Andy Milne talks to Adrian Lyons
13 Nov 2006
Adrian Lyons has an infectious enthusiasm, undiminished by over five years leading the Railway Forum.
The one time career army officer, Major General and Ministry of Defence strategic planner and logistician, faced this new career with aplomb and boldness that dates back way beyond Agincourt. The consummate gentleman Lyons is scrupulously polite about what he found.
The railway industry was recovering from Hatfield and labouring under hundreds of temporary speed restrictions TSRs. The government of the day was increasingly alarmed by what it saw as Railtrack’s mismanagement of the railway network.
How did the railway compare with the services?
‘The services had had the revolution, which the railway should have had, about ten years earlier. It had been pretty bloody actually. We were coming into this era where we were requiring more and more complex equipment with a lot of software in it. You couldn’t just hit it with a hammer anymore and make it work.
It was clear unless you had proper process management and real understanding of reliability and availability of items, they weren’t going to work any longer. There was this image of the heroic front-end engineer who had worked through the night to get a tank out of a ditch and going again. Although that job was still there, there was a much more technical job coming in behind and we had to re-organise for it. I don’t think that ever happened on the railways to be honest.’
Politely Lyons affirms that British Rail would have gone ahead with the revolution if the spectre of privatisation hadn’t hung over it. He talks warmly of John Welsby (last chairman of BR). Even so there were advantages in coming late to the stimulus of the private sector.
‘If you actually arrive last at the ball you can make progress rather more quickly. You don’t have to go through the process of trying things out first. However, the privatisation structure made that extremely difficult. It fragmented the railway. I think Network Rail, the coming of the infrastructure cost model and the real drive to try and simplify standards are all good measures. What is happening is in many ways vital.’
Most rail staff know the railway is growing. They see the evidence of this everyday. This is not just an economic blip which might see volume undulate down again. Lyons, like most railway leaders is convinced the network is growing and needs extra capacity.
He has the figures to prove it. His mission at the Railway Forum has been to say the industry needs to expand and it needs the investment to do it. In this he has enjoyed considerable success. He first started banging the drum before the 2001 election.
‘We are a growth industry. Over and over again the government has underestimated this and as an industry now we are rather congratulating ourselves. We are riding a wave in which people want railways.’
However, catering for growth is a serious business and Lyons is under no illusions about the political shortcomings impeding it.
‘To accommodate growth you’ve got to have a consistent 20 year plan. You can’t do this business in six month chunks. I set this out in 2001. I have changed the details of the message but have remained consistent to it. I think the government’s accepted it.’
Acceptance is one thing - is there really a political will, a dynamic, in Britain to act radically to increase railway capacity?
‘We do lack - and you can either describe it as arrogance or courage and they are often quite closely related - an ability to make really big, bold, decisions. Now if you don’t want a project to happen you write the investment appraisal to stop it happening. If you want the project to happen you do the investment appraisal to make it happen. Some say we often shoot the messengers.
It’s very interesting to notice that every major investment project in this country has had a high level political champion. It was Marples with the motorways, Barbara Castle with the Victoria line and Heseltine with the CTRL. You can’t sort large scale projects unless you’ve got this high level political buy in and popular support. You can’t expect a bunch of economists to design a high speed rail link for you.’
Undoubtedly the public view of railways has changed over the last five years. Commuters may grumble about price and reliability but the industry itself has hit back costing out the services run and making sure people and politicians understand what has been achieved.
When RailStaff ran a conference four years ago entitled ‘Getting Rail a Good Name,’ rail chiefs like Adrian Shooter and Chris Green approached us about speaking. Both ran successful train companies. Adrian Lyons phoned up and asked if he could chair it and proceeded to do this with considerable aplomb.
Have railways got any better at PR?
‘Successful lobbying is about touching the right nerve. People have got to believe in the credibility of your offer...
Network Rail has given people confidence. The string of major accidents that occurred in the last years of Railtrack, the southern upgrade and WCRM gave the impression of a loss of confidence. Network Rail has shown that they are competent.
This is important. Knowing railways are competently run and the money is sensibly spent reassures ministers, puzzled by the vast sums swallowed by health and education occasioning little apparent improvement. However, it is not enough to say how sensible railways are.’
Lyons uses a picture of Just William to illustrate how railways were viewed by the head masters and prefects in Whitehall. The rail industry, he believes, must engage in a wider debate with government about the custodianship of the British economy and indeed the British state. Lyons has been happy to do so.
‘In 2004 the Government had convinced itself overall demand for transport was declining. There was a simple model in the post-war world that said every percentage rise in GDP led to a percentage rise in transport output.’
Lyons argues that is not the case. The nature of commercial distribution - internet buying, supermarkets and foreign trade has seen demand for roads and rail transport rising much faster.
‘The model doesn’t work any longer,’ he says cheerily. The deeper question for our leaders is how best to sustain a burgeoning economy centred on south east England.’
‘We have created this staggering trillion pound economy. No one ever dreamt twenty-odd years ago that Britain would be one of the leading global economies. We have done it by the intellect of people and by bringing it together so productively. We have created this huge knowledge-based economy but it has to work very quickly.
We have got to have a transport system that supports it. We have to have solutions. To keep on growing it has to go on getting better, more productive. It might be more frenetic to live in, but this is the path we’ve chosen and it is one of the great experiments ever, actually.’
