Strategy

Are Your Strategies Coherent? A Checklist Worth Borrowing

The UK has recently created a swathe of strategies affecting the railway, alongside a major reorganisation as privatisation is reversed. The Railway Industry Association has highlighted the need for these strategies to be coherent as a whole and has created this checklist for anyone commissioning, producing, assuring, or updating strategies.

Key Takeaways

The checklist is organised around six ‘lenses’:

1. OUTCOMES: Are the desired outcomes beyond the railway itself clear, prioritised and measurable, and is rail’s contribution to wider economic, environmental and social objectives clearly defined?
2. SERVICE PROPOSITION: Do strategies translate outcomes into a clear view of the connectivity, passenger and freight services required from the railway and wider transport system?
3. ENABLERS: Do funding, appraisal, governance and delivery arrangements provide the resources, incentives and mechanisms needed to turn ambition into action?
4. CAPABILITIES: Are the physical, digital, organisational and workforce capabilities needed to deliver the required service proposition clearly defined?
5. ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENGAGEMENT: Are ownership, accountability, stakeholder engagement and decision-making arrangements sufficiently clear to translate strategy into delivery?
6. COHERENCE: Do the full family of strategies, plans and roadmaps work together as a coherent system, with appropriate alignment between national, regional and local ambitions, assumptions and priorities?

And 5 key messages:

1. Start with outcomes, not rail. Successful strategies start by defining what the railway is there to achieve and only then consider what services, capabilities and investments are required to deliver those outcomes.
2. Be clear on priorities and choices. Decisions about growth, affordability, capacity, customer outcomes, freight, regional priorities and long-term value should be clearly articulated and supported by evidence.
3. A clear vision for the future railway. There should be a clear line of sight from desired outcomes to the service the railway must provide, and from that service to the capabilities and investments required to deliver it.
4. Clarify responsibilities, but break down silos. What matters is that the connections and alignment, as well as any important differences, between all the strategies are visible, explainable and understood.
5. We need living plans, not ‘on the shelf’ documents. This requires clear governance, ownership, accountability and mechanisms for challenge.

Comment

This is an excellent checklist whose principles can and should be applied beyond rail and beyond transport.

What Next?

Review your strategies against the checklist.

Rail

Right Direction, Missing Numbers: The UK's New Rolling Stock Strategy

A good rolling stock strategy is crucial for providing a good rail service. However, it is not uncommon to see rolling stock that is past its sell-by date on rail networks. The UK has just released a new national rolling stock and infrastructure strategy.

Key Takeaways

• GBR’s train design approach:
  • New and refurbished trains meeting passenger expectations.
  • Unassisted level boarding and alighting
  • Accessibility and inclusive design throughout the journey
  • Family provision and flexible use of space
  • Cycles
  • Supporting secure journeys
  • Toilets as a core component of attractive rail travel
  • Connectivity and cyber resilience
  • Trains designed for ease of operation and maintenance
• New train procurement approach:
  • Future train orders will be structured around a small number of defined ‘fleet families’ specified to align to the main passenger markets in Great Britain and the broad train design product platforms already available from manufacturers.
  • Will not prescribe designs or detailed technical solutions, but will generally focus on specifying the outcomes, capabilities and interfaces required from future fleets.
• Asset management:
  • Will establish a new train fleet management function, providing strategic oversight of the national fleet while supporting those responsible for individual services to make the best use of their assets.
  • Procurement, refurbishment and replacement decisions will be aligned more closely across the trains’ lifecycles.
  • Refurbishment and retrofit will be used more actively as strategic tools, particularly when they can more rapidly and cost-effectively improve accessibility,
• A coherent national approach will:
  • Put passengers at the centre of train design.
  • Manage train fleets as a national portfolio.
  • Move progressively away from diesel towards electric traction (aim to sequence new fleets and infrastructure so they create a controlled, smooth delivery profile for the supply chain, reducing the costs of stop-start activity, subject to affordability).
  • Plan trains and infrastructure as a single integrated system
  • Treat depots, maintenance, materials and logistics as core parts of the system’s design
  • Act as a stronger and more coordinated national customer
  • Take a more strategic approach to train ownership and financing ( consider the available ownership and financing models early and rigorously).
  • Establish a Fleet & Infrastructure Plan

Comment

How does this strategy align with the checklist in the article above? Not well, I am afraid.

