A Vision for Scotland’s Railways
28th October 2021 | Evidence
In advance of COP26 – the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland’s Rail Unions came together to release their new report A Vision for Scotland’s Railways.
The report highlights the vital role that rail plays in addressing the climate emergency, and lays out a long-term vision for a “world-class rail service that is fully staffed, with affordable fares, stations that are accessible and trains that are clean, green and attractive.” Well worth a read!
GB Rail Report
17th March 2020 | Evidence
The GB Rail Report – researched and written by our friends at Transport for Quality of Life and published as a Labour opposition whitepaper on 17 March 2020 – offers the most detailed plan we have seen so far for re-unifying our railways under public ownership.
The report defines a new governance structure for our national rail network, which is able to achieve both a central ‘guiding mind’ and long-term strategy (40 years), as well as devolved planning, delivery and control for all devolved regions and nations of Great Britain.
It manages to overcome many of the flaws of the old British Rail – its over-centralisation and lack of passenger representation at a strategic level (not to mention its chronic underfunding!) – and maps out how we can transition from our current privatised structure to a new wholly publicly-owned railway, which can be run in the interests of the British people in the most cost effective way. Well worth a read!
Why we need publicly-owned railways to address the climate emergency
3rd December 2019 | Evidence
Below is an extract from A Radical Transport Response to the Climate Emergency – the excellent new report by our friends at Transport for Quality of Life, which explains why taking our railways back into public ownership is an urgent climate issue.
Extract
It is worth explaining why we believe that changing the structure of the railway so that it is a single entity operating under public control is necessary in the context of a climate emergency, as the very live debate about the structure of the railways has not been framed in the context of action on climate change. There are four reasons why we believe that the current poor governance of the railway is a climate issue.
First, under the present system, Network Rail receives bids for train paths from train operators and has to try its best to fit them together. This is rather like trying to form a coherent picture from random pieces of different jigsaw puzzles. Network Rail has no power to design the most operationally-efficient timetable, or to create the most attractive offer to travellers. Were it to try to do this, it might receive legal challenges about access rights from the train operating companies or the Office of Rail and Road. Exacerbating this, the specification for each franchise is made in isolation and with little or no consultation with Network Rail, precluding a system-wide approach to timetabling. This means that it is next-to-impossible under the current structure of the railways to create a Swiss-style integrated clock-face timetable, which is essential as part of a universal, comprehensive public transport network.
Second, under the current structure of the railways, ticket purchase for anything but a straightforward journey with a single train operating company is excessively complex, and this, together with the high cost of rail travel, deters many people from travelling by train.
Third, fragmentation of the railway between multiple competing train operating companies means that when things go wrong, the passenger is often stuck in the middle: trains are not held to meet delayed services run by other operators (even if the delay is of a few minutes), and a ticket for one operator’s trains may not be accepted by another. Again, this means that people feel that they cannot trust public transport, and so they travel by car.
Finally, there is no objective for the railway to be run in a way that reduces carbon emissions – and nor can there be, because ‘the railway’, as a single entity, does not exist. These problems are structural, and it is only by changing the structure of the railway so that it is a single entity operating under public control, in the public interest, and with an objective to act in such a way as to reduce carbon emissions from transport to the greatest extent possible, that they can be resolved.
Transport for Quality of Life has carried out research in this area and is of the view that public ownership is necessary to achieve this. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have not carried out research in this area so do not have a position on public ownership, but do believe that the structure of the railway needs to change to be managed as a single entity and under public control.
Extract from A Radical Transport Response to the Climate Emergency (p.14) by Lynn Sloman and Lisa Hopkinson, Transport for Quality of Life
People’s Public Transport Policy
5th June 2019 | Evidence
This great new report on the Public Ownership of Public Transport by our friends at We Own It is the first chapter in a six part People’s Public Transport Policy being developed by the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
A Public Future for Scotland’s Railways
28th November 2017 | Evidence
As part of the campaign for the Public Ownership of Scotland’s Railway, this report by our friends at Common Weal & TSSA highlights the failures of ScotRail’s private train operator Abellio and the opportunities for passengers for taking it back into public ownership.
A Better Railway for Britain: A Report by Bring Back British Rail
1st October 2016 | Evidence
Bring Back British Rail’s first report A Better Railway for Britain: Re-unifying our railways under public ownership was launched in the Houses of Parliament in London on 13 October 2016.
Print copies are available to order in advance for just £5 (including free delivery in the UK), with all proceeds supporting campaign materials and activities.
