Project C2 - Delivery of User Needs

INVESTIGATORS: Professor Mike McDonald, Professor John Preston (University of Southampton)Professor Chris Nash (University of Leeds)
RESEARCHER(S): Dr M. Beecroft, Dr J. Crockett, Dr G. Wall (University of Southampton)Dr A. Fowkes, Prof M. Wardman, Dr G. Whelan, Dr A. Whiteing (University of Leeds)

Industrial Collaborators: GNER, Virgin Trains, ATOC, SRA, Greater Manchester PTE

Original objectives:

• 1. To understand access to, and egress from, the rail system by users and the development of novel approaches
• 2. To develop a fundamental understanding of how new technologies, particularly those related to location and communication/tracking and tracing can be best used to deliver user needs to make rail more attractive/accessible to existing and potential users
• 3. To relate user needs and operating practices to the development of infrastructure priorities to best enhance user satisfaction for both passenger and goods movement.

Revised objectives: The original objectives have been interpreted as consisting of two main aims:

• 1. To understand passenger and freight rail user needs and how technologies can help deliver these needs;
• 2. To test a range of suitable delivery mechanisms for UK railways.

Project summary at time of proposal: This project is envisaged as consisting of four tasks.

• Task 1 is a Review of User Needs and Delivery Mechanisms which brings together the substantial existing literature and information on user needs in the UK and overseas (where appropriate), an appreciation of the range of novel and innovative ways of supporting whole journey delivery and the opportunities for new technology. User needs will encompass those of both existing and potential users and will consider trends and forecasts. The new technologies will relate largely to location and communications technologies for a range of services for passengers and goods. An example might be integrated booking and payment for seats, parking and taxi services.
• Task 2 will Identify Suitable Delivery Mechanisms for UK Railways. It will build on the output of Task 1 to develop a set of delivery mechanisms for user needs which may be suitable for current or future applications in the UK. These will be based on knowledge of: how individuals, groups or other users make choices; factors influencing demand for rail; access/egress and interchange issues; user perception factors; and social and technological changes.
• Task 3 is the Development of Application Trials, in which a range of trials will be identified to take forward applications. Such applications will include enhanced interchange processes and new concepts of whole journey planning and execution. New technologies will be involved in some or all of the proposed trial applications and consideration of the evolving context of travel by other modes will be important. Some proposals will clearly relate the user needs to alternative priorities to infrastructure development.
• Task 4 would involve Trial Applications. Potential trials will be prioritised and further focused with involvement from industry. A short list will be identified to be taken forward and the evaluation processes agreed to enable fundamental understandings to be developed.

Summary of outcomes:

• Task 1 Review of User Needs and Delivery Mechanisms: The substantial existing literature and information on user needs has been brought together (Crockett et al., 2005). For the passenger industry 13 attributes have been assessed. These are: accessibility and inclusion; comfort; convenience; cost; customer service; effort; flexibility; information; psychological and attitudinal factors; reliability; safety; security; and time. Analysis of the National Passenger Survey gave added insights into user needs (Watts, 2006). Similarly, 13 somewhat different attributes have been assessed for the freight industry. These include: cost; door to door transit time; reliability; security; safety; accessibility; flexibility; intermodality; interoperability; modal choice biases; customer service; information; and environmental performance. Empirical evidence is dominated by information on the importance of cost and time in passenger markets. Such hard factors dominate the Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook, but there is also important evidence on softer factors such as comfort, information and reliability. Empirical evidence for the freight market is more limited and there might even be a case for developing a Freight Demand Forecasting Handbook. A series of delivery mechanisms have been identified for both the passenger and freight markets. For the passenger market 20 mechanisms were identified and briefly reviewed. These were: through ticketing; smart card technology; fine grain pricing; automatic ticket machines; standardised timetabling; real time information; public transport information data terminals; portable data terminals for staff; wireless technology; demand responsive transport; provision for cars; provision for bicycles; train-tram services; standardisation of station facilities; combined ticket office and retail facility; security provision; promotion of rail services; direct marketing; on-line trip planning and monitoring; and community rail partnerships. For the freight market 14 mechanisms were identified and briefly reviewed. These were: freight distribution centres; intermodal systems for smaller consignments; access to capacity; meeting loading gauge constraints; traction innovation; lower cost local trip operation; well specified freight wagons; customer service delivery centres; one stop marketing systems; freight reservations systems; consignment tracking in real time; contingency planning and recovery mechanisms; temperature control; and grant aid mechanisms.For the passenger market, the needs of users were differentiated by commuter, business and leisure travel. For freight, user needs were differentiated by bulk and by unit load.
  
