Mobility business reimagined: why customers should select rail

‘The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves.’

The German-American economist Theodore Levitt, known as the founder of modern marketing, used the declining American railway sector of the time, in his 1960 Harvard Business Review article ‘Marketing Myopia’, to argue that strategic decisions should be made based on customer needs rather than on products and services being offered.

‘They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.’

The unprecedented financial turmoil that the global rail sector is facing has forced us to reset our way of thinking. Levitt’s warning holds a key to solving not only the immediate COVID crisis but the even more significant issue of climate change.
So, in a world where we compare and purchase air tickets with a few clicks, where we can easily hail an Uber both at home and abroad, and where, indeed, we can ‘travel’ to meetings by Zoom, what should rail operators offer passengers and freight customers?
The answer, according to Levitt, is certainly not transport of passengers and goods from Station A to Station B.

Reassurance
The most immediate need of the passenger is the reassurance that their journey is safe. Any risk of infection must be minimised to the extent that it is outweighed by the passenger’s need to travel, just like the risk of a fatal train crash is so low that it will not deter passengers from travelling.

Over the last year, best practice has been widely discussed through platforms such as UIC’s COVID-19 taskforce and our own webinar programme. How to provide a healthy environment, whether through vigorous cleaning, distancing or mask wearing, has been much debated and implemented.

When and how we can return to the old normal remains a hot topic. Will vaccine passports reassure rail passengers? We will consider this during the keynote session ‘Predict and prepare: strategies to exit the long COVID tunnel’ on Tuesday with the help of speakers including the Chairman of UIC and the Italian state Railways (FSI) Gianluigi Castelli and UNIFE’s Philippe Citroën.

Sustainable mobility
For large corporations, sustainability used to be something you would refer to in the CSR section at the end of an annual report. Business attitudes have changed dramatically over the last few years. With political commitments, investor pressures and a surge in popular demand, sustainability first became a commercial differentiator, and it has now become a sine qua non of survival for many businesses.

Rail transport has long been regarded as the backbone of a sustainable mobility system. The recent flygskam (flight shame) movement has revitalised night train services in Europe, and high-speed rail routes are being constructed in the US, China, India, the Gulf, and South East Asia. Freight rail is also quickly gaining traction along the vital Asia-Europe trade routes.

The rail sector is now in a strong position to lead a multimodal debate on reducing the carbon footprint. Collaborating with the aviation sector on certain routes, for example, will allow the rail to take on additional business, while enabling aviation to offer more sustainable services.

The EU’s Transport Commissioner Adina Vălean, Austria’s Former Chancellor Christian Kern, and UIC’s François Davenne, will tackle the climate change challenge in Wednesday’s keynote session ‘Achieving net-zero mobility by 2050: actions to take right now’.

Innovation
We are told that we are living through the Fourth Industrial Revolution, one of greater connectivity and automation, of AI, IoT, and blockchain. In parallel, we are on the threshold of the Fifth Industrial Revolution, where humanity and ethics will be brought back at its core.Railway led the First Industrial Revolution in full steam, and the tradition of innovation runs deep in its blood. Once again, operators are embracing innovation, with safety, customer experience and sustainability as ultimate goals.

Several sessions during this summit focus on innovation, on how rail operators and infrastructure managers can use the latest technology to benefit customers, from providing smoother and quieter travel and passenger-friendly multimodal hubs to enhancing safety through predictive maintenance and FRMCS.

The keynote session on Thursday ‘Intermodal collaboration for a seamless passenger experience’ will consider how we can create seamless multimodal journeys, with a focus on ticketing technology. The European Commission’s Land Transport Director Elisabeth Werner, Shift2Rail’s Carlo Borghini and Deutsche Bahn’s Marco Kampp, among other speakers, will guide us through the latest debates.

With travel restrictions still in place and physical events still a dream, we are very grateful to our speakers, sponsors and buyer delegates for their contributions which allow us to host the first online edition of the International Railway Summit. Without you, this gathering could not take place.

Virtual events are said to take three times as much effort to organise than physical events, and our team has spent countless days and nights into the early hours preparing for these four days. If I may, I would like to thank my colleagues for their significant contributions to the summit during the current difficult circumstances.

Going back to Levitt, we realised that our speakers, sponsors and delegates were not simply looking to attend events but to actively exchange ideas, learn from peers, discover new innovations, and promote solutions. I know that you would rather meet each other in person, but until then, I hope this online format will give you what you came here to achieve.
Welcome to the 10th International Railway Summit. I wish you successful learning, networking, promoting and negotiating!

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