numbers, that’s 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and thousands of signals, level crossings and stations.

The business manages 20 of the UK’s largest stations whilst the others (around 2,500), are managed by the TOCs.

Network Rail / TFL

Network Rail is changing

Network Rail is on a mission to become a company on the side of passengers and freight users.

As such, it is implementing changes across the business to better improve services and ensure a customer service mindset is embedded.

The organisation’s improvement strategy has three key elements: Every Second Counts Improving Our Stations Value For Money

Every Second Counts

Network Rail is working to reduce delays to its services. To do so, it is improving its practices and technology so it can identify, fix and recover from them more quickly.

One way in which it has achieved this is by utilising a mobile factory. This has enabled Network Rail to replace a mile of track in a night, while keeping the neighbouring line running for service.

In addition, a cross-industry task force has been created with rail network colleagues and TCOs to roll out 11,300 services a week, until 2025. This will provide better efficiency and choice for passengers.

Improving Our Stations

Network Rail has 20 managed stations, including 11 in London. These are typically some of the busiest stations in the country, such as Edinburgh Waverley, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Picadilly.

The organisation is working to provide more choice and comfort to passengers travelling through, or stopping at, its stations.

Not only has it removed toilet fees and added free-to-use water fountains, it is now working with 150 brands to create facilities where users can enjoy unique retail and restaurant experiences in exciting, contemporary surroundings.

Value for Money

Network Rail doesn’t set the fares for the TOCs it works with. It has, however, identified the role it plays in overall costs offset to passengers. The organisation is now challenging itself to get the best value out of every pound it spends.

It is striving to become a dependable partner, which makes it simpler for businesses to invest in railway improvements; become easier to work with for companies who have innovative railway and passenger improvement plans; and by implementing a new, streamlined structure to become more efficient.

One innovation National Rail is implementing is train-borne track inspection (or plain line pattern recognition). By doing so, 2,000 miles of track can be surveyed in one week.

This process is 10 times more efficient, saving the business £23m between 2019 and 2024.

Transport Feature

Transport Feature

Network Rail / TFL

Paying it back

Post-pandemic, the UK has seen a resurgence of train use. In its review of train usage from January 2022 - March 2022, the Office of Rail and Road reported that a “total of 275 million rail passenger journeys were made in Great Britain in the latest quarter (1 January to 31 March 2022). This was more than three times the 80 million journeys made in the same quarter last year”.

The ORR does note, however, that “the 275 million journeys equate to 62.1% of the 443 million journeys made between 1 January and 31 March 2019, the last equivalent quarter before the pandemic”.

Financially however, this re-uptake of train travels equates to £5.9 billion being paid into the sector from passenger revenue in the last year (1 April 2021-31st March 2022).

From Network Rail’s perspective, all profits made are paid back into improving the railway.

Putting the plan into action

Since 2014, Network Rail has been undergoing a significant, multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan. This is the largest investment into British railway since the Victorian times.

Ongoing and proposed projects include Crossrail (and the launch of the new Elizabeth line) Crossrail 2 and the Thameslink programme. All of these projects aim to improve travel into and through London.

Feeding into its mission to make rail travel easier and more efficient, Crossrail 2 is a proposed project between Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL).

According to Network Rail, London’s population is due to increase by two million people by 2031. With this in mind, Network Rail is working alongside TfL to ensure appropriate infrastructure is in place to handle the growth, and keep London moving.

As well as servicing London, the Crossrail 2 proposal includes improvements to the network facilitating an interchange for over 800 destinations around the country.

Ultimately, the aim of Crossrail 2 is to make travel quicker and easier across London and the South West. The additional capacity would allow up to 27,000 more people to travel in these regions during peak periods, whilst also significantly reducing overcrowding.

Not only would the Crossrail 2 project improve travel for thousands of people, it has the potential to create 60,000 jobs during its construction, and 200,000 jobs once operational.

Transport for London

Transport for London is the integrated transport authority tasked with rolling out London’s road and public transport strategies.

This includes London’s roads, bus services, trams and trains, to mention a few. TfL works alongside Network Rail to manage the London Overground network.

A major part of TfL’s current strategy is reducing the use of cars, with a target that 80% of all journeys will be made on foot, by cycle or public transport by 2041. TfL are working with London boroughs to “shape the character of London’s street”, aiming to make London the world’s most walkable city.

Despite TfL transport priorities, it also has assets in commercial properties. The authority generates long-term, sustainable income from 1000 retail units and 800 railway arches. The money generated is reinvested into London’s transport sector.

www.networkrail.co.uk

Capita

Gavin Dunkley, MD, Capita - TFL Road User Charging Together with Transport for London (TfL), Capita

helps to make the Mayoral vision for London’s

transport infrastructure a reality – tackling their biggest challenges and enabling 34 million people around the UK to travel safely, efficiently and sustainably. Our work with TfL has almost helped to halve harmful nitrogen oxide emissions in London since 2019 and keeps the capital’s road network running more smoothly and safely.

