The government has placed great emphasis on ‘sorting out the railways’ as a way of showing things can change and the focus has been on ‘bringing track and train together’ through taking the franchises back in house. So far so good, but as I have pointed out in this column since the election, that is the start of a process rather than the end. We are supposed to get excited by the creation of Great British Railways, but what will it deliver. A new name and an old logo is what we have got so far.
This seems to be well understood by Louise Haigh, the transport secretary who, in one of her rare public outings spoke at the launch of the Derby Rail Campus to stress that we are entering a new era for the railways. The campus concept is a clever initiative by the local council to exploit the previous government’s decision to site the headquarters of Great British Railways in the town. Certainly it will do a lot of good for the region but the public needs to be won over more widely to the change in the structure of the industry.
Haigh’s speech was pretty routine. While clearly endorsing supporting the previous government’s idea to site the HQ of GBR in Derby, she gave no new details of how the system will work. I asked her afterwards about the role Network Rail would have in the new structure and dodged the question by saying it would no longer exist. She did reiterate the importance of bringing track and train together and stressed how she was going to be the passenger in chief, rather than the fat controller. However, she mentioned fares reform only as an after thought in a list of things that needed changing..
That is a shame because it should be the centrepiece of the railway revolution. After all, what do people care about – getting there safely, quickly and cheaply. But there is clearly no plan. Everyone agrees that the system is too complicated, that it is incomprehensible, that the peak fare prices are ludicrously high and overall, that it is a great deterrent to potential users. There is, too, a debate in the industry over between simplification and value for money. In particular, supporters of retaining key elements of the present system argue that pricing in relation to demand – in other words cheaper deals for little used services and premium rates for peak trains – is an essential part of any modern pricing structure.
So here’s a plan, which I have briefly mentioned before in this column but has now been elaborated in a bit more detail. The complexity of the system arises because the original concept of a tariff per mile – which varied between the different Big Four companies that ran the railways before the post war nationalisation – been overlaid by a plethora of different types of tickets introduced over decades such as cheap day returns, advance fares, railcard discounts and the odd £1 extra return fare.
Opponents of this complexity argue that the difficulty for passengers of understanding what they are likely to pay for their journey is a great deterrent to train travel. Indeed, it is difficult not to argue that a return first class fare of £455 between London and Manchester, and £261 in standard is anything but a massive turn off for potential customers. I have just booked a return flight to Japan for £470 which is 4p per mile compared with the fare for that Manchester standard return of 62 per mile. That’s a 15fold difference that cannot be justified.
My view is that the railways would gain a huge amount of passengers if the pricing system was clear and transparent. And those ridiculously high figures were abolished forthwith. The core of my system is simple. There should be a basic fare, based on an off peak single for all journeys. This could then be the basis of advertising campaigns and would become widely known. London to Manchester, for example, would then become routinely available at £76 for most journeys. However, there would be variation according to the time of travel. So a peak train would be publicised as a + 30 per cent or even + 50 per cent service for all passengers. That would guarantee transparency. People would know what they are paying for and crucially all passengers on the train would pay the same amount – none of this ‘the bloke next to me paid half the fare I did’.
On the hand, there would also be cheaper trains at very quiet periods such as very early morning or late evening. Again, these would be clearly billed as, say, a half fare train (- 50 per cent) or a 30 per cent cheaper train. The key is to make the system both simpler and consistent.
At a stroke, this would do away with cheap advance tickets, split tickets and whole plethora of fares. Moreover, I would suggest that all the railcards are integrated into one, which apparently could have happened some time ago except that one or two train operators were reluctant. But what is the point of having all these different cards which, by and large, offer the same discounts?
The system would be both transparent and flexible. The pricing level of for a train or group of trains could be changed. A big advertising campaign could be made with cheap tickets at its heart to promote a particular line with a ‘all trains at 50 per cent discount in March’ or whatever. The pricing, therefore, could remain dynamic but crucially transparent, too.
The concern of politicians and many railway managers is that there will be losers. Of course there will be, as with any change to the system. But there will also be gainers, and most crucially, the simplicity will attract people to use rail. It will take a brave politician to implement such a radical scheme, but it would show that all the upheaval resulting from the creation of Great British Railways would have been worthwhile. The public needs to be won over to the idea that this government is capable of transforming public services. A brave ticketing reform like this one would show it is.
irFe & Steam confession
A new edition of one of my early books, Fire and Steam is being published on November 7th. It is being timed to mark the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington, which is the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives. It’s great to be able to celebrate the event and add to the interest around this commemoration.
However, I have a confession. My view is that the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway five years later was of far greater significance than the little ol’ Stockton & Darlington. A moment’s thought backs my view. The Liverpool & Manchester linked two great cities (though at the time they were mere towns) with a double tracked line on which trains were all hauled by steam engines (including static ones at the Liverpool end). Freight and passengers were carried in both directions and the line soon spawned various branches, becoming the core of a wider network.
The Stockton & Darlington, on the other hand was, in many respects the last of the waggonways built in the North East since the 17th century to take coal and other minerals to the nearest available water. It linked two modest sized towns with a single track with few meeting points and, for the most part, used horses to haul the trains. It was open to all comers, a structure that thankfully was not adopted by other railways as it inevitably led to disputes and delays.
Therefore, while I am happy to join the party, but while there is no doubt that the opening of the line was a significant event, the birth of the railways was in 1830, not 1825. However, it means we can have two parties over the next five years and therefore I am happy to join in. Meanwhile, if you want a signed copy of my book, do email me!