A reserved terminal slot that goes unused is easy to identify in a cost review. The invoice exists, the movement does not and an apparently straightforward saving presents itself. The harder question is what the company was buying before it knew which movements would need another path. A reserve is an option under uncertainty. Some unused capacity may be a reasonable part of that option, while some may reflect a poor fit that should be changed. The absence of use is a prompt for examination, not a complete verdict by itself.
I do not think the word resilience should end the examination either. A programme can acquire protection from scrutiny when its purpose sounds important enough. Managers may describe every reserve as essential without showing how it can be used, which service it supports or whether a different arrangement would be more effective. That makes the board choose between an easily counted expense and an unbounded warning about what might happen without it. We need a more concrete account if the decision is to survive beyond the memory of the last disruption.
Buy the option before knowing the event
Ahead of our 2023 operating year, procurement colleagues proposed removing reserved contingency slots and buying alternatives as needed. The annual commitment was €360,000. Corridor teams argued that short-notice capacity was often scarce when several businesses were responding to the same difficulty. Both positions had merit. Paying in advance meant carrying a cost that might not be fully used. Waiting meant accepting the price and availability of whatever could be found when the need became apparent. The company could not choose a future in which neither consequence existed.
I recommended a narrower, specified reserve rather than preserving every previous arrangement. We examined the locations, the movements they could support and the conditions under which the capacity would be available. The proposal also described who could call on it and how the operating team would know that an alternative was ready. Those details mattered because a theoretical option is less useful than one that can be exercised in time. A reserve listed in a contract but poorly understood by dispatch is not equivalent to a practical recovery route.
The choice should be connected to the service sold. A customer with a flexible receiving schedule may value a contingency option differently from one whose operation depends on a narrow window. The company needs to decide which commitments warrant additional capacity and how the cost enters the commercial account. Otherwise, the reserve can become a common expense supporting promises whose price was negotiated as though no such support were necessary. That does not mean every shipment needs an individual allocation of contingency cost, but the overall relationship must be understood.
Record what the reserve did and did not do
During the reviewed year, 18% of our reserved capacity went unused. The reserve supported alternative handling for movements associated with seventeen disrupted train departures. Those are two useful observations, and both belong in the review. I resisted turning the recoveries into a claim that every affected shipment would otherwise have failed. Some alternative capacity might have been available by another route, and some customers still received late deliveries despite the reserve. An invented avoided-loss figure would have made the programme easier to defend and the evidence less trustworthy.
The cost remained €360,000. The reserve did not become free because it was helpful on a difficult day, and its unused share did not become waste merely because no movement passed through it. We assessed whether the arrangement supported the service in a way the company was prepared to continue funding. That judgement involved the alternatives available, customer consequences and the practical experience of the operating teams. It was not reducible to a utilisation percentage, though the percentage gave the discussion a necessary factual starting point.
There is a temptation to evaluate a reserve entirely through the most memorable disruption. A dramatic recovery can dominate the account, just as a quiet year can make every precaution look excessive. I ask for the ordinary pattern as well: where the capacity sat, which locations were difficult to access and what happened when the intended option was not suitable. This helps distinguish a relevant reserve from a collection of arrangements inherited from an earlier network. It also gives procurement a constructive role in improving the fit rather than being cast as the department that wants to remove protection.
Review access as carefully as utilisation
An option has limited value if the person dealing with a disruption cannot activate it promptly. Authority, contact details, release conditions and current availability need to be understood before the event. I want teams to know which decisions they may make and which require escalation, without encouraging them to cross an operator's technical or safety boundaries. The executive can simplify commercial authority and clarify responsibility. It cannot remove the need for competent operational judgement merely because a customer is waiting for an answer.
Our review led to changes at two locations whose actual pattern differed from the original assumptions. We retained the revised reserve for another planning period. That was a decision about the next period's needs, informed by the preceding year, rather than an assertion that the programme had proved its permanent value. A network changes as customer flows, terminal conditions and partner capacity change. The reserve should change with it. Continuing to purchase yesterday's option can be as unhelpful as refusing to buy any option at all.
I also want the review to consider alternatives that are not simply more or less reserved capacity. A different customer cut-off, a revised departure pattern or better coordination may reduce the situations in which contingency is needed. Those changes have their own costs and may be unacceptable for some customers. They should still be part of the conversation. The best reserve is not necessarily the largest one; it is the arrangement that fits a service whose ordinary design has already been examined carefully.
Unused capacity therefore asks us to explain the choice we made under uncertainty and the choice we propose to make next. It should neither embarrass us into removing a useful option nor excuse us from testing whether the option remains relevant. A serious board account can show the cost, the unused share, the recoveries and their limitations together. That gives directors something more useful than a promise of perfect continuity: a clear view of what the company is prepared to pay for flexibility and how management knows whether that flexibility can actually be used.