I think the rail industry is obsessed with the wrong metrics

 

A recent BBC article asked whether public ownership is making trains run on time. 


BBC News: Publicly owned rail is popular. But is it making the trains run on time?

But as someone who has spent years working on digital technology, data and performance improvement across the railway, I think we're having the wrong conversation. Too often we reduce the complexity of railway performance to a handful of numbers: cancellations, punctuality and reliability.

The problem is those metrics tell us what happened. They rarely tell us why.

When I see operator cancellation data, my first question isn't "How many?"

It's "What caused them?"

  • Was it rolling stock?
  • Infrastructure?
  • Signalling?
  • Power supply?
  • Trespass?
  • Adverse weather?

Or a conscious operational decision to protect the wider timetable?

Yet we frequently use cancellation statistics as a proxy for performance without understanding the underlying causes.

From a digital perspective, that should make all of us uncomfortable. Because we now have access to more operational data than at any point in railway history. We can connect asset data, train telemetry, infrastructure monitoring, operational systems and customer information platforms.

  • We can identify patterns.
  • We can understand root causes.
  • We can predict failures.
  • We can measure passenger impact.

And still the public debate often focuses on a single cancellation percentage.

Here's another challenge for the industry...

Not all cancellations are failures. I know that won't be a popular opinion.

Sometimes a part cancellation is exactly the right decision. Sometimes terminating a service short, reforming a train, or changing a plan in real time prevents a local problem becoming a network-wide issue.

The statistic gets worse. 

Or

The passenger outcome improves.

Which one matters more? Because if a train is cancelled, I want to know:

  • How quickly was the service recovered?
  • How many passengers were impacted?
  • Were they informed in real time?
  • Were alternatives provided?
  • What was the actual delay to their journey?
  • Was the root cause addressed?

That's where digital capabilities should be transforming the conversation.

In my view, the future of railway performance isn't measuring whether trains ran exactly to the published timetable. It's understanding resilience, recovery and passenger outcomes.

So I'll ask a deliberately provocative question:

Are we managing the railway to improve passenger experience, or are we managing the railway to improve industry scorecards?

And perhaps an even more uncomfortable one:

Would the industry make different decisions during disruption if passenger delay and quality of communication mattered more than cancellation statistics?

I'd be interested to hear views from across operations, infrastructure, rolling stock, control and customer information teams.

What are we still measuring because we've always measured it?

And what should a truly digital railway be measuring instead?

#Railway #DigitalRailway #RailData #DigitalTransformation #RailTech #Performance #Operations #CustomerExperience #Transport #FutureOfRail

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