Perhaps you may not have heard of Abellio before; and you may wonder why we have been entrusted to run Greater Anglia – the new franchise for the train services in East Anglia – to deliver improved services. We are part of a wider transport group, Abellio Transport Holdings, who also operate the successful Northern franchise and Merseyrail concession, plus bus services in London and Surrey. We are owned by ‘NS’ in the Netherlands who operate the rail services, stations and facilities on much of the Dutch network so are well placed to bring real improvements to your services. We are delighted that the Department for Transport (DfT) has asked us to operate the franchise until July 2014.
Greater Anglia’s promise to you
We believe that when you travel with us, or think of travelling with us, you should expect high standards of service throughout your journey experience.
As such, Greater Anglia will:
- as a priority provide you with a safe, clean, punctual and reliable train service
- make it easier for you to buy tickets with the introduction of more facilities
- treat you well and fairly when things go wrong
- keep you informed about services, any planned changes and during disruption
- let you know our performance and quality targets in advance, and report each period how we are doing
- listen to you and engage with you more.
What will Greater Anglia do this year?
The DfT has agreed that Greater Anglia will deliver a series of investments to drive real improvements in your services. Some of these improvements will be internal and not so noticeable directly to you; however, we also will deliver a range of much-needed customer service improvements.
Abellio has worked with stakeholders across the area to understand what is required most, and how we can bring these improvements about in such a short space of time.
As a result, over the next 12 months we will be delivering the following improvements:
- introduce SMS text messaging to registered customers to keep you informed of service changes
- roll out over 1600 PDAs to frontline employees to help them provide better information to you
- introduce enhanced customer service training for our employees
- introduce two new Customer Panels to help us shape the timetable
- introduce a new service-quality management system which will measure our performance each period
- introduce improved station information at key locations to help you, including platform markings on busy commuter stations to indicate the location of train doors, and additional customer service desks
- introduction of a further 28 Ticket Vending Machines (TVMs) to stations that need them
- enable you to buy Season Tickets online, saving you time and reducing queues
- introducing mobile ticketing and ticket print-at-home capability
- more revenue protection and security employees, plus two new automatic and manual gatelines
- more cleaning of trains and stations through a programme of deep cleans
- enhanced Delay Repay scheme, with additional measures for periods of sustained poor performance
- more car park spaces at 15 stations and more payment machines plus new facilities for cyclists.
Greater Anglia is the trading name of Abellio Greater Anglia Ltd. Abellio Greater Anglia Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 06428369.