Flexible work patterns will change the future of rail travel
The Monday to Friday, nine to five grind threatens to become obsolete in the next decade. What does it mean for train companies?
Transport projects are reliable fodder for us grumble-loving Brits — just like the weather. Witness HS2, which finally won the go-ahead from government in 2020 after protracted opposition by environmentalists; the Western Rail Link to Heathrow, that 6km stretch of track linking the small town of Langley to Terminal 5, delayed until 2031 — and Crossrail, a project of such legendary scope, difficulty, and contentiousness that multiple documentaries have been made about it. As these projects edge closer to completion, and we edge closer to the end of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s interesting to take stock of the challenges posed to the future of transport by the pandemic, and how the transport projects currently under development — especially Crossrail, expected in 2022 — fit into the new post-Covid world.
Take Crossrail for example. After many pushbacks from the original completion date of 2018, Crossrail is finally undergoing “trial running”. This is basically a dress rehearsal for next year with trains travelling back and forth between Reading in the west and Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east. The route to trial running has been littered with complex technical problems because trains will, for the first time in the London network, need to switch between separate pre-existing signalling systems in the east, west, and centre of the city, in real time as they are being driven along the tracks.
This presents a big challenge for hardware and software engineers. Imagine “a laptop that had got to work on Windows, then switch to Linux, then to [MacOS], while you’re in the middle of running a program, without it glitching — and do it seamlessly”, as Tony Miles, contributor to Modern Railways and expert on all things rail-related, explains.
So what’s the payoff for this huge, complex undertaking? A slightly quicker journey to Theatre Land for the average punter, or half an hour shaved off a commute to Canary Wharf, is all well and good, but how many theatregoers will be happy to take the train after lockdown, and how many bankers will actually work in an office instead of from home? A recent survey published by Campaign for Better Transport, referenced by the Rail Delivery Group, found that while 65% of UK adults in employment were working entirely from their place of work before the pandemic, just half (53%) plan to do so when restrictions begin to ease. (Interestingly, the percentage of those surveyed who plan to use rail for leisure activities, like a trip to the West End, is the same as before the pandemic, at 8%.)
This being said, Miles still believes that passenger numbers will rise again as we adjust back to normality after the pandemic. Judging by the fact that orders for new rolling stock are still being made, train operators are betting on this too. As Miles says, “it looks like the world view [among train operators] is that whatever’s happening in the short term is not worth reacting to overly”.
So while there may still be demand for Crossrail, a much bigger problem than the raw number of passengers is the unpredictable pattern of rail use after the pandemic. And this applies to rail all over the UK.
“If more people start to work flexibly — 3 days a week, different hours in the day — you kill the guaranteed money income that public transport has, particularly railways: peak fares have been the guaranteed income for an awful lot of companies,” explains Miles. Flexible working is by nature impossible to forecast. A person may decide to work Monday to Wednesday in the office one week, and then Wednesday to Friday in the office the next — all based on such murky factors as the weather, family, evening plans, and so on. If it’s no longer possible to rely on the regular wave of commuters getting in to work for 9am, and leaving after 5pm, then the current strategies of peak, off-peak, and super-off-peak fares, may not work. As Miles explains, these fares are set by operators by predicting in advance how busy trains will be. But if, in the world of flexible working, there is no longer a “peak” time to speak of, setting more expensive fares for certain times of day becomes impractical, threatening income. As well as this, how crowded trains are can be a make-or-break factor for those deciding whether to choose rail for leisure activities (as the Campaign for Better Transport survey indicates), so it is important for everyone to understand when and why trains will be busier and quieter.
A huge challenge for the next decade, then, will be to figure out a way of forecasting rail use in a world of flexible working.
The train companies’ ability to adapt in the next decade will have an important bearing on the wider economy, too. Ruth Bagley, Chair of Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Western Rail Link to Heathrow Working Group, points out that the 6km stretch of track linking Langley straight to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is expected to bring an £800 million increase in gross value added — the measure of the value of goods and services produced — in the Thames Valley area alone.
She says this is due to better connections between businesses internally, plus a greater incentive for foreign investors in the area with easy access to the airport. It’s a reminder that rail is an essential spur to the economy as a whole. And although we have all got used to Zoom and Teams, Bagley believes that face-to-face meetings will bounce back post-Covid. “Although some routine international business may be conducted online, forming new business relationships and complex collaborative discussions will remain better delivered in person,” she says, and this is made possible by rail.
Transport initiatives like Crossrail, the Western Rail Link to Heathrow, and HS2 have a big impact on the housing market as well. In particular, Crossrail has long been predicted to boost house value in the suburbs around London. To take just one example, the webpage for Chapel Arches, a new development in Maidenhead (one of the key towns affected by the western arm of Crossrail), gushes over the “excellent rail links” to come, explaining that “residents will benefit from improved connectivity when Crossrail opens”. Developments have been underway for many years in anticipation of greater demand for homes in the Crossrail belt. But it remains to be seen whether demand will be hit now by the greater number of people choosing to work from home instead of commuting into the capital, who are therefore not as interested in finding a home with convenient transport links.
It is going to be an interesting decade for rail, with the main challenge being to figure out how to forecast train use in a new world of flexible working. It’s impossible for anybody to say what life will be like in five years’ time, just as it was impossible five years ago to predict a global pandemic. Many transport projects have been in development long before Covid-19 struck. And since huge amounts of time, effort, and money have been invested in them, those responsible find themselves in the strange position of pushing forward to completion even though they are facing a very different and uncertain market.
But as Tony Miles says of the rail industry in general, “it appears that everybody has decided that that stuff will still be needed in the future — and they’re getting on with it”. After the pandemic subsides, let’s hope that the public continues to get on with trains - and get on trains - too.
