Treating trains like planes would revolutionise our railways

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Written by John Penrose, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Weston-super-mare, for Politics Home

Railway licensing isn’t a bold, radical or exciting alternative, but a rebadged version of franchising, or nationalization-lite, but with the same faults.

One of the early casualties of coronavirus was railway franchising. It had been in intensive care for months already, poor thing, as timetable meltdowns and franchise collapses weakened its immune system. The pandemic sent passenger numbers and ticket revenues tumbling and, soon after the lockdown began, it breathed its last. The Government had to step in, and now train firms are being paid a management fee to run the same services as before, with taxpayers footing the bill for mounting losses. 

Fact check please.  I thought they were running a very much reduced service everywhere - or is Weston-super-mare a special case?

If licensing isn’t the future, what is? The answer is to give passengers a choice of different train firms to take them wherever they want to go, rather than just one. If you or I prefer one company’s carriages over another, or a timetable melts down, or a train breaks down, or there’s a strike, we shouldn’t have to take what we’re given. We should be able to switch to another firm’s service and carry on regardless.

It’s an idea we already take for granted whenever we travel by air. If you want to go from London to Paris there are dozens of different airlines you can choose, but only one train firm. Giving train passengers the same choices as frequent flyers puts them in charge, and makes services far less brittle because no single company can dictate the entire timetable. And that means fares rise more slowly, with fewer delays and less overcrowding too.

Treating trains like planes would revolutionize our railways. Fortunately, Keith Williams used to work in air travel, before he was drafted in to care for our dying rail franchises. Let’s see whether his training makes him bold and radical, or whether his nerve will fail.

Fact check please.  At a push you may find between five and ten flight operators from London to Paris, but I am surprised at "dozens" which suggests at least 24 ....

[rogerw]

Trains are not like planes. You cannot, unless you are lucky and prepared to pay a fortune, just roll up to an airport and catch the next plane.  trains currently offer flexibility on travel (except on advance fares). Planes do not

[RichardB]

I'm surprised he has written a piece about the railways.  He doesn't sound like he travels on trains much if ever and he certainly hasn't given much thought to the practicalities of what he suggests.

You could introduce more open access but one example of the issues it would throw up is that it would actually reduce flexibility for passengers as service frequencies on pretty much any of the routes anyone would want to try to run a competing service would have to be reduced for the main operator to create open access paths.   

[Lee]

Why bang a new drum when you can just dust off the old one, eh?...

From Somerset Live:

Weston-super-Mare MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) John Penrose is calling for more competition in local rail services, putting an end to “monopolies” on the railways.

The conservative MP says having more operators on the Great Western mainline and beyond will provide travellers with cheaper fares and drive up standards.

“I’d like to see more choice for local rail users in Bristol, Weston, Swindon and everywhere else so that if they don’t like the service that is being provided by First [owner of Great Western Railways], then they don’t have to wait 10 years until the franchise ends – they can wait 10 minutes until a different train company’s service comes past and they can get on that instead,” Mr Penrose told Bristol Live.

“It may be cheaper or more comfortable – all the variation you expect when you buy a car or when you choose a toothpaste, or whatever it may be. I’d love to see that.”

Great Western Railway (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)), owned by First Group, currently has the contract to run inter-city trains between Weston-super-Mare, Bristol and London Paddington, having won the franchise for 2015-2020.

But Mr Penrose said the franchise system operated by the Department for Transport (DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)) amounted to “selling monopolies” for a set time period.

He added that passengers would be better served if multiple companies could compete on the same stretch of track because it would force them to become “innovative” in an effort to please passengers.

Mr Penrose said he wanted to see “two or three bidders” on the Great Western mainline “running different trains with different time slots over the course of the next 10 years”.

He said: “It means [train companies] don’t have one spasm of competitive activity every 10 years [to win the franchise] and then they relax.

“You have to carry on trying really hard and peddling hard to keep you and me as the travelling public happy every single day for the next 10 years.”

What has GWR said?

A spokesman for GWR said it was for the DfT to decide how rail franchising was carried out in future.

He added that there was already “competition on many parts of our network” with the line through Weston served by GWR and Cross Country, while South Western Railways also serves Bristol and the West of England region.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for DfT said the current franchise model had brought investment to the Great Western mainline.

She said: “Billions of pounds are being invested in projects to transform the Great Western network and give passengers new services and new, more comfortable trains.”

Here's how the public has responded

The idea, which Mr Penrose shared on social media, has received a mixed reaction from his followers.

Some have praised him for his innovative thinking, believing competition is the way forward.

Mike Dolley commented: "This is a good idea and needs pursuing. The franchise holders are arrogant and dismissive, because they know they can get away with behaving that way in a near monopoly situation."

Robert Sugar added: "Monopoly doesn't leave room for competition. If passengers cannot make a choice then nothing motivates train service operators to improve. We just get what we get."

Meanwhile, others suggested it might be easier said than done.

Mike Harding wrote: "I love the idea but unless trains are very frequent we are still going to be tied to that which gets us into work at the correct time."

