In conversation with Lord Hendy, Chair, Network Rail

[Music] I'd like to welcome to the stage all pet Hy who's coming even from the wrong side of the stage take a seat I'm here where do you want where you come sit sit maybe we should start by asking how your journey was this morning uh so there's a fatality at clap and Junction this morning which is a bit sad so I came on a district line which is a bit crowded and very slow but there you go here said 9:40 and it's not bad you have done brilliantly I decided to cycle this morning for those of you who know me well I'm a big cyclist and uh and that's always a really good way to travel around London um uh Peter is chair of neetwork rail uh who were one of our most important Partners at the Catapult um he's also chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation and was previously Commissioner of Transport for London uh he is um a an incredible leader has extensive experience within both the transport industry and the world of placemaking and public infrastructure and it's a real pleasure to have you today so thank you for coming thank you it's very nice of you um I wanted to ask you a few questions I know we've not got loads of time but how do you see the future of UK rail evolving over the coming decade and how is technology and Innovation sh shaping that future so um we the British invented the railway next year is the 200th anniversary of the first public passenger Railway in the world and uh incidentally we're going to celebrate it and I hope some of you will uh join that celebration um and the railway uh I I go around talking about what the railway is for not how it works particularly but what the railway is for is connectivity and what connectivity drives is economic growth jobs housing social cohes and sustainability um and actually the railway has been extraordinarily adaptable at doing that ever since it was invented it's survived two world wars uh it survived the uh the growth of Mass car ownership uh it survived all sorts of translations of um shifting populations around the countries and particularly into the cities so the first thing to say is I've got no no no fear that the railway is not uh is not useful in the next uh three or for decades of the 21st century and indeed that's evidenced by the fact that politicians uh are are vying with each other to promise unbelievable amounts of money some of them are unbelievable actually to to invest in the railway to get better connectivity and and and you won't find a political party who doesn't want to invest in the railway um uh in this or any other elections so so so I think the railway's got a secure future what we do need to do is is to fix how it works cuz it works very badly and um this uh the uh the story of Royal reform since the timetable crisis of May 2018 which seems and is a long time ago uh is one of uh fearful delay really Keith Williams wrot uh an excellent um uh report about how the railway should be organized based on what the customers said they wanted not on how organizational Theory might work work for a big National Industry but the best way of doing it for the customers um that was uh he was ready before covid it was published after covid the government submitted a dra uh has uh published a draft bill but actually it won't get into parliament in this uh in this election and we do need to fix how the railway works because it's not very good and and and my best comparison of all is I ran Transport for London for 9 and a half years that's why my hair is white and I drink quite a lot um but but actually the great thing about tfl was it it actually everything was my fault if it went wrong it wasn't the mayor's fault we couldn't have an argument between people with different contracts if the northern line didn't work it was our fault and we had to fix it and the railway is not like that in fact uh Andrew Hayes my brilliant chief executive and I frequently observed that actually over 30 years the culture of the Railway is that there's always somebody else to blame there's always somebody else's fault you you know and and actually um it's really not good enough and it's not good enough for performance s so will it evolve to meet the changing demands of the economy and Society yes it will how it's organized needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed rapidly and and and and we're very committed to doing that because in the end you want somebody who takes account of the contribution that the railway should make to the British economy and society and is responsible for the perform forance of it on a on a day-to-day basis who owns bits of it is actually secondary um as it was at tfl actually but that's really important so the things that um second part of your question uh which hopefully I know what you asked technology so so look um if you look at it from a customer angle the the offer of information fairs and ticketing is woeful and it's wful in comparison to again to tfl people hate me on the railway if I keep comp comparing with tfl the National Railway system is more complicated buying a ticket from London to Edinburgh isn't the same as going from finy Park to King's cross on the Picadilly line but the technology that would enable you to know both the best way to go what's going on on the railway on a minute by minute basis which fairs to buy what what's the best ticket for your journey and to uh and to travel seamlessly with a credit card is all there that's the way we do every normal transaction except we've got on the railway uh a lot of people including my own family who don't trust the fair system who want to interact with a human to buy something you don't ask for that in sabd do you in fact you go on the web and buy everything but you can't you don't do that on the railway and this ludicrous sister situation where you've got 16 fairs to London from London from gway airport it it just puts people off so there's an obvious role for technology and innovation in customer service and realtime customer service um two other things I'd say well three other things there's a role for Technology and Safety sadly we killed three members of our own staff at margam uh in South Wales uh two or three summers ago um they were working on the on on the line it's a long story and I won't tell you all of it but they were protect ected by a method that the Stevensons would have recognized in the 1840s or rather they weren't protected and they died and we are using technology to change that system people working on the track is inevitable people working on a live Railway isn't but technology for safety is an obvious uh use of Technology um the third aspect is telecoms I take isue now um quite strongly with uh transport planners who use the value of time so I am going to Scotland which is why I'm on first thing in the morning for a fireside chat which will be much better at 4:00 in the afternoon um actually I'm not really bothered how long it takes me because I've got about six days work in my bag and actually I can work quite happily on a training it's a really comfortable thing to do the the thing that doesn't work too well is voice technology and sometimes