Sometimes, Nationalisation is the best solution.
I don’t see travelling in modern Britain as being ‘romantic’ in any way. We’ll never see a British road-movie hitting the box office anytime soon. If such a film were to be released, I dread to think what the plot would involve. The very idea of somebody in a Volvo stopping at a run-down service station before topping up with a half-edible ceasar salad makes me want to reach for my DVD of The Motorcycle Diaries.
Top Gear is the only valuable British commodity when it comes to a colourful view of travel. The show, however, only covers travelling by car; while many of us dream about owning a McLaren one day, the rest of the population just want a reliable vehicle which gets them from A to B on time. The same can be applied to trains, we do not want delays
When I travel from London to Leeds, or vice versa, I want a few guarantees. The train must reach its destination on time, I must have a seat, and I don’t want to pay too much for my ticket. That is all I demand, and East Coast usually delivers all three of these wants every time I travel. East Coast is owned by a state firm called Directly Operated Railways, and has been since the company fell into state hands in 2009 when National Rail could no longer afford to run the line. The results of this have been fantastic.
East Coast has made a profit of £640 million in the last four years, much of which it has reinvested. Journey times have been cut, there are far more services, and punctuality has improved greatly. Its revenues have grown, and so have its passenger numbers. With results like these, it’s understandable why a majority of people oppose the re-privatisation of the railways. A poll carried out on behalf of the We Own It group showed that 58% of people surveyed were against the government’s proposal to hand the rail franchise back into private hands.
I would define myself as a free-market person, but on the issue of railways, I am on the side of the TUC and the RMT. Private firms have really been detrimental to the country’s railways. It has cost the taxpayer more money to allow private companies to run the trains. The state company who runs East Coast actually receives fewer subsidies than any other rail operator in Britain. Indeed, private firms receive more money in government handouts today than British Rail did in the 1990s before its privatisation. It doesn’t require a mathematical genius to work out that the concept of a privatised railway is an economic fallacy.
Waste is a major problem where the railways are concern. This waste not only comes from shareholder payouts, but extra bureaucracy caused by private operators, and Network Rail managing the track and stations. If you were to combine Network Rail and Directly Operated Railways, much more money could be saved. Transport for Quality of Life, a think tank, estimates that if the railways did fall back into public ownership, enough waste could be cut that fare prices could fall by 20%. If not, overall industry costs will remain higher than wholly publicly owned and integrated railways in mainland Europe.
The overall cost of re-nationalising the railways would be quite low. Passenger services are franchised for limited periods to a private firm by the government. When the period finishes, the trains can fall back into state hands.
So the next time I board a train from Leeds to London, I may feel like my journey is anathema to watching a great road movie, but the journey itself will be reliable, fast and punctual. A nationalised railway service is a safer bet, every time. Che would probably agree.
Henry Wise