Action Stations – Mike Goggin Interview

Network Rail is paying closer attention to stations, with the recent appointment of Mike Goggin as its first director with lead responsibility in this area.

James Dark
03 February 2011
"Stations evoke emotional responses. They are a fundamental part of the journey experiences - the industry shop window" Mike Goggin
An artist impression of the new concourse for London Bridge station
An artist impression of the new concourse for London Bridge station

 

For years, stations have had a reputation as the Cinderellas of the rail network, most recently because they have been perceived as having a low priority on Network Rail’s agenda. Train operators have complained that the company has been a poor landlord, distant and slow to respond to requests for improvements. However, last year Network Rail sent a powerful signal that a change of direction could be imminent with the creation of a new role - director of stations and customer service.

The man appointed to the new position, Mike Goggin, is not the sort to have accepted the job if it had been a role without influence or as he puts it, the chance to “get my hands dirty and make a difference”. His varied background has given him an excellent pedigree for the job, with a 15-year career seeing him rise progressively from management trainee at British Rail to regional affairs manager at Merseyrail, general manager of Network Rail’s Kent region, and latterly a senior consultant at Steer Davies Gleave, where he set up the company’s US office and led its North American operations.


Mike Goggin will give the keynote speech at The 10th Annual UK & European Rail Stations Conference, which will be held in London on March 1. See www.RailStations.net for details


Having spent five years in consultancy essentially advising clients, he is looking forward to being in a position to lead the agenda in an area of the transport industry which he believes plays a pivotal role in passengers’ and communities’ perceptions of the railway in the broadest sense, and provokes strong opinions. “Stations evoke emotional responses in most people because they are a fundamental part of the journey experience - the industry’s shop window,” Goggin says. “They are also at the heart of many towns and cities, a key part of the nation’s infrastructure and they have an architectural form that will create debate.”

The creation of Goggin’s role was influenced by Network Rail’s acknowledgement of the need for strong leadership in order to improve both the condition of and service offered at stations. Part of this job is to provide greater assistance to train operators who lease all stations from Network Rail bar 18 major properties, including the main London terminals, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly. “There was recognition that Network Rail needed to provide greater clarity in the organisation and in the industry about our approach to stations,” Goggin says. “So my role is a bit of a catalyst, a bit of a lightning rod on a bad day.”

Goggin’s agenda for the current five-year planning period (CP4) to 2014 ranges from huge improvement schemes at major stations such as the flagship Birmingham New Street project, to large upgrades at significant regional stations, to working with operators to improve passengers’ satisfaction with stations throughout the country. It adds up to a £3.2bn spend. On top of that he is developing a case for further investment when CP4 ends, and seeking to ensure that Network Rail’s major stations contribute to reducing the industry’s subsidy requirement through developing retail income. In the next few months Network Rail will be putting an extra 75,000 sq ft of retail space into its major stations.

“My job is to pull it all together and make sure it sings to the same tune so we get financial reward and improvements to passenger satisfaction, deliver better service to our train operator customers and improve the value stations add to our stakeholders,” he says.

A sign of the new emphasis Network Rail is now placing on stations is that in the next two months, Goggin will be commissioning research to demonstrate his belief in the overall value stations add to UK PLC. That research will go beyond the contribution stations can make to the rail industry’s finances and reputation. For example, Goggin points out that the business case for the £600m Birmingham New Street redevelopment is based to a considerable extent on the impact it will have on the city in terms of improving economic productivity and making the station a more integral and accessible feature of the city centre. The same applies to the Shard of Glass development at London Bridge which will place thousands of office workers right on top of the station, and to many other station schemes across the network as well.

“I think we have opportunity for stations to play a greater role in local economies,” he says. “It could be in a more productive workforce as with the Shard of Glass, and also we can do things to mark stations as regional gateways in major cities to stimulate growth and regeneration.”

The same holds true for significant stations in large towns and secondary city stations - for example Crewe, Preston and Manchester Victoria, although this will often present additional challenges when seeking to build redevelopment cases with a positive financial return. “The way some stations are used has changed dramatically over time and the industry has got its adapt its approach to them so that in future operators and Network Rail work out what the role of those stations is and how to manage them appropriately,” he says. In some instances, relatively straightforward station redevelopment projects will suffice, for others a fundamental review of service provision will be required.

