The Rail and Road Pod Episode 22: Rail Passenger Experience - targeting improvements

Saj Chowdhury

Hello, I'm Saj Chowdhury, and welcome to the 22nd edition of the Rail and Road Pod. Now, as part of our many functions as the rail regulator, we have a key role in improving the rail passenger experience in the consumer areas. So, of our focus for that includes:

• making sure that train operating companies provide reliable and timely passenger information for planning travel
• enforcing compliance with regulations on accessible travel
• investigating when passengers say their complaints have not been dealt with properly by the train companies, and 
• working with independent passenger watchdogs at Transport Focus and the Rail Ombudsman, which we became sponsor of late last year

So, speaking of 2023, it was a busy year for the consumer team. So, in this podcast, we'll catch up with Jacqui Russell, Head of Consumer, and Matt Westlake, Accessibility Manager, who will look back at some of the work their team produced and look ahead to what's coming up in the coming weeks. Before that, it's time to review what's been happening at ORR. In December, it was a consumer story that made waves in the media. After our research into how retailers present their fees when customers are buying tickets online, I identified concerns with drip pricing. This is when consumers are shown an initial price for an item or service, only to find additional fees are revealed later in the checkout process. 

Our annual station usage stats also made headlines as we revealed London Liverpool Street was the most used station due to the impact made by Elizabeth line services. We published findings into railway station catering calling for more competition and published our annual report on safety on England's strategic road network. There was also the authorisation of two new station buildings and other significant enhancements at University Railway Station in Birmingham. And we announced that Richard Hines will take the position of His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Railways this summer, when Ian Prosser retires. You'll be hearing from Richard later in the year. 

So back to this episode. Jacqui Russell leads ORR's consumer team. She explained the breadth of their work, what their focus has been on in recent months and what work is coming up. Hello, Jacqui, and welcome to the Rail and Road Pod. Now, you lead the consumer team at the Office of Rail and Road. So, what role does the ORR play in protecting consumer rights? And within that remit, has focus changed on what issues deserve more attention since your time in the role?

Jacqui Russell

Thanks, Saj. So, what I want is for people to feel really confident about making the choice to travel by rail. And that's right from the point where you're just starting to think about catching a train and you're looking up train times, time to think about tickets. And from my team's perspective and ORR's perspective, we focus on some quite specific aspects of the customer experience. And if companies can get those right, that should add up to make the broader experience right. Just to talk through what those core areas are. One is about all the information that you get that helps you plan your journey, helps you feel confident while you're travelling, you know what's going on, there's some disruption, but you know what's going to happen and you know when you're going to get where you're going. The second area is all around ticketing and retailing. When you buy your train ticket, is that company that's selling your ticket to you, treating you fairly and transparently? Accessibility to the network for disabled people. We want everyone to be able to make a positive, confident choice to travel via rail. And then finally, unfortunately, things do sometimes go wrong.

People need ways to be able to get compensation and redress. And I guess every year we sit down and think about where do we need to focus our efforts this year? And it will shift year to year. Our priorities will change. And of course, the world is changing around us. And as for many people, it's technology that's driving a lot of those changes. 

From the train company side, while trains aren't changing that much, it's going to run on rails, it's going to get you from A to B, new technology is allowing people to create some quite different experiences for passengers. 

On the information side, in particular, the ability to capture real time data on: are the lifts working, and where is your train on the network? When are you going to arrive? And then make that data available, both to staff or advising passengers and directly to passengers themselves: there is a real opportunity there to be grabbed and that's what we're starting to really try and drive industry to do more. 

But then we're also seeing passengers making different choices. So, for some people, buying a ticket from a ticket office is absolutely their first and only choice. But for many others, and an increasing proportion, they want to buy their tickets online. There are now over 40 different places you can go to buy your train ticket online. And so, we are putting extra focus on what that online retail experience is like for rail tickets.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you. Now, yet again, it's been a busy year for you and your team. Can you talk about some of the important work that has been done?