The Four Big Myths of Rail Privatisation
1st June 2015 | Evidence / News
Read this report from our friends at Action for Rail! It’s all the evidence you need that rail privatisation has failed to deliver what they promised it would in the ’90s:
- • reduction in government subsidies (we now subsidise rail by nearly three times more than we did as British Rail)
- • cheaper tickets (rail fares have risen by 24% in real terms since privatisation)
- • innovation and investment (90% of the investment in the railways has come from public money)
Rail Privatisation: A Timeline of Failures
1st April 2015 | Evidence / News
A special edited and updated version of Rail Privatisation: A Timeline of Failures (below) – based on the design of British Rail’s 1979 ‘Go Direct by Inter-City‘ poster – features in A Better Railway for Britain: Bring Back British Rail’s first report, launched in October 2016.
Today marks 21 years since the enactment of the Railways Act (1993), on 1 April 1994, which unleashed rail privatisation on the poor unfortunate public. Since then, Britain’s privatised railways have been beset by a series of failures, scandals and fatal crashes, each at great expense to taxpayers.
19 September 1997 – A collision between two trains at Southall kills seven people and injures 139. A passenger train running at high speed with defective Automatic Warning System equipment, a fundamentally important safety system, passed a signal at ‘danger’ and collided with a freight train crossing its path. Great Western Trains was fined £1.5 million for violations of health and safety law relating to this accident.
1 December 1998 – A report by the National Audit Office into the flotation of the national railway infrastructure company, Railtrack, found that taxpayers lost £1.5 billion because of the government’s decision to ignore the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendation to sell its shares in stages, opting instead to sell them all at once.
5 October 1999 – A near head-on collision between two passenger trains at Ladbroke Grove, outside London Paddington station, kills 31 people and injures more than 52. A signal with a bad safety record was passed at ‘danger’. A poor standard of driver training by Thames Trains was cited as a major contributory factor.
17 October 2000 – A train running at high speed derails at Hatfield when a rail affected by rolling contact fatigue fractures under its wheels. Four passengers were killed and 70 were injured. The crash exposed the major stewardship shortcomings of the privatised Railtrack plc and the failings of the regulatory oversight of the company (principally, failure to ensure that it had a good knowledge of the condition of its assets) which ultimately triggered its partial renationalisation. Following the crash, Railtrack imposed more than 1,200 emergency speed restrictions across its network, since it did not have the knowledge to predict where rolling contact fatigue might hit next.
24 October 2000 – Connex loses its South Central franchise after a decision by the Strategic Rail Authority to re-let the franchise following criticism of Connex’s poor customer service and poor financial management.
7 October 2001 – In the face of severe financial difficulties, Railtrack plc is placed into railway administration by the Labour government’s Transport Secretary, Stephen Byers. This leads to an explosion of costs and a severe drop in performance. Railtrack was subsequently replaced by Network Rail.
10 May 2002 – A train derails at Potters Bar, killing seven people and injuring 76. A poorly maintained set of points was to blame, the maintenance of which was the responsibility of the private sector railway maintenance contractor Jarvis (who had tried to blame the accident on ‘sabotage’). Eight years later, Jarvis and Network Rail (having taken on Railtrack’s liabilities) were both charged under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Network Rail subsequently took track maintenance back in-house.
27 June 2003 – The Connex South Eastern franchise is terminated by the Strategic Rail Authority, citing the company’s poor performance and financial management.
15 December 2006 – GNER is stripped of its East Coast franchise by the Department for Transport, having fallen into financial difficulties and unable to meet the terms of its franchise.
13 November 2009 – National Express gives up the East Coast franchise (which it had taken over from GNER) owing to financial difficulties, having accumulated more than £1 billion of debt. The failure of this franchise deprived the Department for Transport of between £330 million and £380 million of revenue.
15 August 2012 – The Department for Transport announces FirstGroup plc as the winner of the InterCity West Coast franchise, prompting the incumbent franchise holder, Virgin, to seek a judicial review of the franchise decision.
3 October 2012 – The government announces the cancellation of the InterCity West Coast franchise competition after finding significant technical flaws in the bidding process, rescinding its decision to award the franchise to FirstGroup. The Public Accounts Committee found that civil servants had made “fundamental errors” in the way that the risks for each bid had been calculated, leading to the default surety required of bidders being too low. The government reimbursed the four bidders for all costs incurred; this amounted to £39.7 million, with a further £4.9 million paid to FirstGroup as reimbursement of their mobilisation costs. In the ensuing shambles, numerous incumbent franchise holders were directly awarded extensions to their franchises instead of opening them up to tender. So much for competition!
17 December 2014 – A report from the Public Accounts Committee is severely critical of the Department for Transport’s inept handling of the procurement of new trains for the Intercity Express Programme and Thameslink. The DfT had chosen to break away from previous procurement arrangements and carry out the procurement by itself, despite having no previous experience in this area.
