Removing open access operators from the network by 2029

vuzzeho said:

And then there's Eurostar and whoever else is coming onto HS1 (Probably Trenitalia) - and the government themselves have agreed to run services with SBB to Switzerland (though, I suppose that'll probably be a GBR/SBB 'Lyria' type deal) - without open access, how are those services going to work?

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HS1 and its international services are a different beast though.

Any such law preventing OAs would basically prevent, bar an opt-out from transport regulations, any return in the EU or accession to the EEA. I wouldn't expect OAs to be dealt with by law but by red tape.

The Middle said:

I could just imagine the eye watering price of everything being an 'any permitted' ticket. Ryanair & EasyJet will be licking their lips should that ever come to fruition.

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Ryanair?

Open access operators cost the state money, they don't pay their real costs and abstract revenue.

They might as well be a pit into which public money flows.

Of course GBR wants rid of them.

mike57 said:

So I think trying curtail existing OA operations should not be part of GBR strategy, to me they have far bigger problems to deal with, and should be concentrating on those, the main one being to bring the railways back to being a national operation, may be with brands within it (Inter City, Regional, Metro, whatever), but with everyone pulling in the same direction, as the current silo mentality is responsible for a lot of self inflicted problems. Simplifying the overly complex fares structure, ensuring that rolling stock procurement is more standardised, increasing train lengths as a solution to issues like XC overcrowsing, there is an awful lot that needs to be done before they turn their attention to a handful of OA operators.

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Money money money will always be the first thing on their mind and if they can find a way to kill OA on the ECML they will. However, even if affordable rail travel never has and never will be government policy, it will make national news, I guarantee, if cheaper open access will be scrapped and their paths taken over by LNER. The ECML is heavily patronised and many budget conscious travellers will drive or not travel and this won't be a good look for the railway. I think existing OA operators will have grandfather rights and we won't see anymore.

RailWonderer said:

Money money money will always be the first thing on their mind and if they can find a way to kill OA on the ECML they will. However, even if affordable rail travel never has and never will be government policy, it will make national news, I guarantee, if cheaper open access will be scrapped and their paths taken over by LNER. The ECML is heavily patronised and many budget conscious travellers will drive or not travel and this won't be a good look for the railway. I think existing OA operators will have grandfather rights and we won't see anymore.

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I'd like to see OA reduced to 1tph on the ECML after HS2 phase 1 opens, with 0.5 to Hull, and 0.5 to Eaglescliffe, splitting for Sunderland and Middlesbrough/Saltburn. That then enables 7tph for LNER. 3 for Leeds, 3 for Newcastle/Edinburgh and 1 for Grimsby via Lincoln/York. The GC Bradford and Lumo services add little to the ECML offering (Lumo reduces fares but LNER should price to fill trains). Scattergun trains to random places aren't that helpful but OA can play a role in helping link major destinations that the DfT has decided against serving. Secondly there should be an opportunity for an abstraction for investment type scheme where an OA operator is allowed to run a highly abstractive route in return for investment in the railway, such as the Grand Union Marchwood proposal.

steamybrian said:

No No No.
The whole idea of Great British Railways is to abolish train operating companies and to have one unified passenger service. I remember BR services of pre- 1994 when you could buy a ticket from A to B and catch any train. Simple.
If you want cheaper tickets then it be by time restriction (for example after 1000) when you could still catch any train.

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I think you might be waiting a long time for that - there is no plan to abolish the TOCs - they will continue to operate as present albeit owned by GBR

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Brubulus said:

I'd like to see OA reduced to 1tph on the ECML after HS2 phase 1 opens, with 0.5 to Hull, and 0.5 to Eaglescliffe, splitting for Sunderland and Middlesbrough/Saltburn. That then enables 7tph for LNER. 3 for Leeds, 3 for Newcastle/Edinburgh and 1 for Grimsby via Lincoln/York. The GC Bradford and Lumo services add little to the ECML offering (Lumo reduces fares but LNER should price to fill trains). Scattergun trains to random places aren't that helpful but OA can play a role in helping link major destinations that the DfT has decided against serving. Secondly there should be an opportunity for an abstraction for investment type scheme where an OA operator is allowed to run a highly abstractive route in return for investment in the railway, such as the Grand Union Marchwood proposal.

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I dont understand the link between HS2 phase 1 and the ECML.