Jacqui Russell

Let's take a technology enabled one to start with. So, you're a passenger, you've been really organised, you've booked your train tickets two months before you want to travel. You're feeling really confident. You know what time you're going to catch your train. Now something happens on the network and unfortunately those train times change. How are you going to know? Previously, you would have had to have been really proactive and before you travelled you would have had to go and check. Is your train still the same time as you thought it was when you bought your ticket? But what we have got train companies to implement is a new system. So, you will be automatically sent an email or a text message telling you that ticket you've bought, that train time has now changed and here are your options for what you can do now. You can get a refund, you can travel on another train. Passenger information, helping people feel confident that the information they've got is the information they need to have a good journey. 

I talked about previously, part of our role being sometimes things go wrong. What can passengers do? How do they get redress? How do they get compensation? So, we have a really clear code of practice for trained companies, both on how they handle a complaint when you make it and how they handle delay repay claims. Generally, they do an okay job in terms of how quickly they turn those claims and complaints around. Sometimes it goes very wrong. So, we've worked really closely with some operators where we've seen it taking months to respond to people when they've put in a delay repay claim, and that's just not acceptable. So, we've been asking the train company what they're going to do differently, holding them to account for getting that service back where it needs to be for passengers. 

One pain point for passengers is always where your train is not a train. You're there booking your journey and it pops up and you're told you're going to be on a bus for part of your journey. And we've decided this year is the time to start really focusing on getting the industry to change. And there are some basics that we want the industry to get right. Just putting the destination on the front of a bus is not something that's consistently done for rail replacement buses. So, there's some real easy, quick wins, as well as some much more forward looking technology-enabled change, about, for example, being able to get in live information about your replacement bus in exactly the same way as you would if you were on a train. So, we've been out there, my team's been out there catching rail replacement buses, capturing everything about their experience. We've set out a really clear set of expectations for industry about what we need them to do differently. We'll be back on the buses again this summer, seeing what progress they've made since we were out there last year.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you for that explanation. And finally, what consumer issues are the team currently focusing on?

Jacqui Russell

We've been having a look at online retail websites, the 40 different websites and apps that you can go to buy a train ticket. And everyone needs to know you can buy a train ticket for any train company from any rail ticket retailer, whether that's another train company or a third party. Some retailers charge a fee for their service and people can make a very positive choice that they want to make a fee because they like the service that they're being given. But we need that choice to be an informed one. People should know that they're being charged a fee, they should know what the overall cost that they're going to be charged is right at the beginning when they start making that online purchase and when we had a look at what was actually happening, that's not what all their retailers were offering. 

So, we have been engaging with seven retailers where we had concerns about their approach to their transparency of the fees that they were charging. And many people will be familiar with similar issues in other sectors. For example, when you're buying tickets for concerts, same sort of issues can arise with the transparency of the fees. We're specifically trying to fix it for consumers in rail and there are some very live conversations going on right now with those retailers in response to our letters to them. And people can look forward to us publishing our correspondence with those retailers and we hope we'll be able to bring an end to drip pricing in the rail sector.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you, Jacqui. Now, ORR's vision is to empower confident use of the railway by all. It approves train operator policies for disabled passengers, promotes accessibility and aims to eliminate discrimination. Matt Westlake reviews some of the work we have done in the past few months in this area and provides a glimpse into what the team are working on. This includes a report on the frequency of lift faults and how passengers are kept informed. Hi, Matt, thanks for coming onto the Rail and Road Pod again. Now, for those new to the podcast or may need reminding, could you please tell the listeners about your role at the ORR?

Matt Westlake 

Thanks, Saj. Happy to be back. I'm the Accessibility Manager at ORR. So, my job mainly focuses on consumer policy, by which I mean assistance to disabled passengers, information for disabled passengers and training for staff. So, making sure the passengers get the assistance that they need at stations and making sure that there's information available for those passengers with disabilities, including about the accessibility of stations and such. And lastly, making sure that rail staff are fully and properly trained in delivering an accessible railway. And then, although I'm not actually an engineer myself, I also act as a point of contact for the office. On the technical side, things like the physical requirements that rolling stock and stations have to meet so you comply with the law. So, things like ramps and tactile paving on the platform edge and accessible toilets. And, as is common for a regulator, we set the consumer policy standards operators and station managers have to meet and the technical standards are set in law. But for both, it falls to us to monitor the industry's performance in meeting those requirements. And then, if necessary, then we take action to address any shortcomings.

