Rufus Boyd
RAIL celebrates 1,000 issues with alook back at how we’ve covered the past 43 years… but also with an important look forward as the UK rail industry approaches acritical period in its history. We begin with aspecial guest column from Great British Railways Transition Team Lead Director Rufus Boyd. He discusses the future of rail reform and the growing opportunities for the rail industry to work together to deliver whole-railway initiatives ahead of Great British Railways
ON the day of the King’s Speech to Parliament in November, the Government announced that Parliamentarians and experts across the industry will have the opportunity to review and test the legislation needed to create Great British Railways (GBR).
This is a clear statement that GBR remains the destination. And given the scale of the changes being made to the sector, it will help the Bill to have a swifter passage through Parliament when legislation is brought forward.
As you might expect, as the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT), we are now working with the Department for Transport to adapt our plans to deliver reform, accounting for the delay to legislation.
In preparing for all eventualities, we have taken a realistic appraisal of what can and cannot be achieved ahead of legislation, and where we can deliver most benefits for customers ahead of GBR.
Considerable effort has gone into the design of GBR - a design which resolves the fundamental weaknesses the Williams Review diagnosed in the structure of Britain’s railway today:
■ Misaligned incentives that don’t focus on serving customers, taxpayers, or generating social, economic and environmental benefits for the nation.
■ Railway fragmentation leading to unclear accountabilities, poor decision-making, and a blame culture.
■ Too much reliance on politicians to take risk on operational decisions.
Alongside and underpinning this, we’ve been working to support and enable joined-up decision-making within this current, imperfect environment.
Providing industry leadership until structural reform can be progressed
The Secretary of State has asked the DfT, GBRTT and Network Rail to work together to provide industry leadership until legislation is in place. Alongside this, we need strong leadership and support from the private sector.
To date, GBRTT has played a valuable role across a broad range of areas.
Driving initiatives to boost revenue recovery - recall the Great British Rail Sale in the spring of 2022andthelargestpushonnationalmarketing in a decade, which between them generated many millions in net passenger revenue.
And developing tools to support better decision-making across track and train that drives efficiency today.
From train operating company commercial teams to Network Rail direct
