This is a very provocative report by an industry expert which should stimulate some interesting discussion.
http://passengertransportnetworks.co.uk/IRS paper_FINAL.pdf
http://passengertransportnetworks.co.uk/IRS paper_FINAL.pdf
Preamble
Public discussion of the railway passenger business
in Britain has in recent years been singularly
superficial. The Department for Transport [DfT] co
nfidently contends that franchising is the only
possible model. The Association of Train Operating
Companies [ATOC] has convinced itself that
its members’ success is entirely attributable to th
e marvels of private enterprise. The Office of
Rail Regulation [ORR] rests secure in its belief in
the virtues of the regulatory process. And
buccaneers at the helm of owning groups lecture us
about how grateful we should be for the
investment and skills they have brought to a moribu
nd industry
. Of course there is some truth in
all this, but the future of the railway is too impo
rtant to be left to the
parti pris
of these players.
Meanwhile most of the population treats the railway
with indifference
, an increasing number use
its services but grumble away and debate is polaris
ed around fares or HS2 or the legacy of Dr.
Beeching. We could and should do better. This pap
er is a contribution to that process.
It does not discuss in any detail the controversy a
bout franchises – the process-cost, their length,
specification, incentives, risk-transfer and so on
– or the relationship between Network Rail and
its Regulator or the lowering but seemingly unmentionable
matter of Network Rail’s unsustainable
mountain of debt, but focusses on associated aspect
s of contemporary railway affairs, many of
which receive less attention than they merit.
The railway in denial
The concept of our railway being in denial may seem
odd. After all, traffic is buoyant, big projects
are under way, franchising has been enthusiastically
relaunched, commercial and technical
initiatives abound. I do not wish to denigrate eve
rything that is happening, for there is more that
is positive and exciting than at any time in my 55-
year association with the industry, but I do think
some big questions should be asked.
We should be clear about the context. Although the
re are recent signs of a levelling-off, the
quantity of passenger-kilometres travelled has near
ly doubled from its broadly stable level between
the early 1970s and the mid-1990s (though in some d
etails the data is arguable
and the National
Travel Survey puts the growth at only 70%). Train-
kilometres run have increased commensurately
(though that itself is significant). Rolling stock
and stations have been improved and speeds and
frequencies enhanced (though not consistently), and
attention to customers is better than it was
(though with notorious exceptions
). Yet all is not well, and my suggestion of denia
l rests on a
conviction that many of the reasons for this are la
rgely suppressed, consciously or otherwise. Let
me put a series of propositions.
Proposition 1
That governance of the railway is now dominated by
a politically entrenched ideology
.
This is a mere segment of the political and economi
c malaise afflicting the capitalist world, namely
deep and patent structural weaknesses, if not failu
res, in the system accompanied by extreme
difficulty in identifying alternative paths, let al
one mobilising effectively to implement them. But
if
we focus for now on the railway we see
-
the glib assumption that only entrepreneurial manag
ement and competition can deliver what
‘customers’ want, in wilful forgetfulness about wha
t state ownership at its best did once
deliver
and without evaluation of the societal implication
s of unquestioning consumerism
;
-
the reluctance of the governing and industry establishments to admit failure or contemplate
other options, as for example the fact that the lat
est approach to franchising is at least the
fourth attempt to get it to function properly since
the Railways Act 1993
-
, or perpetuating
the system (as recommended by the Brown Review), in
defiance of the well-argued case for
examining the merits of concessions; and
-
the imposition of the separation of infrastructure
from operations
, despite copious evidence
of its inappropriateness in a technically-integrate
d system
.
There are challenges to this powerful hegemony. In
its Fourth Railway Package
the Commission
of the European Union, exasperated by the uneven application and interpretation of earlier
packages, is attempting to enforce the track / whee
l separation and to promote ever-greater
competition, but a Franco-German railway alliance (
abetted by the Swiss) is fighting back in
defence of unified institutions, albeit with intern
al separation of management and a modicum of
competition. And interestingly, in Britain, howeve
r strongly ATOC may believe its member-TOCs
to be loved by their customers
, whenever the public is asked its opinion in polls
or bloggers have
cause to discuss the state of the railway there is
a convincing majority in favour of reunification
and some form of communal ownership
.
