The executive now departing from platform one…

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Marc Johnson reports on Phil Hufton’s valedictory address to the Rail Exec Club in London.

Speaking to a packed room of rail industry professionals last month, London Underground’s chief operating officer, Phil Hufton, outlined the raft of changes taking place across the capital’s Underground network. Just a few days later, Hufton announced his departure to become Network Rail’s new managing director. Now London Underground must find someone else to drive his proposals forward.

In the last two months several big changes have occurred on the 151-year-old system. Contactless payment has arrived, marking another step toward a paperless railway, click and collect shopping is now available at a number of stations and the start of 24-hour Tube services has been confirmed.

During his speech at the Rail Exec Club on 9 September, Hufton spoke frankly about his difficult relationship with the unions and what he described as ‘the biggest change programme in the whole history of London Underground’.

In what shape is Hufton leaving London Underground? Boris Johnson has promised Londoners that by the end of 2015 Tube reliability will have improved by 30 per cent. Hufton felt confident that he and his team would in fact deliver 40 per cent. He also said 2013 was the first year where London Underground’s operating costs had been less than its revenue. All of this is being done at the same time as London Underground looks to close all 270 ticket offices across the network before the General Election in May next year.

‘We need to change our organisational mindset, and I’m now leading the biggest change programme in the whole history of London Underground,’ said Hufton, addressing railway staff under the arches of Vinopolis’ Victorian railway viaduct.’

NTfL Exterior Badge Looking Up_021014 [online]

Very good people

‘When you think about people [where] their fathers, their forefathers have all worked in an organisation like ours, people get into a mindset where there is only one way of doing things and that’s the Underground way. It doesn’t make them bad people, they’re very good people. There are some great people in the rail industry, but when you get into an organisation [and] you’ve been there a long, long time, people tend to behave in certain ways. For me, changing that mindset is  a challenge.’

Hufton argued that with less than three per cent of customers buying tickets from the ticket office and some selling less than 10 tickets an hour, trying to justify keeping ticket offices open for passengers didn’t make sense.

He added, ‘As part of this transformation, bringing people out from behind a piece of glass and bringing them onto the station where they can actually help our customers to get around the network, to help them buy the best possible ticket, to help them with their journeys makes sense.’

However, London Underground doesn’t just plan to move ticket office staff out onto the platform. Hufton said that he is providing 50,000 training days for station staff and that in the future staff would be armed with smart phones and tablets, allowing them to convey live service information to passengers.

‘We’ve got to develop our people in a different way. Having well trained and equipped staff, people that are capable of helping our customers around the network.’

New technology

The challenge that looms for London Underground’s new chief operating officer is of a growing population which is filling new services faster than they can be added.

Speaking after his presentation in a quiet corner of Vinopolis, Hufton said, ‘Demand is outstripping capacity… The expectation is that London will grow by the size of Birmingham by 2030.

‘What we recognise is that we need to be able to run a service that is greater than the 30-34 trains an hour on Victoria.’

Automation is one way in which service frequency could be increased but it remains a controversial topic.

New Tube for London designed by PriestmanGoode. from PriestmanGoode. on Vimeo.

Transport for London (TfL) has enlisted PriestmanGoode, the design house behind the Class 390 Pendolino, to produce a concept showing what the Tube’s new driverless trains could look like.

London Underground has shortlisted Alstom, Siemens, Hitachi, CAF and Bombardier to build the new deep-level Tube trains. A formal Invitation to Tender worth between £1 billion and £2.5 billion is expected to be issued in early 2015 for 250 new trains for the Bakerloo, Central, Piccadilly and Waterloo & City lines, with the Piccadilly line to benefit from the first new vehicle in 2022.

London Underground has indicated that the new trains would be built with a driver’s cab which could eventually be removed. Because of the safety risk of having unmanned vehicles in the Deep Tube network, the new vehicles would have a ‘train operator’ onboard but Hufton said he had committed to ensuring there would be opportunities for all current drivers to continue driving London Underground trains.

As a farewell, the speech was controversial but reassuring. The message from Hufton was about the need to embrace new technology and working practices in order to meet the changing expectations of passengers.

Hufton’s debut at Milton Keynes will no doubt be watched closely by friend and foe alike.

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