Meet the Chair: Graham Fitzgerald on Light Rail Operations, Leadership and LROC

As part of our Meet the Chair series, we spoke with Graham Fitzgerald, newly appointed Chair of the UKTram Light Rail Operations Committee (LROC).

Graham brings extensive operational and leadership experience from his role as Luas Duty Operations Manager in Dublin for Transdev Ireland. His background covers incident management, service delivery, customer experience, safety-critical operations, and service in the Irish Defence Forces.

Graham has been involved with LROC since 2019 and served as Vice Chair since 2023. He assumes the Chair role at a pivotal time as light rail networks evolve and industry collaboration grows in importance. We spoke with Graham about his path into light rail, the future direction of LROC, leadership lessons, and common misconceptions about operating a modern tram network.

You’ve worked across operations, incident management and control room leadership at LUAS. What first drew you into light rail, and what has kept you in the sector?

What first drew me into light rail was the operational environment. After my military career, I was looking for a sector where, over time and as I gained experience, I could apply some of the skills and leadership from my previous military roles. I wanted something fast-paced and the sector offered that. I started as a tram driver and, over time, worked my way through various operational roles while advancing up the managerial ladder.

What has kept me in the sector is that no two days are ever really the same. I also feel my role has a positive impact on the thousands of people who use the tram system daily. The control room side of the role, in particular, can be challenging but equally rewarding when I can help the team manage complex and difficult incidents and issues that can be part of the daily responsibility, but also when serious incidents occur, such as road traffic accidents, event management, service disruption, and other incidents that we can't plan for that can easily occur.

You’ve recently taken on the role of Chair of the UKTram Light Rail Operations Committee. What are your priorities for LROC over the next few years, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for collaboration across the sector?

In taking on the role of Chair of LROC, my priority over the next few years would be to strengthen collaboration across the different operators on the shared challenges we all face, including operational resilience, safety, incident response, and preparing our networks for future growth.

A key focus for me would be improving how operators share lessons learned from incidents and disruptions. Every system experiences operational challenges, but there is a real opportunity within LROC to help share those experiences by creating stronger channels for best-practice sharing in incident management, control room operations, and emergency preparedness, which the sector can benefit from.

Another key area I feel would be beneficial for each system and operational management group is building on the group's knowledge in this specialised sector of leadership development, training standards and learning from mistakes we are bound to make along this journey. We must keep an open and honest chain of information, and the quarterly meetings must be open and allow our peers to challenge our decisions, taking the learnings back to our own network.

The biggest opportunities for collaboration, I feel, would be standardising operational best practices, particularly around control room procedures, service recovery and major incident management. Technology and innovation to share approaches across the different systems we use and to help build industry resilience by strengthening links between operators, infrastructure management, and key decision-makers within operational teams.

Your background spans both the military and light rail operations. Are there any leadership lessons or experiences from that time which still shape how you approach operational management today? 

There are many leadership lessons I draw from the military experience that still shape me and how I approach operational management every day, particularly in a control room environment, and during major incidents.

The importance of remaining calm and decisive under pressure is one of them. Similar to when I served overseas in the military, decisions must be made quickly. I feel these experiences from deployments have helped me realise the value of staying composed, assessing the available facts, and, most importantly, making clear, timely decisions, which are directly relevant to managing service disruptions and critical incidents.

Another lesson that continues to influence me is the importance of teamwork and trust. Success depends on everyone understanding their role, communicating effectively, and having confidence in each other. In transport operations, the same principles apply, and strong teamwork is essential. I think the main lesson is knowing a leader's role in supporting the team around me. I think people perform best when they know they have that support.

What do you think people outside operations often underestimate about running a modern light rail network?

I think people often underestimate just how complex a modern light rail network is behind the scenes. From a passenger's perspective, it can seem straightforward. One of the biggest misconceptions is that operations are only about moving trams from A to B. In fact, it is about managing an entire live system, service regulation, infrastructure, power supply, staff deployment, customer information and incident response, all at the same time. The control room, in particular, is continuously balancing safety and service continuity.

Also, people can underestimate how quickly a supposed minor issue can escalate across the entire network. A signal fault, traffic light issues, a road accident that didn’t even involve a tram, a security issue or a medical emergency can have a knock-on effect across both Luas lines and impact thousands of passengers.

I also think the human side can be overlooked. Modern light rail relies heavily on people making critical decisions every day, including traffic supervisors, drivers and incident managers. My point is that light rail systems are not simply managing transport, but managing public infrastructure and people, sometimes in critical situations.

After years of working across the LUAS network and wider light rail sector, do you have a memorable operational moment that has stayed with you?

After 10 years, it’s hard to single out one thing if I am honest, but certain difficult situations and how we, as a team, react to and manage them have stayed with me, in particular the Dublin riots that occurred in November 2023.

This was an incredibly difficult situation to be involved in and watching it evolve from the control room and with hundreds of cameras seeing the destruction caused to the city including our own tram being set on fire along with multiple buses and the damage in the aftermath that we witnessed but the point I make is I found it incredible the teamwork that went into responding not only within Luas but with multiple other emergency services and agencies to get the city and tram service back operational in such a quick time has really stayed with me and I am still incredibly proud of everyone involved within Luas.

Graham’s reflections highlight the people behind modern light rail operations and the responsibility of keeping networks running safely and reliably each day. This involves managing complex incidents, supporting frontline teams, and sharing lessons across the industry. The role of operations extends far beyond what passengers typically see.

UKTram would like to thank Graham for taking part in the latest edition of our Meet the Chair series. We look forward to welcoming him to the UKTram offices in Birmingham next month for the next Light Rail Operators Committee (LROC) meeting.