The Northern Rail subsidy myth

[tbtc]

Here we go again...

They tick a lot of boxes for “Local Rail Users Group” communication:

• We want faster trains for our area
• But for them to also stop at new stations in our area (like Elland)
• And we aren’t too keen on really fast trains that won’t stop in our area (like HS3)

…you could sum much of this up as “we want to eat more cake, but we want to retain the cake that we currently have and we want other people to keep subsidising our cakes too”.

Last time we had this discussion (http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=107713&page=3) I posted a link to the subsidies per passenger mile. For reference, they were as follows:

• c2c 5.6
• Chiltern Railways 7.9
• CrossCountry 15.6
• East*Coast -0.6
• East Midlands Trains 13.1
• First Capital Connect -3.9
• First Great Western 6.4
• First TransPennine Express 16.8
• Greater Anglia 1.5
• London Midland 13.6
• Northern Rail 51.5
• Southeastern 12.4
• Southern 0.6
• South West Trains -1.7
• Virgin Trains 4.7
Average 6.8p subsidy per passenger mile (the three TOCs paying a premium per passenger mile highlighted in bold)

If we compare subsidies on a per passenger mile basis (which seems to be the emphasis of the DfT website data), it is important to realise that train operations in the North have been artificially split into Northern Rail and TransPennine Express. In effect the more commercial, longer-distance
inter-urban/inter-city operations have been creamed off ...

... the removal of more profitable elements ...

Do they realise that the “more profitable” routes “creamed off” into the TPE franchise still require a subsidy of more than double the national average (per passenger mile)?

This idea that the routes that Northern require vast subsidies to operate would be okay if only we could hide them in a different franchise map is rather naïve (to be polite). I think that those thinking that they can sweep the mess up by hiding it inside an Intercity franchise are in denial about the actual problem.

a tiresome focus on cutting apparent subsidy

The above quote sums up a lot of what is wrong with this The Halifax & District Rail Action Group article. "apparent" subsidy? APPARENT? hock:

There is a huge subsidy required for Northern - if it needs an average fifty pence per mile to move a passenger then we really are at the "taxis would be cheaper" end of the railway spectrum.

If you are in denial about this, and aren't even offering any solutions for how any of this could be reduced (just more of the same about "we want modern trains and more trains and a cherry on top" and other things that will only add additional operating expenses) then is it possible to have a discussion with people of that mindset?

This is the problem. Northern was split off I believe for an original idea that it would be a basic railway managed for decline. That hasn't happened, and it's clear to me the split should never have happened. Yet nobody has the guts to re-merge.

Neil

The question I'd ask then is "if you don't have one big Provincial TOC for northern England then how else do you carve things up?" Northern is a big enough franchise as it is, without lobbing in the TPE operations. But any "east/west" split is going to cause other problems. For an example, would an "east" TOC have a depot around Manchester/ Liverpool for the current TPE services?

A re-merging of TPE and Northern would somewhat devalue the consumer perception of TPE routes. It would also lead to more of a rolling stock lottery on all routes in the north of England

It shouldn't be any more of a lottery than the chances of getting an HST on the St Ives branch, or a Pacer running Paddington-Penzance.

I agree with TheKnightWho - the "lottery" stuff is overblown by enthusiasts.

 

[158756]

Surely a question which needs answering here is why it costs so much more to run Northern routes than equivalent routes on other operators- Scotland, Wales, non-intercity EMT and Great Western?
Or alternatively why Northern attracts so much less passengers/revenue than the above?

 

[yorksrob]

The above quote sums up a lot of what is wrong with this The Halifax & District Rail Action Group article. "apparent" subsidy? APPARENT? hock:

There is a huge subsidy required for Northern - if it needs an average fifty pence per mile to move a passenger then we really are at the "taxis would be cheaper" end of the railway spectrum.

If you are in denial about this, and aren't even offering any solutions for how any of this could be reduced (just more of the same about "we want modern trains and more trains and a cherry on top" and other things that will only add additional operating expenses) then is it possible to have a discussion with people of that mindset?