internet connections and that's such an obvious thing to do in the modern world um and and and actually why would wouldn't you do and in fact we've got some plans to do just that using the railway routes uh for uh private sector investment to give much better connectivity for us to run the railway and also for the customers to use as they go and then lastly but very very importantly climate change um we have 20year events now in terms of structure and uh Earthworks failures happening twice a week anybody here who doesn't believe in climate change is kidding themselves our Victorian Railway is falling to pieces under the weight of uh of the wetest winter ever the wetest February ever extraordinar high temperatures and our methodology of of repairing it is pretty good civil engineering is good worldwide our technology of monitoring it is lousy and we've got to get better at that and the fact that we have a yellow train that goes around the network measuring the measuring the infrastructure and it does it once every four weeks is crazy when there trains every 3 minutes and they could all measure the infrastructure and they could measure the uh the the the uh minute change over time and similarly with vegetation and and uh and things actually the other side of our fences all 177,000 mies of them so there are just four areas where technology and Innovation could make a real difference yeah and I think that's really interesting for us to hear because the work that we're doing uh with our partners and with the small business that we're supporting definitely is focusing on the climate change issues and the safety Tech issues in particular I think that's really interesting to hear I just want to bring us to London for a minute and um how do you see the future of London when it comes to the public infrastructure challenges of the 21st century um how do you see London maybe shaping the rest of the UK so the politics of London has become very difficult since well not not not connected to but since since I left tfl in 2015 which is sadly nearly 10 years ago and and the uh the the the the pressure is for better connectivity in the Midlands and the north of England and it's entirely understandable isn't it um because uh people people in those places the PO industrial ER era has not been kind to a lot of towns and cities in Northern England I I'm I'm rather sad about the proposition that somehow you have to do London out of investment in order to fund in investment in the rest of the country and and I suspect whoever the next government are they're going to have to balance their order to invest strongly in the in the in the rest of England Wales and Scotland with the fact that London is such a powerful economic generator and creates wealth now that I can't see anything wrong with creating wealth in London and spending it in the rest of the country but I can see something a bit odd about not wanting to create wealth in London and and connectivity applies in London just as it applies everywhere else you see with the Elizabeth line a third of the journeys are new Journeys that's undoubtedly contributing to to the a better economy in London isn't it it must be yeah um it's either work economy probably some of it or or the Leisure and uh or the Leisure economy but it it's creating uh wealth of some sort so I I don't know how you solve that because the next government is undoubtedly going to be faced with a very difficult economic problem whoever they are but equally it is interesting I see you know Andrew and are trying to they trying to make sense of people who want to you know the there have been so many rail plans for the north I can't remember what they all called now the integrated rail plan for the north was was you remember that argument it was the big argument was not whether you did it it was an argument about whether you should invest 97 billion or 110 billion or something think now it's implausible to invest sums like that over less than 15 or 20 years the industry can't do it there isn't the capacity to do it and if you put it all into the existing Railway you'd have to stop running it for about 15 years so you need a plan to to do to to spend that money wisely um and and in in that 10 to 15 20 year time Horizon there will need to be money invested in London's connectivity if only keep the thing running you know it's a bit ironic isn't it actually everybody in northern England complained about Pacers but actually the oldest trains in Britain are the baker L line trains which were first running before I joined London transport 49 years ago that it feels like that sometimes on bakerly l oh though they are very reliable actually they are but they w g just as a final question thinking about the worlds of transport and plac making what does a truly connected place mean to you well so I was my other job is is um at least for now is uh running the uh Legacy Corporation at the Olympic Park and uh I was there yesterday morning actually I it it lifts my spirits every time I go uh we were Lynn who's the chief executive and I were looking around the new VNA Storehouse which is everything the VNA own that isn't in the museum which will be in part of what was the prestent TV center for the uh Olympic andar Olympic Games on the Olympic Park um and this place uh they reckon the visitor dwell time and it's going to be 60 to 90 minutes I said to Tim reiver the VNA you're kidding mate the people are going to be in here all day it's extraordinary place um would that have been there without the connectivity of Stratford uh and and Stratford International absolutely not what the the foundation of that place as it now stands is connectivity driven by driven by the Je Le line driven by the uh uh highspeed line at statford International driven by the DLR and now by uh and now by um by the Elizabeth line so and and I know it's a very particular example and if you if you come from outside London you say oh yeah well London got all that as well but the Olympic Games weren't ever going to be in Bolton or or chesterly Street or or in Taunton they were going to be in London and the connectivity that was put in to deliver them has also delivered a a wonderful boost in in in London's economy and the viscer economy not only for London but but the country and thousands of houses so actually if we can do that that there's an issue I think about the order in which you do it it would be nice to think that you could do deliver the connectivity first and then build the houses and get the jobs afterwards but sometimes it's the other way around and I'm not sure you can go on debating that and there's no time left to do it but um but places that aren't connected don't get housing don't get jobs and don't contribute to our economy in the 21st century so they're not much use and then if you if you if you know urban renewal uh and and we are talking about cities really um urban renewal is is the way in which you make those places nice to live nice to work and nice to be around and that's a beautiful way to finish our conversation thank you very much for joining us this morning brilliant thank you there you go Che have a good [Applause] journey