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TRANSPENNINE EXPRESS
FIRST PAST
THE POST
First Transpennine Express has just won four rail awards,reflecting its
growth rates and passenger satisfaction levels.It is also in talks with
the DfT to lengthen its trains.Alan Whitehouse meets MD Vernon Barker
Winning almost half the Rail
Business Awards at a single sitting
is remarkable enough. What
turned it into a truly memorable moment was
when Trans-Pennine Express’s MD, Vernon
Barker, revealed that was all part of his original
plan for the company.
When the fledgling franchise’s future plans
were being brainstormed, executives asked the
question: Where do we want to be in three
years’ time? The answer? An award-winning
company. Well, you can’t argue with that. Four
awards, including the two top ones and a third
for the fleet of 51 new trains brought in on time
and to budget, is a hard act to follow.
Three years ago, when Barker and his team
were dreaming their dreams, it would have
been easy to scoff. Here was a franchise
created out of nothing by the Strategic Rail
Authority against the advice of many and the
warnings of a few that it would turn into
neither fish nor fowl: neither a true inter-city
franchise – that dream was buried long ago –
nor a regional franchise either. So what has it
become?
There are three key tests that TPEx is
passing with flying colours: it is vastly more
punctual and reliable than before the franchise
was created; it is carrying vastly more people;
and many of those people are giving strong
feedback that they like what they see.
Vernon Barker loves spraying statistics at his
visitors like a machine gun. He starts with
PPM. TPEx is divided into three performance
segments – North West, North Trans-Pennine
and South Trans-Pennine. The latest figures for
Period 13 show the following scores: NW: 96.2
per cent; NTP: 92 per cent and STP: 94.7 per
cent. The annual figures show an overall
measure of 90 per cent.
‘When we took over, that figure was 73 per
cent,’ says Barker. ‘The North West was a
basket case. It’s partly about the rolling stock
– we now have Class 185s rather than 175s –
and partly about better train regulation. When
we started three years ago, we looked very hard
at what sort of company we wanted to be. We
also looked very hard at how other companies
did the same job. We promised new trains and
station improvements but we knew they
couldn’t be delivered for two years, so we set
about the things we could change quickly,
things like staff morale and how the staff
interacted with customers.
‘We benchmarked the best in the industry.
We looked at companies like Virgin, GNER,
SWT and Chiltern and used them as role
models. There was a cultural shift from day one
and that started from the top with the
management team not being afraid to stand up
when things were going wrong, which, in the
early days, they did.’
The step change came with the rollout of the
Pennine Class 185 fleet. The Siemens-built
DMUs were designed with hill climbing in
mind. Each vehicle is powered and the loss of
one engine leaves performance unaffected.
Losing two out of three engines still enables
the set to offer a ‘get you home’ service, instead
of leaving passengers stranded. For the 51 sets
First Transpennine Express’s MD Vernon Barker was awarded Rail Manager of the Year at March’s Rail Business Awards.
16 RAIL PROFESSIONAL : MAY 2007