A new report by CMAC has shed light on an often overlooked but frequent aspect of the railway’s customer service proposition
2026 has already brought two major shocks. FA Cup holders, my beloved, Crystal Palace, being knocked out of this year’s tournament by non-league Macclesfield, 117 places below them, was unwelcome. However, the other ‘shock’ was the publication of a report focused purely on the customer experience during periods in which train services are provided instead by buses, coaches and taxis – ‘rail replacement’.
They call it the magic of the cup, but when it comes to rail replacement, there’s certainly no mystique and glamour – it’s perennially been the fag-end of the industry, never really receiving the airtime it deserves among railway’s top brass – and that’s why it should be a shock to see a report dedicated to this subject appear.
Apart from some research in 2018 and a bit of mystery shopping in 2023 – both undertaken by Transport Focus – there’s been general apathy towards a subject which fascinates me but seems to bore most others in the industry. Fair play, therefore, to the contingency and disruption company, CMAC Group, for providing its ‘White Paper’ titled ‘Let’s solve disruption together’.
In 2024, CMAC set up a division called Great British Rail Replacement, responsible for providing its services to the rail industry and for driving wider change in customer experience during disruption across the UK. It’s run by Ian Jeffrey, whose 45-year career has been equally split between running rail replacement services and senior customer-interfacing and commercial roles in a train company environment – a rare feat in this game.
CMAC’s Paper was better timed than Palace’s humiliation, coinciding with the less shocking, perennial Christmas and New Year blockades across the sector. This year was no exception, one such being on my manor, with no services into Waterloo station for large parts of the holiday period (well-managed, I might add). The Waterloo shindig, along with others across the industry, witnessed the recent fad of rail top dogs being very keen to video themselves over the festive break, white helmet, orange jacket on, surrounded by engineering equipment and contractors – building site style – giving an update on the ensuing works. It’s particularly interesting to rail professionals and moderately helpful to customers, whilst also reminding their gaffers they’re out and about ‘in the thick of it’, but I can’t recall ever seeing an industry bigwig boarding customers on a rail replacement bus or travelling on a coach with customers during blockages. Like many customers, they avoid them like the plague – it’s just not sexy enough.
Onto CMAC’s report, and before we get stuck in, I’ll fess up and admit that I had a hand in it. I’ve spent eight hugely enjoyable years working with the CMAC team, and I couldn’t resist interfering, so of the 1,500 rail customers that they interviewed face-to-face and online, a couple of pals and I went out on the network and spoke to 350 of these folk, across every single train company in the UK.
It’s perennially been the fag-end of the industry, never really receiving the airtime it deserves
I can tell you that customers are fed up with the experience during ‘planned rail replacement’ and short-notice disruption.
They can’t understand why advance information is so bad, why buses only stop
at all ‘stations’ and why there’s not a mix of ‘express’ and ‘stoppers’. They find drivers sometimes grumpy and ‘rail replacement co-ordinators’ far from customer-centric. They seem most happy in c2c and Southeastern land, cheesed off in rural areas such as Yorkshire and Humberside, whilst it seems bizarre to them that fares aren’t discounted during engineering works.
First Class customers on inter-city trains can’t get their heads around paying an eye-watering fare for an experience with such brand and product dilution. Oh, and they, like me, reckon that stations are like the Mary Celeste when rail replacement is occurring, particularly at weekends, and management are as absent as Palace’s back four at Macclesfield.
Overall, the synopsis of customer feedback, whilst not necessarily surprising, was a very helpful reinforcement of what many of us had long suspected – that there is disquiet about the lack of consistency in the provision of rail replacement. The experience is definitely ‘hit and miss’, even within the same geographical areas, with so many unpredictable factors in play – depending on time of day, supplier used, the luck of the draw of the station and local management roster conjuring up more focused and proactive employees for duty and so on. Customers are fed up with this lottery, and so too with the lack of joined-up, real-time information delivered across all channels in the end-to-end customer journey proposition. Also, despite all the platitudes about looking after customers with accessibility needs and those who are vulnerable, the safety and experience they receive during disruptions, particularly rail replacement, are below par. Digital tools for real-time updates, journey planning and incident reporting are also sub-standard. This presents a sorry tale of a lack of coordination between operators, station staff and rail replacement providers.
CMAC’s survey revealed that only 8% of rail users noticed an improvement in their experience during rail replacement; the remaining 92% thought it had either stayed the same or got worse. Meanwhile, 33% of women relied on others for the completion of their journeys due to fears around vulnerability, whilst only 2.8% of customers with accessibility needs report fully accessible rail replacement services. There’s also a need for ‘levelling up’ in terms of rural communities, where 19% of those living here that CMAC surveyed, cancelled travel plans when they saw the dreaded words ‘rail replacement’.
