Steve Butcher's lifetime in rail began when he was 16 years old

as a cleaner for British Rail.

Now, he's Executive General Manager of the Rail and Transport Division

for the John Holland Group.

I'm Paul Comfort and on this episode of Transit Unplugged,

we go in depth with Steve.

I sat down with him recently at the AusRail conference in Brisbane

on the Gold Coast of Australia.

Steve progressed through roles in train crew, driver management, operational

safety, action investigation, and operations director to become

the Chief Operating Officer for Northern Rail in the United Kingdom.

They held a global role with Serco across Dubai, India, the USA, and Australia.

And for the last seven years, he's been Executive General Manager, one of the

largest transportation companies in Australia, that is the John Holland Group.

They just recently took over operation of Yarra Trams in a joint venture with

Transdev called Yarra Journeymakers.

And on today's episode, Steve explains kind of what their role

is and what's happening there at this most iconic light rail tram

network, the largest in the world.

We also talk about their role on building the Gold Coast Light Railway.

There in Brisbane that I got to see driving right down the Gold Coast,

we also talked to them about the tunnel boring they did for the Sydney

Metro, that big Sydney Metro project Northwest and other work they're doing

there, and he gives some advice to young people who want to join into

the public transportation industry.

This is a great episode.

You'll enjoy hearing from one of the world's leaders in public

transportation and infrastructure, Steve Butcher from John Holland.

Great to be with my pal, Steve Butcher, who works with John Holland.

I was here five years ago in Australia.

We're continuing our Australia series here on the Transit Unplugged podcast.

Tell us where we're at, Steve.

Oh, well, we're on the Gold Coast.

and what is really significant for me and John Holland group, not only is

it in a beautiful part of the world, we're also working on stage three of

building the, the Gold Coast Light Railway on behalf of TMR and GoldLink.

We saw that going down the middle of the road.

Tell me about that.

Oh, it's an amazing network.

It really is changing people's lives, in terms of going, from El Ellens Vale all

the way through, eventually, hopefully, the, the airport at Gullingatta.

It's an amazing, network.

You know what's funny, Steve, was we were here, uh, we're staying here

overnight and we, um, we went down to the beach today and we saw this

line being built all the way down.

And there's a beach here called Miami Beach.

Absolutely.

And it looks just like Miami Beach, except it's 9, 000

miles away, but, I can imagine.

The tourists that come here, man this is going to change their lives.

They don't have to drive anymore.

Oh well not only does it change the lives of the tourists here,

it makes it really accessible.

So whether you land in Coolingatta at the airport or whether you land

in Brisbane, it's all connected eventually by the, by the rail system.

So you're going to be able to land in Brisbane, train out to Ellensvale

straight on the light rail all the way through onto the Gold Coast.

Not only is it going to change people that live here, their lives, it's

also going to make it more accessible for people wanting to come in and

have an holiday on the Gold Coast.

Now, what's your job?

Tell us about what you do every day with John Holland.

Okay, so I'm the executive general manager of rail and transport and

we are we are We're the largest end to end rail provider in Australasia.

And when I say end to end, it's really important to us.

So, end to end is really about we draw the railway and design it.

We would build it, and whatever that means in terms of the design and construction.

We then follow that through with our rail services team, which is

track, signals, signal design.

We've got a couple of test labs in the signalling world.

And then we then, work with mainly partners, MTR, RATP, Transdev.

UGL, et cetera, partners to then operate and maintain that railway.

So when we're building it, we build it with the operator in mind, and

the longevity of what that means for operating a railway all the way.

So the end to end is really important to us in being able to provide that

capability and that bandwidth, that when you design a railway, you do it

from being able to give the operator and the customer the best success

possible during that design phase.

And you have a lot of projects either just completed or underway and almost, I mean,

tell us, it's fantastic what you're doing.

I don't know how you keep up with it.

Oh, this has been our biggest year yet in terms of opportunities.

so in terms of what we've been working on, we've been working on bids for

suburban rail loop in Melbourne, and you will have seen that when you was there.

Sydney Metro West, and of course that's building on the expertise

and the skill set of us operating.

Sydney Metro Northwest and City and Southwest, which has

just gone live and opened.

Tell us about that.

Howard Collins, my friend who works there, wanted me to come see it.

It's driverless and walk us through that a little bit.

That's awesome.

It's the first Australian driverless Metro.

We actually opened it when you was here last time in 2019.

We opened it from Tallowong through to Chatswood, which really opened up the

Northwest into, in towards the city.

