Blog

The impact of social media, Peter Moran and Sneha Patel, ORR information and analysis team.

Tom Wake – ORR's principal inspector, Network Rail - South East

Improvements in technology are changing the way passengers buy their rail tickets and the form of the ticket itself is changing rapidly. Ticket offices remain popular but rail passengers are now making greater use of the internet and ticket vending machines to buy tickets. They have greater choice and more convenient forms of tickets, with smart ticketing and mobile ticketing. They are also buying

As director of health and safety and HM chief inspector of railways, I lead a team of inspectors who spend most of their time out and about on the railways. We work with Network Rail, train operators and others from across the industry to help make Britain's railways safer whether you are travelling or working on them. Inspectors have been doing this for quite a while – 175 years next year.

Britain's railways are carrying record numbers of passengers and freight on the network today – there were more than 1.5bn passenger journeys on the network in 2013-14, up from around 1.2bn in 2008-09. The amount of freight goods carried has increased from 102.7 million tonnes in 2008-09 to 116.6 million tonnes in 2013-14.

Welcome to the new ORR blog. One of the privileges of being chief executive is that I get the first crack at writing a blog entry. I want to use this to give you a better insight into what people at ORR do and why - working across the industry to ensure an efficient, effective and safe railway for everyone.