Securing a Safe Return to Rail
Higher levels of passengers and freight means an even greater motivation to maintain rail’s safety credentials
Improvements in leisure passenger numbers post-Covid-19 might suggest commuters are less concerned about safety, but the continued lack of commuting and business passengers means that there are still financial pressures on rail. It can be tempting to think that this means rail can relax its focus on passenger safety, and concentrate solely on increasing revenue. But this must not happen; rail must continue to maintain its strong safety record.
Passenger numbers have been affected significantly by the pandemic and lockdowns. From healthy numbers before the pandemic, the introduction of the first lockdown caused a precipitous drop in numbers, and many financial pressures, operational headaches, and safety challenges for the railway. As a vital service for the whole country and economy, it was essential that rail kept operating in some form, and the industry did well to work out how to adapt while maintaining the safety of both employees and passengers. A sense of the size and speed of this challenge is that at the beginning of January 2022 passenger numbers were low but by March 2022 had increased 160% on the previous year.
Since the pandemic restrictions ended, passenger numbers have steadily increased but are not yet at pre-pandemic levels. This is a significant business challenge, especially since numbers on business and commuter travel are still much reduced compared to leisure passengers.
A knee-jerk reaction to the resulting financial pressures could be to relax the focus on safety. This would be understandable given that rail already has a strong safety record as the safest form of long-distance transport, suggesting that there’s margin to place focus elsewhere, but doing so would be a mistake. There are several reasons for this.
The first is that safety still matters to passengers. ‘Tempting passengers back’ after the pandemic wasn’t a joke phrase; it reflected the reality that many potential passengers were actively concerned about the safety of travelling post-pandemic. An explicit or implicit message that ‘we used to focus on safety but now we don’t bother quite so much’, or even worse, an actual accident, is not going to reassure potential passengers and tempt them back to rail.
The second reason is that even though some increased safety risks from members of the public emerged during the pandemic, longstanding safety risks continued. These include asset integrity, workforce trackside safety, and signals passed at danger. These still need to be dealt with both in their own right, and for rail to maintain and extend its reputation as the safest form of long-distance transport. Dealing with them will help improve the efficiency of the network overall, and hence reduce costs.
Another reason is that rail’s reputation for safety, alongside its excellent sustainability credentials, could also be important information to persuade new passengers to travel by rail, particularly in these increasingly eco-conscious times.
The final reason is that passenger rail is a partly-subsidised industry, receiving considerable funding from government. We should not compromise any part of that government support by relaxing the focus on passenger safety.
Whatever the reasons for the focus on safety, it must be maintained and even made more effective. As the industry’s body dedicated to safety, standards and research, we are committed to making a positive difference in rail and playing a leading role in supporting the sector’s safety strategy, Leading Health and Safety on Britain’s Railway (LHSBR). Developed by leaders across a range of rail sectors and the industry-wide safety groups, LHSBR focuses on tackling safety risks which need a collaborative approach.
Working alongside the LHSBR, the informative Annual Health and Safety Report (AHSR) unpacks the risks across the rail network to provide timely insights into health and safety performance data, and the work that’s under way to avert them.
The rail industry now has a golden opportunity to modernise, adapt and improve its service for passenger and freight customers, while retaining focus on the safety and health of everyone involved. For our part at RSSB, we will continue to help the rail industry become healthier, more efficient and safer. Our members and funders can always count on us for support in helping bring that to life, with innovative new tools, shared expertise, standards and data analysis.
Learn about how LHSBR and AHSR can assist your organisation and the wider rail sector maintain and improve safety.
Find out about LHSBR
Read this year’s AHSR