Saj Chowdhury

Thanks, Matt. Now, the delivery of a good service for rail passengers with accessibility requirements has improved, as highlighted in ORR's consumer report. But there are still areas for concern. For example, only 66% of those with a physical disability who booked assistance getting to the wheelchair area reported receiving all the assistance they had booked. And the proportion of passengers reporting that none of the assistance they had booked was received was 8%. So, what can be done by industry to improve the overall figures?

Matt Westlake 

There's definitely still work to do here. We want every passenger that asks for assistance, whether that's booked in advance or Turn Up and Go on a day assistance, and we want them to have full confidence that they will receive that assistance. As you say, there's still 8% of passengers seemingly who had booked assistance and they're not getting any of the help that they'd requested. So that's, what, one in 12? One in 13? And that's too high. That said, we have seen progress in this area, so over the past five years, that number has improved for all operators, and I think that does reflect a lot of the hard work, including the things like training and communication processes. But nonetheless, it's frustrating for passengers when things don't go well. Unfortunately, I don't think that there's one silver bullet or one factor that can make everything go perfectly. We've just got to keep on pushing across a broad front on information, on training, on processes, on technology and complaints handling, so that the industry recognises when things haven't gone well and gets the feedback from the passenger and from the staff in terms of recognising what went wrong and then taking action as a result and so on and so forth.

I think it's important to emphasise that the key areas for focus might be different for each operator, depending on the different types of service that they run or the kind of stations that they serve or whether they've got station staff or onboard staff. So, yeah, I think we just got to keep our eyes on the prize, recognise that there's still work to do, not be complacent about the progress that we've made and keep on pushing across that board front holding industry to account.

Saj Chowdhury

Okay, thanks for that, Matt. So how important has it been working with disabled passenger groups to understand the issues that frustrate?

Matt Westlake 

I think it's really important. Last year, for example, I spent an afternoon on railway with the disability campaigner Alan Benson MBE. I'd say that I learned more in those three hours than months sat on my computer previously. It gave me a real insight into the kind of challenges the disabled passenger, in his case, the wheelchair user, faces in reality, when they're out there on the network in a variety of different environments, be that underground, over ground, on the street, et cetera. And it's vital that when setting the requirements that the industry should be meeting and then in terms of monitoring how well the industry is performing, that we keep a constant, open dialogue with the disabled passengers that we are striving to serve, because there may be things that we're oblivious to. Speaking for myself as an able-bodied person, in terms of how the industry is doing in these areas, or in terms of improvements that can be made to make sure that that's happening, to make sure that we've got that communication with passengers with disabilities. Firstly, for ORR's part, we've got a disability expert stakeholder forum where we've got people from a variety of different campaign groups, from a variety of different charities, many of them disabled themselves.

And we'll speak to them, and we will share our thoughts on development of policy, or share our findings in terms of monitoring the industry's performance and see what they think. And that's been really useful in helping to inform the standards that we set and the areas that we need to be focusing on. We also set that as a requirement for operators as well as for train operators, and for network rail, that they should be seeking input on a regular basis. Well, firstly, both in terms of training, so that industry staff have got a chance to hear from people with lived experience of disability when they're receiving that training, and to ask any questions of them that they might have in terms of how they might improve the assistance that they provide, but also in terms of developing company policy, be that do with staffing or station layout or whatever it may be, but having that dialogue with passengers with disabilities who are experienced of their network I think has been a real boom, a real positive influence in terms of operators better understanding how they can make a difference to passengers with disabilities.

Saj Chowdhury

Okay, so work for you continues at pace. What do we expect from your department in the coming months?

