“The railways, fairly frankly, aren’t match for goal.” That quote may have come from any opposition politician.
“We have now them mired in industrial motion, which lets passengers and freight prospects down. They’re traditionally unable to ship main enhancements at good worth for the taxpayer.”
How refreshing, then, to listen to this from the minister who’s straight in control of the railways: transport secretary Mark Harper. On Tuesday night, delivering the George Bradshaw Tackle in London, he spelled out the ramshackle nature of practice journey – and promised to enhance it.
“The railways want basic reform and that’s what we are going to ship,” he vowed. As an alternative of civil servants on the Division for Transport (DfT) directing each side of practice operations, a brand new “guiding thoughts” often called Nice British Railways will run the present.
“It isn’t the position of ministers to pore over operational choices,” he says.
Crucially, Mr Harper needs to rationalise ticket – untangling the anomalies that successive governments have allowed to construct up with no fewer than 55 million completely different fares on supply.
So, what is going to you discover? The briefing offered to The DailyTelegraph on the weekend had heralded the abolition of return tickets – with a long-overdue transfer to single-leg pricing.
Since rail privatisation within the Nineteen Nineties, numerous anomalies have been “baked in” to the fares system, in a botched try to guard passengers towards sharp value rises. The absurdity that many return tickets value lower than 1 per cent greater than singles is overdue to be torn up. The one approach to do that is nearly to halve many current single fares.
It seemed as if the measure can be launched nationwide. Now it seems that solely LNER, the government-run operation on the East Coast most important line, will convey within the change over the following few months. At current there’s a trial providing precisely this notion, however solely from Edinburgh, Newcastle and Leeds to London.
That transfer has itself launched but extra anomalies (anybody from Durham to York heading one-way to the capital can purchase a ticket from Newcastle to save lots of). The broader experiment will have an effect on shorter journeys akin to London-Stevenage and Durham-Newcastle, with impacts on different operators working on the identical routes.
Allow us to hope that the unintended penalties hasten the common transfer in direction of single leg pricing. However there are lots of extra flaws, which has led to the observe of “cut up ticketing”: legally exploiting anomalies within the fares system to chop the price of rail journey. The “Didcot Dodge” will virtually at all times save a passenger between London and Bristol a small fortune, by shopping for one to the Oxfordshire city after which a second to their last vacation spot.
Nonetheless enticing the fare, although, if the service is hopelessly unreliable passengers will proceed to maneuver away.
The transport secretary emphasises that the present disputes with the RMT union and the practice drivers’ union, Aslef, can be settled solely when reforms – akin to making Sunday a part of the working week all over the place – are accepted. That implies extra disruption over the following few months.
However Mr Harper acknowledges: “Left untreated, we are going to drive passengers away with poor efficiency, which results in fewer providers, which can drive extra passengers away and so forth.”
Will it work? Nigel Harris, the managing editor of Rail journal, believes it could actually. He welcomes “the concept of the DfT backing off from micro-management”.
Mr Harris says: “It’s not their experience, they’re threat averse. The railway has solely ever labored wherever close to correctly when there was a physique of experience working it.”
I shall be watching – and, if rail efficiency doesn’t enhance, ready.
