Ask any Brit about their last positive experience on a train – and chances are they will do one of two things: laugh in your face or wax lyrical about one of Spain, the Netherlands, France or Italy.
Despite Britain introducing rail to the world, 200 years ago to this year in fact, the system is creaking – and stories are becoming more horrifying. Overcrowded trains, jaw-dropping ticket prices and endless complaints about on-board wi-fi justifiably fill social media and newspaper articles. After decades of neglect and mismanagement, the UK’s railway network needs more than a fresh lick of paint – it needs a complete rethink. With the government on the cusp of launching their plans to the industry we have the perfect opportunity to propose some liberal ideas to fundamentally improve the offering for passengers.
The new government’s plans are bold and have more cross-party support than one might imagine. Plans to create ‘Great British Railways’ (a singular body to run both rail services and infrastructure) have near universal support. The government will, and perhaps at the time of reading, have already, put forward proposals to unite track and train into one body – citing fragmentation as the reason for the poorly run state of our railways. Broadly, they are spot on: too many chefs occupy the kitchen, leading to a poor quality broth.
Whilst the ‘broad principles,’ as one senior rail figure described to me, are agreed upon – the devil will truly be in the detail – our party needs to ensure good policy outweighs rigid ideology.
For the first time since the mid 1990s, all aspects of the railway – save the leasing of the trains, freight operations and a few other constituent parts – will hinge entirely on government money. In a tight fiscal environment, this should worry anyone who uses the train.
Whilst nationalisation is a popular concept, in the abstract at least, the public are uninterested in stomaching further fare rises. When YouGov surveyed the public, 76% supported nationalisation – but this fell to just 6% if fares continued to increase. Who can blame them? The relative cost of travelling by train has shot up by 151% in relation to inflation since 1997, when travelling by car has increased just over half of that. We should call on the government to freeze rail fares for the remainder of the parliament – and subsidise specific routes where fares are most problematic. How do we fund this you ask? Reverse the freeze on fuel duty or reinstate the full rate of Air Passenger Duty for domestic flying. Productivity increases, emissions fall – win, win.
Secondarily, we need to throw our weight behind rail infrastructure projects that alleviate pressure on the network – something the government has been unwilling to commit to. The West Coast Main Line – which runs out of Euston to Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, as well as Scotland – is the busiest line in Europe. We need to support building High Speed 2 in full, to alleviate pressure on these paths. The same logic can be applied for Northern Powerhouse Rail – increasing capacity between the North’s great cities. We need to be unambiguous in our support of these projects in order to tangibly improve the offering to passengers. Whether delivered by the UK government, or through a public-private partnership – like High Speed 1 or the Elizabeth Line – we must support the industry’s ambitions to make these proposals a reality.
Thirdly, and most liberally, we must alleviate the pressure on Great British Railways by devolving power to Combined Authorities and expanding ‘Open Access’ operations. Combined Authorities, who have a strong track record in delivering rail services like Merseyrail and the London Overground, should be empowered to take control of local lines. Enabling Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds to deliver their own services will lead to better outcomes, with decisions being taken closer to home.
We should also embrace ‘Open Access’ – the concept of letting multiple, non-state owned companies run services at their own risk. Lumo, Grand Central and Hull Trains have competed with the state operated LNER for years – driving up patronage, offering lower fares to passengers and increasing the number of towns and cities directly, or more speedily, connected to each other – not to mention reducing domestic flights on cities on the route. This model has led to even greater success in some European nations – to the point that the EU has now legislated to ensure competition exists on intercity routes across the continent.
Calling for these measures, as well as a raft of others, will set us apart from the other parties, and win us credibility in the industry and among passengers where the other parties fail so miserably to do so.
* Ben Curtis is a councillor in Clapham Common & Abbeville in the London Borough of Lambeth and works for a public transport NGO.
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16 Comments
Whatever Lib Dems feel about Combined Authorities as models of devolution, their track record on rail (sorry!) has not been wonderful so far. I served on the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority before being booted off to make way for the Combined Authority. Our rail problems went back to John Major’s lamentable privatisation. Northern Trains was the most unwieldy of the operating companies – an amalgamation of routes that couldn’t go with any other company. Poor performance (perhaps inevitably) continued through various different franchises. I have no problem with transparent government subsidies in the national/passenger interest so long as we dispose of the shareholders practising wasteful pretend capitalism with monopoly services.
I do however support Ben Curtis on Open Access Services. They can do a good job with a limited brief. Grand Central have proved popular and reliable in Yorkshire.
Geoff – thanks for these comments. So useful to have a background of the past. The new models of operation – delivered by the concession model, are working well in London and Liverpool – albeit with some issues currently on Merseyrail. They are among the most popular and punctual operators on the network – for a myriad of reasons – and if well implemented (totally understand the past, as you mention) it could alleviate pressure on the future Great British Railways and ensure greater integration of public transport services (as we see down in here in London with the Overground).