What has really transformed it is that, only this year in August, we opened

it from Chatswood through to Sydenham, and that has really opened the city up.

You can go from Tallowong all the way through the city to Sydenham,

which is, in the suburbs of Sydney.

in about 59 minutes.

We're also doing the work to extend that out to Chatswood,

out to, sorry, Bankstown.

And John Holland Group with our partners Lango Rourke have got the work to

convert from Sydenham to Bankstown and we're working on that currently.

That is due to open any time next year.

I saw a video, I was telling you this before we turned on the mic,

I think it was on YouTube, some TV show where they filmed these

big boring machines underground.

Was that you guys?

Yeah, it was,

yeah.

John Holland, we did all the tunnel boring for Sydney Metro

Northwest and City and Southwest.

all of that was our own teams, and one of the beauties of John Holland is that

we can offer that integrated service.

So you actually get the best of John Holland.

You get the tunneling, you get the station build, you get the line wide

services, and then you get the O& M.

So actually, in terms of the end to end, not only do you get the end to

end service from a rail perspective, you also get it in a construction

sense all the way through the tunneling through to the build.

And who is John Holland?

Who was he?

Was there a John Holland?

There was, Sir John Holland, yes, so Sir John Holland started from very

humble beginnings 76 years ago in, built a woolshed, he went on to create

a, a really exciting business in terms of, building, projects, mainly,

mainly a project centered business.

Okay.

the John Holland Rail business was born out of that.

And only this year, it's probably been our busiest year yet in

terms of bidding and winning work.

So only this year, as I said, we've bid on Suburban Rail Loop, we've bid

and was very fortunate to win the Yarra Journeymakers with our partners Transdev.

And we actually go live at 0200 hours on Sunday, the 1st of

December, and we're really excited.

Although scared, really excited on going live.

It's a big, big change.

I, I mentioned to you, I was with Michelle Batsas who works with you there, and

met the, the chairwoman of your, of your board there, and, they're all so excited.

It's gonna, I'm just gonna make international news, I'm sure.

It already has made international news.

We knew about it in the U.

S., yeah.

Yeah, what is really exciting about that, and, and the previous operator did an

amazing job, We're taking over on the 1st.

We've got a mandate to operate the largest tram network.

And what the beauty of this partnership is, you've got a

global operator in Transdev.

you've got John Holland who add real complimentary services, not

only operating railways, but also in infrastructure and asset management.

so we've got a lot of great plans with the rolling stock, the infrastructure,

really to turn it into a first class grade A light railway system

for the citizens of Melbourne.

Got some new vehicles coming I heard.

Yeah, absolutely.

I like the old ones, they're kind of cool.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if you know this, we were in Memphis this year

and they are running light rail vehicles.

From, from Yarra Trams ah, I didn't know that.

Some of the older ones that went over there that they've refurbished.

Yeah, so I said, hey, I know where that's at.

So, yeah, but you've got new vehicles coming.

Yeah, we've got the beauty of, of Yarra Trams is that it's

got such a diverse operation.

It goes straight through the city of Melbourne, into the suburbs.

It's got anything from historic type trams running in certain parts of the

network, in terms of still keeping that flavour of what the network was about.

And we take that very serious.

Not only do we want to modernise it and make it into one of the world's greatest

transport systems, we also want to protect what the iconic, image, and the iconic

element is for Melbourne and Victoria.

And that's working with an old diverse range of vehicles, old diverse range of,

routes, and providing the best, absolute first class service we can for all, all,

all sorts, all elements of the community.

Yeah.

Kind of from this iconic hagiographic approach, the, it's kind of like

it reminds me of the Yarra Trams Light Rail Vehicles, or tram as you

call it here, represents the city.

It's like a symbol of the city of Melbourne, just like the red double

decker buses are a symbol of London.

So it's very rare, in my experience, I've visited close to a hundred cities

now around the world, their tram systems, that you have integrated.

The woven yourself into the fabric of the community enough where

they, when they think of the city, they think of your transit system.

That's amazing, man.

Ah, and not only do they think of the transit system, they've

got high expectations as well.

So we owe it to our customers, we owe it to our client, Transport Victoria,

to make sure that when we do do It's a real privilege to take over Yarra Trams.

Yarra Journeymakers was a relationship with Transdev we thought very hard about.

We wanted to provide complementary services.

We wanted to provide a complementary skill set.

But more importantly, what we wanted to do, was our values were aligned in

terms of driving great customer service and making real, Yarra Journeymakers and

their experience second to none every day.

I'm very impressed with the model here in Australia, similar to the UK, of

contracting out fixed route services.