Matt Westlake 

We've got a couple of things on the short time horizon, actually. So in February, we're expecting to publish the result of a focused deep dive audit that we did on how passenger assistance is being delivered for five operators. We chose those five operators to try and reflect a broad range of different delivery models. So long distance, commuter, regional, a range of different staffing types and a range of different prior performance track records. We took a really close look at the processes that they've got in place right down at the operational level and also at the business level to make sure that passenger assistance is being delivered and that they are meeting the requirements of the ORR's accessible travel policy (ATP) licence condition. So, we'll be publishing that in February, all being well, and then in March one thing that's a really key dependency, if you like, for a lot of disabled passengers and non-disabled passengers, thinking of people with lots of luggage or with push chairs is around lifts and the availability of lifts. So, whether or not they're in service or not or out of service, and then whether or not there's good, accurate and timely information available for passengers on whether those lifts are working.

We have set up a new reporting framework for Network Rail, who manages all the 1,400 odd lifts on the network. We've set up a new reporting framework for them to tell us twice a year what their performance is like in this area. So, focusing on key passenger facing and passenger impact metrics about the number of lifts, both at national and a regional level, that have been out of order, the number of lifts that have been out of order more than three times or for longer than a week, the number of entrapments that passengers have suffered, et cetera, across the network. We'll be publishing the findings of that reporting in March and we'll also be reviewing the industry's progress in terms of setting up or establishing common framework for sharing and dissemination of the real time live information so that you can see, if I want to travel from Paddington to Reading and my train is getting in this platform at Reading, then are the lifts on that platform going to be out of service or do I need to re-plan or maybe get off the train and then go one step further on and back, or whatever it may be, but you'll have that information at your fingertips if the industry gets its act together on this. It may not be immediate, but that's what we're working towards.

Saj Chowdhury

Thanks for that, Matt. Now, did you know ORR has a Consumer Expert Panel which provides independent advice to help the regulator fulfil its vision of making the rail and road industries better for current and future consumers? The current panel has discussed a wide range of topics with colleagues from across all areas of ORR since its inception in 2017. I caught up with panel member Dr Ralitsa Hiteva to find out more. Hello, Ralitsa, and thank you for joining the Rail and Road Pod. First question I want to ask why did you want to become a member of the Consumer Expert Panel?

Dr Ralitsa Hiteva

I was really excited when I saw the job advertisement for the Office of Rail and Road because it's one of the most exciting types of infrastructure that we have in the UK. I have had experience in the past working in similar roles in energy, and I have to say that I've always wanted to do the same thing for the rail network because I can see as a very frequent user of trains where I live, for work, as a hobby and just to go anywhere, I can see what some of the practical challenges are. So, for me, it was multiple opportunities that rolled into one.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you. And why is it important that ORR has a Consumer Expert Panel?

Dr Ralitsa Hiteva

It's hugely important because it's my deep seated belief that we would not be able to achieve our net zero targets as a society and as a country unless we find a way to make trains the default mode of travel, first thing that people think of, and to make it hugely relevant and practical, not only for current customers, but for future and younger generations of customers in the UK.

Saj Chowdhury

Can you give me some insight as to what happens during a session?

Dr Ralitsa Hiteva

Well, I would say that most of the fun starts even before the session takes place, as we're given access to a lot of the background information, the research that has been carried out, so we can have a quite informed discussion about any of the topics that come across our desks. One of the most interesting things that happens in the discussion itself is to get a better understanding of the logic and some of the reasoning behind the people who actually deal with the nitty gritty of operating the trains and making sure that everything runs, that the network runs on time and at the right cost. So, trying to understand their points of view and trying to find ways in which those points of view could work for the greatest number of people and the greatest set of circumstances, and just open it up to a logic of what would work for consumers as well as what would work from a technical or economic point of view.

Saj Chowdhury

Thank you Ralitsa , and thanks to Jacqui and Matt for sharing some insight into the work produced and being produced by the consumer team. That's all for this podcast. Remember, you can catch up with our latest consumer work and also our other work in rail and road by visiting orr.gov.uk. And of course, you can follow us on our other social channels, including X, which was formerly Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Thank you for listening.