Virgin Trains aims to be delivering world-class transport services by 2003. ‘Our company will be the best in the world,’ says Chris Green, managing director of Virgin Trains. The train operator is concentrating on five main areas in order to achieve this goal: safety, reliability, customer service, product development, and human resources. ‘Without safety we should just give up. There is no point in being reliable if we cannot guarantee safety. There is no point in developing customer services if we cannot back them up with safety. Britain’s railways have experienced a number of recent high-profile accidents, and public concern for safety has grown.’
I travel on a competitors train. In that way I get an even better insight into whats happening in the industry, he says, while underlining that he is happy to be with Virgin. But I think the industry is too fragmented. Complex relationships exist in the rail industry between Railtrack, Virgin, the other rail companies, and the Governments Railway Inspectorate everyone has interlocking responsibilities in the area of safety. Fragmentation makes the safety issues far more critical, and several recent accidents involving different companies and management systems controlling the trains and track have highlighted this. The biggest concern has been the interfaces between Railtrack and the train companies, and the third parties acting as maintenance contractors. It is possible in the future that the train operating companies will have to take responsibility for maintaining their own infrastructure.
Step changes in safety management
As part of its approach to dealing with these issues, Virgin is working towards making step changes in its own safety management system.
A detailed review of the Virgin safety management system is to be carried out using the Rail Operators Audit Rating System, ROARS, which will look at areas of major risk facing Virgin Trains. The assessment will cover such aspects as leadership, communications, organisational structure, policy, planning, management of subcontractors, training, client liaison, incident reporting and follow-up, as well as Virgins own audit process. Both Virgins West Coast Main Line and Cross Country routes will be covered by this review.
Virgin is commissioning Det Norske Veritas to take a look at the company in an international context and to benchmark it against world best practice.
Virgin is aiming for a cultural change in safety: nothing will be accepted as unavoidable, states Green. Most people in Virgin are committed to making a big step forward detailed safety plans and processes are in place and these are now being widened to include quality.
Virgin is using the ROARS system to find out exactly where the company lies in terms of safety and quality. With a current score ofjust five it is merely average. Accidents involving passengers are running at one a day, those involving staff at one every three days. New rolling stock will help reduce these as all slam doors on coaches will be phased out, new interior sliding doors will be installed and TPWS signalling introduced. The biggest problem is Virgin itself, where the need to provide customer service sometimes overrides safety, Green admits.
New trains and a change in culture
Green believes that when safety and quality are right, then train performance and customer service will follow. Results will then speak for themselves.
The core company of Richard Bransons Virgin Group is very much the airline, which is itself driven by safety and so provides relevant support.
We have doubled our emphasis on safety, Green explains. We use benchmarking, and we are making real progress. The most important thing now is to get that change in culture. We have caught up a long way, but we still have a distance to go. But I believe much of that will occur when we get our new trains.
Virgins new trains, the Voyagers, have been created in a partnership between Virgin and manufacturer Bombardier, and much was learnt about safety and quality in the process. The first Voyager went into service in May, with more to follow soon, while the tilting Pendolino is scheduled to enter service on the West Coast line in May 2002.
Green is enthusiastic. The new Voyagers are 125 mph diesel units; with the first one commissioned in May, we have started to take delivery of our GBP 1 billion fleet of new trains at a rate of one per week for the next two years.
Delivery of the fleet of 140 mph electric Pendolino trains is not far behind the Voyagers. Now undergoing intensive testing, the first Pendolino will enter service early next year. Both fleets will have virtually identical interiors and will bring radical improvements in reliability, speed and comfort. They will be the first trains in Britain to have audio entertainment at every seat and they will also boast an onboard shop, sockets for recharging laptops, destination indicators in every coach and electronic seat reservation.
We are impatient to see the end of the old trains but we intend to maintain a high quality of service on the existing trains in the meantime, confirms Green.
An impressive network and a profit
Virgin Trains operates a comprehensive network, with lines from Aberdeen in the north of Scotland to Penzance in the southwest, from Brighton in the southeast to Glasgow in the northwest. 5,500 staff oversee the traffic. Like other parts of the Branson empire, the train operations have also been able to earn several distinctions. For example, Virgin Trains received four awards in 2000: Train Innovation of the Year, Operator of the Year, Integrated Transport Scheme of the Year, Rail Marketing Campaign of the Year, plus one from 1999: Station Innovation of the Year.
Chris Green expects Virgin to make a profit in 2002. He is also positive about deregulation of the railways both in the U.K. and in other countries. Privatisation has given the railways fresh venture capital. We can also see great innovations in service attitude, marketing and investments in modern stock that would have been difficult to implement if we had kept British Rail as a monopoly. The Heathrow Express and the Thames Link are examples of these new developments that would not have been possible without deregulation. Today, 26 operating companies share the British rail network, five of them major players like Virgin.
It is important that when new franchises are awarded, they are sufficiently long to allow the train companies time to invest, concludes Green, who would not say no to possible subsidising of the railways either. The state is building motorways for road traffic. Why shouldnt it also build railways for train traffic?