3 April 2015 – The private train operator West Coast Railways has its operator’s licence suspended by Network Rail amid concerns over the company’s ability to perform its safety obligations. This action followed an incident on 7 March 2015, when a steam-hauled train operated by West Coast Railways passed a signal at ‘danger’ after the driver had switched off vital train protection systems, narrowly avoiding a collision with a passenger train running at 100 mph.
Is it anyone wonder we’re all shouting Bring Back British Rail?
Spread the word! Link to this post using www.bringbackbritishrail.org/timeline and read more compelling evidence for Public Ownership here: www.bringbackbritishrail.org/evidence
Towards Public Ownership
31st March 2015 | Evidence / News
This TUC Report summarises research by Transport for Quality of Life, to show the high costs of running rail franchise “competitions” – estimated at £45million for every single one!
Given that there are 11 of these unnecessary “competitions” scheduled to take place before the next parliament ends in 2020, the Report shows how much we could save by then if we chose to run these franchises under a single publicly-owned railway company instead. It’s more than £600million!
The Arguments for Public Ownership are Overwhelming
1st January 2015 | Evidence / News
There are so many reasons why privatised rail is failing us and the environment. Check out this brilliant leaflet, supported by Bring Back British Rail, which will be handed out at the nationwide Protests for Public Ownership on Monday 5 January 2015.
Get your Bring Back British Rail Bumper Stickers and Rail Card Wallets! Order by 12noon this Weds 18 December to receive in time for Christmas 🎄 All proceeds help support our volunteer-run campaign. Order at: bringbackbritishrail.org/support ... See MoreSee Less
12 CommentsComment on Facebook
Will the BBBR campaign be wrapped up when GBR is flying solo?
Is the logo supposed to be the wrong way round?
When it's all done and dusted, you might want to apply yourselves to bringing back Royal Mail. Breaking news is that Starmer has okayed the sale of Royal Mail to a Czech billionnaire.
View more comments
🚆Join our countdown to rail re-nationalisation! ⏰Our new Privatisation Departures Board allows you to easily count the days to the demise of your least favourite private train operator...
👉bringbackbritishrail.org/departures
Roll-on our re-unified, publicly-owned #GreatBritishRailways @top fans ... See MoreSee Less
240 CommentsComment on Facebook
It won’t be truly renationalised until we actually own the rolling stock instead of paying rent-seeking corporations for the privilege of using the trains!
If anyone thinks that the fares will come down and the service improve then they must be living in the same cloud cuckoo land as most of the people in the labour cabinet
It’s the rolling stock owners who are the real gravy train grifters. They offer no value to the railways yet receive public money to buy new trains. An absurd set up which needs dismantling.
View more comments
We're delighted to see news today of the first 3 private train operators to be re-nationalised under new legislation 👏
- May 2025 - bye bye South Western Railway
- July 2025 - see ya c2c Rail
- Autumn 2025 - cheerio Greater Anglia
Roll-on our re-unified publicly-owned #GreatBritishRailways 🚆
@top fans We Own It ... See MoreSee Less
First train services to return to public ownership revealed
www.gov.uk
Services across England will return to public control, transforming our railways into a more reliable, affordable and accessible system.27 CommentsComment on Facebook
All the usual know-it-alls whining about this... well done labour for finally tackling these sponging oxygen thief companies who repeatedly break the law without reproach. In two years the RMT has battered one company five times in court and they don't care, don't change, continue to break the law. Finally a bit of accountability has arrived and still these Tory company luvvies whine at their beloved firms getting the sack.
Next up, the rolling stock.Even still, prices can't go down until we have more lines and enough capacity. So let's have HS2 all the way up to Scotland, and HS3, 4 and 5 ready to go.
And what happens to the train leasing companies? Rarely mentioned but take a big slice of the pie
View more comments
Congratulations to Heidi Alexander for Swindon South on becoming Transport Secretary 👏 We look forward to seeing plans for #GreatBritishRailways develop over the next few years 🚆 Britain needs a re-unified national rail network run for people not profit 🧑🤝🧑🚉 @top fans ... See MoreSee Less
19 CommentsComment on Facebook
We need to reverse as many of the Beeching cuts as possible
I'll agree bri g back BR because when it went private nothing changed in the running of the railways just more profit left this country...
Don't hold your breath, Starmer's tory lite party will never deliver this.