The question I'd ask then is "if you don't have one big Provincial TOC for northern England then how else do you carve things up?" Northern is a big enough franchise as it is, without lobbing in the TPE operations. But any "east/west" split is going to cause other problems. For an example, would an "east" TOC have a depot around Manchester/ Liverpool for the current TPE services?





I agree with TheKnightWho - the "lottery" stuff is overblown by enthusiasts.

Fundamentally, it doesn't matter how you carve up TPE. Add the East TPE to the ECML and the North to the WCML if you like, the key thing is that it's mixed. You speak about it like having mixed franchises is some amazing new thing that has never been tried anywhere else at all, well it isn't. We have mixed franchises in the South West, Anglia, the Midlands, Wales, Scotland. It's the North of England set up that's the outlier.

There are ways to bring the price of the railway in the North down.

Electrification - some is happening, but we're still too squeamish about coughing up the necessary capital, so it's a case of too little, too late. And we all know how much more capital investment per head the South East is getting at the moment, so it's not as though they're going away empty handed.

Have Rail North own and run it's own trains - can't change any aspect of our sacred privatisation model, which must be preserved in all its glory, regardless of whether it pushes up day to day revenue costs or not. Infact, all authorities or train companies with their own rolling stock must pay a tithe of carriages to the mother ROSCO's else they shall undergo flagellation as heretics.

Build a standard fleet of DMU's across the country that can be internally configured to get economies of scale - that boat sailed long ago.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Surely a question which needs answering here is why it costs so much more to run Northern routes than equivalent routes on other operators- Scotland, Wales, non-intercity EMT and Great Western?
Or alternatively why Northern attracts so much less passengers/revenue than the above?

I'm not sure it does. The above list doesn't include Scotland and Wales, and no ones recorded what non-InterCity EMT costs on its own.

 

[edwin_m]

I'm not sure it does. The above list doesn't include Scotland and Wales, and no ones recorded what non-InterCity EMT costs on its own.

Indeed - the OPs figures suggest that Scotrail and ATW would have figures per passenger mile similar to Northern's. And incidentally Transpennine's figure is very similar to CrossCountry's for a fairly similar operation.

It would also be instructive to split out the "regional suburban" figures from Northern, London Midland, ATW and Scotrail, all of whom have quite big operations of this type mixed in with very different services. This would give a far more useful benchmarking between TOCs than simply taking an overall figure where the biggest factor is probably the differences in the relative proportions of each type of service operated.

 

[yorksrob]

Indeed - the OPs figures suggest that Scotrail and ATW would have figures per passenger mile similar to Northern's. And incidentally Transpennine's figure is very similar to CrossCountry's for a fairly similar operation.

It would also be instructive to split out the "regional suburban" figures from Northern, London Midland, ATW and Scotrail, all of whom have quite big operations of this type mixed in with very different services. This would give a far more useful benchmarking between TOCs than simply taking an overall figure where the biggest factor is probably the differences in the relative proportions of each type of service operated.

Indeed. I'm sure if someone worked out the cost of running individual routes, they would doubtless find that longish rural routes with an hourly DMU across the country will cost the same whichever TOC they're in.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

The subsidy figures are not important as the gap between transport subsidy in London and the three official Northern areas is huge.
Sorry my phone's messing up...
The North East get's 500 times less per head than a Londoner in investment.
The only these subsidies would meet that is if everyone gets on this 51p train for 1,000 miles a year... very unlikey. So this is really peanuts.

I'll quote a Rail Future article highlighting Northern's unfair situation in another way:

 

[Clarence Yard]

The real problem here is rubbish statistics. The DfT have just taken their net subsidy and whacked on (as a crude %) the fixed track access, which is just the net funding requirement of the whole of NR, after all other charges and grant, laundered through the various TOCs in a fairly arbitrary way.

Their 51.5p per passenger mile is just unbelievable, says this old BR finance manager, and the ORR, who have gone through all the industry components with a fine tooth comb, have Northern as 7.79p per passenger km, which sounds more like it.

