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Terence Watson
passengers it’s the same weight as a latest generation ICE empty,
which should leave a profound set of questions being asked that
we would love to be engaged in the discussion of. Although energy
consumption and weight are issues that are claimed to be top of
the page, we want to make sure that debate is sticking, because if it
ends up being all about price then these environmental questions
become superfluous, which we think is wrong.’
Lessons from Europe, or not
Fifteen years is a long time to experience the European rail market.
And I wondered if Watson feels we have lessons to learn. ‘Yes and
no. First of all it’s a private railway here and most of the others are
either partially privatised or not. In countries such as Germany and
Italy, you have one major interface with an opinion and a structural
approach to strategy relating to technology, and we interface with
those organisations very well. In Britain it’s not broken but it’s
harder to find who owns that.
‘A state organisation can have longer-term strategies and can
optimise procurement. For example the way it sequences orders
isn’t based around short-term franchises which end up looking
like zig-zags, but they smooth it generally around what’s good for
a region. So they say, ‘In this region we need 1000 trains’ – that’s
a programme then and manufacturers can invent or re-create
products around that programme. You can introduce technology
faster when you’ve got a more secure and better view of the future.
‘In the UK, it’s more opportunistic: find the right partner
who happens to win the franchise and they happen to have bid
with your technology. The original projections for East Coast
in ridership were bigger than West Coast, so did the West Coast
growth occur just because we had a brilliant franchise No. Was it
because track was upgraded No. Was it the technology as well No.
But taken altogether, yes. So we’d like to see that replicated, but you
can’t do that unless you get big enough procurements.’
Franchising system hindering new technology
Given Alstom’s history in the UK and its selectiveness, I wondered
about its relationship with the ROSCO’s. ‘It’s fine,’ said Watson.
‘It’s an enabler, but nowadays there’s quite a dissonance between
the timing of new franchises, re-franchises, the progress of
technology and the need for new trains. They’re not the same
things at all, and the dissonance is quite severe now, so Alstom and
the other manufacturers are in dialogue with all the stakeholders
about how we square this circle. In fact we’re at the peak of
dissonance at the moment I think - manufacturers may or may
not be able to enter the market, and certainly can’t sell equipment
to new train operating franchises based on all the technology.
The good news is that the government, the RDG (Rail Delivery
Group) and RIA (Railway Industries Association) and all the other
stakeholders have ‘got it’ and they’re all looking at the problem
together, which is good.
‘I was at a DfT round table recently and we decided to focus
more on the supply chain and technology, which Alstom really
commends. Because if you look at where the railway discusses these
things, apart from those types of venues it’s a second or third-level
discussion. The first level is always about the Toc, customer service
(quite rightly by the way), and daily operating issues. But where do
you end up talking about new stuff
What do passengers want from trains
Watson laughed heartily at this point. ‘The surveys we know about
suggest they don’t actually want anything of a train in itself. They
want to get to places on time and really easily. On the train itself,
it’s very easy stuff - lightness, airiness, leg space. And we’re finding
much more demand for on-board information and internet and Wi-
Fi facilities. With the vestibule areas, which railway people look at
as just being inconveniences, passengers are starting to say, ‘This is
awful. What are you doing about this area And that’s a valid point.
It seems we’re just useless in this industry in creating a space that’s
attractive and really useable. Ride comfort is something that’s less
well appreciated. The trains in our market are obviously tested for
that but don’t all have the same level. Passengers don’t know which
ones are which and they don’t have any option anyway. But the
faster you go the more that difference is recognised, which was one
of the reasons we developed the Pendolino. Passengers also want a
really quiet environment, and there seem to be a lot of arguments
about fast on load and off load and very wide access doors.’
What Watson has observed as interesting is that the opinions
of younger passengers are more ‘radically critical. And I like that.’
Referring to an event he had attended the previous evening held by
Prince Charles at Clarence House for leading businesses to discuss
their environmental responsibilities, he said: ‘Somebody said last
night that the difference isn’t between men and women or races
and so on, the real dramatic change in behaviour seems to take
place at the age of 26 – because if you’re younger than that, you’ve
pretty much grown up with the internet and a style of networking
and social media relationships that people over that age don’t get
so much.
‘What young people are saying is: ‘We’re sick to death of
companies pretending they’re protecting the environment. We’re
sick to death of companies doing the minimum and pretending it’s
the maximum, and we’d really like to wake up in the morning and
make a choice to use the train that’s greenest and the services of a
company that’s environmentally responsible.’ And as an industry
we haven’t really understood that. We’re working on it but we’re all
over 26 I’m afraid.’
Thinking about Watson’s comment on ‘surveys that we know
of’ I wondered if Alstom speaks directly to these ‘radical youth’ or
through ROSCO’s ‘That’s a very good question. Our customers
are our Toc’s and ROSCO’s so we have their feedback and feed into
them. We do carry out surveys if we have new things to test and
go directly to passengers, but we have to be cautious about that
because we’re doing it over the head of our customers if you like.
But on matters such as ergonomics for example, or a prototype
train, we absolutely don’t want the industry to go wandering
around the train, we want to see how citizens feel. That happened
with great success in Sweden, on the X40 trains. We created a
mock-up as good as the final train and the feedback we got changed
the interior design. Now it’s one of the most beautiful trains in
Europe and Scandinavia, and one of the few that has a high level of
appreciation by the operator, the driver and passengers.’
Page 56 July/August 2013