The great rail shake-up: threat or opportunity?

Alexandra Woodsworth, May 2011

In her article below Alexandra Woodsworth, public transport campaigner at the Campaign for Better Transport, expresses her and CfBT's fears about plans she and they believe are being hatched away from public view and, beneath that, in her response to the Inter City West Coast franchise consultation, she urges the government not to give too much freedom to franchisees.

Big changes to Britain's railways are being planned behind the scenes.

This could be an opportunity to make the system simpler and more affordable for passengers. Or it could lead to deregulation and cutting back on support for the railways as a public service.

Leaked documents show that the high level McNulty review into value for money in the UK rail industry, due to report in a few weeks, will suggest raising rush hour fares even higher, deregulating some tickets, cutting on-board staff and decentralising or even breaking up Network Rail.

There are worrying signs that rather than provide an adequate supply of new carriages to tackle overcrowding, the plan is to price people off rush hour trains. The idea is to try and 'nudge' commuters into travelling off-peak - but many people simply don't have a choice about their working hours. In difficult economic times, and as fares are already set to rise four times faster than average earnings next year, it's both disgraceful and foolish to raise prices to the point that people can't afford to get to work on time.

We are also concerned that local routes outside the busy London area, many of which currently need public support to run socially necessary services, will be a target for cuts in funding and services as well as fare rises. On inter-city routes, there's a danger of deregulation of fares and possibly service levels as well. With a new franchise policy - which is currently being tested in the new West Coast franchise for the first time - the trend seems to be towards much greater freedom for train companies. Unfortunately, this doesn't bode well for passengers, with the risk of fare rises and service cuts.

The frustrating thing is that this review could be such an opportunity. Everyone agrees that the costs of running the railways are way too high, and need to come down for the sake of fare-payers and tax-payers. The McNulty review interim report suggested that a fifth - or #1 billion a year - could be saved from the industry's costs. Some of this could and should be passed on to passengers in the form of reduced fares, and not simply be savings to the government. Forty-six MPs of all parties agree with us on this point, with more signing a parliamentary motion to this effect each day - make sure yours is on board.

The good news is that this report simply presents suggestions (some of which, to be fair, are sensible - like the need to streamline our ridiculously complex ticket structure). The government will then go away and reflect on it, and will likely respond sometime in the Autumn with new policy.

So we'll have plenty of time to kick up a fuss and make sure that the great rail shake-up is good for passengers, not just companies and government

Response to InterCity West Consultation

The response from the Campaign for Better Transport to the InterCity West Consultation is available here (pdf).