Transport User Voice May 2025 – Chief Executive’s editorial

02 May 2025

Driving positive change

Many years ago, I remember sitting in a North London pub with a group of friends shortly before we all went our separate ways after university. It was a post-graduate course which a couple of them had come back to after working during their twenties. They seemed impossibly old and worldly wise. The rest of us had only had part-time or casual work in the summer holidays. We wondered how we would cope working five days a week year-round.

One of them mentioned the ‘Sunday night test’ – how you feel at the end of a weekend is a good barometer of how you feel about work generally. Not many people look forward to Monday mornings, but if you dread it you’ve got a problem. If you’re excited you’re lucky and should hold onto whatever is making it that way.

Being aware of what motivates me has helped at times of uncertainty. If you focus on the things you value and can change then you’re well placed to get through most situations.

In its own way our mission, which we’ve published as part of our Business Plan, does this. Whatever happens around us we’ll keep our focus on making positive changes for transport users. Sometimes it will be small, tangible differences we can make by, for example, spotting a gap in passenger information at Paddington and getting it fixed. On other occasions, it will be less tangible but potentially more significant, by using surveys like Your Bus Journey to drive up standards.

What we can do might change, but what we’re trying to do won’t.

I know many of you reading this will be involved in different stages of reform and service delivery. It won’t always be clear – as sometimes it isn’t for us – what’s coming next, but I hope you feel you are making whatever difference you can, big or small, and that we’re all finding our own ways to pass the ‘Sunday night test’.

Back to newsletter