Rail chaos: will nationalisation solve it?

When John Major privatised the railways in the 1990s, he dreamt of a return of the “golden days”, before the birth of British Rail in 1948, when regional operators such as Great Western – nicknamed “God’s Wonderful Railway” – were “held in genuine public affection”. Safe to say, it hasn’t worked out like that, said Andrew Woodcock in The Independent. In the place of affection there have been “gripes about fat cat bosses”, overcrowding and delays. Last week, ministers responded to the prolonged poor performance of Northern Rail by stripping Arriva of the franchise and handing it over to a government-controlled body. Northern Rail is the second train network to have been brought back under state control after Virgin East Coast lost its franchise almost 20 months ago.

If only an efficient German train operator could run this network, you might think, rather than “those imbeciles at Northern Rail”, said Ross Clark in The Spectator. Yet that has been tried already: Arriva is a subsidiary of the German state railway company, Deutsche Bahn, and it operates other well-regarded franchises such as Chiltern Rail. Why, then, has it made “such a hash of running rail services in and around Leeds and Manchester”? The firm is partly to blame for bungling its timetable changes, but most of the delays have been down to strike action and the persistent failings of Network Rail, the state-run company that looks after tracks, signalling and stations. It follows, then, that further nationalisation will not in itself fix this problem, said The Times. Fundamental reforms across the whole network are needed.

The franchise model has brought some benefits, said the FT. Passenger journeys have more than doubled over the past 25 years, and a lot of private money has been pumped into the rail network. But a “rejig” of the system is “sorely needed”. Former British Airways boss Keith Williams is due to unveil a report on this issue in the coming weeks. It’s expected to recommend replacing franchises with a more flexible, long-term form of “management contracts”. A similar model has worked well on the London Overground suburban network, where Transport for London sets fares and timetables and grants concessions to a single operator. One reason why the London system works, said Stephen Bush in the New Statesman, is that there is more accountability. Elected mayors in the capital can’t afford to mess up the transport brief as it’s one of their few key powers. By contrast, the current franchise system makes it far too easy for ministers to deflect blame for the inevitable consequences of government spending cuts onto train companies.