UK - time to reunite track and trains

[John Ashworth]

This is no way to run a railway: time to reunite track and trains

By Jeff Randall
Last Updated: 6:40am GMT 28/03/2008

'Trains back to normal today," was the headline in Tuesday's Financial Times. "Network Rail said the engineering improvements at the weekend had gone to schedule," was the story underneath.

The pink paper rarely gets the facts quite so wrong, but one of its news staff had apparently made the error of believing, and then recycling, the rubbish on Network Rail's self-congratulatory website.

This became obvious when I arrived that morning at Shenfield station, just before 8am. Services into the City weren't merely disrupted; they were in disarray. Crowds of wretched commuters were already fighting for places in taxis. It was like a bit of Heathrow in Essex suburbia.

Engineering works, which had closed the line into Liverpool Street during the Easter weekend, were due to have been finished in good time. Instead, a related signalling problem was causing rush-hour chaos.

In all, there were 126 hours of delays and 500 cancellations. Punctuality on National Express's Great Eastern services collapsed to 55 per cent. For regulars, it was a familiar case of low morale, high anxiety and a primeval desire to put the head of an incompetent railway manager on the end of a stick.

At first, Network Rail denied that the problem had anything to do with engineering over-runs. The foul-up was just "a horrible coincidence", the company said. But later, under pressure from National Express, the track operator admitted that it was a "failure of our infrastructure".

Six years ago, Peter Hain, then a cabinet minister, said what frequent travellers had long known from bitter experience: "We [Britain] have the worst railways in Europe. It is an intractable problem."

Since then, little has changed. Despite massive government subsidies, about £5 billion a year, and a surge in demand for rail services, our national network remains, according to Rod Smith, research professor of railway engineering at Imperial College, "on a treadmill of mediocrity".

Worse still, there is no prospect of improvement. The structure of our railways is inherently flawed. The Conservatives bungled the industry's privatisation, splitting the track company from the operators. The result has been open warfare between the two sides, irreconcilable conflicts of interest, and a breakdown of effective planning.

In the middle is the Government, which is interfering in the day-to-day operations with ever greater intensity and diminishing success.
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Professor Colin Divall of York University's Institute of Railway Studies says: "It is interesting to note that the micro-management of the railways by the state is now at arguably its highest-ever level. The problem is the lack of a clear overall transport policy."

The operators' seven-year franchise contracts contain extraordinary impositions by the Department for Transport, including how many carriages can be run on each route. Civil servants are dictating timetables and the design of new rolling stock. It is a recipe for costly failure.

Overseeing this miserable confection of in-fighting and point-scoring is the Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, one of the least effective ministers of this or any other government. Having been associated with several embarrassing U-turns, including the climb-down over home information packs, she has neither the confidence nor the authority to be radical.

Virgin Trains, which runs services between London and Glasgow, is warning that Network Rail's proposed programme of works on the West Coast Main Line will cause months of disruption and severe over-crowding for the rest of the year. In short, says Virgin, the scheme for upgrading is "unworkable".

By contrast, Network Rail insists that any postponement would have a deleterious impact on other parts of the system. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who knows? What is clear is that this is no way to run an essential national asset. Fixing what we've got cannot be done. We need to start again.

The Government is keen to stress its green credentials, yet seems to be part of a covert conspiracy to drive more and more people back on to the roads. Faced with a demand for rail that way outstrips supply, its policy is to allow train companies to jack up fares on services that are already among the most expensive in the world. It's a depressing example of more for less.

The industry's fragmentation has led to chronic structural weaknesses. Too many organisations are involved in decision-making. Accountability has been lost in a mire of bureaucracy. As rail travellers discover with dispiriting regularity, it's not easy to find out who is ultimately responsible.

Network Rail's status is a joke. When the company screws up, as it did over New Year maintenance schedules, heavy fines are imposed by the rail regulator. The trouble is, as a quasi-state body, all its financial obligations are underwritten by the taxpayer. So we end up suffering twice.

Another area that needs to be looked at is the role of the big banks as lessors of kit to the train operators. One insider told me they had "a licence to print money". Should some of that profit be used to improve services?

If David Cameron wants to put some distance between his new-look party and Labour on an issue that affects voters of all ages and different persuasions, right across the country, a plan for our railways is surely it. His predecessors got denationalisation wrong. Labour inherited that mess, but has made things worse. Now is the time to be bold.

One year ago, when Chris Grayling was shadow transport secretary, he made a speech in which he set out his vision for an overhaul of British railways. He said: "We think, with hindsight, that the complete separation of track and train into separate businesses … was not right."

Grayling was correct. Opponents claim that European Union rules would prevent the realignment of track and operations, but, as the French and others have proved, if a national government really wants to achieve something there is always a route round the road block.

Consolidation is necessary if cohesion is to be restored. A way must be found to restore vertical integration. What's more, the Government has to face up to the reality that a world-class rail system cannot be acquired on the cheap.

Labour is spending at least £600 billion of taxpayers' money every year. Fortunes are being squandered on welfare handouts that encourage idleness and lock in poverty. Britain would be a less polluted, less congested, more efficient and more attractive place if a few billion pounds were diverted from the social security budget into investment for a 21st-century railway network.

Such action would, of course, require vision and courage. Unfortunately, these are not qualities with which the current incumbents of Downing Street are well acquainted.

So, I fear, for rail travellers the outlook remains bleak: management by Sir Humphry, years of above-inflation fare rises, a deterioration in comfort as over-crowding increases, and yet more mornings like last Tuesday.

Daily Telegraph