Managing the pressures of increasing pollution: congestion charge and the ULEZ scheme

Air quality in the capital has been a source of health and environmental concern for decades. London’s high-profile congestion charging scheme has been instrumental in reducing traffic – and thus air pollution – as well as facilitating inner-city transport. It also enables TfL to reinvest in the transport network and keep London moving.

On behalf of TfL, Capita implemented and manages the congestion charge and all of its associated operations – from upfront payments and customer services to enforcement and penalty charge notices (PCNs). Not only does this reduce the amount of traffic in the city’s centre, making journeys quicker and easier; fewer vehicles on the roads make for better air quality and a safer environment for drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

The Congestion Charge scheme works hand-inhand with the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) – the former reducing traffic in general and the latter designed to keep numbers of high-emissions vehicles on our roads to a minimum. #NO (nitrogen oxide) emissions in central London were recently reported to be 44% lower than what they would have been further protecting citizens from harmful levels of pollution.

In Conversation with Gavin Dunkley: Working with TfL to Keep London Moving

By charging drivers a premium to discourage the use of these older, dirty vehicles, ULEZ is a vital contributor to the city’s wider clean air initiative.. From our years of providing customer-facing collection services, we’ve learnt that offering a range of different customer contact and payment

Transport Feature

collection channels increases collection rates – so as part of the ULEZ go-live, we introduced a mobile pay app, allowing customers to pay when and where it suits them. In managing ULEZ, we handle 4,000 calls and over 12,000 payments a day, with over 90% of early compliance.

As well as being a technical success, the scheme demonstrates how technology can be applied to address climate change. The ULEZ has brought about a fundamental change in road-users’ behaviour: More than 90% of vehicles in the zone now meet the standard and the number of people exploring sustainable travel options has risen substantially. In October 2021, Capita and TfL expanded ULEZ up to London’s North Circular and South Circular roads.

Through these two initiatives, London has become a healthier, greener place. Children at 400 schools now benefit from improved quality in the air that they breathe.

Improving road safety: the Direct Vision Standard

In March 2021, with the support of London councils, we helped introduce the Direct Vision Standard (DVS) scheme, part of the Mayor of London’s Vision Zero plan to eliminate deaths and serious injuries from London’s streets by 2041.

Heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) make up the most dangerous component of traffic: despite accounting for only 3% of the miles driven in London from 2018-20, these vehicles were involved in 41% of

fatal collisions involving cyclists and 19% of those

involving pedestrians during that period, making HGVs five times more likely than any other type of vehicle to be involved in a collision resulting in a fatality, relative to their share of traffic. The DVS exists to ensure that drivers of large vehicles have adequate visibility through the windows of their cabs. It measures how much a driver can see directly, and thus the level of risk their vehicle may pose to vulnerable road users – pedestrians, cyclists, etc – nearby.

Vehicles over 12 tonnes that fall below the Standard must be equipped with Safe System improvements to qualify for a valid permit to operate within Greater London, and unlicensed vehicles face a PCN of up to £550. Thanks to this scheme, more than 282,000HGVs now have a safety permit.

Providing 24/7 services: the area-wide network scheme

To reduce emissions and improve the city’s air quality, it’s crucial that people are encouraged to travel sustainably – by utilising more public transport and taking fewer private car journeys. Capita’s data network infrastructure enables London Underground to continue running, from stations to back-office functions. We refreshed the network on behalf of TfL and now manage it, monitor it and provide preventative maintenance which enables the Tube to run smoothly.

Transport Feature

Our network handles everything from payments via Oyster card to TFL’s email system, voice network, invoicing, payroll and more. Subsequently the service was enhanced to include wifi connectivity in stations and on the Jubilee Line, the first cellular and mobile network of its kind in the UK. This connectivity improves the journey experience for passengers, enabling them to travel safely, efficiently and sustainably. Without the data network it would be impossible for the Underground to successfully operate more than 100 million passenger journeys every month.

Our data capabilities play a role in road users’ journeys, too. To enable the ULEZ to go live, we made over 1,400 changes and refinements to improve underlying systems and processes, delivered a full-scale upgrade of the IT infrastructure and enhanced camera capture and detection, billing and payments, customer contact and automated enquiry services, database and evidence storage and PCN enforcement. We brought our digital transformation experience to bear in managing the complex levels of integration between our managed IT systems and those run by third-party organisations, such as the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system.

In 2021, our contract with TfL expanded to include network support for the organisation’s surface transport assets, including traffic lights, CCTV and Congestion Charge cameras. Almost every set of traffic lights within London is attached to a network that enables them to be intelligently controlled. In the event of congestion in one area of the traffic network, TfL can intervene and change the profile of those lights to alleviate jams and help traffic to move more freely. Our work contributes to and enables an efficient and effective transport network to operate within one of the world’s largest cities. Find out more about how we keep transport networks safe, sustainable and efficient at www.capita.

com/industries/supporting-todays-transport-industry-tomorrow

Capita