At medium sized and smaller stations, however, Goggin admits that there is a real funding challenge in the current economic circumstances, and that the minimum station standards suggested in the 2009 report by Stations Champions, Chris Green and Sir Peter Hall, can not be delivered at present. “In this environment it is hard to see how to apply it in a sensible straightforward manner,” he says. “If we were to mandate minimum standards across the network it could be prohibitively expensive at this stage.”

However, that is not to say that significant improvements will not be targeted. On top of the works to station facilities carried out with funding from the £165m National Stations Improvement Plan and the ongoing Access for All programme, he believes that simple intuitive planning can deliver gains across much of the network. Part of that is borne from experience in North America working with city governments. “In one city in California, one of the things that hampered use of public transport was that you can do what you like to improve the service frequency, but if you don’t have kerbs on the roads so people can walk to the bus or tram stop you are missing a trick,” he recalls. “Basic building blocks need to be in place and you need to make sure you are creating awareness so that people know the basic infrastructure is there to get to station.”

In the UK there may not be such a glaring example of poor provision of facilities for public transport users, but he insists there is plenty to be working on. “If you take the passengers’ perspective and walk through their experience from their home to their destination you will find that all too often we trip ourselves up,” Goggin says. “There are simple things which Network Rail as landlord and franchisees as station operators can do - not expensive things, but keeping design and information simple and clear.”

Some pointers as to the issues that need to be addressed in the area of station design and layout will be set out in Network Rail’s stations plan - the Network RUS (stations) – due to be published this spring. The RUS is examining pedestrian congestion across all types of station from the largest to the smallest. It identifies those stations where crowding is an issue and predicts which stations will become congested in the short medium and long term if no intervention is made. Although it does not recommend specific interventions at individual locations, the RUS offers a toolkit of potential generic interventions to be used as appropriate. In addition, the RUS will outline projects such as improvements to car parking, cycle storage and integration with local bus services.

The analysis will feed into the case the industry makes for future investment and enable operators and Network Rail to work up schemes so that they are ready to go should funding be made available.

A guide to station planning design that Network Rail will publish shortly will support its projects managers in thinking through how stations should be developed to meet the needs of passengers, funders and other interested parties.

Traditionally, many of these station works have been seen as operators’ rather than Network Rail’s responsibility to promote. However, Goggin says that, in fact, Network Rail now has a different perspective.

“I wouldn’t have said it was an automatic responsibility for a train operator,” he says. “We certainly have our role to play. We have responsibility as a landlord. Operators are there to maintain stations during the life of their franchises and we want to support them to do that so they can offer a quality service to passengers and make a financial return while they have their franchises. But we also have a longer term aim to develop and promote the network.”

The increasing importance Network Rail is placing on this role is evident in a letter Goggin’s boss, customer services director Robin Gisby, sent to the managing director of every train operator just over a year ago. It asked how Network Rail could support operators in improving passenger satisfaction and suggested ways Network Rail could provide support and value. Stations as a key ‘touchpoint’ for passengers are seen as one of the major areas in which Network Rail and operators can co-operate to improve perceptions of rail travel.

While there may be a wind of change starting to blow through Network Rail’s approach to station management and development, it may be too late for the company to make a case for it to retain ultimate responsibility for the nation’s entire stations’ portfolio. Away from Network Rail’s major stations, train operators have campaigned vigorously to take responsibility for many aspects of station management currently allocated to Network Rail, arguing that this would enable small and medium sized investments to be carried out more cheaply and effectively. Goggin counters that in many instances this may not be practical - for example, in the case of the large number of stations that have complex historic structures. Retaining at Network Rail the engineering capability and expertise to deal with the risks and issues inherent in maintaining and improving these stations would give economies of scale and better results, he argues. But, perhaps surprisingly, he is not averse to a degree of change.

“There are many different types of station and one solution will not fit all,” he says.

“In some places the assets are more simple and it may be that a local deliverer can reap some reward in looking after them. We are participating through the McNulty Review and franchising review in finding solutions that will suit particular stations and the government’s aspirations.”

Mike Goggin will give the keynote speech at The 10th Annual UK & European Rail Stations Conference, which will be held in London on March 1. See www.RailStations.net for details

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