Service Design



Service plans and service design
Typically, railways have focused on running trains, but paid little attention to customer needs or changing schedules or services to better meet customer requirements.

Passenger surveys, discussions with passenger representative organizations, and meetings with metropolitan authorities can reveal needs for different passenger service patterns—more frequent afternoon trains, daytime intercity trains, more passenger space on night trains, and later or earlier departure times.

Direct discussions with freight customers can lower costs for shipper logistics, shift investment requirements; and for the railways, these discussions can increase volumes and reduce costs. Engaging with customers enables railways to predict and adapt to marketplace changes, for example coming up with new service designs—complex service and investment arrangements that tie customers more closely to the railways, increase profitability and reduce customer transport costs.

For example, many railways/shipper conflicts arise from demurrage charges for delayed freight car loading. Instead, the railway could provide customers with sufficient freight cars for a full trainload and extend their loading times. The railway would service the customer less frequently but transit times would improve, since a full-loaded train can move directly and without delays from loading site to destination such as a port or a power utility. Also, this option improves equipment utilization as equipment can return directly and reload.

Close contact with shippers enables railways to suggest specialized equipment that will increase load size, ease loading and unloading, or create some other specialized advantage for shipper goods—internal bracing systems or flat cars equipped with metal racks for logs or lumber. Often, shippers agree to pay for special equipment or purchase specialized freight cars, which not only ties that shipper to the railways but also avoids damage and depreciation of railway assets.

Customer requirements vary over time so commercial railways must constantly revise service designs—train schedules, service patterns and work performed—to meet evolving customer needs as revealed in customer surveys and interactions.

    
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