Brubulus said:

OA can play a role in helping link major destinations that the DfT has decided against serving

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What if the DfT wants to set up services to serve those places?

Brubulus said:

Secondly there should be an opportunity for an abstraction for investment type scheme where an OA operator is allowed to run a highly abstractive route in return for investment in the railway, such as the Grand Union Marchwood proposal.

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That doesn't really make sense. If someone wants to operate from a convenient bay platform, perhaps Fareham, to Marchwood and take the commercial risk, then that might be a reasonable place for open access operator, but letting them run those trains on beyond Southampton to London is obviously abstractive. Even running to Fareham introduces unnecessary trains over the constrained infrastructure between Southampton and St Denys.

HSTEd said:

Open access operators cost the state money, they don't pay their real costs and abstract revenue.

They might as well be a pit into which public money flows.

Of course GBR wants rid of them.

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The current system is that nobody pays their real costs, only short run marginal costs, with clearly defined mark ups for some. It was all done that way to encourage model shift to rail. The DfT now want to change that system.

The abstraction argument has been done to death (and, in the case of Hull, proved otherwise). What OA operations do is deny the state from making substantial future additional revenues on those routes and the DfT hate that and all the economic and social benefits of OA go directly to the Treasury and nothing goes via the DfT. So the Treasury can see a net gain in OA but the DfT only ever sees the gross loss in revenue.

So while the DfT supports OA in principle, every OA operation (barring Heathrow Express), present or future, affects its budget. It will always be that way, as long as OA exists.

HSTEd said:

Open access operators cost the state money, they don't pay their real costs and abstract revenue.

They might as well be a pit into which public money flows.

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You can reverse the argument, if they don't cover costs, then the state part is stupid, because it doesn't price things properly and undercharge.

Abstracting revenue, is just a way of saying don't deliver a good enough service, or value for money, so customer would prefer to go elsewhere.

You can also say many DfT operators run their services as a money pit, rather than being entrepreneurial, making customers experience so good they come back more often, instead often do nothing to make you want to travel with them again.

You have to look at this from view of someone 100% using their own money to travel, not anyone with concessionary or subsidised tickets. If you don't, then get biased views such as those from rail staff who soften their tone, because it isn't their hard earned money being spent.

deltic said:

I think you might be waiting a long time for that - there is no plan to abolish the TOCs - they will continue to operate as present albeit owned by GBR

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My impression was that the intent was always to fold the TOCs into GBR with the GBR legislation.
Of course it seems unlikely that route and service restrictions on tickets will vanish.

Snow1964 said:

You can reverse the argument, if they don't cover costs, then the state part is stupid, because it doesn't price things properly and undercharge.

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The problem is that higher prices mean less customers. The railways are frequently in the bad position of not being able to make a profit no matter how high or how low they set prices.

I think this whole discussion comes back to a much wider question, how are the (passenger) railways to be managed going forwards, are they a public service or a business?

The Google AI answer to the question "what percentage of the UK railway budget is delivered by subsidies?" is 50%. Obviously this comes with the usual AI cautions, but feels like its in the right ball park.

At this level of subsidy to me railways are a public service, because you would have to double fares and retain passenger number to break even, which is obviously not going to happen.

If they are a public service then they need to start acting like one, passenger focused and not trying to gouge every last penny, fares need to set nationally, and if they are public service I would argue that they should be offering fares which correspond with other modes of transport. Its worth noting taxpayers are paying half the salary of every railway employee, from the cleaner to the senior manager. The current arrangements where they pretend to be a business are not working, LNER are a good example. If OA operators can make a margin running services not part of the public service offering then good luck to them. I realise that a lot of the subsidies probably end up supporting lighly used rural routes but thats what happens if you run a public service.

I personally think the majority of the public would also regard railways as a public service. The ability to travel at reasonable cost helps lots of apparently unrelated activities to flourish. I can understand the goverment taking ToCs in once contracts expire, but I think there also needs to be a wider debate about where we are headed. I can just see the same problems being carried forwards because no one at the top will actiually take a hold and lead. The last minister of Transport who was actually interested in railways was John Prescott.

Clarence Yard said:

The current system is that nobody pays their real costs, only short run marginal costs, with clearly defined mark ups for some. It was all done that way to encourage model shift to rail. The DfT now want to change that system.