Others argued competition for low ticket prices wouldn't necessarily result in an improvement in services.

[Bmblbzzz]

Airlines don't work in the way he describes either. If I have a ticket from London to Paris with BA^» (British Airways - about) but their pilots are on strike, I can't just board an Air France flight unless I buy a new ticket.

[eightonedee]

Forgive me while I try to bite my tongue....

Don't these {expletive deleted} {insulting plural noun deleted} realise that the railway service providers have all the competition they need - airlines, long distance bus/coach operators, those who sell/hire private motor cars, hitch-hiking.

You could make equally fatuous comments such as "its about time the airline industry took a leaf out of the rail industry's book, and had a network of suburban and rural airports with branch routes connecting to main hub airports, the ability to turn up just a minute or two before departure and catch a plane, and built airports in convenient city centre locations so you can walk out into the main town and city centre shopping centres and business districts............"

Next week - how Britain's canal system can be run so as to provide competition for motorways for long distance commuters and Amazon deliveries!

[Electric train]

Written by John Penrose, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Weston-super-mare, for Politics Home

Railway licensing isn’t a bold, radical or exciting alternative, but a rebadged version of franchising, or nationalization-lite, but with the same faults.

One of the early casualties of coronavirus was railway franchising. It had been in intensive care for months already, poor thing, as timetable meltdowns and franchise collapses weakened its immune system. The pandemic sent passenger numbers and ticket revenues tumbling and, soon after the lockdown began, it breathed its last. The Government had to step in, and now train firms are being paid a management fee to run the same services as before, with taxpayers footing the bill for mounting losses. 

Fact check please.  I thought they were running a very much reduced service everywhere - or is Weston-super-mare a special case?

If licensing isn’t the future, what is? The answer is to give passengers a choice of different train firms to take them wherever they want to go, rather than just one. If you or I prefer one company’s carriages over another, or a timetable melts down, or a train breaks down, or there’s a strike, we shouldn’t have to take what we’re given. We should be able to switch to another firm’s service and carry on regardless.

It’s an idea we already take for granted whenever we travel by air. If you want to go from London to Paris there are dozens of different airlines you can choose, but only one train firm. Giving train passengers the same choices as frequent flyers puts them in charge, and makes services far less brittle because no single company can dictate the entire timetable. And that means fares rise more slowly, with fewer delays and less overcrowding too.

Treating trains like planes would revolutionize our railways. Fortunately, Keith Williams used to work in air travel, before he was drafted in to care for our dying rail franchises. Let’s see whether his training makes him bold and radical, or whether his nerve will fail.

Fact check please.  At a push you may find between five and ten flight operators from London to Paris, but I am surprised at "dozens" which suggests at least 24 ....

Quite frankly my personal view on this ……………. yet another politician pontification on a subject he knows very little about, and is just pandering to his disciples.

It would better if he was advocate better integration of local transport

[Andy]

What a scarily ignorant and illogical piece of writing....

[TonyK]

What a scarily ignorant and illogical piece of writing....

Now there's no call for that! Be fair to the poor man, it's not easy up there at the blunt end. It's bad enough having to turn up at Parliament when it's open, but this is the MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for a small provincial town. He actually has to visit it from time to time, and put up with a steady stream of constituents complaining that they have been found fit for work just because there's nothing wrong with them, and the newsagent has sold out of Suns before they wake up and the council won't do anything about it. He's probably had a bad experience on one of these sojourns, maybe with a late train keeping him in the area and away from the comfort of the bubble for longer than anyone should reasonably be expected to have to endure.

Has anyone mentioned to him how few trains run between his constituency and anywhere else? Maybe he could double the service to Bristol. A few extra bits of track here and there is all it needs, surely?

[Celestial]

A few extra bits of track here and there is all it needs, surely?

Maybe he could persuade a private company to reinstate the second track between Worle and Weston to facilitate the extra services.  GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) tracks on the existing track and Penrose Inter-City Services Rail on the new track. Rename Standard as Cattle Class and First as Rees-Mogg class.

[grahame]

Has anyone mentioned to him how few trains run between his constituency and anywhere else? Maybe he could double the service to Bristol. A few extra bits of track here and there is all it needs, surely?

I understand there's a company just across in the next county - at Beer in Devon - who manufacture track. There's even a stockist in Portishead, if not in Weston ...

[Reading General]

Ahh of course, the retail approach. The individual wants...…... no, demands choice. Everybody only wants to use trains to go long distance is also the assumption here. The sooner we leave the US business school, retail thinking transport management behind the better. I'm not a customer on a bus or train, I'm a passenger and I don't mind being one. I will never get why the U.K believe so strongly in consumer choice and try to apply these rules to everything.

[ellendune]

The sooner we leave the US business school, retail thinking transport management behind the better.

After all its working so well in retail at the moment you've only got to look at the high streets in our town centres to see how they were booming before Covid-19.

[eXPassenger]

Unfortunately he is my MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) and lives fairly close to us. 

[johnneyw]

Unfortunately he is my MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) and lives fairly close to us. 

Hey, he might enjoy joining this forum with his new found interest!