by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

Damned train companies. They overcharge and the service you receive for your hard-earned cash is, well, poor. Like most people, my experience of Britain’s creaking railway system is grim. I went to Malvern a month ago and the return economy ticket cost an astounding £95. Two weeks ago I got a train from Waterloo to Godalming. It took two-and-a-half hours to complete a 40-minute journey. It would be wrong to call it Victorian – the trains worked better 100 years ago. So when I heard about Island Line, a train service on the Isle of Wight, I had to investigate. Its trains are on time 98.3 per cent of the time, compared to 39.2 per cent for train companies in London and the south-east. How do they do it?

First, Island Line has direct control of the infrastructure. It owns the track, unlike every operator in the UK, so it does not have to rely on Railtrack. This means it can plan maintenance work around traffic and react quickly to unexpected problems such as signal failures. The line also has its own contractors on the island. Stephen Wade is general manager: “On the mainland in the old days they used to have a permanent way gang every five miles or so; now they can be 20 or 30 miles away if there’s a problem.”

Second, all its 39 staff are multi-skilled. If there is a signal failure, for example, managers are trained to carry out the signalling work manually. These skills have wasted away on the mainland since privatisation because of the division between trains and track, says Wade. Staff at Island Line are responsible for a relatively small stretch of track and few stations, so they have in-depth knowledge of problem areas and possible solutions.

Next, customer service. Island Line is one of only a few operators that have a Chartermark for its entire operation. What makes it so special? It does its own passenger surveys, works hard to synchronise the trains with the ferries that arrive at Ryde pier from the mainland and makes sure “staff are walking tourist information centres.”

So what about the railway plague – strikes? The line works hard at its employee relations. Even in national ASLEF ballots, the staff vote against strike action and resolutely stay at work even if the rest of the country goes out. “Working for the best train operating company gives them a reason to be proud,” says Wade. (Employees also earn a good salary relative to the average on the island.) I suspect it is more a matter of teamwork and not wanting to let colleagues down. In such a small company, they get to meet regularly and so “everyone knows everyone else and they know that the responsibility for keeping the railway running rests with them and no-one else,” says Wade.

The little details matter. Island Line runs 1938 Underground trains (ironically, from the notoriously unpunctual Northern Line). They were completely refurbished recently and look eye-catching in their multi-coloured paintwork.

Island Line operates on a different scale to the commuter lines around London. Peak daily traffic is about 10,000 passengers compared to ten times that number for a mainland railway. There are only eight stations and eight-and-a-half miles of track.

But the service does have problems. It needs major investment to renew the tracks and replace the pre-war trains. While it does a great job of keeping the trains running today, the story could be very different in ten or 15 years time. Parent company Stagecoach has decided not to bid for the franchise when it comes up for renewal in 2003 unless investment is forthcoming.

Island Line provides us with valuable lessons: good management really does make a difference to punctuality and service; being small helps; and investment is key. The problems in our railways go back decades and will take decades to solve. If the railways are to remain private commercial operations, then the operators need to be given much longer leases. Seven years is not enough time to allow any private company to make good a serious investment.

My experience with the railways has been so bad that I chose to fly to the Isle of Wight. For two of us it was still cheaper than going by train. More important, what does it say about the state of the railways in this country that the best train operating company doesn’t want to renew its franchise?

Matthew Stibbe is a pilot, writer and entrepreneur.
www.stibbe.net

Any examples of best practice in hateful industries? A world-class estate agency with fantastic customer service, perhaps? Let us know and we’ll track them in “Everybody hates us.”

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