9 minute read
The Cheek of it
The Cheek of it Chris Cheek
Jubilee Year
The start of a new year inevitably triggers thoughts of what significant anniversaries will fall during the next twelve months – a tendency perhaps highlighted this year because of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the nostalgia-fest that will no doubt provoke through the spring and summer
In the transport world, this year sees a number of anniversaries, some less happy than others. In the autumn, for instance, it will be seventy years since the Harrow & Wealdstone rail crash. That event, which saw three trains collide in a busy station, on 6 October 1952, cost the lives of 112 passengers and still stands as Britain’s worst ever peacetime rail disaster.
During the summer, it will be fifty years since the passage of the 1962 Transport Act, which abolished the British Transport Commission and created a number of separate organisations in its place – including the London Transport Board, the British Transport Docks Board, British Waterways Board, the Transport Holding Company and, of course, the British Railways Board (BRB) which, when it took office on 1 January 1963 would be headed by a dynamic modern manager recruited from the private sector, Dr Richard Beeching.
It is a measure of the speed of change in world of nationalised industries that, of those organisations established by the 1962 law, BRB was almost the longest survivor. The London Transport Board and the Transport Holding Company had disappeared again within ten years, whilst the docks privatised as Associated British Ports in 1983. The British Waterways Board remained in being until 2012, though by then it had morphed from a trading organisation into a guardian of canal heritage. There was little surprise when it was turned into a charity, the Canal & River Trust (though the Scottish canals remained in state control).
This year, it will also be 25 years since the rail privatisation process was completed, with the completion of the franchising process by 31 March 1997, just in time to ensure that the incoming Labour government did not have the chance to keep one or more train operating company in the public sector. In the event, six new private sector operators commenced operation four weeks ahead of the deadline and BRB’s role in train operations came
This time last year the our editor, Sam Sherwood-Hale, asked Chris this question:
Do you believe we are going to return to a single, vertically integrated, publicly owned railway?
I wouldn’t go that far, but a reform to the franchising process. They haven’t published the Williams Review, it has been imminent for two years now, if Williams recommends the recreation of the SRA and contracting out operations to the private sector still, then it is not going to be a single integrated railway as we had prior to 1993, it will be a series of operating contracts, with the government taking the financial risk. But that is a modified form of franchising where the risks lie with the government and not the operators. The Treasury is not happy about that and frankly, I don’t blame them. This is the difficulty with any essential service, you can contract it out to a certain extent but ultimately there is an overriding necessity to keep providing the service so if the operator does fall into difficulty somebody has to step in and do it. This was recognised in The Railways Act in 1993, the detailed procedures for step-in in the event of insolvency were laid out in the legislation right from day one, and arguably have operated quite well. All of the transitions from private sector to public ownership have happened relatively smoothly. One of the highlights of my consultancy career was helping two light rail bids in Nottingham and Croydon, and my favourite memory in each case was the party to greet the first tram. For a consultant to see the physical representation of what you’ve been working on for months is a big moment. The lesson from Croydon was that you can’t have the private sector taking the revenue risk if the public sector is setting the fares. In Croydon as soon as it opened London Transport (as it was then) decided to have a premium between bus and tram which blew the revenue forecasts out of the window and caused all sorts of financial problems for the operator, which ended with TfL buying the contract out. So there are all these complexities and incompatibilities, so if you want the private sector involved then you’ve got to recognise that somewhere along the line the private sector needs to cover its costs and that requires flexibility.
to an end. You may remember that the Labour Party won its 1997 landslide on a promise to have a ‘publicly owned, publicly accountable railway’: the new policies implemented by John Prescott and Gavin Strang may have achieved many things, but that was not one of them – it looks as if it’s going to be a Tory government that does that particular deed.
However, lest we think that nothing in the railways has changed since, we should remember that we’ve seen several organisations come and go, including the Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF) and the Strategic Rail Authority, whilst the Department for Transport has since 2005 taken a steadily stronger and stronger grip on the railways – so that government probably has more control over day to day management than it ever did between 1948 and 1997 (witness the recent discussion on the number of on-train announcements, which apparently is in the direct gift of the Secretary of State).
