THE FUTURE The Railway’s place in a future digital society

It is impossible to predict in detail how the railway will look in ten years, let alone even further into the future! At a macro level, some things are known or are highly probable:

According to RIA’s research, 45% of the current national fleet have been introduced in the last 10 years and will be nearing their replacement date, allowing a potential technology shift similar in size of that seen since the move from legacy, non-computer controlled technology.

• The society the railway serves will be different: likely a diverse range of customers with different accessibility needs, but a wider understanding and appreciation of digital technology through everyday familiarity.

• Digital signalling will be present in a significant proportion of the mainline network, driven by programme upgrades and end-of-life replacements.

• 10% of the track, in the best scenario, will not be electrified, with battery and hydrogen used as an infill power source. However, at current electrification rates, this non electrified percentage is likely to be higher.

• More routes will have been added to the network, for example East West Rail and Beeching cut reversals, bringing many more communities back into direct access to the railway.

• The number of passenger and freight journeys will increase. Though the effect of COVID19 has made trend predictions less stable, population growth, major projects such as HS2, East West Rail and Midlands Rail Hub, ongoing programmes such as the Transpennine Route Upgrade, the reopening of old lines, will drive numbers up. This will be compounded by emerging trends towards lower car ownership, increasing denser living through urbanisation, and growing local and global goods consumption.

Government policy, outlined in the Long-Term Strategy for Rail and being implemented through the creation of Great British Railways, will influence the direction of development, namely: a customer first culture treating the railway as the whole system enhancement of the role of the private sector However, the details of the future railway environment are not easy to predict. 30 years ago, as mobile phones were taking off, Nokia couldn’t (or didn’t?) predict an iPhone and similarly, as digital entertainment was expanding, Blockbuster missed an opportunity to partner with Netflix. Even if these types of opportunities are missed, the UK railway network will not disappear. However, customer satisfaction, service profitability, return on investment success and UK exports potential are all dependant on wise and informed choices, which need to be made sooner rather than later.

The digital railway of the future

This section outlines how RIA – and our members – see the railway of the future, for its customers, owners, and maintainers.

We will have a digital railway.

Infrastructure

Smart sensors, cameras and other devices will monitor every aspect of the railway system in real-time – from track and train conditions, to parcel movements and passenger behaviour. This information will be pooled into the data-lakes, accessible to operators, infrastructure owners, and the supply chain.

Artificial Intelligence will use this data to constantly predict maintenance needs sending automated systems to fix issues before they become serious, significantly improving rolling stock and infrastructure availability and reliability. During the disruption it will optimise decisions on train movements, route choice and usage requirements for passengers and freight. Communication will be instantaneous. Standards will support the design of new components to drive automation and intelligent systems.

The railway system will be part of the National CyberPhysical Infrastructure, linking the entire transport network through digital twin platforms, allowing for short and long-term change scenarios to be modelled, improving service availability during special events or when significant maintenance and development is happening. This modelling is run by ever more powerful computers and algorithms. The models are holistic, and their outputs support live decision making during infrequent times of disruption – the main cause of which is no longer technical failure, but instead the result of a changing environment and weather patterns.

Design and installation of rail schemes will be fully automated – guided by highly skilled human operators. Operational costs will fall to a fraction of current.

Passengers

Passenger journeys will be interlinked. From leaving the front door, through all transport mode changes, to arriving at their destination. Optimum mode changes will be calculated and communicated for them. Information given to passengers will be accurate, tailored, and timely. Railways will be a competitive option among other travel modes, offering convenient, affordable, reliable, and connected journeys.

Through Account Based Ticketing (ABT) there will be a single digital payment for the whole journey either as part of a subscription service or as a pay-as-yougo option. The cost for this journey will be calculated across all transport modes, offering the lowest fare. Railways will be fully integrated into wider MaaS (Mobility as a Service) systems, sharing data across transport modes, and allowing the account holder to access targeted offers, upgrades, and renewals.

Freight

Rail freight will form a significant part of the logistics chain, carrying the heavy freight from ports to distribution centres and working with retailers to deliver parcels to the hearts of the cities5 .

Powered by clean power, freight trains will significantly reduce the carbon emissions of the logistics sector with freight users receiving daily reports on their goods’ carbon credentials.

Digital marshalling will allow rapid routing of individual containers through the network with predictable and reliable arrival times. Pop-up railheads will allow railways to support shorter term activities, such as construction and demolition. All will use auto-loading. The largest market entrant will be high-speed, highvalue freight. These will be supported by digital booking and tracking systems giving real-time information, and likely for small parcels, supported by automated last-mile delivery39

Timescales

• Most of the railway of the future vision is not reliant upon any technologies not yet invented – it is achievable and available now

The customer offering, revenue potential and business benefits are significant across the board.

• Impact and benefits accrual starts from the moment each digital transition is completed.

RIA therefore believe it is imperative that the UK railways begin its digital transition without any hiatus. Any delay is only costing our industry – and the treasury – unnecessarily. Unfortunately, we are already witnessing delay, hiatus and indecision which will increase costs, reduce benefits, and negatively impact our customer offering.

In our member’s words

Clearly, across all elements of our railway, there are opportunities for significant change, and most of this change will be because of, or enabled by, the continued evolution of data and digital techniques. There are, however, some challenges. We invited our members to state how they envisioned the railway fitting into society in the near future:

All the info to make an endto-end journey is available, at the moment it is either not available or presented in a neat enough format. Kind of an electronic concierge for the journey. Tickets should default to the aggregated lowest cost – it shouldn’t be our customer’s responsibility to find this.

I envision a railway where organisations work together collaboratively to maintain a strong focus on delivering for the customer. They put aside disputes and differences to come to an agreement on things such as investments and priorities. This leads to a more consistent and a compelling offer for the customer. Open data can and will play a large part in that.

The future railway is integrated and connected – part of a wider integrated transport system for people and freight. Knowing about demand and influencing operations, collecting better information and enabling better systems for managing disruption or unexpected demand will be key.

We think that we are considering passengers, but we are often not. Compare our offerings in terms of service to that of the top airlines.

We like the big name, flagship projects but often the basics are missing. Where is my train? What can I do if the train isn’t suitable? If it is cancelled? What if my travel plans change? The railway of the future will need to be better at managing these basic passenger needs.

The future railway will be supported by open data and the established underlying principles of what this needs to be. Data needs to have a level of quality, consistency and reliability that allows informed decision making to take place.

It will have to be very customer centric – this is step 1. This isn’t just about getting information to passengers. In terms of making the system available, reliable, and low cost, we need to get better at using information about how the assets perform, and move away from the traditional means of performing asset management. If we understand more about system performance and the rates as well as root causes system condition changes, we may be able to design better interventions. Less intrusive and less disruptive interventions. We need to reduce cost and provide better value for money. Reducing cost to encourage modal shift onto a greener form of transport.

The railway of the future will 100% be based upon data and digital techniques, and the quality of the data and its architecture will underpin what we can achieve. The whole industry needs to come together to work out a vision for the architecture of rail data in the future. Then when we are tweaking existing systems, we can keep in mind moving towards that architecture. There is plenty of common data architecture already out there to enable fast and scalable rollout – just look at what, e.g., Amazon or Netflix can achieve.