Great British Railways has unveiled its new brand while Parliament debates the Railways Bill, giving the railway a clean logo, a bold future and the traditional ability to make a passenger study a platform screen as if it contains a will.
The reforms are intended to bring train operators into public ownership, simplify the system and create one organisation responsible for the network. They also promise a ticketing app without booking fees. This is a radical concept. A passenger may soon buy a journey without comparing seven prices and apologising to a browser tab.
The government has frozen rail fares and proposed a stronger passenger watchdog with powers to investigate poor service. At last, delay announcements may face an animal that refuses to accept operational reasons as a complete personality.
At the Office of Forward Motion, branding director Sylvie Signal unveiled the design. “It represents one railway,” she said. “It also represents the calm face a station makes while explaining that your train has become a bus for reasons.”
The new red, white and blue identity will gradually appear on trains, websites, stations and other places where passengers currently search for information beneath a notice explaining that the information is unavailable. The branding was designed in house, which should reassure taxpayers that at least one part of the railway has been brought under control.
The app is expected to let passengers check times and buy tickets across the network without booking fees. It may even make fares easier to understand. This will disappoint the tiny goblin living inside the phrase “any permitted route”, feeding exclusively on people who selected the wrong railcard.
The bill is intended to bring together 17 organisations and reduce the bureaucracy created by having several bodies responsible for explaining why responsibility belongs somewhere else. Great British Railways will therefore provide one focus for the system. Previously, rail had several focuses. They all met in a room beside a broken vending machine.
Watchdog handler Martin Buffer welcomed the plan. “Passengers deserve a railway that works around them,” he said. “We have told the timetable. It is considering the feedback between Crewe and eternity.”
A better railway needs more than a handsome mark and a useful app. It needs reliable trains, clear information and staff who do not have to perform semaphore with their eyebrows. The new structure will have to deliver those things in public, preferably while the public is still on the platform.
A clearer ticket process counts. A fare freeze counts. A watchdog counts. For years, the system has treated a simple journey as an escape room with upholstery. Great British Railways now promises a door. The door will open shortly. Please stand clear of the optimism, which has just been announced as a replacement service operated by a logo.
Source: Department for Transport.