Super happy to chat this through further, as you make some great points – I’m on [email protected]
The problem with devolved concessions for individual areas is that tracks are often shared with and trains need to interwork with regional services, so then you risk having two competing bodies trying to run trains on the same tracks. TfL in London works well where it largely runs on segregated lines (Such as the Underground), but it’s less clear how it would work in – say – Birmingham, where pretty much everything except the Cross-City line and the Birmingham-Rugeley line has to interwork with regional services, and even some of the metro services actually run far outside Birmingham.
Even in London, there are metro lines (such as the ones out of Waterloo) that operate mainly inside London, but are still run by National Rail, and which it’s hard to see how you could hand control of to TfL without creating management conflicts with regional services.
And as for Leeds – I don’t believe there are any rail services that only run within the city of of Leeds and which a Leeds transport authority could therefore reasonably take control of. Do you mean something more like, West Yorkshire rather than Leeds itself?
@Ben – seeing as you are a councillor in London, have you considered campaigning for integrated bus and rail fares? It seems absurd that, even though TfL run most trains and all the buses in London, there’s still no fares integration: You could travel across London on TfL trains and pay only one fare, even if you change trains several times (which is great), but then if you jump on a TfL-run bus to complete the last half-mile of your journey, you’ll immediately get charged a completely separate fare for that bit of the journey. The fact that in most places there are no combined bus-train fares is a big barrier to public transport use across the UK, but in London it seems particularly easy to solve (and particularly daft that it hasn’t been solved) because the buses and trains are largely already run by the same organisation. Pushing for TfL to combine bus and rail fares, so if you make a mixed-mode journey you only get charged once, would seem a very sensible, popular, and achievable thing for the London LibDems to campaign on.
(For the rest of the UK that’s obviously just as desirable, but harder when the buses and trains are run by totally separate organisations. Would require Government action)
Most of the rail system sees freight running on the same track as passenger services run by different companies. TfL shares track with several national rail franchises and there are different franchises searching with each other and open access companies. It can be done. Tfl could quite easily take over some of those commuter routes. London is very nearly the right size. Transport is potentially the biggest thing that regions should be doing. Combined authorities are not big enough.
Simon R 27th Feb ’25 – 7:08pm:
The fact that in most places there are no combined bus-train fares is a big barrier to public transport use across the UK,…
Check out ‘PlusBus’:
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/connecting-travel/plusbus/
This model has led to even greater success in some European nations – to the point that the EU has now legislated to ensure competition exists on intercity routes across the continent.
The Directive came first, specifically the Fourth Railway Package (EU) 2016/2370, which requires all passenger services (not just intercity) to be open to competition, even when privatisation isn’t wanted. In nationalising rail passenger services, our Labour government is making use of a Brexit freedom.
‘Norwegian workers protest implementation of EU’s 4th railway regulations package’ [October 2019]:
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/10/12/norwegian-workers-protest-implementation-of-eus-4th-railway-regulations-package/
The 4th EU Railway Package is a set of six legislative texts, formulated in 2016, to complete the process of establishing a single market for rail services – the Single European Railway Area. Even though Norway is not a member of the EU, it has to comply with the regulations due to its membership of the European Economic Area Agreement.
‘EU orders Greece and Ireland to transpose rules on opening rail passenger market’ [August 2019]:
https://labourheartlands.com/eu-orders-greece-and-ireland-to-transpose-rules-on-opening-rail-passenger-market/
@Jeff: PlusBus is a way of adding unlimited bus travel to your rail ticket – within either the origin or the destination town. So for example if you’re travelling London to Brighton, then you can buy a London-Brighton + plusbus ticket which will let you travel by train to Brighton and then do unlimited travel on the buses in Brighton on the day you’re travelling. It’s good but not really an answer to integrated ticketing, because it’s only useful if you want *unlimited* bus travel. In most cases people are simply going to be making a journey where they travel by train somewhere and then want to use a bus to get the final mile of their journey. PlusBus is normally useless for that because it’s priced for unlimited travel and therefore typically even more expensive than just buying separate bus and train tickets. Also it’s only available for the specific towns for which it’s been set up – not anywhere in the UK.
Almost anywhere else in the world HS2 would have built by 2015 and the railways put on an advanced footing. We are our own worst enemies.
When a local councillor I recall a redevelopment project was put back years because of “newts” in the area, but who had actually seen them, no -one admitted to that!
@Jeff “The Directive came first, specifically the Fourth Railway Package (EU) 2016/2370, which requires all passenger services (not just intercity) to be open to competition, even when privatisation isn’t wanted. In nationalising rail passenger services, our Labour government is making use of a Brexit freedom.”