In the United States we contract out paratransit, the vans for people

with disabilities, but largely fixed route buses are run by the agency

staff, and then when you get to the rail side it's some of each.

Explain to us how that worked in Yarra Trams.

What do you do versus what TransDev does versus what the other company,

or are you just a group together and you hire a management team?

How does that work?

Oh no, it's a fully integrated JV, so we take full accountability and

responsibility for the end to end service.

So and, and what is great about that is that we all learn off

each individual skill set.

So in terms of TransDev, there is no question they're a global,

world class transport operator.

John Holland, what we bring to the party is not only our operational

expertise in some of our operations, Melbourne Trains, Adelaide Light Rail,

Canberra Metro, Sydney Metro, etc.

So we've got that skill set ourself.

But what is really complementary is how we manage the asset, how

we manage the infrastructure.

And now we manage the operation as one.

So, those skill sets, we don't, we don't divide them in terms of what Transdev's

doing, what John Holland's doing.

We take full accountability.

We have one board.

it's, it's the most diverse board that we've, we, we, we

could possibly put together.

I met your Madam Chairman the other day.

Absolutely.

Madeline, she's a real inspiration to us.

it's got a 50 50 split of male and female on the board, which drives

great diversity and challenge.

We want to challenge the status quo, but we also want to make sure

that we are really representing the people that travel on us and how

we can improve the service by them.

Let me ask you a question about, kind of post pandemic rail.

I just gave a speech here at the conference, a few minutes ago.

I was talking about what's happening in the U.S.

In the U.S., bus ridership is back maybe 75 80 percent of pre pandemic,

but commuter rail service, like the one I used to run in Maryland into

Washington DC, they're still down around 50 percent because of this

hybrid work schedules, what Howard Collins told me he calls the three day

city, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and people stay home on Mondays and Fridays.

What are we doing globally?

What are you seeing?

What trends cause you work all over, to bring riders back to rail?

Yeah, I think, I think we're, we're still seeing a little bit of that.

certainly the networks around are probably a bit higher than, you

know, they're, they're currently running it around 75, 80%.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's across most networks.

I think what we're trying to do, I mean, flexibility is

really important to us as well.

But what we are, we're really working on is what that offering

and making transport really simple.

Easy for people to use.

So, if I look in certainly Melbourne, if I look at the weekends, they're over 100%.

Because people are still using rail.

It's more about the flexibility of how they are working.

So, generally, Howard would be right.

Monday and Friday is a lot less.

But in terms of some of the initiatives that rail is taking, you know,

the 50 cent fare in Queensland.

Yeah.

And a number of other initiatives to really drive people back in,

not into the office, but using rail as their first choice.

I, I often had a say when I was in Northern Rail, I think I may have

said it to you last time you was over, is I almost want the rail industry

to be as easy as going to the chip shop or the pub, it's a no brainer.

It's very simple, you don't have to think about it, you don't

have to think about your car.

It's really about providing that integrated service.

And we've been working really hard.

Not only in terms of the bus connections, but in the metro connections, the

heavy rail connections, to make it a real seamless service door to door.

So you don't miss your connection, like on the airplanes I do too often these days.

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, the connection protection, right?

So you ride the bus or rail, you're not going to miss the next ones.

You guys are working on that?

Yeah, and of course, with the metros, you know, I catch

Sydney Metro to work every day.

And you don't even have to worry about it, because you know there's going to be

one every four or good point, right, so it doesn't matter if you get to that, yeah.

So it's a turn, up, and go.

I catch the, the Metro at Vic Cross.

I go into Central every day.

I never leave home or work thinking about what time the train is because I

know there's going to be one turn up.

And that is the ease of what you do in terms of you, whenever you get

down there, even if you've missed one and see one go out the station, you

know in four minutes time, there's going to be another Metro come along.

And that's the type of ease and the integration that we really got to drive.

I'm also impressed with the commitment to investment in public

transport here in Australia.

I was just in Brisbane yesterday, met with Ryan Murphy, who's head of the

City Council's Transportation Committee.

We toured the Cross River Rail project underground.

We went out and saw the Metro, which are like a BRT like service,

but that looks like trains.

They're investing billions and billions of local dollars.

I mean, is Australia like, you know, doubling down on transit or it sounds

like there's a lot of investment going on?

There is an amazing amount of investment in terms of the transportation, industry.

You know, if I look at, and that's all across Australia, if I look at,

you know, certainly Melbourne, the investment that they've put in in terms

of the metro tunnel opening, in the future, in terms of Queensland, in Cross

River Rail, We're just going through a procurement process on Logan Faster

Rail, the Olympics are coming in 2032.

