Timetables will become irrelevant for much of Britain’s railway in the next 10 years, according to a rail chief.
Increased services mean performance should be judged by frequency rather than trains running to set times, Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy said.
In a speech to rail industry leaders, he called for more stations to copy Glasgow Central in altering departure boards to show the number of minutes until the next train instead of scheduled times.
Sir Peter said: “The Tube isn’t measured by timekeeping but by average waiting time and lost customer hours.
“I predict in 10 years’ time much of our railway will be measured in the same way.”
He called for the railway to embark on a major change in focus to coincide with the upcoming rise in metro-style turn-up-and-go services, such as on the Great Western Main Line and Thameslink routes.
Describing passengers as “clever people”, he said: “Increasingly they will measure their journey not by timetable adherence but by regularity – average wait – and by journey length.”
Sir Peter told the audience that passengers will replicate the habits of London Underground users in not considering timetables.
Giving the example of increased frequencies on Bristol trains, he said: “Will people look at a timetable? Unlikely. These services will be more frequent than the outer end of the Metropolitan line.”
The former commissioner of Transport for London raised doubts about whether penalty structures used by train operators create “the right behaviours”.
Government-owned Network Rail, which is responsible for managing tracks, makes payments to train companies based on the length of delays for issues such as infrastructure faults, vandalism or bad weather.
Sir Peter questioned whether this is the best approach if “overall service reliability” is what most affects the total revenue of the network.
He also called for “more flexibility” in rail franchises, which currently incentivise operators to keep costs down even at the expense of performance.
Sir Peter said: “If extra drivers create greater service reliability then they shouldn’t be regarded as an extra cost, they should be easily balanced against the better revenue a reliable service generates.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article