On the private sector side, names have come and gone too – early operators such as Prism Rail, M40 Trains, MTL Trust Holdings, GB Railways and Connex were all gone within five or six years whilst others such as Sea Containers and National Express lasted a little longer but then disappeared from the scene. Meanwhile brands which had become well-established and seemed set to become a permanent part of the British railway scene, such as Stagecoach and Virgin, have pulled out – increasingly disillusioned, one suspects, by DfT micro-management and inflexibility. Remarkably, only two big names have now got continuous records of involvement in train operation from 1997 to date – Govia, the partnership between GoAhead Group and French operator Keolis, and FirstGroup. Even Govia’s continued participation has been thrown into doubt by the debacle at Southeastern last autumn.
Over the years, new entrants have replaced or acquired businesses, whilst other companies have come in as joint venture partners. Arriva was an early recruit: having missed out on the first round of franchises, they acquired MTL from its management and employees in 2000. Dutch state railway subsidiary Abellio came next, initially in joint venture with Serco at Merseyrail (2003) and at Northern Rail (2004). Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, Italy’s Trenitalia and Japan’s Mitsui Corporation have all become players in the last decade or so.
Thus, any idea that the new ‘ShappsWilliams’ plan will mark a step change from a ‘failed’ privatisation model established under John Major in 1993 is a complete fiction – as is the idea that BR’s organisation was static under state ownership from 1948 onwards. The way we organise and manage our railways has been a continuous and evolving process going back to the start of the industry almost 200 years ago. As technology develops and society changes, that has been, and remains, inevitable.
So, how will our successors look back on 2022 and what events will they be commemorating in 25 or 50 years time? It already seems certain that the year will see the opening of the new Elizabeth Line in London, as test running is now well under way and only one station remains to be handed over to TfL. Already, it is good to see that the press is returning to adulatory mode as opening nears, praising the spacious station design and architecture rather than harping on about cost overruns. There may, too, be some milestones to celebrate on the other major rail construction project currently in progress, High Speed 2, as well as various rolling stock deliveries to be completed. The year is likely to be remembered, too, for another piece of railway legislation, in the form of an Act to enable the establishment of the new ‘Great British Railways’ organisation, scheduled to commence operations early in 2023.
However, the big thing that everybody will be watching for in 2022 is Covid recovery. As I write, it is the week in which the government’s plan ‘B’ restrictions are being lifted. This has involved the lifting of the ‘work from home where possible’ advice reintroduced at the beginning of December last year. Prior to the spread of the Omicron variant, DfT statistics showed rail demand recovering to around 70 per cent of pre-Covid levels, having crept up from the mid-50s at the beginning of the autumn. Numbers fell back to as low as 40 per cent in the first week of the New Year, before recovering to the mid-fifties again in the second and third weeks of January. The Tube has remained about ten per cent below National Rail levels. Everybody will be watching keenly for what happens next.
The big crunch for public transport operators will come in April, as the Treasury continues to signal that it is not happy to keep paying for running existing levels of bus and rail services when the demand is not there. We can expect some tense discussions between government and the transport operators and authorities between now and when the current deals expire. Not for the first time (nor for the last), the government is going to be facing a conflict between its short-term need to save cash and its longer term objective of achieving modal shift from car to public transport.
Meanwhile, the rail unions are, as usual, breathing fire and threatening strikes over the prospect of job losses or pension reforms. Let’s hope, then, that another anniversary that falls this year is not repeated: in 1982, 40 years ago, a national strike by members of ASLEF decimated rail patronage, and British Rail carried just 630 million passengers during the year; it was a twelve per cent drop and the lowest number since 1881 (before Covid decimated the market in 2020).
Here’s hoping that we have a happy and peaceful Jubilee year, that will be remembered as the year when rail patronage recovered. Just don’t hold your breath.
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