“You need to have a very thick skin,” says CPT President-elect Martin Dean, 54. But he’s not talking about his day job (MD of Bus Development of Go-Ahead) nor his forthcoming CPT Presidency, but his role as a Sunday morning football referee in the Watford league.
“It’s a good challenge; you’ve got to manage the situations and be very decisive.” The man who is also a Watford FC season ticket holder, big cricket fan and does a “bit of running,” is a former Sunday league player, then manager, and has refereed since 2007.
It illustrates that there’s more to the man who is well-known on the conference circuit as an articulate and informed speaker, and has been a lifelong transport employee, having joined London Transport as a graduate trainee in 1985.
One-year term
Martin’s one-year term starts with a speech to the trade body’s annual dinner tomorrow evening (Thursday), having been formally elected to the role a few hours before.
Always a Londoner being born in Harrow and now living in Abbots Langley, near Watford, Martin is married with two children (22 and 24).
This year marks Martin’s 10th anniversary with Go Ahead. He joined to take up the new role of MD of Bus Development, when recruited from First by then Go-Ahead CEO Keith Ludeman. There had been a similar role in the rail side, and Keith’s view was that “we needed to a bit more in growing Go-Ahead outside of London.
Go-Ahead is relatively small outside London with only an 8% market share, so “Keith was keen to get someone to be more proactive in that market, and do all the policy stuff as well.”
Industry liaison
A lot of Martin’s work is industry liaison, with CPT, the Department for Transport (DfT) and other pan-industry bodies. “There’s always a lot going on, for example between 2010-2012 there was the Competition Commission inquiry in the bus industry, so for two years that took up a lot of my time.”
Then there was the Quality Contract in the North East, “so that was 2013 to 2015,” he adds.
“There are always two sides to my job, the non-business development aspect, alongside business development: acquisitions, putting in tenders and working on expansion into new geographical areas.”
Martin shares a small office in Go-Ahead’s Matthew Park Street, London, base. Outside it’s a striking Queen Anne-style building, a stone’s throw from Central Hall, Westminster Abbey and Parliament. Inside Go-Ahead occupies one floor of the modernised building. A “very talented” IT team that worked on The Key smartcard and other business development initiatives is also based here.
While Martin isn’t involved in the technical side, he holds a Group and industry-wide role for other major projects such as negotiating better handling fees for the use of contactless cards with banks.
He also leads on Transport for the North’s contactless project. The idea is to create a contactless back-office, initially for the north of England, with the aspiration of being a back-office for the whole of the country, similar to the Rail Settlement Plan.
“One of the things about that is the ability to get multi-operator ticketing on contactless, and the transaction volumes to be in a strong bargaining position.” Like McDonalds, bus has lots of low-value, but high volume transactions.
“In terms of the cost and simplicity, it makes so much sense to have transport ticketing weaved into contactless, rather than individual smartcards.”
Key issues
Opportunities and challenges are facing the industry this year, and CPT “needs to keep banging the drum about all the issues,” says Martin.
Congestion “is the biggest scourge for the industry. It’s not a new issue but we need to keep talking about it.
“It’s a huge issue in terms of costs of operation and our customers in terms of journey time and reliability. They all tell us, and Transport Focus, that reliability and punctuality is their number one issue.
“We’re in control of ensuring the bus doesn’t break down and it has a driver, and we must ensure that we deliver on that, but after that for the reliability of the road network we ‘ve got to rely on our partners.”
For Go-Ahead, of its lost mileage, “just 0.5% of it is due to vehicle/driver issues, the rest is road congestion.
“Where we can work with local authority partners we get really good outcomes, but we need to make them aware of the economics from our point of view.
“We think the clean air debate is a good opportunity for the industry, but that the implementation is in a managed way. That means proper consultation and timescales that challenge the industry, but accommodating the life cycle of a single decker of 12 years and a double decker for 15 years.
“Coaches too are vital for local economies with the number of people they bring in. Again, it’s really important that officials developing these schemes understand the economic impacts of what they are doing.
“We need to get our message across about working with local authority partners and CPT has got a big role in that. It’s a key priority for us. It’s down to us as an industry to get that message across and ensure that we’re heard.”Fact File: Martin Dean
The Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) President for 2019, Martin Dean, 54, has been Managing Director of Bus Development of Go-Ahead Group PLC since July 2008.
He leads and acts as a focal point for all bus development activity throughout Go-Ahead Group, assists with the development of bus policy and strategy and provides additional group resources for its bus companies.
He joined Go-Ahead in 2008 from First Group, where he was Business Development Director of the UK Bus Division, and also served as Commercial Director in the Midlands & East Anglia Division.
He held roles in rail at National Express as Sales & Marketing Director of ‘one’ Railway and began his career with London Transport as a graduate trainee.
