Fare Dealer
RAIL fares expert Barry Doe says Travel Commission report shows privatisation was a mistake.
I was fascinated by the report from the Independent Travel Commission (ITC), ably explained by Andy Roden in RAIL 867 and expanded by Christian Wolmar in his column of the same issue. It’s well worth downloading from the ITC’s home page, at www.theitc.org.uk.
The report maintains that since 1996 the growth in professional, scientific, technical, information and communication services alone has accounted for an extra 100 million commuter journeys a year - 10% of the total growth since 1996. Then there’s the shift to urban areas and the subsequent decline in car ownership.
Most important of all, privatisation itself has not been a reason. How often have people told us, both in Parliament and on the pages of
RAIL, that the ‘proof’ of the success of rail privatisation can be seen in the growth in use alone? I have been equally consistent in my view that the growth has been despite privatisation, and I have now been vindicated.
Sadly, however, I believe this report will be rapidly forgotten, because it’s produced the ‘wrong result’ and those who are adamant that privatisation was (and remains) excellent will never accept otherwise.
There are similarities with views on Brexit. Mine is that if it goes ahead it will be the greatest disaster of my lifetime. Yet even if the country were ruined and a self-inflicted recession followed, you know Jacob Rees- Mogg will still appear on TV saying it’s actually been a major success!
More similarities, too: for just as I believe that a repeat of ‘the’ Referendum would now show a large majority for Remain, a referendum on returning the railways to state ownership would similarly show a large result in favour.
It does now seem that in the next General Election, whenever it comes, Labour’s policy to take back franchises will feature heavily - and they know it’s a very popular policy in the country at large. However, if it happened, there would be pages of negative reporting saying how the ‘success of privatisation’ was now in jeopardy.
I have never been a particular fan of nationalised industries, and think that organisations such as the National Health Service are grossly inefficient. Nevertheless, I do believe that certain things lend themselves to being natural monopolies.
The National Grid and trunk roads are examples. And does anyone really think the gas industry is a group of genuinely private businesses when we all know that, regardless of whom we choose to sell us our gas, it’s the same gas in the same pipe that we’re buying?
Let’s pause and look at the success achieved over the life of British Rail. In the late 1950s, the norm for long-distance steam trains was a start-to-stop average speed of less than 60mph.
A mere decade later, new West Coast electrics were doing Euston-Crewe in two hours - an amazing 79mph average. Another ten years on, and High Speed Trains were on the Western Region: Paddington to Bath Spa was 69 minutes - a 93mph average.
There are also many things that BR introduced, such as Savers (Off-Peak Returns), Rovers, a National Rail Timetable, and (London) Travelcards. Very little new has been introduced since. Overall, compared with the
mid-1990s the service today is often mediocre and unreliable. When InterCity owned and managed its own track it would not have allowed the major problems that Network Rail inflicts daily.
Similarly, my own Bournemouth line has never been as unreliable during my lifetime as it is today. The peak service is frequently trashed by Network Rail’s inability to maintain the system and prevent constant signal, points and track-circuit failures. Network SouthEast would not have permitted this.
As for customer service, in many cases it is utterly dire. Poor catering, lack of advertised trolley service, cancelled trains, and poorquality rolling stock. The railway has never been so down-market and dismal.
Latterly, BR’s three Sectors (InterCity, Network SouthEast and Regional Railways) formed about as good a set-up as ever existed, and led to standards which have been greatly diminished- if not all but lost.
I accept that there are still a few jewels in the crown today, with some equalling BR standards, but BR had far greater consistency,
as well as having lower fares in real terms. Had it remained, we’d be streets ahead today. Investment? BR would have achieved a lot more with less.
How annoyed I get when those without a proper argument still joke about BR food. They probably never used the first-rate Pullman trains, the many excellent restaurants or Mk 3 buffets. It’s not rose-tinted spectacles… it’s fact.
I only hope that if in due course we get a Labour Government (and the political pendulum will, as always, swing at some stage), then it will handle this well. It won’t be costly because the infrastructure is already Government-owned and franchises can be taken back on expiry at zero cost.
However, we must have a proper command structure back. Assuming the old Sectors, each must be in total charge of its assets again, and free to plan rolling stock and timetables. In short, the railway must once again be run by professionals and not by the Department for Transport.
Remember, BR was an arms-length, stateowned corporation like the BBC - but the civil service doesn’t produce programmes or schedules. So it can be again with railways.
2019 could be most interesting in so many ways, and I wish all my readers a very Happy New Year.