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I'd argue it was done to conceal subsidies to the industry. Setting track access charges so low allowed the government to manufacture TOC-to-DfT 'premiums'. This provided a way for the government to claim that the privatised railway was less subsidised than it was, staving off challenges to the status quo over the last three decades.

Clarence Yard said:

The abstraction argument has been done to death (and, in the case of Hull, proved otherwise). What OA operations do is deny the state from making substantial future additional revenues on those routes and the DfT hate that and all the economic and social benefits of OA go directly to the Treasury and nothing goes via the DfT. So the Treasury can see a net gain in OA but the DfT only ever sees the gross loss in revenue.

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The Treasury and DfT are functionally part of the same body. They are the state.

What column of the public accounts the money comes out of is immaterial, what matters is net support.

Clarence Yard said:

So while the DfT supports OA in principle, every OA operation (barring Heathrow Express), present or future, affects its budget. It will always be that way, as long as OA exists.

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The DFT supports OA 'in principle' because it was politically advantageous for Labour to do so during the election.
It will, however, likely work dilligently to crush all actual OA operations because that is in the interests of the state.

Also Heathrow Express likely affects its budget, although less obviously!

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Snow1964 said:

You can reverse the argument, if they don't cover costs, then the state part is stupid, because it doesn't price things properly and undercharge.

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Then the state should correct this and raise track access charges to the fully burdened commercial value.

Obviously that would destroy freight and open access operations, but then the effect would be much the same!

Snow1964 said:

You have to look at this from view of someone 100% using their own money to travel, not anyone with concessionary or subsidised tickets. If you don't, then get biased views such as those from rail staff who soften their tone, because it isn't their hard earned money being spent.

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Very few, if any, people use 100% of their own money to travel.
Half the industry's entire revenue (excluding HS2) is provided by the state.

My view is that Open Access has to go if the mess the industry is in is to be fixed.

HSTEd said:

I'd argue it was done to conceal subsidies to the industry. Setting track access charges so low allowed the government to manufacture TOC-to-DfT 'premiums'. This provided a way for the government to claim that the privatised railway was less subsidised than it was, staving off challenges to the status quo over the last three decades.


The Treasury and DfT are functionally part of the same body. They are the state.

What column of the public accounts the money comes out of is immaterial, what matters is net support.


The DFT supports OA in principle because it was politically advantageous to do so.
It will however work dilligently to crush all actual OA operations because that is the interests of the state.

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There was an explosion in Network Rail costs after Hatfield and the Railtrack collapse, and those costs have never been brought back under control, even though they began to be obscured as certain parts of the network became relatively profitable, (SWR paid a large enough premium to cover it's part of the network grant immediately before COVID, and VTEC was meant to)

The civil service does not work across departments generally, the DfT will look after it's budget and the Treasury will look at its balance sheet, though the Treasury doesn't really care about OA, even though the benefits of OA accrue to them and to passengers (voters).

JonathanH said:

What if the DfT wants to set up services to serve those places?


That doesn't really make sense. If someone wants to operate from a convenient bay platform, perhaps Fareham, to Marchwood and take the commercial risk, then that might be a reasonable place for open access operator, but letting them run those trains on beyond Southampton to London is obviously abstractive. Even running to Fareham introduces unnecessary trains over the constrained infrastructure between Southampton and St Denys.

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It enables investment which doesn't come out of the DfT capital budget. That is invaluable. The cost of the abstraction will be reflected in increased subsidy for SWR, but that's on a different balance sheet. It doesn't really matter how expensive the financing method is, so long as it doesn't directly appear on the DfT balance sheet.

mike57 said:

I think open access is going to be a thorny and contentious issue going forwards.

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Oh yes-and that sir is an understatement in my opinion!

Brubulus said:

The GC Bradford and Lumo services add little to the ECML offering

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So what do you tell the large numbers of passengers who get on the GC Bradford trains at places north of Doncaster when you cut their direct link to London?

357 said:

So what do you tell the large numbers of passengers who get on the GC Bradford trains at places north of Doncaster when you cut their direct link to London?

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Where the best place to change is, presumably.

Brubulus said:

That then enables 7tph for LNER. 3 for Leeds, 3 for Newcastle/Edinburgh and 1 for Grimsby via Lincoln/York.

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Do you really think LNER will use the paths?

357 said:

Do you really think LNER will use the paths?