From a generational perspective, younger customers are more likely to shun rail replacement services and make alternative travel plans. They also remarked that if their alternative turns out to be better, they’ll have no qualms about shunning the train in the future. 40% said that real-time app updates specific to services during engineering works would improve their experience. The tech-savvy kids of today saw this as an absolute basic requirement, whereas old-timers were a bit more forgiving, even if the prospect of rail replacement on their journey gave them sleepless nights.
As I’ve oft lamented on these pages, the problem with rail replacement is that it’s never been given the priority that it deserves across the industry. With a few exceptions, the crème de la crème talent in a train company are more excited by the glamour of running the railway, rather than messing around supplying buses and coaches for their ‘in-house’ owning group rail replacement division, causing a skills shortage, not helped by the lack of a career development pathway for those working in this arena. There has been a lack of customer-centric role models among in-house rail replacement providers, and little, if any, drawing on best-practice approaches from other parts of the industry. This is something CMAC has been able to capitalise on from its extensive experience serving aviation clients and their customers, as well as in other service sectors, where there is no tolerance for second-rate service.
There’s a danger rail replacement will become an afterthought, as it has always been
The situation hasn’t been helped by transport owning groups being able to self-award rail replacement contracts to their own in-house division. Sadly, this became a more inevitable scenario in the post-Covid era, when, apart from the slender management fees available to train companies to run franchises, rail replacement has been pretty much the only area in which they can generate additional revenue streams and make commercial decisions. The lack of a level playing field can only have undermined the ability to deliver a quality experience and one that provided the best value for taxpayers. Thankfully, tender processes are now far more consistently specified, tightly managed and scrutinised.
CMAC’s report makes a number of recommendations, with the need to establish a national rail replacement standard being absolutely imperative, setting out clear deliverables for each customer touchpoint during pre-planned and short-notice disruption. Information delivery, accessibility, vehicle quality, tighter supplier management, improved customer service training for staff, and contingency protocols are key components that need to be prescribed, along with performance metrics aligned to customer outcomes. There should be regional performance dashboards that provide transparency across the industry and to customers on the quality of rail replacement provision, with proper pre-planning and reviews involving all partners responsible for the end-to-end experience. Collaboration really is key, and at a strategic level, we should move away from the disdain that parts of the industry have held toward rail replacement suppliers and their supply chains.
Clearly, as CMAC recommends, it’s vital to invest in real-time customer information, integrating website updates and apps, and to improve on-the-ground signage for rail replacement services and station screens that provide real-time information. Station staff should be visible and well-trained in delivering accurate and helpful advice, something that is not always the case. Accessibility should be a non-negotiable, across all aspects, from vehicle specifications through to staff training. All this potentially comes at a cost and requires investment, but for too long, rail replacement contract awards – not just those presided over by the TOCs – have been fixated on cost to the detriment of quality, leading to a race to the bottom and frayed proposition.
There’s no time like the present to get it right in terms of rail replacement. It’s been difficult, more generally, to get a glimpse of the future customer proposition that GBR is developing, and there’s either been a level of secrecy or it’s still at the concept stage. My fear is that, in the overall scheme of priorities, rail replacement will be low on their agenda. The soundbites we hear from GBR focus on fare simplification and technology that make it easier to buy a ticket and get trains to run on time. There’s a danger that rail replacement will become an afterthought, as it has always been. This is ridiculous when you consider the scale and frequency of events that tend to lead to bus, coach or taxi provision instead of trains – over last May’s two bank holidays, Network Rail undertook 630 infrastructure projects and every quarter, there tends to be at least 30 days classified as ‘severely disrupted’, most, if not all, requiring rail replacement of some kind. Delays and disruption aren’t disappearing, quite the opposite, and the post-Covid backlog of maintenance and big projects is still being embarked on by Network Rail, such that planned engineering works and blockades are as frequent as ever.
Let’s solve disruption together sounds an optimistic strapline for CMAC’s report, particularly as disruption management has never really felt like a collegiate experience within the rail industry, but with the onset of a new unified structure, we’ve a now-or-never, blank canvas opportunity to work as one team and prove that a solution to the rail replacement conundrum need not remain eternally elusive. CMAC have reached out and started the discussion.