  
• Task 2: Identification of Suitable Delivery Mechanisms: An assessment of user needs identified information as being a key user need which could benefit from several of the delivery mechanisms identified (13 out of 20 of the passenger delivery mechanisms and 6 out of 14 of the freight delivery mechanisms – if customer service is included with information).
  
  
• Task 3: Development of Application Trials: Rapid review case studies have been undertaken of those passenger rail delivery mechanisms where information was identified as the primary need being met (Wall and Preston, 2006). For passenger services, a distinction can be made between niche applications and mass market applications.
  
  Niche market applications include:1. Public Transport Information Data Terminals and Assistants such as GNER’s customer information points, MIRACLES (Winchester) and VIVALDI (Bristol); 2. Portable Data Terminals for Staff such as the terminals used by National Express (Avantix) and London Underground Limited (PORTRAIT); 3. Direct Marketing. An example is InfoMotion (Hampshire County Council); 4. Fares promotions such as South West Trains/ Virgin Cross Country’s megatrain.com; 5. Wireless technology such as the Icomera system adopted by GNER.
  
  Mass market applications include: 1. Automatic Ticket Machines (ATMs). Examples include machines provided by South Eastern Trains (Scheidt and Bachmann), South West Trains (Avantix) and Virgin Trains (Fast Ticket); 2. Real-Time Information (RTI). Examples include Docklands Light Rail (Kizoom), South West Trains (Amey Datel), Transport Direct, National Rail Enquiries; 3. On line trip planning and monitoring. Examples include www.nationalrail.co.uk, www.thetrainline.com and www.raileurope.com, as well as Transport for London’s Journey Planner; 4. Smartcards such as the Oyster card developed by Transport for London. Subsequent work has also identified the scope for e-ticketing (such as the PRINT@HOME trials) and mobile phone based M-tickets (Deutche Bahn, National Express Coaches, Eurostar).
  
  It is acknowledged that some of these mechanisms were not designated as primarily meeting information needs (e.g. Smart Cards, Wireless Technology, on line ticketing such as megatrain.com), although they can be important sources of management information and can be combined with direct marketing and/or information provision.
  
  For freight, the standpoint at the start of the research was that the rail industry could learn a lot from the road freight industry, where substantially more progress had already been made in harnessing modern information systems for the benefit of both operators and users. Some developments in the rail industry were starting to emerge, including: 1. Single points of contact as provided by Customer Service Delivery Centres; 2. One stop marketing systems, such as provided by www.railfreightonline.co.uk; 3. Consignment tracking in real time, as provided by Isotrak; 4. Freight reservation systems, as provided by the major railfreight operators EWS and Freightliner, the latter under the banner of Logico (www.logicotransport.co.uk).
  
  Over the life of the project, however, none of these has progressed to the stage whereby information could be obtained to undertake meaningful evaluation. Indeed, none of the first three have even survived. Consignment tracking on rail did not progress beyond the life of the Freight Multiple Unit experiment sponsored by the SRA. More recently, the abolition of the SRA has led to the demise of the railfreightonline website. Even more recently, EWS has announced the abandonment of its Customer Service Delivery Centre, which serviced all its customers from one location, in favour of a return to a more commodity based, sectoral approach to management.Despite such disappointing progress in bringing concepts to successful application, it is still felt that there is potential for information system applications aiming to improve rail freight user benefit. An alternative approach was taken, therefore, to consider research findings and developments elsewhere in Europe and to consider their potential transferability to the rather different UK rail freight environment.
  
