Back in the heady pre-pandemic days of early 2019, Tonbridge Line Commuters submitted a response to something then known as the Williams Rail Review. This was to be a major review of Britain’s railways, looking into the potential for root and branch reform of the organisational and commercial structures of the industry. Over two years later, we now have results of the review. In the intervening time, it has transmogrified into the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, with the Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps taking the honours alongside the original author Keith Williams.
The overall thrust of the plan is that a new entity called Great British Railways will be created. This will take on many of the responsibilities of the Department for Transport and subsume Network Rail, the publicly owned body which manages rail infrastructure such as tracks and signalling. Great British Railways will set fares and timetables, but will issue contracts to private companies to run the trains. These private companies will generally have less commercial freedom than that enjoyed by franchised train operating companies since privatisation in the 1990s. The aim appears to be to emulate the relative success of TfL services in London such as the Overground, TfL Rail and the DLR, which uses private firms to run train services on a concession model. Despite this, a cynic might fear that it will privatise the profits but nationalise the costs.
It is interesting to compare the proposals with what we asked for in our original submission to the Williams Review. We suggested that the franchising system was fundamentally flawed because it did not provide the correct incentives for train companies to improve services beyond a given baseline. The industry structure did not promote effective joint-working and too often led to ‘blame games’ between Network Rail and train companies. We commented that our preferred approach would be for a fully integrated UK railway system integrating track and train, either on a national or route basis.
With the advent of Great British Railways, it appears that we will partly be getting our wish. There will be a more integrated approach, at least as far as is visible to the public. That said, it appears there may still be potential for blame shifting between Great British Railways and the companies it contracts to the run the trains. It is also unclear how easy it will be for us to communicate with Great British Railways and influence its approach as it pertains to our local area. Will it be a monolithic body which ignores user groups such as ourselves? It is unclear whether the new organisation will piggyback on the organisational structure of Network Rail, which is managed on a route basis (there being a “Kent” route). Traditionally, Network Rail has been less open to day to day feedback than train operators such as Southeastern, but this has changed over time.
The Williams-Shapps Plan says very little about fares other than a vague promise that “fares will be simplified”. It is disappointing that more concrete proposals have not been put forward. For example, there is nothing about addressing the problem of split ticketing, where it is sometimes cheaper to buy a ticket from A to B and another ticket from B to C rather a through ticket from A to C. On the plus side, the Government is rolling out a system of flexible season tickets this summer, although this is a separate initiative. When buying tickets and looking up information it appears that in future passengers will use a single Great British Railways website and app, rather than the myriad different train company sites and apps that exist today.
Overall, we feel that the proposals have some merit but it is yet to be seen just how “Great” the new Great British Railways will be. We need to see more detail before we can be fully convinced that the Government has a properly thought through plan to deliver a better railway for passengers. The impact of the pandemic means that reform is needed more urgently than ever. We’ll be watching developments and ensuring that our voice continues to be heard.