Happy birthday, trams?

Years late, £ millions over budget and there’s an ongoing public enquiry – but on Sunday (31 May) Edinburgh trams will celebrate their first year of operation. A Happy Birthday? Edinburgh Trams Director and General manager Tom Norris certainly thinks so …

In terms of our business there has been much noise about our performance. Our annual report will be out shortly for the year to end December 2014. On top of this we are releasing further data to give a view of the first full year. So what does it say?

Where did that year go? As I reflect on where we were in May 2014 and the amount of change our business has gone through since then, it is unrecognisable.

We carried 10% more passengers than expected in the first full year. 4.92m in year one.
Our passenger revenue was 3% ahead of target.
Passenger satisfaction was 95%.
In May last year we were totally focussed on the 31st of May go-live date and were in the midst of intensive staff training, testing, commissioning, press engagements and promoting our service. The whole organisation was geared towards this start day with a cautious eye on the One Direction concert at Murrayfield in our first week.

There was a whirlwind of media and external activity as we approached go live and it really seemed that the whole of the UK was looking on as everyone at Edinburgh Trams made their final preparations for that all important first day of service. My last engagement being STV news broadcasting live from the depot on the eve of our first day. As I finished what was a relatively challenging interview, I was hit with a realisation that there was nothing more I could do and it was over to the team to start passenger service.

I arrived at the depot at 0330 and after a quick briefing final preparations were put in place. A number of our key stakeholders were at the depot to be ready for the first tram. It was clear from our tram stop cameras that people started arriving at the Gyle Tram stop a long time before the first 0500 tram was due to arrive. The atmosphere on the first tram, and indeed throughout our first few weeks was electric.

The following year has passed incredibly quickly and I’m delighted to be able to say that it appears both Edinburgh residents and visitors to the city have really embraced our service. We’ve serviced major concerts, international rugby and European football events matches at Murrayfield. We felt truly involved in the summer festival season with festival goers and even performers using our services.

But that said, this year hasn’t been without challenges. Trams have broken down, systems have failed and incidents have occurred. In the scheme of things the disruption has been few and far between. We are very proud to report service reliability of 99% and passenger satisfaction of 95%. Our fare evasion rate is incredibly low. All of these measures can be benchmarked against other operators, and we come out very well indeed. That’s down to a team of committed staff working day and night across Edinburgh Trams, our sister company Lothian Buses, Siemens, CAF, our partners at the City of in Edinburgh Council, as well as and other contractors who support our services.

It’s really at this point I should give a nod to my team. The sheer amount of change our business has experienced over the past two years is more than most would experience in many years. On top of this all of the measures we have for the business are all in the right place. The team have been flexible, committed and it has been a real privilege to lead them over the past two and a half years. My team are superstars and as much as I can reflect and enjoy looking back on our first year, it’s been our people who’ve made it all come together. I simply couldn’t have asked any more. Well done and thank you.

We’re hugely passenger focussed and our staff have delivered exceptional passenger satisfaction scores. But we won’t rest here. There are many changes underway, timetable enhancements to speed up services where possible, relaxing some of the more overzealous rules for our passengers and continuing to build our passenger base by delighting more and more people. We do listen, and we do react. One of the catalysts for changing the rules on food and drink on our services was a letter that stuck with me that I received from a customer who had been feeding his child an oatcake and had been asked to stop. There is no criticism of our staff here, they were following the rules that had been set down. But the reality was that this rule just wasn’t aligned with our customer expectations and harmed the overall experience. That’s why it was changed. We listen to our customers and we act.

So year one of Edinburgh Trams is over. It has been an absolute honour and privilege to lead this team into passenger service and a highlight of my career. From me, a huge thank you out to our customers, our staff and our supporters.

#tramiversary