Drop me an email at alex.warner@cmacgroup.com if you fancy a chinwag about rail replacement and a copy of the report, but just don’t mention the word ‘Macclesfield’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
Let’s get on and fix rail replacement
by Passenger Transport on Jan 16, 2026 • 12:30 pm No CommentsA new report by CMAC has shed light on an often overlooked but frequent aspect of the railway’s customer service proposition
2026 has already brought two major shocks. FA Cup holders, my beloved, Crystal Palace, being knocked out of this year’s tournament by non-league Macclesfield, 117 places below them, was unwelcome. However, the other ‘shock’ was the publication of a report focused purely on the customer experience during periods in which train services are provided instead by buses, coaches and taxis – ‘rail replacement’.
They call it the magic of the cup, but when it comes to rail replacement, there’s certainly no mystique and glamour – it’s perennially been the fag-end of the industry, never really receiving the airtime it deserves among railway’s top brass – and that’s why it should be a shock to see a report dedicated to this subject appear.
Apart from some research in 2018 and a bit of mystery shopping in 2023 – both undertaken by Transport Focus – there’s been general apathy towards a subject which fascinates me but seems to bore most others in the industry. Fair play, therefore, to the contingency and disruption company, CMAC Group, for providing its ‘White Paper’ titled ‘Let’s solve disruption together’.
In 2024, CMAC set up a division called Great British Rail Replacement, responsible for providing its services to the rail industry and for driving wider change in customer experience during disruption across the UK. It’s run by Ian Jeffrey, whose 45-year career has been equally split between running rail replacement services and senior customer-interfacing and commercial roles in a train company environment – a rare feat in this game.
CMAC’s Paper was better timed than Palace’s humiliation, coinciding with the less shocking, perennial Christmas and New Year blockades across the sector. This year was no exception, one such being on my manor, with no services into Waterloo station for large parts of the holiday period (well-managed, I might add). The Waterloo shindig, along with others across the industry, witnessed the recent fad of rail top dogs being very keen to video themselves over the festive break, white helmet, orange jacket on, surrounded by engineering equipment and contractors – building site style – giving an update on the ensuing works. It’s particularly interesting to rail professionals and moderately helpful to customers, whilst also reminding their gaffers they’re out and about ‘in the thick of it’, but I can’t recall ever seeing an industry bigwig boarding customers on a rail replacement bus or travelling on a coach with customers during blockages. Like many customers, they avoid them like the plague – it’s just not sexy enough.
Onto CMAC’s report, and before we get stuck in, I’ll fess up and admit that I had a hand in it. I’ve spent eight hugely enjoyable years working with the CMAC team, and I couldn’t resist interfering, so of the 1,500 rail customers that they interviewed face-to-face and online, a couple of pals and I went out on the network and spoke to 350 of these folk, across every single train company in the UK.
I can tell you that customers are fed up with the experience during ‘planned rail replacement’ and short-notice disruption.
They can’t understand why advance information is so bad, why buses only stop
at all ‘stations’ and why there’s not a mix of ‘express’ and ‘stoppers’. They find drivers sometimes grumpy and ‘rail replacement co-ordinators’ far from customer-centric. They seem most happy in c2c and Southeastern land, cheesed off in rural areas such as Yorkshire and Humberside, whilst it seems bizarre to them that fares aren’t discounted during engineering works.
First Class customers on inter-city trains can’t get their heads around paying an eye-watering fare for an experience with such brand and product dilution. Oh, and they, like me, reckon that stations are like the Mary Celeste when rail replacement is occurring, particularly at weekends, and management are as absent as Palace’s back four at Macclesfield.
Overall, the synopsis of customer feedback, whilst not necessarily surprising, was a very helpful reinforcement of what many of us had long suspected – that there is disquiet about the lack of consistency in the provision of rail replacement. The experience is definitely ‘hit and miss’, even within the same geographical areas, with so many unpredictable factors in play – depending on time of day, supplier used, the luck of the draw of the station and local management roster conjuring up more focused and proactive employees for duty and so on. Customers are fed up with this lottery, and so too with the lack of joined-up, real-time information delivered across all channels in the end-to-end customer journey proposition. Also, despite all the platitudes about looking after customers with accessibility needs and those who are vulnerable, the safety and experience they receive during disruptions, particularly rail replacement, are below par. Digital tools for real-time updates, journey planning and incident reporting are also sub-standard. This presents a sorry tale of a lack of coordination between operators, station staff and rail replacement providers.
CMAC’s survey revealed that only 8% of rail users noticed an improvement in their experience during rail replacement; the remaining 92% thought it had either stayed the same or got worse. Meanwhile, 33% of women relied on others for the completion of their journeys due to fears around vulnerability, whilst only 2.8% of customers with accessibility needs report fully accessible rail replacement services. There’s also a need for ‘levelling up’ in terms of rural communities, where 19% of those living here that CMAC surveyed, cancelled travel plans when they saw the dreaded words ‘rail replacement’.