Your latter point is simply untrue. There is, and wasn’t when we were we members, a requirement that railways be private, or that existing franchises remained private (the UK de-facto renationalised the East Coast Mainline in 2018, after the passing of the Fourth Directive and while we were still members.
There is a requirement that private operators are allowed to bid on services – but on the same terms as government-owned bodies, and that “open access” services that Ben refers to in his article are allowed (which have worked well in the UK, and have lead to inter-European sleeper services making a comeback in the EU) Most trains in the EU are still state-owned.
Here’s Christian Wolmar on this topic (writing in 2019) https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/2019/01/eu-membership-does-not-preclude-rail-renationalisation/
Daniel Walker 28th Feb ’25 – 9:36am:
Your latter point is simply untrue. There is, and wasn’t when we were we members, a requirement that railways be private, or that existing franchises remained private…
I didn’t say there was. Within the EEA, rail passenger services (not “railways”) must be open to competitive tendering. The UK government is no longer doing that.
..the UK de-facto renationalised the East Coast Mainline in 2018, after the passing of the Fourth Directive and while we were still members.
The Directive didn’t have to be implemented until 2023.
There is a requirement that private operators are allowed to bid on services…
Exactly; and the UK no longer meets that requirement as we have exercised our Brexit freedom to nationalise passenger services.
Most trains in the EU are still state-owned.
It’s early days. The pandemic delayed implementation. Norway was first (pre-pandemic); they currently have four operators – two state owned (Vy and Flytoget), one owned by the Swedish government (SJ Nord), and one privately owned by the UK’s Go-Ahead Group (Go-Ahead Nordic). Their national ticket sales operation, Entur, is similar to Trainline and has a similarly confusing morass of ticket options, pricing and conditions…
‘Buying and using Tickets & Rail Passes in Norway’:
https://showmethejourney.com/train-ticket-guides/norway-tickets-and-rail-passes/
One noteworthy feature of the GB rail ticketing framework is that standard walk-up tickets are by default valid on services of all operators, including open-access, appropriate to the journey. This is not usually the case elsewhere in Europe, especially for open-access operations; however, when British Rail was privatised, a decision was made early on to safeguard through-ticketing across the network and maintain some sort of national ticketing framework. It’s not perfect and can be complicated, but it does at least mean that passengers can mostly simply walk up, buy a ticket and hop onto the next available train. I say “mostly” because some operators (notably LNER) seem to be trying to chip away at this system by doing away with “Any Permitted” and off-peak walk-up tickets on certain journeys.
I hope GB Railways retains and restores the traditional turn-up-and-travel flexibility of the British passenger rail network. This is one way in which we do things right. In Spain (for example), most trains are bookahead-only and they often fill up. Some European countries have introduced RyanRail-type services which seem to be copying the ticketing of low-cost airlines by introducing compulsory check-in and charges for luggage. This seems rather artificial to me.
Do you have a source for your statement that the West Coast Main Line is the busiest rail line in Europe? Last time I looked it was Waterloo to Wimbledon, but I understood that it was now the Elizabeth Line. Most rail journeys are short.
“….. all aspects of the railway – save the leasing of the trains, freight operations and a few other constituent parts….. ”
These aspects will still be in the hands of the private sector.
So we might want to ask “why?” It’s not because the private sector operators want to do anyone a favour. It’s because they want to keep the most profitable of their activities. The leasing of the trains and other rolling stock is even better than money for old rope. The rolling stock companies don’t even have to make any trains or even provide any rope!
They buy the rolling stock from the manufactures and lease it to government owned rail operators. It’s totally risk free on their part. The taxpayer is not getting a good deal. It is much cheaper for the Government to borrow the money from the sale of gilts than it is to effectively borrow from the leasing companies.
It’s rather like renting a house or a car on a long term basis rather than buying one on a loan. It might seem like a way of keeping the debt down but in reality it is only hiding it.
https://issuu.com/rmtunion/docs/june-23l/s/26800958
@ Daniel, @ Jeff
“….. after the passing of the Fourth Directive…… ”
We can argue all day about just what these Rail Directives actually mean. I’d just ask why the EU was so keen to tell us how to run our railways and why they had to issue so many “directives”?
It would have been understandable if they had limited themselves to wanting an input into how the services which use the Channel Tunnel should operate but why would it matter to them how trains from Newcastle to Carlisle should be run?
Who cares how the train service between Berlin and Dresden operates? Most people in Europe are happy to leave it up to the Germans. The EU really isn’t doing itself any favours by interfering in what should be local decisions.
Aren’t the Lib Dems supposedly are in favour of devolving power from the centre?
Whoever runs our inter-city trains, there must be oversight by the local authorities through which they run. It is only they who understand the importance of connectivity in pursuing regional growth through employment, skills training, tourism, leisure activities and sport.