RAIL comment: Labour’s blueprint for rail

Can the latest strategic report, the Rail and Urban Transport Review chaired by former Siemens UK head Juergen Maier, deliver a successful long-term strategy? 

In this article:

• The Labour government is prioritizing rail infrastructure reform to restore trust and enable future growth after years of stagnation.
• The Rail and Urban Transport Review calls for a comprehensive transport strategy and challenges the government to double rail’s modal share within a decade.
• The report recommends reducing project costs and risks, proposing a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority to guide long-term investments

As soon as Labour gained power at July’s General Election, it seemed keen to show that moving fast and fixing things was not an empty statement, and that trust in the railway as a future growth enabler was not a dream that 15 years of stagnation had killed off.

It quickly moved forward with its plans for reform. These include changes to how the industry is governed, how to ensure passengers and freight users are put first, and (crucially) who controls it.

All those questions (and possible solutions) will be working their way through the corridors of Whitehall over the coming months. But, until now, plans for reform didn’t necessarily cover in detail how to build the infrastructure needed.

Now, a blueprint may just be emerging on how this could happen. The Rail and Urban Transport Review was published in August. The report, chaired by former head of Siemens UK Juergen Maier, and initially commissioned by the Labour Party when it was in opposition, focuses on delivery. It follows a theme that the new government is keen to push - that any real change in the rail industry is going to take time.

One of the review’s first recommendations is to implement a comprehensive transport infrastructure plan, which it haughtily calls the Transport Strategy for England (TSE). Focused on growing the modal shift from cars to public transport between now and 2035, it ties into the various devolved governments’ own plans.

It goes one step further with rail, however - challenging the government to set targets to double rail’s modal share within a decade, although rather than putting a target out there and hoping it will be hit through happenstance, the report acknowledges that it won’t happen without this plan being linked to a long-term industrial strategy.

But stop us if you’ve heard this one before. 2021’s Integrated Rail Plan was the last incarnation of a plan for rail investment which promised long-term thinking and a chance to reset.

Packaged up as part of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, it promised a scale of investment in the Midlands and the North of England that had not been seen before (other than when the government announced HS2 in 2012 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in 2014). But it soon unravelled, primarily because of the problems identified in this new report.

Bold plans are not exclusive to rail, however. The Roads for Prosperity plan was initially announced in 1989, promising one of the largest road-building programmes since the Romans. But the whole plan barely got out of first gear, with many of its schemes cancelled through rising costs and strong resistance, and by 1996 most of the plan was quietly dropped.

This latest report also leans into the renationalisation of rail. When nationalisation originally took place, it sought to rebuild (with the Modernisation Plan, published in 1955) what the railway had lost in terms of infrastructure during the Second World War.

But while it looked transformative, it largely just replaced what already existed, failing to seize upon an opportunity to transform the network for the future.

During the era of British Rail, electrification of the rail network was gradual, but also reactive to the needs of the time. However, after the Railtrack experiment ended in 2002 (after three major rail accidents), public ownership returned - largely to accommodate economies of scale.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that there would be collective groans across the rail industry at the announcement of the Rail and Urban Transport Review. But this time, there is a sense that this could be different.

Part of that thinking is likely down to the fact that it’s a new government, ready to tackle nearly two decades of inertia.

But this review was announced to the world in a meeting room at Bradford City Hall - a deliberately low-key approach for a government setting out its ambitions, and a sign that it is taking this matter seriously as well as looking to avoid bluster and ruin.

The review suggests better management of project risks, and proceeding with caution rather than delaying where risk exists. It recommends an infrastructure project framework which it believes will cut down project costs and delivery by up to 25%.

This will be music to the ears of HM Treasury and the private sector. While curbing project costs and inflation might seem obvious to some, it has rarely been tackled at policy level, and spiralling project costs and diminishing returns have slowly turned the Westminster view of public transport into one of a cost burden.

To hammer this point home even more, the review even touches upon reforming planning regulations, and endorses the establishment of a new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority - which was originally suggested in the Major Capital Projects Review, published in January.

Maier argues that a shift in mindset is required, where investment is framed into improving UK productivity - now and in the long-term future. Future-proofing high-profile project decisions so that they cannot be scrapped on a whim by future governments, Maier argues, will ensure the mindset will gradually change when the TSE starts showing its teeth.

What rests with central government may also change, as the review also recommends further devolution over transport matters, following Greater Manchester and West Midlands deals secured last year.

That would entail financial settlements being arranged between the authorities and central government, and then allowing the authorities to get on with investing it in their transport plans - although, somewhat ominously, it warns that combined authorities would need to demonstrate their “delivery capabilities”.

And this caution is well-placed, as this government aims to pivot away from a perception of a decade of stagnation and waste. To combat this, it wants an acceleration of some of the plans that have stalled or been caught in a mire of red tape - including NPR from Warrington to Yorkshire, East Coast Main Line improvements north of York, providing a lasting solution to the West Coast Main Line bottleneck, and (at long last) a new station in Bradford.

The Transport Secretary mentioned that these findings would now inform transport decisions in the next two budgets, and work alongside its wider rail bill. But against that, as this issue of RAIL went to press, the Prime Minister was delivering a speech warning the country that the upcoming budget was going to be painful. It might be some time yet until those short-term infrastructure projects are delivered.

This report, however, is not about short-term promises. The positive response by many in the industry is because it is looking at long-term structural changes that go beyond quick fixes and political gimmicks. A bedrock for further reform.

But whether this new government has the courage of its convictions, when it looks at its budget sheets and with multiple other departments knocking at its door, remains to be seen.