Do They Ever Use Their Transport?

Sometimes in this country and not only in Britain, but anywhere else in the world where governments desire to promote public transportation; I think that it is worth asking if bureaucrats in the Department for Transportation are ever using “their” advocated types of transport instead of their own private cars? Considering the not so infrequent scenes of overcrowded trains with standing space only in the South East, but also on an increasing scale elsewhere in places like the West Midlands, the North West and now the Bristol-Bath region.

If passengers numbers are exceeded to the point of people not showing valid tickets to conductors as a mean of protestation then I think that comparing them with sardines in their box is fairly correct. Some readers might probably comment that “it’s the Tories who privatised the railways” and Major government certainly bears a responsibility by fractionating the systems into 27 different operators, three companies owning and leasing the rolling stock to the same trains operators and dozens of contractors for renewals and maintenance work. The creation of Network Rail was a very wise move in that respect but apart from this, the railway of today is already vastly different from the one of ten years ago when the last BR service ran in Scotland. Changes were made by previous Labour governments and the “benefits” of some of them are currently being reaped.

In 1997 every train operating company had the power to set up new services without much interference from the DfT and the now defunct Strategic Rail Authority. South West Trains did very well in that respect increasing in some cases the number of services from two trains per hour to five, much the same can be said for Virgin Trains and their thirty minutes clockface timetable to Manchester. Timetables are precisely a cause of overcrowding in the Bristol-Bath area, but because of micromanagement from the DfT moving to two trains per hour instead of one train her hour is now impossible. When specialists says that the railway of today is more state controlled than during the days of BR and in my opinion the fuss around concerning the timetables here where both First Great Western and the DfT points the responsability towards each others illustrate this statement very well. When a company such like First is entrusted to run services in a particular area, it is natural to state some minimum requirements but preventing them from trying something or creating new services for the benefit of everybody is not. If I would ask a painter to paint the wall of my house in say green, I would just except him to do the work stated on the contract but it would never came to my mind to ask him to use a particular brand of paint or something like this and yet with Train Operators, the DfT is exactly doing this!

Micromanagement from the civil servants of the DfT is however only a part of the problem. A second and yet very important part of the problem is the total lack of long term vision for the rail industry in this country. Merging the SRA with parts of Network Rail, parts of Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate and parts of the DfT was a huge mistake. The SRA had the power to organise talks with the differents voices of the industry and to use its own specialists to state clear goals. A juggernaut like the DfT does not have the power to do so and never will. “The reinstatement of a SRA-like institution would be a welcomed move in an industry which is discouraging new entrants to come into the field” (as stated by the ex-Chairman of GNER).

The Franchising system is not bad in itself but, the way franchises are made is far from being very efficient. Most of them last for ten years at best and in some cases premiums payments to the treasury are included, and these two facts mixed together are a recipe for disaster. When you rent a house for six months, investing in it with the consent of the owner will never come trough your mind but, if you had to live there for ten years, after some time you would certainly wish to change some things. The same principle applies to franchises and operating companies. No one will take the risk of investing its own money in, for example tracklaying with the cooperation of Network Rail or in new rolling stock, just to see another company taking over the franchise after a few years. Extending the duration of the said franchises from ten to twenty years would help in that matter as shown by the example of Chiltern Railways. Premium payments to the government are meant to reflect the “performance” of the companies but, a simple rule of the thumb would state that such payments (1,3 billions pounds for up to 2016 in the case of First Great Western), must be invested back into the railways. In the case of a longer franchise lasting for twenty years, potential profits would be invested back by the company into improvements as every well managed corporation is doing, creating a virtuous circle of, investments, improvements and growth.

By creating a system full of loopholes, the DfT and its team of civil servants who surely for some never set foot on a train in their daily lives, is wrecking Britain’s Railways instead of strengthening them. Freedom of initiative for the operating companies would lead to powerful results in terms of improvement, the same would be true by entrusting them with more powers thanks to longer lasting franchises. Prior to nationalization, the private Southern Railways, covering lines which are now used everyday by millions of commuters made huge improvements to its network: the first of them being electrification of swathes of suburban lines, installation of colour light signals on the most used parts of the network (the transition between old and new taking in some cases hours, note that today Network Rail needs days to resignal a line with sometimes total closure). Surely if this was possible in the past something similar is again possible, even if its true to say that the structure would be different.

On a local level, and before any structural changes are made, it would be a good thing to create a Passenger Transport Executive encompassing the borders of the previous county of Avon. Specifications for services in the area would be made, hopefully if the DfT allows them,timetable changes would follows. Considering the long term prospect of growth in the area, along with the fact that improvements in rail services always brings more passengers. Perhaps launching studies about an electric Avonrail system, similar to the Mersey one serving, Bristol, Bath, Frome, Trowbridge, Westbury; bringing back Raddstock and Midsomer Norton on the rail map of UK, with lines then possibly serving Bristol city centre via a tunnelled section would be a wise move to do as long term planning.

Despite a will to improve public transports on the part of Labour, the facts remains that bureaucracy, micromanagement and inefficiency will never help in that respect. The three are and were always linked to Labour, thus a revolution in the transport field will probably never happen under a Labour government. Being pragmatic is the only thing that counts here and hopefully if Chris Grayling is to become the head of the DfT, he will show some pragmatism.