I would recommend the ORR work on railway finances if you are interested in the subject. The bar charts in their recent release on their website gives the subsidy figures by TOC.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

http://www.railfuture.org.uk/article1507-Northern-double-whammy

The new figures themselves are not very different, showing a subsidy per passenger mile for Northern Rail of 51.5 pence for 2013-14. This is made up of 25.8 pence subsidy direct to Northern, and 25.7 pence Network Grant paid to Network Rail.The difference is in the way the figures are calculated.

The new figures for the Network Grant subsidy are apportioned by fixed track access charges. Fixed track access charges are calculated on the basis of timetabled vehicle miles, but do not depend on the type of vehicle (only variable track access charges do that).

However the type of vehicle is reflected in the calculation, because 70% of the costs which make up fixed track access charges are made up of renewals and maintenance costs which are disaggregated to 307 route sections - so fixed track access costs will be reasonably representative of real costs as the renewals and maintenance costs will depend on the type of traffic and hence vehicles using those route sections.So far so good - but over 80% of the cost paid for by the network grant (£4Bn) is interest on NR's debt (£1.5Bn) and depreciation (£1.8Bn), aggregated at a national (England and Wales) level.

These charges are the result of past investment in enhancements and major projects, most of which have been in the London area or on inter-city lines, which should have made those lines more operationally cost-effective and so reduced fixed track access charges.Using operational costs as a basis for apportioning finance charges is fundamentally unsound. Northern are hit by a double whammy of paying for investment in the south, and then paying more because that investment has made the south more cost-effective.

The only fair way would be to apportion those finance costs to the route sections where the investment was made, then to the train operators by vehicle mileage over each route section.The nearest Northern Rail services come to Reading is a once-per-day service at Derby, 137 miles away.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The thing that I find most amazing about this thread, noting its subject matter which must have been mentioned in passing on thousands of postings on a myriad of past threads in posting comment, is that it has taken until 2015 when an actual thread of its own was launched.

Just one of my many "idle observations" made in postings at 0100 hours.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The question I'd ask then is "if you don't have one big Provincial TOC for northern England then how else do you carve things up?" Northern is a big enough franchise as it is, without lobbing in the TPE operations. But any "east/west" split is going to cause other problems. For an example, would an "east" TOC have a depot around Manchester/ Liverpool for the current TPE services?

I don't see why having a big provincial TOC for northern England is a problem, and yes, that would be my preference. Having a big national TOC for the entire UK worked reasonably well, didn't it?

But on the subject of east-west split...that's how it was before, and TPE was indeed run by RRNE. I don't know about what depots were used, though?

Neil

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

For an example, would an "east" TOC have a depot around Manchester/ Liverpool for the current TPE services?

May I ask, in response to that point made above, do Siemens currently have much to do with the operations of both the Ardwick and York TPE depots and how would such a proposal affect them, if any?

 

[muddythefish]

The real problem here is rubbish statistics. The DfT have just taken their net subsidy and whacked on (as a crude %) the fixed track access, which is just the net funding requirement of the whole of NR, after all other charges and grant, laundered through the various TOCs in a fairly arbitrary way.

Their 51.5p per passenger mile is just unbelievable, says this old BR finance manager, and the ORR, who have gone through all the industry components with a fine tooth comb, have Northern as 7.79p per passenger km, which sounds more like it.

I would recommend the ORR work on railway finances if you are interested in the subject. The bar charts in their recent release on their website gives the subsidy figures by TOC.

This figure does seem more credible than the 51p being bandied about. Why is it not publicised more ?

 

[158756]

I'm not sure it does. The above list doesn't include Scotland and Wales, and no ones recorded what non-InterCity EMT costs on its own.

Logically, if we were very concerned about subsidising the railway, we would be questioning the future of every route vaguely like those Northern operate.
However, we only appear to have an issue with Northern. This points to one of the following
a) Those routes with other operators which look similar to Northern's are in fact performing far better than those with Northern.(in which case, why and what can be learnt)
Or
b) We're having this discussion mostly because of devolution and some lines the SRA drew on a map.

 

[alexl92]

May I ask, in response to that point made above, do Siemens currently have much to do with the operations of both the Ardwick and York TPE depots and how would such a proposal affect them, if any?

I may be mistaken but I have a feeling that Siemens have a maintenance contract with TPE and train the staff, if not supply them. Not certain though.

