The author is a former board member of the Office of Rail and Road and is president of the Infrastructure Forum
Britain’s railways have bigger problems than weeks of industrial action. They really need a structure that works. They need “leading minds” with expertise to fill the current gap between the fragmented, and generally underperforming, train company and the Department of Transportation that has ended up determining its fate, financing and operations.
In May 2021, the government produced the Great British Railways: Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, which sets out post-privatisation fragmentation and the way forward.
Privatization in rail, it is now clear, is overambitious. Looking back, the earlier privatizations of the 1980s, where nationalized entities were privatized as a whole and then gradually became subject to competition, seem better than those, like the railways, where a complex competitive structure had been set in the beginning. .
Rail franchising is beyond the ability of the Passenger Rail Franchising director, the next Strategic Rail Authority and then the DfT to do so. It has withered on the vine with two-thirds of contracts since 2012 issued without competition.
Fragmentation leaves passengers with what industry observers call “a very complex ticketing system”. Eight companies charge different amounts at different times, for tickets that are only valid on certain routes with prices depending on the date of purchase.
Although the ticketing system is decentralized, experts complain that the centrally determined rolling stock gives passengers hard and cramped seats. The good delivery of electrification has resulted in many services running on diesel. Research by the Rail Safety and Standards Board has found that air quality levels for passengers on some modern diesel trains can be up to 13 times worse than standing on the side of a busy road in central London.
The Williams report recommended that a new body, Great British Railways, should be created to pull the system together. The plan is to learn from the success of Transport for London. The bus service is run on a concession basis – companies bid to supply and operate city buses through a competitive process, but specifications, prices and ticketing systems are controlled by TfL.
Or, as Williams-Shapps documents succinctly: “We are now proposing the biggest change to the railways in 25 years, ending the fragmentation of the past and bringing the network into a single national leadership.”
In this model, GBR will “own the infrastructure, receive fare revenue, run and design the network and set most rates and schedules”. The current infrastructure owner, Network Rail, will be “absorbed into this new organisation”, as will many functions from the Rail Delivery Group and the Department for Transport.
GBR will award concessions to competing rail providers. The new body could start by simplifying and automating the fare and ticketing system. It will then proceed to build a coherent national plan for rail based on the work already carried out by Network Rail and the GBR Transition Team.
Unfortunately, due to political unrest in the government until 2022, the early implementation of the plan is impossible. The rail industry fears that nothing will happen, but there is no sign that reform is a government priority. The minister is evasive about what can happen when.
But the basics are done. The plan is there and it needs to be implemented. Otherwise, long after the strike has disappeared and the railways have begun to gradually recover from the pandemic, the fragmentation and lack of thought leading to managing the British railways will remain.