It should also be noted that, although the Labour P
arty failed to resolve the inherent tensions
during its period in office from 1997 to 2010 and i
s only hesitantly grasping the need for reform
,
others on the left are doing some thinking about ho
w a publicly-owned railway with community-
oriented objectives might be defined and created
.
One way in which the fundamental issues at stake ab
out the purpose of the railway can be
evaluated is by means of a diagram that expresses the
continuum between subsidised public utility 3
and treating travel as a marketable commodity on the
vertical axis and the continuum between
connected network and individual lines on the horizontal
axis, and then attributes coordinates to
countries and companies. The top-right corner locates
the ‘supermarket railway’ represented by
Virgin and the bottom-left Switzerland as the epitome
of communal values. We need a national
conversation about where we want Britain and its railway to sit in this space 16. It will be especially
interesting to see whether the Government agrees to
further devolution of responsibility for
franchising and if so whether it allows other bodies
the freedom to modify the model by varying
the current coordinates
...
. It will be especially
interesting to see whether the Government agrees to
further devolution of responsibility for
franchising and if so whether it allows other bodie
s the freedom to modify the model by varying
the current coordinates
17
.
Proposition 2
That the institutional structure of the industry pr
edicates relationships whose
consequences may be perverse or even malign
. There are several.
...
Proposition 3
That the franchising system has locked us into a se
t of assumptions and policies with
no real debate about their wisdom or desirability
. This has many facets.
...
Proposition 4
That the prevailing structure is inimical to free-thinking about development of the
railway
...
Proposition 5
That the railway is not being managed as well as its cheerleaders would have us
believe.
It is not my intention to indulge in an indiscriminate whinge about the state of the railway or how
much better things once were, and I am often appalled by the biassed or ignorant presentation of
railway stories in the news media. Equally however I am irritated by the stream of upbeat press
releases from DfT, NR and the TOCs that are uncritically reported and too often do not reflect
the real experience of travellers by rail. Here are
some examples.
...
Proposition 6
That the approach to planning has significant weaknesses
that expose the railway to great risk. I have left this to last both because it feeds into any discussion of HS2 and because it
encapsulates concerns arising from the other propositions.
...
Conclusion
This is a weighty critique. I do not wish to sugge
st that all is woe, for there is much to value in t
he
modern railway in Britain – new rolling stock, bett
er timetables, rebuilt or refurbished stations and
of course the growth in travel by train. However,
if I have focussed on a number of matters that I
believe to be problematic either already or in futu
re, it is because I am worried by the tendency of
the corporate interests to discourage debate by put
ting out a relentless flow of propaganda to the
effect that everything is absolutely fine. It is n
ot, and it is essential to open up the debate. Aft
er
all, the railway is not and should not be a private
fiefdom. It is our railway, the people’s railway.
So what might the agenda be ? Here are my prioriti
es
70
:
-
create a tangibly-integrated national network, firs
t for the railway and then for public
transport as a whole;
-
establish as a fundamental principle and presentati
onal tool the concept of regular-interval,
inter-connecting services running at the frequency
appropriate for each route;
-
aim primarily to increase rail’s (and public transp
ort’s) share of the travel market rather than
to stimulate new trips that would not otherwise be
made;
-
concentrate on what rail does best, replace margina
l stations and lines with properly-linked
buses and fill gaps in the rail network with associated coach services;
enhance the poorer services toward the standard of
the best before spending massive sums
on the already good;
-
reorient Network Rail’s projects toward the deliver
y of the integrated timetable by means of
selective enhancements such as doubling single-lead
junctions and raising speed limits but
also by better coordinating schemes with operators’
rolling-stock plans; and
-
set up a Public Transport Agency to plan, manage an
d champion the system in the public
interest, including the timetabling function, and to administer its delivery through term concessions to a mix of public and private companies and not-for-profit cooperatives.
This list obviously begs many questions, including
that of finance, but is intended to emphasise the
need for a broader, more honest, more-evidenced-bas
ed, more realistic discussion than we are
having at present. And you will notice that I do not mention renationalisation: I am not wholly
opposed, but I think we can achieve our goals in different, more twenty-first century ways.
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