Select Committee on Transport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)

DR PAUL SALVESON, MRS SHEILA DEE, MR JONATHAN DENBY, MR SCOTT HANDLEY AND MS RUTH ANNISON

3 NOVEMBER 2004

  Q140 Chairman: They are very difficult people in Yorkshire!

  Mr Handley: They are our passengers and they are keeping the railway going and they have invested in the company, so without them it would not be happening. What we needed to do each day was to prove that we could deliver. We introduced low floor buses into Wensleydale running seven days a week and began to build a market for public transport and we have gone on each day. As we have developed seven days a week services at the same timetable every day the district councils have become involved and the county council is coming on line and we seeing a speeding up of the development process really.

  Q141 Miss McIntosh: Are you able to say that there are lower cost units for opening a line like yourselves?

  Mr Handley: Without a doubt.

  Q142 Ms McIntosh: To what do you attribute that?

  Mr Handley: I would not want to give the impression that this is the answer for the railway network or even for rural railways, but for some railways it does work. What we try to do is tailor the way we develop new stations, for example, or upgrade the track to what we can afford and what we know we can deliver going forward, but also another part of our remit is to try to reinvest locally, so where possible we plan our works and train people appropriately to the normal standards but in such a way that we can use local contractors, local suppliers, and they can work with us. That does bring costs down. We are able to control all aspects of the infrastructure as well. One decision that we took last year as part of a major upgrading of capacity on the line was to close the railway for three week periods and that meant that we could provide a better service very quickly, and they understood that.

  Q143 Miss McIntosh: Is it partly because you have a more limited service? What is your frequency and timetable throughout the year?

  Mr Handley: At the moment we operate a train every two hours from round about 9.30 in the morning through to mid-afternoon. At the moment it is mainly geared to taking people into the Yorkshire Dales without their cars. Over the next couple of years—

  Q144 Chairman: You are not suggesting you take them there but you do not bring them back. You would be confirming some of the worst prejudices, but I am sure that is not what you mean.

  Mr Handley: At the moment the bigger problem is people leaving the Dales and not coming back. We do bring them back at the end of the day.

  Q145 Miss McIntosh: Since this has opened, how many passengers have you carried? Have you seen an incremental increase?

  Mr Handley: It is difficult to say because we have not yet had a full year of figures. What we have seen is there is quite a degree of seasonality, as you would expect for somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. The key objective that we have got to increase the year round traffic is a good connection with the mainline at Northallerton. At the moment we are working in partnership with Arriva on their bus route in the area and we have agreed a through ticketing arrangement which will be our trains and their buses. We want to expand that. When we get down to Northallerton we will see another step increase as we are meeting the local need.

  Q146 Miss McIntosh: The SRA's paper draws on "best practice and innovative approaches of the heritage and independent operators". Is there anything you would like to share with us that you think you do particularly well?

  Mr Handley: It is easy to think that the secret is to keep the costs down but that is only part of the equation. Equally important, and more important in terms of morale of staff, is to increase the number of passengers on the trains. We put just as much effort into making sure that the services reflect what people want to do, and we work with local businesses to make sure the trains arrive at the right time. That very local objectivity and approach is important. Our services are not based on very detailed studies, they are based on discussions in post offices and in pubs and in community centres which leads to where the trains go.

  Q147 Miss McIntosh: What percentage of volunteers do you have running the line?

  Mr Handley: I would liken it probably to the way a hospital might operate where the key staff are all trained professionals but the League of Friends means a range of things can be done if funds are raised. All our key staff are paid staff but voluntary help means that we can do these other things.

  Q148 Ian Lucas: Mr Denby, how important was the role of the local authority in starting up the line as far as you were concerned?

  Mr Denby: Very important. Very clearly it was a joint initiative between the then Anglia Railways team and Norfolk County Council. It is true to say that without both parties being fully committed to it the partnership itself would not have happened. It relied on funding from both parties and an extra resource from within the county council and part of that person's time being attributed directly to working on the partnership. Having that consistency of approach throughout in terms of both parties continuing to be fully committed to it has made a very big difference because it has had a very firm foundation around which we have then built significant other third party funding from other bodies, smaller district councils, local businesses, Regional Development Agencies, those sorts of bodies. What you end up getting is a pot of money that you put together from a number of partners that simply would not have happened if just one of those partners on their own had been trying to improve services on the line. Having that pot of money allows you to more effectively and more quickly promote the line and do small scale improvements at stations, put information into places like the library and Tourist Information Centres, spread the word more effectively so that those people who do not use the railway and perhaps think that it is less frequent, less reliable and more expensive than it actually is in practice are disabused of that notion and realise that their local service is there and it works very well for them.

