Guest Opinion: Our railway needs a lot more now than nationalisation

Sidestep the public vs private debate and focus more closely on better public transport, says the new Liberal Democrat MP Olly Glover. 

In this article:

• The Labour government’s focus on transport is welcome, but overpromising on public ownership may not deliver quick improvements for customers.
• Public and private sectors both have pros and cons, with long-term private contracts driving investment, while short-term leasing causes inefficiencies.
• The UK should learn from Swiss and Dutch models, focusing on reliability, affordable fares, and better integration with buses and cycling for sustainable growth.

It is welcome news that the new Labour government is providing ample legislative time to transport, given that it is a vital policy area that is often neglected. I also welcome the appointment of Lord Peter Hendy as Rail Minister.

However, the new government is playing a precarious game by overpromising to customers on the benefits of public ownership of passenger services.

Before entering Parliament, I worked for both state-owned Network Rail and private sector train companies. Both public and private have their merits and weaknesses, but by focusing entirely on changing the ownership of train companies, government will fall short in delivering the rapid improvements that customers want to see.

Take Network Rail. Following the safety and financial failures of Railtrack, the previous Labour government rightly took action to create Network Rail in 2002, which was quickly able to tackle safety and performance issues. However, my experience of working for Network Rail is that as a very large publicly owned organisation, silo-working and bureaucracy can be barriers to achieving results.

Network Rail’s challenges are demonstrated by issues near to my constituency, such as infrastructure reliability problems on the Great Western Main Line, severely over-running engineering works causing prolonged closure of the major Botley Road thoroughfare in Oxford, and a very long construction process for Reading Green Park station. Being in the public sector does not inherently make everything better.

As for the privatised train operating companies I worked for, some of the main barriers to progress were not so much their being private sector, as a lack of incentive to invest. This was down to short contracts and micro-management by the Department for Transport and HM Treasury.

I joined London Midland in September 2013, notionally in the last year of its franchise. This meant that key investment decisions were deferred, such as for on-train WiFi, timetable improvements, and car park enhancements.

In contrast, before the pandemic, Chiltern Railway’s 20-year franchise created the incentives for significant investment in rolling stock, major infrastructure and timetable enhancements, and a new station at Warwick Parkway.

The potential for private sector benefit to the railway has often not been realised because of the flawed short-term approach to train company contracts, rather than the nature of the private sector. Government’s plans to leave freight and open access operators in private hands perhaps indicate inconsistency in any view that the private sector cannot deliver good services.

Government reforms do not propose to tackle the issue of trains being owned privately and leased back to operators, often at increased whole-life cost.

The current leasing arrangements can also create perverse incentives on rolling stock retention, as a result of cliff-edges imposed by lease durations and renewal dates. This has created shortages of capacity on several parts of the network in recent years, because short-term financial decisions have been taken to avoid rolling stock lease extensions or heavy overhaul work.

Examples affecting capacity in recent years include HST withdrawals on Great Western Railway and CrossCountry, and withdrawals of Class 455s on Southern and Class 365s on Great Northern.

In seeking to create a reliable and popular public transport system, while we should be careful not to lazily eulogise other countries, we do need to be more willing to learn from good practice elsewhere.

In Switzerland, a 1987 referendum on a nationwide, long-term infrastructure development programme, designed around a national standard-hour timetable, has led to transformative improvements to the rail network.

Combined with integrated timetables with buses, mountain railways and cable cars, Switzerland continues to enjoy the highest public transport use rates in Europe.

The entire Swiss network is electrified, contributing to reliable rolling stock and rapid train acceleration. Fares are straightforward and (given the value of the Swiss franc) relatively inexpensive, helped by discount cards that are available to all ages and applicable to most forms of transport, not just trains.

Fully electric transport such as trams and trolley-buses are common in Swiss cities, making urban transport as efficient and easy to use as longer-distance.

The Netherlands combines a comprehensive and generally high-frequency rail network with world-leading expertise on how to make walking and cycling the core of the ‘last mile’ challenge - how to make it easy to get from railway station hubs to end destinations within town and cities.

Provision of high-quality and continuous cycling and walking routes enables low-cost and healthy transport for people, as well as tackling the scourge of congestion. Huge cycle parking facilities at railway stations, and widespread availability of well-run cycle hire schemes, makes it easy to combine train with bicycle. As for fares, the Netherlands has had a nationwide smartcard ticketing scheme for a decade.

Public transport is often talked about as a solution to climate change, but it is about so much more than that.

Comprehensive and reliable public transport can help secure the economic growth our country needs, so that we can have the public services we deserve. Reducing the requirement for car ownership will help to enable those on lower incomes to access more employment sites, and to have more of their money available for spending on the wider economy.

An efficient and well-presented public transport system will create greater incentives for private enterprise to invest and create jobs.

We need a mindset change. It feels as if public transport is viewed as a nuisance by many of our decision-makers. Short-term, spreadsheet-focused approaches appear to be used for investment decisions. And the Treasury, which determines so much in our country, has traditionally not been enthusiastic about capital investment in public transport.

If we can be bold in our vision and our imagination, there is no reason why we cannot build on what we already have and create high-quality and comprehensive public transport systems across regions and cities.

Like Germany, France and Switzerland, we too could have widely enjoyed tram systems in all our large cities, and bus networks properly integrated with railway stations and train timetables elsewhere.

I therefore implore the new government to move beyond the public vs private debate and focus on what current and prospective rail users want: reliability, cheaper fares, a comfortable on-train experience, good WiFi, and integrated timetables, both within the railway and with buses.

Doing so will be crucial to achieving a real focus on customer service, which is needed to grow patronage and achieve modal shift, helping the railway thrive as part of a wider sustainable and efficient transport system.