  
• Task 4: Trial Applications: Rail Passenger Initiatives. For passenger services, two trial applications were undertaken. The first was undertaken in conjunction with GNER and examined the impact of the provision of on-board WiFi services (Wall and Preston, 2006b).
  
  Initial trials were undertaken in December 2003, with roll out to 10 Mallard trains in December 2004 and roll out to the rest of the GNER fl eet between February and June 2006. Access was given to GNER data and five surveys undertaken by Accent Marketing Research. Most of our fi ndings relate to the period when WiFi services were available in around one-third of GNER’s trains. The provision of these services did not have a detectable impact on demand, but did have a measurable impact on revenue, largely as a result of Standard class passengers migrating to First Class, where the service was provided free of charge. Revenue from the usage of WiFi services by Standard Class passengers was negligible in comparison to GNER’s total revenue. The roll out of WiFi services was forecast by market research to have an impact on overall demand. However, a feature of such research was the prevalence of non commitment bias. Respondents’ stated intentions of using WiFi services were con- siderable higher than their actual usage, by a factor of three in one survey. Hence, although there was strong evidence of the existence of a product take-off curve (with the number of passengers using Wi- Fi increasing four fold in the first half of 2006 and usage times also increasing), it remains very much a niche market. Only a minority of passengers thought that it represented value for money and hence there has been much work on alternative payment methods. Overall, our estimate is that such services can only increase patronage by one or two percentage points, at best, but can have a slightly higher impact on revenue due to passenger upgrades.
  
  The second trial was undertaken in conjunction with GNER and Virgin Trains (Wall and Preston, 2006c, d) and considered the issue of distribution channel migration. As of 2005, at the three TOCs studied between 43% and 69% of tickets were sold at booking offices, with between 18% and 53% being sold at the booking offices of other TOCs. It is estimated that this manual form of distribution can account for up to 15% of revenue. Migration to more automated services could reduce this to 5%. This cost saving is likely to exceed any revenue growth that new forms of distribution might bring. Although, we detected trends away from sales at booking offices, the rates of transfer were relatively modest (between 1 and 3 percentage points per annum), suggesting that it would be over 30 years before ticket distribution was fully automated. A detailed study of Virgin Trains Fast Ticket Machines (85 installed between 1999 and 2006) indicated that there was considerable resistance from several market segments. Indeed, a feature overall is the fragmented nature of the ticket buying market.
  
  A feature of recent trends was the growth in web-based ticket sales, accounting for between 10 and 22% of sales, and growing in one case by as much as 13 percentage points in one year. This also seems to have resulted in the use of Fast Ticket Machines for ticket collection rather than purchase and also seems to have led to strong reductions in the use of Travel Agents and more modest reductions in the use of Call Centres for ticket purchases. The overall conclusions was that the internet offered a vehicle for effecting distribution channel migration, with scope for both growing the market and reducing distribution costs. With appropriate design of web sites this could also be combined with improved information provision concerning train time/fare combinations. There is also great scope for mobile telephones to act as a delivery platform for tickets and this could be combined with real time information provision and navigation capabilities.
  
  Rail Freight Information – European Research findings and their potential for UK application. Various EU research programmes have examined the development of improved rail freight information systems. The most notable are FIRE and F-MAN. FIRE was concerned with the development of an information system relating to freight train scheduling (including wagon provision and positioning), with benefits of information provision on current status and delays. Benefits would mainly be to operators but there would be spin-off benefits to customers in terms of better information on service availability and tariffs. The F-MAN project developed various prototype systems including systems for freight wagon tracking across Europe, systems that predicted estimated arrival times on the basis of current progress along the route, and on-board sensing systems covering both the condition of the wagon and of the load.
  