  Q149 Ian Lucas: Does it operate within just one county, within Norfolk?

  Mr Denby: There are a number of partnerships that we are involved with. The two most well established ones are the Bittern Line, which is the Norwich to Sheringham route, and the Wherry Line which covers both the routes to Great Yarmouth and to Lowestoft. Norfolk County Council have been the most proactive of the local authorities with which we work in pushing these initiatives forward. We have now started one in Suffolk because they have seen the success of the one in Norfolk and worked with us on the Ipswich to Lowestoft line which was launched early this autumn. Indeed, in Essex they are ahead of Suffolk and are almost as far forward as Norfolk in being proactive in working with us.

  Q150 Ian Lucas: What is the cost of the line per route mile?

  Mr Denby: I would not be able to tell you that figure precisely because the track access charges that we have from Network Rail presented to us are for the whole of the area that One Railway covers, they are not broken down, but I believe that it would be possible to get hold of that figure through Network Rail or for Network Rail to break down their costs of the infrastructure charges.

  Q151 Ian Lucas: Could you arrange to forward that to us?

  Mr Denby: I will liaise directly with Network Rail and ask what they can forward to you, certainly, yes. We could also forward our costs of what it costs us as the train operator to run that.

  Q152 Ian Lucas: Do you compete with buses?

  Mr Denby: There is some competition between Cromer and Norwich but the rest of the route is not as direct as the road route because it serves North Walsham and a couple of other places. From that point of view there is a little bit of competition for the Cromer-Norwich route but apart from that there is not much competition. Under the auspices of the   county council we have co-ordinated more integrated transport links so that you have got fares that are valid on both trains and buses including along the North Norfolk coast.

  Q153 Ian Lucas: You operate an integrated ticketing system?

  Mr Denby: We do. What we have done is we have worked up with the help of the county council specific arrangements so that you have got specific fares that are valid on the trains and buses. As you might have in a metropolitan area or where there are PTEs, we have not got complete bus/rail integrated ticketing that all routes within Norfolk but what we have done as a train operator is proactively said to the bus operators, for example, "We will give you a certain amount of cash each year" and that then means our cheap day returns into Norwich are all valid on the bus as soon as you get into Norwich station and you can get straight into the city centre. That was a proactive thing that was worthwhile for the buses but also persuaded more people to use the train to get into Norwich.

  Q154 Ian Lucas: Is most of your traffic commuter or just general traffic for shopping?

  Mr Denby: It is a mix of commuter and leisure. It is seasonal. The highest patronage is during the months from late May through to late September when you can see quite a significant growth in the passenger numbers during that period. Outside that period it does stay quite steady. Apart from the immediate post-Christmas period in January it does hold pretty steady throughout the rest of the winter months and I think that is because the leisure patronage is quite high and North Norfolk is quite attractive for weekend breaks, for tourism, for bird watching, so there are a lot of reasons why people go to North Norfolk. The majority of the growth has been in leisure but, at the same time, we have seen a significant increase in commuting as well. Business traffic will be the smallest part of the patronage.

  Q155 Ian Lucas: Mrs Dee, I know your line very well and I think you are probably dealing with six local authorities, is that right?

  Mrs Dee: I get funded by six local authorities and the train operating company.

  Q156 Ian Lucas: It must be difficult to co-ordinate that.

  Mrs Dee: It takes a fair amount of time to co-ordinate that and ensure that the funding is there. The change of administration in any of those authorities can jeopardise any funds that I might be expecting, shall I say, year to year.

  Q157 Ian Lucas: So it is very difficult to construct a stable plan for the line?

  Mrs Dee: It is. We have done one for the next five years with the help of the train operating company. As Wales now has a 15 year franchise, the train operating company—Arriva—have guaranteed five years funding for the post and the partnership and whilst the local authorities have matched it in principle, they can only go to their budgets year by year.

  Q158 Ian Lucas: Does that inhibit development of the line?

  Mrs Dee: I would like to say it does not but obviously it is in the background when doing any forward planning. I am always conscious of the fact that in November one of the local authorities may not be able to contribute fully.

  Q159 Ian Lucas: In terms of development of facilities in stations, do you have to approach individual local authorities on a piecemeal basis?

  Mrs Dee: I do. I am fortunate that the line runs through two countries. If, shall we say, the Welsh Assembly, as they have, install project inform systems on the Welsh side of the line, the English local authorities feel duly obliged to find funding to match it for the English stations. I would not say we play off one against the other but we have not had difficulty in funding the entire line.

  Chairman: It sounds like an excellent system, do not give it up.


 
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