Celebrating its tenth birthday this year Virgin Trains is Britain”s largest train operator. For June”s ON THE SOAPBOX CEO Tony Collins, discusses the past, the present and the future of the rail company. Mr Collins joined Virgin Trains from Alstom, the power and transport group, in September 2004.
Britain”s rail industry is enjoying a period of massive and continuing growth as people in droves turn to the train as their preferred mode of travel, and it needs to rise to the challenge of satisfying ever increasing demand for faster and more frequent services that offer greater capacity.
The train has inherent and proven environmental advantages over car and air travel, and these will become increasingly more obvious and significant with the advent of road pricing and increased ”green” taxing of airline passengers.
The opening of the dedicated high speed link to Paris in November from a rebuilt St Pancras station demonstrates the progress being made by the rail companies. With the staging of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Britain”s train operators will be in the spotlight with an unprecedented opportunity to showcase its services, which more than match international standards.
The opportunity has been taken to create a regional network of high-frequency, high-speed services across the UK from a rather rambling network of ageing trains. Our own Operation Princess transformation of the regional services since 2002 has proved to be one of the most exciting rail developments of the decade.
Customers are being enticed back to rail following the introduction of new trains and a vastly improved timetable.
As Virgin Trains celebrates its tenth birthday, the number of journeys made on its routes has risen by 61.5%, outstripping the national average of 40%. It is the fastest-growing railway in Europe and the figures are quite staggering: in the past 12 months 42m journeys ” 16m more than when the company began in 1997.
More frequent and faster services and a step-change in quality are attracting increasing numbers of customers to rail and the success of the new trains has been built on some of the most skilled and motivated people in the business who maintain them round the clock.
Virgin Trains” West Coast and CrossCountry franchises are major players in the upgrading and improvement of Britain”s expanding rail network and its state-of-the-art train fleets of Pendolinos and Voyagers are playing a key role in revolutionising rail travel.
In the last three years Virgin Trains” share of the London ” Manchester air/rail market has risen dramatically from 38 to 61% and the ultimate replacement of domestic air travel by rail will free more airport capacity for international travel, which is clearly vital.
The introduction of faster train services at the end of next year from Scotland direct to the centre of London will, we believe, have a significant effect on the air market. Passengers do not have to travel to an airport, and last minute boarding is the norm.
From the end of 2008 the company will be running 32% more train services on West Coast, providing ten million extra seats every year. The number of Sunday services will double to cope with booming demand and weekday frequencies will be improved from two to three trains an hour between London, Birmingham and Manchester, and hourly services will run between London and Glasgow.
The announcement last week of a further environmental initiative demonstrates just where we, and the railway industry, are going. Virgin CrossCountry began trials of a Voyager train running on a 20% biodiesel blend on Thursday, 7 June, which if successful could cut CO2 emissions by 14% and save 34,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year when introduced across the fleet.
The last ten years has seen amazing progress with the rail network. It has not all been plain sailing but real progress has been made. As we settle into a world of carbon efficiency and maximising mass transportation the railway industry, and Virgin Trains, looks forward to another decade of innovation, initiative and real growth.
Tony Collins
CEO
Virgin Trains