So improving that system.

Sydney Metro, Sydney Metro Western Airport and the airport out at

Badgerys Creek has been developed.

That really will open up the transportation network, not

only internally to Sydney, but also people flying in both

internationally and domestically.

But also the Sydney Metro West.

So, these are all about opening the cities up, making

transportation really easy to use.

But it, you know, I have to say, every single part of Australia

is putting investment into this area, and that's great.

I mean, you know, I have a lot of respect for the agencies because

they, their vision for driving, That better transportation system

throughout all parts of Australia is second to none, it's fantastic.

So what are the other trends you're seeing when it comes to rail transportation?

We've talked about funding, infrastructure.

You seen any other trends that we could learn from in the U.

S.

and in Europe?

Yeah, I think, I think a lot of the trends are, is that in terms of some of

the construction, you know, it's more about how we keep people energised.

You know, we're building the extension out on the Gold Coast, we're duplicating

in terms of Logan Fast Rail, we're doing a lot of work in Sydney.

I think, The trends are, and you know, I often say this when Dubai

Metro went live many years ago, you know, there's a mantra there, if

you build it, people will use it.

If I look at Sydney Metro, when it opened into, from, Chatswood through the city,

and south west to Sydenham, you know, I think in the first few days there was up

to 5 million people using the network.

So, I guess the trend for me is if you provide easy, simple services

Where people don't have to think and it becomes part of their DNA,

part of their life, day in, day out.

People will use it.

So actually, I think the real trend is people are starting to get excited

about public transportation once again.

That's great.

Let's talk about your background, your personal background, your family.

Your father and your grandfather were involved in the rail business, right?

Yeah, my father was a, a train driver, in the UK.

My grandfather was a locomotive superintendent, also in the UK.

And, so I guess it was pretty much in the blood.

I was grown up surrounded by trains in many ways.

So.

It was pretty inevitable that, I was going to join.

I joined British Rail at 16.

43 years later, I'm still here.

Still, still as excited to get out of bed about the railways and the transportation

system as I was all those years ago.

But what is really important now and really drives me every day is that, you

know, John Holland, one of John Holland's values is about transforming lives.

And when we build and then go live and operate a railway.

You can see that every single day we're transforming people's lives.

And it also becomes in their DNA that makes their lives easier.

And I tell you what, I wouldn't change a thing.

Absolutely nothing in terms of my career.

and, and certainly on the, I think we've got to work harder at getting young

people in, not necessarily, With graduates or, or, or, or university graduates.

But we've also gotta work really harder at getting grassroots people

into the industry that 43 years later they can be as excited as I am.

That's great.

Are, do you know, uh, Sir Peter Hedy?

I do know, I do know Sir Peter, he very real guy from British Rail.

Absolutely.

And of course, you know, Sir Peter Hendy, in terms of, um.

The roles he's had over the years, both as a commissioner and

then in Network Rail and now in terms of the role he's now doing.

He, if you look at Sir Peter Hendy, he is a real role model about the

excitement he has about connecting transport and connecting people to

places and making people's lives easier.

And, you know, that mantra is still in my blood.

That's all I really want to do is to make sure that whatever

we do, we're adding value.

And not only adding value, we're providing great, great, great

transport systems, whatever they are.

Whether it be a bus network, whether it be a metro network or an heavy rail

network, connecting into airports, connecting into different places.

It is really about making people's lives a lot simpler.

Well, thank you for spending a little time with us today.

Just from my perspective, your company, John Holland, has a

tremendous reputation for quality, and the work you do is fantastic.

I've seen it myself.

And, so congratulations and keep up the great work.

There's a lot of people doing it.

We're very proud of what we do.

We're very proud of John Holland, all of us together.

And, yeah, thank you for, thank you for that.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Transit

Unplugged with our special guest, Steve Butcher of John Holland.

Hi, I'm Tris Hussey, editor of the podcast.

And coming up next week on the show, we have a special panel on

Transportation Networking Companies, or TNCs, in public transit.

Our guests are Dr.

Judy L.

Shanley, National Director, Transportation, Mobility, and

Youth Transition at Easterseals.

Alex Eligudin, CEO at Wheeling Forward, Jen Shepherd, General Manager, Uber

Transit at Uber, and Brad Miller, CEO of Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.

Transit Unplugged is brought to you by Modaxo.

At Modaxo, we're passionate about moving the world's people.

And at Transit Unplugged, we're passionate about telling those stories.

So until next week, ride safe and ride happy.