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OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

A rail or bus timetable is a picture of order and predictability. Real life, unfortunately, is not. Beneath the surface of smooth-running operations there is a huge amount of activity by people with a passion for detail. They have a deep sense of their responsibility for delivering safe, reliable and excellent services. The more successfully they do their jobs, the less our customers should notice.

Our goal is to Make Travel Simpler. To do that, we first have to achieve operational excellence.

There is no operational issue more important than safety. Trains, coaches and buses are rightly recognised as three of the safest forms of transport, and we guard that reputation jealously. Safety is our first responsibility to our customers and our people, and essential to our business success.

We constantly review ways to improve our performance. All our UK coaches are fitted with seat belts by law, and since 2006 it has been mandatory for passengers over 14 to wear them. In Spain, the law will require seat belts to be fitted to coaches registered from October 2007. On that basis, it could have been 2011 before our whole Alsa fleet was seat belt equipped. But in fact, Alsa has been fitting this vital safety equipment to new coaches since 2003. And last year, with belts fitted to just under half the seats in its long distance scheduled fleet, Alsa decided to retro-fit belts to the rest of its long distance fleet. The work will be completed this year.

Table 1: Trains Public Performance Measure

We maintain the same drive for constant improvement in our Trains division, where the key measure of safety performance is SPADs – signals passed at danger. Each of our rail businesses has its own SPAD reduction strategy involving driver training, driver assessment and competence management. Our SPAD rate has been improving for several years and the 2006 figure was our lowest ever. To maintain further improvement we are working in partnership with the drivers’ union, ASLEF, on a development programme that will further enhance the way we support safety awareness and competence in our driver workforce.

After safety, customers’ greatest concern is reliable, punctual services. In the most recent National Rail Trends reliability and punctuality table, National Express companies topped all three categories (see Table 1). But we still have work to do. In 2006 Central Trains achieved its highest ever scores for punctuality. In the National Passenger Survey’s twice-yearly customer satisfaction figures, the weighted average of our train companies has been consistently ahead of the national average in both our focus areas of punctuality and cleanliness (see Table 2).

Table 2: Passenger Satisfaction Autumn 2006

As we achieve the standards customers expect in basic criteria such as punctuality, we can now address more of the other details that affect customer satisfaction.

We are defining and formalising the levels of service customers can expect – for example, Midland Mainline now has written standards for every train setting out details such as when the buffet must be open. Customers are frustrated by complex fare structures and timetables, so we have been working with the Association of Train Operating Companies on fare simplification and the results will be seen in 2007. In Birmingham we have worked in partnership with Centro to simplify fares and use distinctive branding on certain routes to make identification simpler.

In Spain, we have just launched the Bus Plus card for regular customers. Cardholders get priority booking and fare discounts, and can change or cancel reservations with less hassle – which makes life simpler. They also get access to premium waiting rooms,special offers, discounted theatre tickets and a prize draw. Which makes life a bit more fun. Each of these little extras is just a detail. But taken together, we believe details like these make a real difference.