The rail network has two fundamental capacity imperatives. One, a high speed rail link between north and south and two a freight only network. It’s not an either-or scenario. The two, Lyons believes, are complementary. The rail industry needs to show how they can be built and at what cost. The government, he is convinced, will back us in the end.
‘Network Rail was on a short leash but now is allowed to talk about enhancements. The Government is now talking about enhancements. As long as Network Rail continues to bring its costs down, there is head room for an increase in the capacity of the network. And the government will back them, there is no question in my mind about that.’
Hasn’t there been a little dithering here?
‘Massive dithering actually!’ Lyons chortles.
‘The big question is really about Britain. For 100 miles around London you have one of the most successful dynamic economies on the planet. It’s a small area and it has extraordinary dense levels of population and activity. Once you get north and west of Birmingham you have a very different Britain, with regions in relative decline.’
Shouldn’t we try to rebalance the country?
By shortening journey times you can encourage dispersals from high value regions to ones that offer advantages. You see plenty of examples across Europe and Japan where that has happened. Seville used to be five hours from Madrid, now it’s down to two hours and the place booms. That’s what drives high speed.’
The socio-economic arguments are compelling. ‘Scotland is not holding its population. It will have a 1/4 million fewer people in a few years time.’ High speed rail might help.
‘If you think a high speed railway will stabilise Scotland’s population and make it more economically prosperous then a quite significant investment may be worthwhile. So it is no longer a railway debate but a national economic one.’
How realistic is the idea of a freight only railway?
‘Running all sorts of different types of train on one stretch of track is inefficient. It’s inefficient in engineering terms. People say you can only have a high speed passenger line or a freight railway. I don’t think that’s a debate.
Freight is very interesting indeed. We currently have about a 12% market share and it has come up very fast.’ He goes on to argue that raising that to 15% would have a visible impact on the M25 and on carbon emissions.
Then comes an airy reminder, ‘The government has no national freight strategy...What worries me is I just don’t really see any debate about this. These are really big gains for rail. That’s a national investment we should be looking at. Gauge cleared routes etc. and it should work alongside high speed passenger rail.’
Perhaps Mr. Eddington will recommend just that. Lyons may be enthusiastic about railways but he is realistic about politics.
‘There’s every indication that it will be a lemon.’ Leadership needs vision and it entails risk.
‘I’m very worried that with Eddington the logic flow seems to have gone. Transport economists don’t have the tools to absolutely prove that making this level of investment will bring the benefits that we claim.
You need leadership in these things - you can work out the economic benefits of a bypass pretty easily or a station upgrade at Reading, but when you’re talking about major shifts in the UK economy it’s much harder to identify.
You need quite a lot of money up front to build these things and the treasury is tight. It has also been said that actual forecast growth for the next few years can be met by further enhancements to the existing network. My counter argument is if you are really going to back away from a high speed line what transport infrastructure measures have you got to put in place to see regeneration north and west of Birmingham? Are you going to rely on short haul air to do it? Are you going to build more motorways? There’s not a ‘do nothing’ option as far as I am concerned.’
Eddington is expected to say there may be a case for high speed rail long term but not yet.
‘I believe his officials are keen on what they regard as a low risk outcome which is to use existing railway lands and to build extra high speed tracks alongside. That can be done, but we’re underestimating the risk. We’ve seen what happened on the West Coast. Trent Valley widening has not come cheap.
I have had officials come to me and say, ‘Just imagine what the hybrid bill would be like for a high speed railway,’ but my counter argument is, these are all highly paid civil servants, paid to do this.’
Adrian Lyons has always had an interest in European railways. Does he get disheartened by the inevitable comparisons?
The sub-text of his answer is not so much disheartened but inspired.
‘There is a real national pride about modernisation most obvious in Spain and Italy. There you have a bunch of young engineers and systems managers who want to modernise their countries. For them a high speed network across Spain is an exciting idea and it binds the country together.
The Italians are the same. Their governments respond by setting up systems that build high speed lines cheaply and quickly. I applaud them. Spanish engineers know for ten years exactly what they’ll be doing next. The whole things runs like a machine.
Here in Britain it’s different. Teams that work together year after year become extremely efficient at what they do. The speed at which the Spanish are building railways is staggeringly good. Most of these countries have planning regimes which tend to benefit the major projects. In Spain you have a double or quits deal. You can agree to the proposed land-take and you’re paid double the compensation automatically. But if you go to appeal you take your luck.
Think of the hundreds of millions we spend on planning applications. So I’m sure it could be cheaper. In Spain and France you can start preliminary works ahead of major agreement of projects. Now these are difficult and sensitive issues in Britain, but they should be looked at.
Next year Adrian Lyons will see his book, ‘The Coinage of Aethelred of Wessex’ published. Anglo-Saxon coinage is his hobby and facetiously one might suggest he is no stranger to the parsimony of Her Majesty’s treasury, past and present. However, aged 60 this Christmas, Lyons does take a long term view of history and our place in it.
His willingness to engage with and advance the cause of railways has produced real benefits for all who work in the industry. Perhaps one of his greatest gifts is to put people at ease - whether they are harassed railway officials, horror struck transport ministers or simply journalists and staff.
On behalf of all of us who have worked with him, let me record a heartfelt thank you to the Director General of the Railway Forum, our very own model of a modern major general.