From a generational perspective, younger customers are more likely to shun rail replacement services and make alternative travel plans. They also remarked that if their alternative turns out to be better, they’ll have no qualms about shunning the train in the future. 40% said that real-time app updates specific to services during engineering works would improve their experience. The tech-savvy kids of today saw this as an absolute basic requirement, whereas old-timers were a bit more forgiving, even if the prospect of rail replacement on their journey gave them sleepless nights.
As I’ve oft lamented on these pages, the problem with rail replacement is that it’s never been given the priority that it deserves across the industry. With a few exceptions, the crème de la crème talent in a train company are more excited by the glamour of running the railway, rather than messing around supplying buses and coaches for their ‘in-house’ owning group rail replacement division, causing a skills shortage, not helped by the lack of a career development pathway for those working in this arena. There has been a lack of customer-centric role models among in-house rail replacement providers, and little, if any, drawing on best-practice approaches from other parts of the industry. This is something CMAC has been able to capitalise on from its extensive experience serving aviation clients and their customers, as well as in other service sectors, where there is no tolerance for second-rate service.
The situation hasn’t been helped by transport owning groups being able to self-award rail replacement contracts to their own in-house division. Sadly, this became a more inevitable scenario in the post-Covid era, when, apart from the slender management fees available to train companies to run franchises, rail replacement has been pretty much the only area in which they can generate additional revenue streams and make commercial decisions. The lack of a level playing field can only have undermined the ability to deliver a quality experience and one that provided the best value for taxpayers. Thankfully, tender processes are now far more consistently specified, tightly managed and scrutinised.
CMAC’s report makes a number of recommendations, with the need to establish a national rail replacement standard being absolutely imperative, setting out clear deliverables for each customer touchpoint during pre-planned and short-notice disruption. Information delivery, accessibility, vehicle quality, tighter supplier management, improved customer service training for staff, and contingency protocols are key components that need to be prescribed, along with performance metrics aligned to customer outcomes. There should be regional performance dashboards that provide transparency across the industry and to customers on the quality of rail replacement provision, with proper pre-planning and reviews involving all partners responsible for the end-to-end experience. Collaboration really is key, and at a strategic level, we should move away from the disdain that parts of the industry have held toward rail replacement suppliers and their supply chains.
Clearly, as CMAC recommends, it’s vital to invest in real-time customer information, integrating website updates and apps, and to improve on-the-ground signage for rail replacement services and station screens that provide real-time information. Station staff should be visible and well-trained in delivering accurate and helpful advice, something that is not always the case. Accessibility should be a non-negotiable, across all aspects, from vehicle specifications through to staff training. All this potentially comes at a cost and requires investment, but for too long, rail replacement contract awards – not just those presided over by the TOCs – have been fixated on cost to the detriment of quality, leading to a race to the bottom and frayed proposition.
There’s no time like the present to get it right in terms of rail replacement. It’s been difficult, more generally, to get a glimpse of the future customer proposition that GBR is developing, and there’s either been a level of secrecy or it’s still at the concept stage. My fear is that, in the overall scheme of priorities, rail replacement will be low on their agenda. The soundbites we hear from GBR focus on fare simplification and technology that make it easier to buy a ticket and get trains to run on time. There’s a danger that rail replacement will become an afterthought, as it has always been. This is ridiculous when you consider the scale and frequency of events that tend to lead to bus, coach or taxi provision instead of trains – over last May’s two bank holidays, Network Rail undertook 630 infrastructure projects and every quarter, there tends to be at least 30 days classified as ‘severely disrupted’, most, if not all, requiring rail replacement of some kind. Delays and disruption aren’t disappearing, quite the opposite, and the post-Covid backlog of maintenance and big projects is still being embarked on by Network Rail, such that planned engineering works and blockades are as frequent as ever.
Let’s solve disruption together sounds an optimistic strapline for CMAC’s report, particularly as disruption management has never really felt like a collegiate experience within the rail industry, but with the onset of a new unified structure, we’ve a now-or-never, blank canvas opportunity to work as one team and prove that a solution to the rail replacement conundrum need not remain eternally elusive. CMAC have reached out and started the discussion.
Drop me an email at alex.warner@cmacgroup.com if you fancy a chinwag about rail replacement and a copy of the report, but just don’t mention the word ‘Macclesfield’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alex Warner has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector, having held senior roles on a multi-modal basis across the sector. He is co-founder of transport technology business Lost Group and transport consultancy AJW Experience Group (which includes Great Scenic Journeys). He is also chair of West Midlands Grand Rail Collaboration.
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!