The good news is that it ticks many boxes in terms of the direction of travel. However, I have two significant concerns.

First, because of how the UK Treasury has traditionally made decisions, short-term, stop-start decision-making has often resulted in much higher overall costs and worse fleet outcomes. Nothing in this strategy suggests that Treasury is being brought in to take a longer-term approach with a long-term financial settlement that would significantly reduce total costs.

Secondly, the entire report is qualitative. It provides little data, and it proposes no measures of success. Where are the targets for reliability or the percentage of the fleet that is electrified or fully accessible?

What Next?

Does your rolling stock and infrastructure strategy meet the checklist requirements set out above?

Public Transport

Can Freight Help Fund Public Transport? Evidence From Germany

Recently, I have been exploring the possibility of using public transport to move freight, improve transport outcomes, and generate additional revenue for reinvestment. This research examined using demand-responsive transport for parcel deliveries alongside passenger trip requests in low-demand or rural mobility contexts.

Key Takeaways

• The research examined parcel deliveries alongside passenger trip requests in low-demand or rural mobility contexts while preserving passenger service reliability.
• Planning and policy implications are assessed through a real-world case study in Kirchheim bei München, Germany.
• The analysis compared Integrated Passenger-Freight Transport (IPFT) with segregated passenger-freight transport (SPFT) systems.
• The benefits of integration (IPFT) are mostly observed in the reduction of vehicle operating costs (by 34%) and human driving costs (by 33%).
• Total fleet size (separate passenger and freight vehicles) was reduced by a third.
• The number of vehicles available for passenger trips increased by 20%.
• Integrating passenger and freight transport reduces emission costs by 29%.
• Integrated Passenger-Freight Transport (IPFT) can reduce total costs by 24% compared with conventional segregated passenger-freight transport (SPFT) systems.
• By reducing operating costs for service providers, the overall cost balance conditions allow for increasing service frequencies in an IPFT system by deploying a larger fleet size, thereby enhancing service quality by reducing both passengers’ trip times and time window penalty costs (for late or early parcel arrival).
• The proposed model assumes that there is separate passenger capacity and dedicated parcel-storage capacity.
• Performance is more strongly linked to overall vehicle utilisation than to passenger occupancy alone.
• Real-world implementation would face many barriers, including vehicle design, operating procedures and regulations.

Comment

The potential benefits of integrating freight and public transport have been clear for some time, so why have we not moved beyond pilots?

One issue has been concern about a negative impact on passengers, and some proposed approaches certainly do not work from a passenger perspective.

However, better approaches are now being developed that have very little negative impact on passengers on any one trip, and if some of the increased revenues for public transport are reinvested into better services, then passengers would win substantially overall.

Given the funding crisis in many public transport systems around the world, now would be a good time to seriously explore this option.

What Next?

Are you taking forward integrating freight and public transport?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​Waymo offers new incentives for commuters on public transit - An LA Times article looking at an attempt to integrate Waymo with first and last mile transit connections.
• ​Traffic Filters vs Congestion Charge: Contest or Evolution? - A report from the city of Oxford, UK looking at two real world trials taking place in the city.
• ​The future of US transportation policy demands new ways to pursue long-standing goals - The Brookings think tank argues for a paradigm shift in US transportation.

Tool

​This new research report looks at how to provide information for people who are blind or have low vision.

Jobs

Jobs for Transport Leaders

​Here is a link with jobs around the world, specifically designed for transport leader readers. Use the filter to find jobs that match what you are looking for.