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I would not want the DFT to take paths from OA and leave them empty. That would also be politically unpalatable. Any erosion of OA would have to come with medium term guarantees that DfT service would replace it. I'm more pointing out that removing what I believe to be the most abstractive and irregular OA routes would enable a VHF style timetable on the ECML.

Zomboid said:

Where the best place to change is, presumably.

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So, what reasonable explanation do you give these people that the well used services have been removed, and their journey times extended? Because the train was the wrong colour?

I don't know, it's not me advocating for their removal.

I'd be interested to see how much of GCs revenue was from those off route stations compared to how much they get from revenue sharing or their own tickets to LNER served stations.

Brubulus said:

I would not want the DFT to take paths from OA and leave them empty. That would also be politically unpalatable. Any erosion of OA would have to come with medium term guarantees that DfT service would replace it. I'm more pointing out that removing what I believe to be the most abstractive and irregular OA routes would enable a VHF style timetable on the ECML.

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I wouldn't call GC Bradford irregular, when we should be hearing within days if they will expand the service with a fifth daily return trip.

Whilst some applications recently have been very bizarre - I would suggest the better action would be to establish why Lumo was able to operate an identical route to LNER and attract so many new passengers to rail.

As for Bradford, it's been going for 15 years and the trains are always well loaded.

Before removing Open Access, learn the lessons on how they have made a profit and established new customer bases.

And find a job for the displaced staff!

mike57 said:

I think this whole discussion comes back to a much wider question, how are the (passenger) railways to be managed going forwards, are they a public service or a business?

The Google AI answer to the question "what percentage of the UK railway budget is delivered by subsidies?" is 50%. Obviously this comes with the usual AI cautions, but feels like its in the right ball park.

At this level of subsidy to me railways are a public service, because you would have to double fares and retain passenger number to break even, which is obviously not going to happen.

If they are a public service then they need to start acting like one, passenger focused and not trying to gouge every last penny, fares need to set nationally, and if they are public service I would argue that they should be offering fares which correspond with other modes of transport. Its worth noting taxpayers are paying half the salary of every railway employee, from the cleaner to the senior manager. The current arrangements where they pretend to be a business are not working, LNER are a good example. If OA operators can make a margin running services not part of the public service offering then good luck to them. I realise that a lot of the subsidies probably end up supporting lighly used rural routes but thats what happens if you run a public service.

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This doesn't follow at all. The railways may be at 50% subsidy, with the pricing and service levels that we have at the moment, but Government may wish this to be at 40%, so needs higher fares and less costs/service. Equally Government may be happy (unlikely) that it is 50% but would not wish to do any of those 'public service' things you mention which may put the subsidy up to 60% or 70%.

There is no magic threshold of 'Public Service'. This term is used by railway users to try and justify having even more money spent on them that they presently get.

Zomboid said:

I don't know, it's not me advocating for their removal.

I'd be interested to see how much of GCs revenue was from those off route stations compared to how much they get from revenue sharing or their own tickets to LNER served stations.

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I can say that I travel on the West Riding service extremely often, probably more than most other members on this forum (bar one or two ).

Bradford loadings are reasonable considering it is quicker to go via Leeds - these people value the direct train.
Low Moor is picking up over the last year or so, I presume that more housing has been built or something.
Halifax is always busy.
Brighouse is always busy.
Mirfield is always busy.
Wakefield Kirkgate is normally busy but not as much as the above three.
Pontefract Monkhill is another one that's picked up significantly over the last 12 months
Doncaster always has good loadings - people get on to avoid Azuma seats and because the train is non-stop.

Peterborough seems to be busiest in the morning heading northbound.

I'd say that Halifax and Brighouse are the busiest of the lot after Doncaster.

357 said:

Do you really think LNER will use the paths?

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I could see LNER running 3tph to Edinburgh if they can get it to fit. A big driver for the most recent timetable update is explicitly to increase capacity to Edinburgh.

I don't see why they wouldn't be interested in 3tph to Leeds.

Ideally, both of those would have sensible extension (Aberdeen/Inverness for Edinburgh, Harrogate and Bradford for Leeds)

eldomtom2 said:

My impression was that the intent was always to fold the TOCs into GBR with the GBR legislation.

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It is. There will be regional branding, but everything will be under GBR. The current TOC brands will not continue to exist, once they've been taken over and 'deemed worthy'. Same with the DFTO operators.

