2023 Winners

Service of the Year GoMedia

Visor’s aim is to provide independence to the blind or visually impaired people, but with the design philosophy that a good solution isn’t designed for a specific group of people but a good solution benefits us all.

So even though Visor has been an approved solution by the Royal National Institute of Blind People, it benefits everyone, from tourists to commuters, who just quickly want to access train times.

Providing a solution for everyone approved by the blind and visually impaired community will not only positively impact accessibility at stations but also improves the image of disabilities. Solutions for these groups don’t get hidden, and only they will make use of it.

Visor needs to provide: personalised, contextual, real-time, accessible wayfinding around the public transport network. For operators, it is important that this is a cost-effective solution but also provides flexibility.

Winner

Operator of the Year LNER

Claiming their second award of the evening, LNER was named operator of the year through their East Coast Partnership.

Through this partnership, LNER and Network Rail are working together to put passengers first by improving the performance of the route - improving the reliability of our services, reducing cancellations and minimising the number of trains running with reduced coaches.

In their entry, LNER explained: “We’ve undertaken over 20 performance improvement schemes in partnership with Network Rail as well as joint initiatives with Hitachi, which maintains our fleet.”

For example, on driving, they have undertaken a detailed piece of work on acceleration away from stations utilising the performance characteristics of the Azuma fleet. This can save up to nine seconds per station call, which helps to improve performance further.

Impressively, LNER was the first operator to return to running 100 per cent of its timetable, a very welcome move following two years of uncertainty for customers as a result of the pandemic.

Winner