http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/22/transport.railtravelPassengers on First Great Western are used to hearing the word "sorry" from Andrew Haines. The boss of Britain's least popular rail franchise sometimes gets an earthier reply from the most disgruntled customers on the rail network, especially when he is stranded with them on the 6.30pm from Paddington to Weston-super-Mare.
"Last night on the train we were stuck for 30 minutes and I had to listen to another customer's language, which probably even the Guardian would not print. Plenty of use of the c word."
Oaths have been muttered up and down the London-to-Cardiff line over the past year as FGW▸ struggles with overcrowding, passenger protests and endemic tardiness. Last month it was voted the UK▸ 's worst rail service, hence its inevitable rechristening as "Worst Late Western", and the situation must be bad when the man who presided over the first run on a high street bank in more than a century, chancellor Alistair Darling, urges managers to "get a grip".
Haines was drafted in as chief operating officer of FGW by its parent, FirstGroup, five months ago and is working a six-day week as he toils over the franchise, alongside executing his responsibilities for four other rail services as the head of FirstGroup's rail division. He is affable, but does not exude sunny optimism about the franchise. This is in contrast with his predecessor, Alison Forster, who told the Guardian last year that "it will be a very different place in a year's time", adding that "it will be seen as one of the best operations in the UK rather than one of the worst".
Sat in a boardroom at FGW's Paddington station office, the 43-year-old Welshman mutters about finding the most diplomatic response to an impossible pledge. He outlines a turnaround plan measured in inches rather than leaps, starting with a lowering of the sights.
"Alison was clearly setting out an aspiration that, with the benefit of hindsight, was probably too ambitious and not realistic. There are big issues to tackle and we are absolutely on the right ground to do that now. But I will not promise that it will be top of the league next year. It will not be. My experience of business transformation is that it does not happen overnight."
Haines insists that the cussing customer on the Weston-super-Mare service is not representative of most passengers. Rail users angered at being shoehorned on to trains have registered their concerns: two fare strikes in the past year have made their point and FGW allowed hundreds of passengers with protest tickets, most of whom were season ticket holders anyway, to board trains. Haines finds the abusive stuff harder to take.
"You feel physically sick. I didn't feel I could do anything for that customer," he says, referring to the fact that their train was being held up by a service from another franchise. But Haines is not expecting a consoling pat on the back. Perhaps a little less ripe language would be appreciated, but FGW will lose the franchise if excuses continue to outweigh improvements.
Haines has prostrated himself since taking over. Stations on the FGW routes have been adorned with posters carrying apologies from the FGW boss and his team and passenger compensation has been doubled - 10% off their season tickets. Some of the excuses are sounding tired, no matter how impressive the promises attached to them, particularly the repeated references to the ^200m investment in train and station refurbishments that are part of the 10-year franchise. The ^200m investment was announced when FirstGroup renewed the franchise two years ago and many passengers argue it has not worked.
Anthony Smith, chief executive of commuter watchdog Passenger Focus, says Haines, a lifelong railway man who joined British Rail as a graduate manager in 1985, has the pedigree to turn around FGW. "He is universally trusted and respected throughout the industry. There is relief that he has arrived but it is a pity he has not arrived earlier." Smith adds that the ^200m programme has been crushingly ambitious, combining the overhaul of 53 high-speed train sets with a ^1.1bn government payment schedule that imposes hefty fare increases on fed-up customers.
"The task is huge, absolutely huge," Smith says. "The scale of the ambition was correct, but given the size of the task it had to be done quickly in order to get a return. First Great Western did everything very quickly at once. The company came badly unstuck, doing things too quickly on top of very shaky infrastructure, old track and old signals."
So, has FGW committed a fatal misjudgment in promising a miraculous performance? "I fundamentally disagree with Anthony Smith," says Haines. "But I can understand why he says that because our delivery has not been strong. If we are not ambitious someone else will win the franchise."
Smith insists that the sums don't add up. FGW has charged the highest fare increases in the UK over the past decade, but the ^1.1bn contract with the Department for Transport, which defines timetables and carriage numbers as well as demanding a lofty premium, is constraining the company's ability to fix its problems.
"Everyone recognises that it was a bad deal," Smith says. "Is the investment enough or does more money need to go in from First Great Western, the government or a partnership? We are getting to halfway through the franchise and it's a question of who is going to blink first."
There is not much of a staring contest to be had when government railway policy states that annual public subsidy across the network will fall from ^4.5bn to ^3bn from 2009, while the farepayers' contribution will nearly double to ^9bn. Haines says FGW will put more money in over and above the ^200m, but won't say how much or where it will be invested, although FGW is hunting down more rolling stock. He adds that the "vast majority" of FGW's profits, which represent around a third of the rail division's ^109m annual surplus, is being reinvested in the franchise. Haines won't reveal explicit figures, but one financial certainty in all of this is that fares will continue to rise above inflation into the next decade.
"We are all big boys and we decided to bid for the franchise. The government wanted to rebalance the contribution by taxpayers and we accepted that. Will there be some passenger pain? Yes."
More Trains Less Strain, the passenger group that called the fare strikes, believes the service has improved since the dark days of 2007, when FGW fumbled the introduction of a new timetable and failed to put enough carriages on. But punctuality - more than a quarter of all peaktime FGW trains arrive late - and high fares still annoy.
"It is good that Andrew Haines is there," says More Trains Less Strain's Peter Andrews. "We are pleased that he is a railway man, but until we get a franchise that is punctual, affordable and reliable, we will keep on rebelling. At the moment we are seeing none of those things."
Haines is exasperated at the group's plucky appropriation of the dark arts: "I agree to meet them and they put out a press release saying I'm 'rattled'," he says, before admitting that the company has become disconnected from its customers.
Network Rail has also driven a considerable wedge between Haines and the farepayers. The owner of Britain's rail infrastructure is responsible for maintaining a great western route whose track dates from the 1970s and whose signalling systems are a decade older. Half the delays on the consistently shoddy Oxford-to-Paddington section are due to Network Rail problems. The replacement of Forster was accompanied by a new route manager at Network Rail, confirmation that both companies had got it wrong since 2006. Haines says the relationship is much better and incremental improvements are being made all over the route, which covers the West Country down to Penzance as well as the Cardiff and Oxford routes. However, he won't put the boot into Network Rail. "Would it make the customers feel any better?" And he accepts that FGW got a lot wrong .
"First Great Western underestimated the scale of the challenge. It underestimated the strength of passenger feeling ... be it timetable changes, be it fare rises, be it service levels. It was a complex task, integrating three franchises into one, re-engineering and refurbishing a high-speed train fleet in three years."
Government sources say FGW's performance is "under a microscope", which threatens the corporate and personal humiliation of FirstGroup being stripped of the franchise. Haines says he is a turnaround specialist who restored South West Trains from a much criticised business to an award-winning franchise within years. A former British Rail colleague, Virgin Trains' chief operating officer, Chris Gibbs, says: "Passengers should know that Andrew will be leaving no stone unturned in the quest for better performance on First Great Western, and should not doubt his sheer energy and personal commitment." That reputation faces its biggest test with this franchise.
"Is it a tough job? Yes," says Haines. "Do I have phenomenal support from the top of the group? Absolutely. Our customers can be mightily unhappy and I cannot say my wife is happy either with the time I have been spending on it. But I don't feel browbeaten."
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