I wonder how this effects the recent Nottingham to Bristol open access proposal? They can say "you said in your manifesto you would allow open access, so you can prove it by approving our proposal which unlike nearly all others doesn't use the ECML or WCML."

Also if all the proposals are rejected they will be able to use the voyagers that all the open access bids want to use!

HSTEd said:

I'd argue it was done to conceal subsidies to the industry. Setting track access charges so low allowed the government to manufacture TOC-to-DfT 'premiums'. This provided a way for the government to claim that the privatised railway was less subsidised than it was, staving off challenges to the status quo over the last three decades.

The Treasury and DfT are functionally part of the same body. They are the state. What column of the public accounts the money comes out of is immaterial, what matters is net support.

The DFT supports OA 'in principle' because it was politically advantageous for Labour to do so during the election.
It will, however, likely work dilligently to crush all actual OA operations because that is in the interests of the state.Also Heathrow Express likely affects its budget, although less obviously!

Then the state should correct this and raise track access charges to the fully burdened commercial value. Obviously that would destroy freight and open access operations, but then the effect would be much the same!

My view is that Open Access has to go if the mess the industry is in is to be fixed.

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When Railtrack was set up, the idea was that the Government would fund the capital investment but everything else would come through the access charges. Therefore, with low variable charges, the Franchises each had a large Fixed Track Access bill, much larger than today. I was the one who paid them at my TOC. I forget exactly what then occurred but around the time the first FTA bills were paid, it all changed and the Grant funding element was increased substantially and the FTA bill reduced dramatically.

Ostensibly it was done for internal DfT purposes, classifying as much expenditure as they could as “investment”. But the effect of this was to turn Railtrack’s eyes towards the DfT as their real customer, not to the TOCs. One TOC, Virgin iirc, tried to withhold the FTA but were rudely told that they couldn’t do that - it wasn’t a real charge, just a way of subsidising NR. The FA effectively prohibited such a move.

Whether TOCs makes premiums to the DfT or takes subsidy excites some people but leaves me cold because the TOC FTA goes up and down like a yo-yo and every TOC (through the NNGNNL clauses) is held neutral for the effect any change has on the subsidy/premium line. As nearly every service group makes a loss, once you take into account even long term incremental costs, let alone true non traffic related fixed costs, it all becomes a little pointless to wibble on about premiums when the DfT is directly paying NR for a good proportion of the TOC caused infrastructure costs.

You would be surprised how much the Treasury values its “own” gains rather than through the departments. OA have very good links to the Treasury, better in some cases than to the DfT! They find them far more receptive and quicker to act.

Every political party has supported OA in principle but the DfT can’t control it and OA affects their budget. So they feel frustrated. However, the DfT revenue loss figures for OA are usually overstated.

What can be charged is laid out in EU 2015/909 and GBR intend to use this as their basis for charging. Unlike today they are looking at including long run incremental costs in that charge, which is permissible if the “market can bear” tests are abolished, which is expected. That is an existential threat to OA. GBR can give discounts to certain market sectors, such as Freight and Charter/Heritage, as these satisfy certain criteria but OA looks unlikely, as they would be effectively subsidising competing services to their own. That would almost certainly be illegal in current non-rail legislation.

357 said:

So, what reasonable explanation do you give these people that the well used services have been removed, and their journey times extended? Because the train was the wrong colour?

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In most cases their journey times won't be significantly extended.
From Halifax, Brighouse and Mirfield to London, on the current timetable it adds 2 to 4 minutes to change at Leeds onto an LNER service compared to the direct GC service.
From Bradford to London, it can be up to half an hour quicker to get a direct LNER service, or about 15 minutes quicker to change at Leeds.
It's only Pontefract where passengers face a significantly longer journey, and that's such an important station for GC that more than half of their northbound services miss it altogether.

The Middle said:

I could just imagine the eye watering price of everything being an 'any permitted' ticket. Ryanair & EasyJet will be licking their lips should that ever come to fruition.

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Today tickets are valid "by any reasonable route" but using the same company you bought the ticket from.
Today - If I buy a ticket from A to B bought at a station owned by train company Z then I want to travel on the next train and not at present where you can only travel on companies Z trains even though a company called Y operates the same service along the same route calling at the same stations as company Z.
There are no eye watering prices just pure standardisation as we had in BR days when fares were much simplier.