 

[Bantamzen]

The real problem here is rubbish statistics. The DfT have just taken their net subsidy and whacked on (as a crude %) the fixed track access, which is just the net funding requirement of the whole of NR, after all other charges and grant, laundered through the various TOCs in a fairly arbitrary way.

Their 51.5p per passenger mile is just unbelievable, says this old BR finance manager, and the ORR, who have gone through all the industry components with a fine tooth comb, have Northern as 7.79p per passenger km, which sounds more like it.

I would recommend the ORR work on railway finances if you are interested in the subject. The bar charts in their recent release on their website gives the subsidy figures by TOC.

I have to say this whole issue about the real levels of subsidies really confuses me. On the one hand the DfT seem to be coming up with a 51.5p per mile subsidy rate (which by the way is still cheaper than any taxi, despite what some claim) and on the other hand the ORR seem to be coming up with 7.79p per km (4.67p pm), which is far, far less. So which it is?

The 51.5 ppm seems to be dragged out whenever someone wants to argue that Northern passengers should pay more for the same service, much more for the promise of something better somewhere down the line, or to simply argue for a massive scaling back of services and the closure of large parts of the network. Frankly it all sounds a bit too political to me. I would welcome someone to finally lay the argument to rest and actually come up with the real figure.

 

[DarloRich]

I would welcome someone to finally lay the argument to rest and actually come up with the real figure.

Exactly - independently audited figures rather than some pressure group wibble trying to get their story in the paper.

I also love the complete lack of any objectivity from many posters. They have seized on something that makes their case rather than look for some sensible data.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

May I ask, in response to that point made above, do Siemens currently have much to do with the operations of both the Ardwick and York TPE depots and how would such a proposal affect them, if any?

They have everything to do with TPE's Class 185s.
There is a long-term maintenance contract with Siemens, much like the one with Alstom for Virgin's Pendolinos down the road at Longsight.
It is very unlikely the Ardwick base could be moved, as it is central to the 185 operation.
York is smaller and feeds off Ardwick.

This figure does seem more credible than the 51p being bandied about. Why is it not publicised more ?

I have to say this whole issue about the real levels of subsidies really confuses me. On the one hand the DfT seem to be coming up with a 51.5p per mile subsidy rate (which by the way is still cheaper than any taxi, despite what some claim) and on the other hand the ORR seem to be coming up with 7.79p per km (4.67p pm), which is far, far less. So which it is?

The 51.5 ppm seems to be dragged out whenever someone wants to argue that Northern passengers should pay more for the same service, much more for the promise of something better somewhere down the line, or to simply argue for a massive scaling back of services and the closure of large parts of the network. Frankly it all sounds a bit too political to me. I would welcome someone to finally lay the argument to rest and actually come up with the real figure.

Both figures are right - and wrong.
The ORR figure is the accounting figure between each TOC and DfT as per its franchise agreement.
On this basis 9 franchises are "profitable" (returning a net premium to DfT).

But there are two big numbers missing for Northern.
One is the payment made by DfT to PTEs to support Northern services. This was £182m last year.
The other is the payment made by DfT direct to Network Rail as part of its 5-year plan, to top up the access charges paid by the TOCs.
That's what bumps the figure up to the larger number.
Also don't mix up pence per mile with pence per kilometre: 7.79 is p/km, 51.5 is p/mile (ie 31 p/km).

You can argue about the way the Network Rail number is carved up between the TOCs, and it may be that Northern loses out somewhat in the equation.
Northern doesn't go anywhere near Crossrail, Reading or New Street, but they should be paying towards NW electrification, Northern Hub, station upgrades, resignalling projects in the north, WCML upgrades in the north etc etc.
It's also where the maintenance cost of long rural lines bites: Northern will have to pay for the S&C and Cumbrian Coast, for instance (with freight).

These are the two sets of stats (ORR and DfT) for 2013/14.
In the DfT stats the net Northern figure is 12.5 p/mile, which equates to the ORR figure of 7.79 p/km.
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/14497/rail-finance-statistical-release-2013-14.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

On a pence per mile basis (in the DfT document), the Northern PTE grant is 13.3, and the network grant is 25.7.
That's how you get to 51.5 pence per passenger mile.
So the PTEs pay Northern more than DfT does in subsidy, and the network grant doubles both those figures.