  In terms of potential UK application, it is concluded that such systems would represent a significant step forward, but are far from ideally configured for the UK environment, reducing their potential benefits. In particular, the benefits relate mainly to wagon-load services, whereas UK rail freight is dominated at present by trainloads for particular customers. In addition, the systems are envisaged as part of the solution to Europe-wide rail inter-operability, whereas in the UK 99% of all rail freight is purely domestic, and moreover it is extremely rare for wagons to be moved by more than one rail freight operator. As currently configured, European systems are clearly focused on improving the very poor utilisation of rail freight assets (particularly) wagons, rather than focused on delivering benefits to users more directly.
  
  On-line freight reservation systems, as operated in the UK by both EWS and Freightliner (Logico), are also directed towards relatively ad-hoc rail freight movements, in that they basically aim to sell spare space on scheduled services (especially intermodal services). As such, they offer benefits primarily to the operators, in terms of marginal revenues and better utilisation of train space. There may well be the potential to link such systems to the load sharing and spare capacity auctioning systems already available for road freight (e.g. “Freight Traders”), but this would depend on mutually acceptable commercial terms being agreed. Optimum system configuration would also need to be determined, e.g. would the rail freight providers routinely place their spare capacity on such systems, or would such systems interrogate the rail freight operators’ systems when relevant requests are received? The need to cover container lifting between modes and road collection and delivery would be an added complexity if such systems were to be interfaced. Hence this development is regarded as some way off at present.
  
  Further work: It is intended to continue this work through an application to the European Commission’s Seventh Framework programme. For passengers, the First Call (issued late 2006) includes a work task on meeting rail customers’ expectations. The way that information technology packages may be combined in concepts such as the Informed Traveller and the Intelligent Interactive Train could be considered in such a task. Similarly, the theoretical risk of too much information (or technology) being provided (‘information (technology) overload’) could be considered. Emphasis should be placed on the concept of intelligence rather than information per se.
  
  It is hoped that issues of integrating ticket sales and information provision using mobile telephony can be further investigated in EPSRC/DTI/DfT Future Intelligent Transport Initiative, with the co-operation of the Association of Train Operating Companies.
  
  For freight, opportunities for modal shift and greater intermodality form one theme of the work already under way on the EPSRC Green Logistics programme. IT providers and load sharing system providers are contributing in kind to this programme, giving the opportunity to take forward research into the scope for harnessing such information systems to encourage greater use of rail (and hence greater sustainability), through meeting user needs more effectively.
  
  

OUTPUTS

Project Reports:

• Preston, J., Wall, G., Whiteing, A. (2006). Rail User Needs and Delivery Mechanisms: Final Report. Report RRUK/C2/06.
• Whiteing, A.E., (2006). Rail Freight Information Systems – The Potential for User Benefits in the Light of European Research. Report RRUK/C2/05.
• Wall, G., Preston, J. (2006). Channel Migration. Virgin Trains Case Study. Report RRUK/C2/04b.
• Wall, G., Preston, J. (2006). Channel Migration. GNER Case Study. Report RRUK/C2/04a.
• Wall, G., Preston, J. (2006). Wi-Fi Review and Case Study. Report RRUK/C2/03.
• Wall, G., Preston, J. (2006). Passenger Rapid Review Case Studies. Report RRUK/C2/02b.
• Crockett, J., Beecroft, M., McDonald, M., Whiteing, T., Wardman, M., Nash, C., Fowkes, T., Whelan, G. (2004). Rail User Needs and Delivery Mechanisms. Report RRUK/C2/02.

Publications:

• Preston, J., Wall, G. (2007). Meeting Rail Passenger User Needs: The Role of Information Technologies. Accepted for Presentation at the World Conference on Transport research, Berkeley, June, 2007.
• Crockett, J., Hounsell, N.B. (2005). Role of the Travel Factor Convenience in Rail Travel and a Framework for its Assessment. Transport Reviews, 25(5), 535-555.

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