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After this year, it’s probably no big surprise that UK trains can’t run on time. This is not a reference to Mussolini. That modest ambition was set out in the opening sentence of the Williams-Shapes plan for rail, published in May 2021: “We want our trains to run on time.”
They are not. Often, they don’t just walk away. People are bracing for another round of industrial action in December and January, showing little sign of the pay workers need or the modernization of work methods the system needs.
In parts of the north, particularly those served by Avanti West Coast, Transpennine and Northern, services have opened with double, triple or worse the proportion of late or canceled trains over the past year.
Meanwhile, criticism of the 2021 review still stands. Railways “lacks a guiding focus on customers, coherent leadership and strategic direction. They are too fragmented, too complex and too expensive to run. Innovation is hard. Incentives are often perverse.” What a shame that 18 months later so little has been done about it.
The review was published after the pandemic prompted wholesale taxpayer support of the railways, a tab which still runs at £13bn in the year to March 2022. In reality, however, it addresses the failings of a franchising system that was crumbling well before Covid. -19.
A system already characterized by large, overspecified contracts, dwindling numbers of bidders and frequent franchise failures was moving towards the low-risk, low-reward form of contracting that the lockdown imposed.
Keith Williams, chairman of Royal Mail, planned to establish Great British Railways, a new public body that would include both services and infrastructure. The idea was that it could provide a “guiding mind”, oversee new operator contracts and coordinate smooth fares, schedules, capacity and maintenance.
The model was very much Transport for London: a publicly-planned, publicly-fronted service delivered in the background by private operators.
It’s not fair to say that nothing has happened since (although the fact that one change involved dropping former transport secretary Grant Shapps’ name from the plans tells its own story about a year of political turmoil and inaction).
Legislation to establish the GBR is yet to be brought forward. But its transition team is working on new fares and ticketing, including a pay-as-you-go service, long-term strategy and how to roll out new contracts before legal action.
One problem is that a system where overall traffic remains at perhaps 85 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels but has shifted radically between commuter, leisure and business use is one that could really use some conscious and holistic oversight. Instead, it has the Treasury in effect, which must sign off on every penny and has blocked pilot schemes even in areas such as dynamic pricing, according to industry sources.
Another is that the over-prescription of franchising, where seat hardness, catering services, or credit card-sized pieces of garbage were contractually specified, has given way to a different system of counterproductive micromanagement. Every initiative, station improvement or marketing campaign must be cleared with the government.
Enough, perhaps, given who is fitting the bill. But even in a fully nationalized system this would be an inefficient level of central scrutiny. Oxera research for industry group Rail Partners showed that open access operators outperformed government-contracted operators in terms of revenue from mid-2021, arguing that contract changes to include some growth incentives could raise £800mn a year.
“In franchising the government uses private industry as a shield to blame,” says railway engineer and author Gareth Dennis. “Now we have micro-level fiddling without doing anything to set an overall strategy for the railways, which is the opposite of what you want.”
Until the system finds its guiding mind, the field is dependent on a patchwork of legacy organizations and workaround solutions to attempt reform. It is, as another saying goes, no way to run a railroad.
helen.thomas@ft.com
@helentbiz
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