What's more these figures are going up by about 10% a year, so the Northern problem is getting worse.

 

[BlythPower]

Surely a question which needs answering here is why it costs so much more to run Northern routes than equivalent routes on other operators- Scotland, Wales, non-intercity EMT and Great Western?
Or alternatively why Northern attracts so much less passengers/revenue than the above?

I haven't got the magazine to hand, so can't provide the exact figures, but in Autumn last year Today's Railways UK had an editorial on the subject of Northern's higher than the rest subsidies. It would appear to be, in part at least, down to Northern's higher than the rest costs. Northern have to pay more for annual station usage for one of those one train a week parliamentary stations than SE commuter TOCs pay for very heavily used stations. Perhaps if Northern faced more reasonable charges, they'd require less subsidy...

 

[northwichcat]

What's more these figures are going up by about 10% a year, so the Northern problem is getting worse.

There was a suggestion that DfT calculated the Network Rail grant incorrectly for the latest year and Northern and Virgin were affected the most by the error. Northern because they operate the most Pacers (with the cheapest track access charges) and Virgin because they operate Pendolinos and Voyagers (with the most expensive track access charges).

Certainly there's no reason why Northern's figure should have gone up 10% - as there's been no change in rolling stock from the previous year and no changes in services. If track access, diesel, leasing costs and staffing costs have contributed to the 10% increase then the same should have happened with all operators who operate all or mainly diesel services.

 

[paul1609]

I haven't got the magazine to hand, so can't provide the exact figures, but in Autumn last year Today's Railways UK had an editorial on the subject of Northern's higher than the rest subsidies. It would appear to be, in part at least, down to Northern's higher than the rest costs. Northern have to pay more for annual station usage for one of those one train a week parliamentary stations than SE commuter TOCs pay for very heavily used stations. Perhaps if Northern faced more reasonable charges, they'd require less subsidy...

You have to ask if these 1 service per week stations are so expensive why dont Northern bite the bullet and go through the official closure proceedure. Its been done on some routes in Central London in the recent past why not Manchester. Its not like you would be removing the track and room for a future station could be protected.

 

[northwichcat]

You have to ask if these 1 service per week stations are so expensive why dont Northern bite the bullet and go through the official closure proceedure. Its been done on some routes in Central London in the recent past why not Manchester.

Maybe because the closure request wouldn't likely be accepted? Take the Denton line it's not like Denton wouldn't be able capable of producing 250,000 journeys per annum if it had a regular train service to Manchester but there isn't a train service to Manchester and just one train per week to Stalybridge.

Network Rail actually looked at closing Reddish South on the Stockport-Stalybridge line and found there was a lot of objection despite Reddish North having a regular service, so didn't progress with the process.

 

[Bantamzen]

Both figures are right - and wrong.
The ORR figure is the accounting figure between each TOC and DfT as per its franchise agreement.
On this basis 9 franchises are "profitable" (returning a net premium to DfT).

But there are two big numbers missing for Northern.
One is the payment made by DfT to PTEs to support Northern services. This was £182m last year.
The other is the payment made by DfT direct to Network Rail as part of its 5-year plan, to top up the access charges paid by the TOCs.
That's what bumps the figure up to the larger number.
Also don't mix up pence per mile with pence per kilometre: 7.79 is p/km, 51.5 is p/mile (ie 31 p/km).

You can argue about the way the Network Rail number is carved up between the TOCs, and it may be that Northern loses out somewhat in the equation.
Northern doesn't go anywhere near Crossrail, Reading or New Street, but they should be paying towards NW electrification, Northern Hub, station upgrades, resignalling projects in the north, WCML upgrades in the north etc etc.
It's also where the maintenance cost of long rural lines bites: Northern will have to pay for the S&C and Cumbrian Coast, for instance (with freight).

