Why are National Express getting rid of the "One" railway branding?

Question

When National Express took over the East coast franchise from GNER they decided to get rid of the GNER brand and replace with a brand new livery and the name "National Express East Coast". And now they decided to apply the new livery to "One" trains as well re-branded as "National Express East Anglia" or something. The current livery hasn't been completely drafted in and yet it is already obsolete. Currently "One" are the least reliable of all UK train companies with about 82% of all trains arriving on time, but instead of improving performance they decide to spend time and money changing the look of the company instead.

Why are they changing the brand instead of improving performance?

Answer 1

There has been changes to Board-level management of the National Express Group, which has led to a number of major changes.

For example, the UK Rail Division was abolished and merged with the UK Bus Division as the new UK Operations Division.

As a consequence of these changes, it was decided that the "National Express" brandname be used for all UK operations, since this brand is particularly strong in England and Wales.

The National Express Group, as part of the new rail franchise arrangements, have agreed to improve performance.

On a personal note, this is a dodgy strategy, because if the Group fail to improve performance on their rail franchises, then they will damage the "National Express" brandname - so perhaps they mean what they say!

Answer 2

'One' was always a barmy name and needed to be changed. It is up there in stupidity with 'First Capital Connect' which should never have been allowed to change from Thameslink (even if it became 'First Thameslink') and 'c2c' - which, I think, is another name being altered. However, I take your point about the costs of re-branding. Railway Magazine totted up all the costs of re- franchising - including re-liverying stock and it came to a phenomenal figure. Of course, re-lettting the East Coast franchise had to be done in view of the collapse of GNER's parent company, but the on costs are an argument for making the franchises much longer - say 25 years so this constant colour change doesn't happen. With the proviso, of course, that franchises can be more speedily removed from bad companies.

Answer 3

I read in the Railnews newspaper that the main reason comes from the confusion that still exists when a train gets announced, for example, as the 'seven twenty one service to cambridge' - where the 'one' could be the minute, i.e 7.21, or it could be the operator, ONE, running a 7.20 service.

Seems as if the company now realise it was a bad idea and that they need a company name more in keeping with railway tradition.

I didn't know they were least reliable (or should that be punctual?), but it wouldn't surprise me, as they have a lot of problems with equipment failures, and of course many of their trains are Driver Only Operated, which always causes many more delays as passengers have no guard or conductor to whom they can direct questions (or their frustration!).