BRITISH passenger operator, Northern, which operates commuter and regional services in northern England, has launched a campaign called 30 by 30 which is designed to grow traffic by 30 million journeys by 2030.
Northern operates 2650 services a day and carries 92 million passenger per year, so transporting an extra 30 million passengers equates to growth of 32.6%.
Northern has identified three areas where that will come from, with each area generating 10 million additional journeys:
- organic passenger growth
- improved reliability, and
- initiatives such as pay-as-you-go ticketing, multi-modal integration of services and improved regional connectivity.
Northern has set a target to improve punctuality from the current low level of only 73.1% of trains arriving with 3 minutes of schedule to 90%. It also wants to reduce the number of cancellations from the current level of 3% of trains being cancelled each day to fewer than 2%.
“We have been working hard to stabilise performance and cut cancellations in recent months,” Matt Rice, Northern's chief operating officer, told IRJ. “There are green shoots of progress, but we know more work needs to be done before we can deliver lasting improvements for our customers.
Rice says that one priority is securing a new agreement with the trade unions so that the operator is no longer reliant on conductors volunteering to work on Sundays.
“We are also working to reduce sickness levels by helping staff return to work, introducing state-of-the-art simulators to accelerate our training programme, and planning to make the largest ever investment in our fleet by introducing up to 450 new trains,” Rice says.
“Our vision for 30 by 30 is rooted in confidence and user research,” says Alex Hornby, Northern’s commercial and customer director. “Our data shows that the demand for rail travel is greater than ever, and with improved performance, better value and greater convenience, we can make rail the natural choice for even more people.”
Northern says recent performance indicators show strong momentum, with “record post-Covid journey numbers, best-ever revenue days and customer satisfaction levels above the national average.”