These are the two sets of stats (ORR and DfT) for 2013/14.
In the DfT stats the net Northern figure is 12.5 p/mile, which equates to the ORR figure of 7.79 p/km.
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/14497/rail-finance-statistical-release-2013-14.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

On a pence per mile basis (in the DfT document), the Northern PTE grant is 13.3, and the network grant is 25.7.
That's how you get to 51.5 pence per passenger mile.
So the PTEs pay Northern more than DfT does in subsidy, and the network grant doubles both those figures.

What's more these figures are going up by about 10% a year, so the Northern problem is getting worse.

Thanks for that, it at least puts the meat on the bones.

However it raises another question, possibly a series of questions. Firstly, why is Northern the only operator to who receives grants from the government via the PTEs? Is it for example that these indirect grants cover the cost of PTE seasonal ticketing, and if so are the passenger numbers using said tickets included in the calculation? Whilst it should be fairly simple to work this at stations with barriers, at those without it is nearly impossible to actually arrive at a genuine figure of people using these on the network (bearing in mind many PTE passes are multi-modal).

And away from these questions, I've seen suggestions that Northern Rail possibly pay more per passenger per mile in network access charges. Is there any truth to this, and if so why?

 

[Bletchleyite]

It isn't, is it?

Merseyrail receives such a grant, but as the PTE is the franchising authority it gets it a different way.

LM gets such a grant for Birmingham area local services, I believe.

Are there any PTEs darn Sarf?

Neil

 

[HSTEd]

Not that I know of - Londons original Passenger Transport Board drastically predates the PTEs and was enabled under entirely different legislation, as far as I know all subsequent updates used different legislation to PTEs.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Thanks for that, it at least puts the meat on the bones.

However it raises another question, possibly a series of questions. Firstly, why is Northern the only operator to who receives grants from the government via the PTEs? Is it for example that these indirect grants cover the cost of PTE seasonal ticketing, and if so are the passenger numbers using said tickets included in the calculation? Whilst it should be fairly simple to work this at stations with barriers, at those without it is nearly impossible to actually arrive at a genuine figure of people using these on the network (bearing in mind many PTE passes are multi-modal).

And away from these questions, I've seen suggestions that Northern Rail possibly pay more per passenger per mile in network access charges. Is there any truth to this, and if so why?

I can't answer much of that, but Northern is the only TOC with PTE grants. TPE is not funded that way.
Every time someone says on here that "TfGM are paying for...extra services", in practice the DfT refunds the cost to the PTE.
I don't know how the PTE-funded fares work, but I'm guessing Northern's passenger numbers are probably accurate.
On the other hand Merseyrail has had problems getting accurate passenger numbers because of Merseytravel's zonal tickets.

There have been esoteric arguments about Northern's access charges and that Pacers are charged the same as Pendolinos, but I believe the impact is only on indirect charges and is marginal.
The bulk of the access charges will be specific to stock type and route.

 

[Bantamzen]

I can't answer much of that, but Northern is the only TOC with PTE grants. TPE is not funded that way.
Every time someone says on here that "TfGM are paying for...extra services", in practice the DfT refunds the cost to the PTE.
I don't know how the PTE-funded fares work, but I'm guessing Northern's passenger numbers are probably accurate.
On the other hand Merseyrail has had problems getting accurate passenger numbers because of Merseytravel's zonal tickets.

There have been esoteric arguments about Northern's access charges and that Pacers are charged the same as Pendolinos, but I believe the impact is only on indirect charges and is marginal.
The bulk of the access charges will be specific to stock type and route.

Actualy West Yorkshire also use a zonal system for it's Metrocards, which are very popular amongst rail passengers. And as many (myself included) do not use stations with barriers, or even those that do have tickets that are not always, or ever swiped by the barriers, it would be near impossible to get an accurate figure on Metrocard useage. There used to be fairly regular surveys carried out by Metro on both the buses and trains, but these seem to have fallen by the wayside in recent years so even an estimate would be difficult.

I don't know about the other PTEs, but I would imagine that similar schemes run in most.

 

[northwichcat]

I can't answer much of that, but Northern is the only TOC with PTE grants. TPE is not funded that way.

But TPE like Virgin, XC, East Coast, EMT, ATW, LM and possible others accept tickets which are subsided by PTEs, so they'll get money from PTEs even if it's not in the form of a grant.

 

[yorksrob]

Both figures are right - and wrong.
The ORR figure is the accounting figure between each TOC and DfT as per its franchise agreement.
On this basis 9 franchises are "profitable" (returning a net premium to DfT).

But there are two big numbers missing for Northern.
One is the payment made by DfT to PTEs to support Northern services. This was £182m last year.
The other is the payment made by DfT direct to Network Rail as part of its 5-year plan, to top up the access charges paid by the TOCs.
That's what bumps the figure up to the larger number.
Also don't mix up pence per mile with pence per kilometre: 7.79 is p/km, 51.5 is p/mile (ie 31 p/km).

You can argue about the way the Network Rail number is carved up between the TOCs, and it may be that Northern loses out somewhat in the equation.
Northern doesn't go anywhere near Crossrail, Reading or New Street, but they should be paying towards NW electrification, Northern Hub, station upgrades, resignalling projects in the north, WCML upgrades in the north etc etc.
It's also where the maintenance cost of long rural lines bites: Northern will have to pay for the S&C and Cumbrian Coast, for instance (with freight).

These are the two sets of stats (ORR and DfT) for 2013/14.
In the DfT stats the net Northern figure is 12.5 p/mile, which equates to the ORR figure of 7.79 p/km.
http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/14497/rail-finance-statistical-release-2013-14.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rail-subsidy-per-passenger-mile

On a pence per mile basis (in the DfT document), the Northern PTE grant is 13.3, and the network grant is 25.7.
That's how you get to 51.5 pence per passenger mile.
So the PTEs pay Northern more than DfT does in subsidy, and the network grant doubles both those figures.

What's more these figures are going up by about 10% a year, so the Northern problem is getting worse.

With regard to the Network Rail grant, the blurb under the DfT figures states that "the distribution of fixed track access charges has been used to calculate the Network Grant" This strongly suggests to me that the network grant has been divvied up on the basis of who runs the most trains, rather than how much it actually costs to maintain a companies route, particularly given that Northern rail runs a lot of shorter trains.

Secondly if, as someone has mentioned earlier, a large proportion fixed track access charges are going to finance Network Rail's debt, then given the much larger proportion of Network Rail's investment that has gone to Inter City and South Eastern areas, it is inevitable that this figure is effectively paying more towards those areas that have received the Lion's share of investment.

Also, there's no franchise area with anything like the level of urbanisation as the Northern Rail area except London, so how on earth are we meant to have a discussion about how much should be spent on urban transport without anything to say how much subsidy TfL services get ?

This suggests to me that the DfT figures are pretty unreliable in themselves, and since they miss out other areas such as Scotland and Wales which have similar levels of longish rural routes, as well as urban London, they are useless for deciding policy.

Graph 1.1 of the ORR document is interesting as it shows the overall Government support for rail services. In this, support via PTE grants is releatively small and falling, particularly compared to something called "direct rail support", so I don't really see how the PTE grant can account for half of Northern Rails support, yet it's subsidy figure is so much higher than everyone elses. Surely this direct rail support must feed into the other subsidy figures somewhere ?

Something really doesn't add up.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Graph 1.1 of the ORR document is interesting as it shows the overall Government support for rail services. In this, support via PTE grants is releatively small and falling, particularly compared to something called "direct rail support", so I don't really see how the PTE grant can account for half of Northern Rails support, yet it's subsidy figure is so much higher than everyone elses. Surely this direct rail support must feed into the other subsidy figures somewhere ?
Something really doesn't add up.

The PTE figure is one quarter of the Northern total subsidy (13.3p out of 51.5p).
It only applies to Northern, and rose 10% last year (though it fell previously).
Direct rail support is the vast £3.4 billion for Network Rail which is carved up between the TOCs, and is not only for new investment.
There will be big chunks of maintenance and renewal in there.
The subsidy figures for Scotrail and ATW are significantly worse than Northern's.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The PTE figure is one quarter of the Northern total subsidy (13.3p out of 51.5p).
It only applies to Northern

Are you *absolutely sure* LM does not receive a PTE subsidy from Centro?

Neil