View more comments
It's been a huge week for the Bring Back British Rail campaign 🥳 The 'Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill' passed the UK House of Lords on Weds 🚆 When the Bill becomes law later this year, public ownership will be the default for rail services rather than the 'last resort' 👏 @top fans We Own It ... See MoreSee Less
Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill - Parliamentary Bills - UK Parliament
bills.parliament.uk
Current version of Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill with latest news, sponsors, and progress through Houses8 CommentsComment on Facebook
Rebuilding public trust in the railways is going to take a long time. Undoing the utter mess of 30 years of privatisation is going to be a monumental task.
Bring Back British Rail We are sleep-walking into having to pay more for rail travel in Britain because the general public at large, many members of public-transport campaign organisations and many politicians alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'.All that the Department of Transport, Rail Delivery Group, H.M. Government, a devolved administration or any Train Operating Company needs to do is bandy around the world 'simplification' and they can get away with all manner of detrimental implementations, because those who would normally point these things out, and protest against and lobby against them have been seduced by the word 'simplification'.One can expect the general public at large to not appreciate all of the implications of changes to fares-and-ticketing structures because no one person can know everything about everything, but one would hope that public-transport campaign organisations would interrogate the finer details of the exact specifics of the minutiae of proposals, to find the the-Devil-is-in-the-detail implications.Ordinarily, when a Train Operating Company or the authorities proposes something concerning rail travel, public-transport campaign organisations will forensically scour the finer details, and when detrimental the-Devil-is-in-the-detail aspects emerge, they will be like a dog with a bone, and persistently be on the case of the authorities or Train Operating Company until notice is taken, but, alas, this is not happening with the changes in 2023 and 2024.All of the changes this year and last year, very particularly so c2c and LNER, which purport to reduce fares have actually increased travelling costs. I very deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because that is how people should view things.Loss of all iterations of Day fares. Loss of Super Off-Peak. Loss of the ability to avail oneself of to-boundary-zone discounts for the returning-leg part of a round-trip if using a ticket machine. Loss of railcard discounts because the minimum-fare threshold for the railcard's discount to apply is met or exceeded by a Return fare, whereas a Single is below the threshold. Then also the loss of the convenience of Return fares.Take the reforms to and simplification of fares and ticketing on LNER; these reforms and simplifications can lead to a triple-whammy of travelling-cost increases to a journey. A double-whammy is bad enough, but a triple-whammy is shameful, and should be fought against.Whereas I would have previously, if making a round-trip from Station A to Station B and back, purchased a Super Off-Peak Day Return from Boundary Zone [XYZ] to Station B, the simplification which purports to be there to make my travel cheaper means that (if using a ticket machine) I know have to purchase an Off-Peak Single from Boundary Zone [XYZ] to Station B, and I have to buy a an Off-Peak Single from Station B to Station A.The LNER policy which abolished Return fares, and halved the price of Single fares quietly included the abolition of all iterations of Day fares. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return. Fare decreases and travelling-cost decreases are not necessarily the same. Think in terms of travelling costs, not in terms of fares.First Whammy: The travelling cost of my round-trip has gone up because I have been forced to purchase two Singles, rather than a Day Return, which is what I would have previously bought.Second Whammy: The LNER Simpler Fares pilot had abolished Super-Off Peak; the travelling cost of my round-trip has gone up because I have been forced to pay for Off-Peak, rather than the cheaper-option Super Off-Peak, which is what I would have previously used.Third Whammy: Many ticket machines sell from-boundary-zone tickets, but, in the entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland there is not even one ticket machine which sells to-boundary-zone tickets. The workaround for this is that the returning-leg part of a from-boundary-zone Return/Day Return becomes a to-boundary-zone ticket by dint of being the outbound-leg part of the ticket in reverse. Because I have to purchase the returning-leg part of my round-trip as a completely separate standalone Single I am unable to avail myself of the travelcard/season ticket/concessionary-pass to-boundary-zone discount which I qualify for. I qualify for the discount but I have no means of applying it because ticket machines do not sell to-boundary-zone fares. I am forced to purchase a more expensive point-to-point ticket, rather than a cheaper-option to-boundary-zone ticket, which is what I would have previously used.In one round-trip, these reforms and simplifications which purport to be there to make things cheaper have caused three cost increases to my travelling. A double-whammy is bad enough, but a triple-whammy is shameful.It could potentially even be a quadruple-whammy of travelling-cost increases if each Single were below the minimum-fare threshold for my railcard discount, whereas a Return would not have been.Not only have I had all of these travelling-cost increases to my journey, but I have also had the inconvenience of having to make two completely separate transactions when previously I only needed to make one transaction.Travelling-cost increases cleverly disguised as travelling-cost decreases, all under the guise of simplification.Perhaps the fare structure is complicated, but It is within the myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk. If you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth, you bring down the cheaper options which are housed within the behemoth.The fares-and-ticketing structure does not need to be reformed. The fares-and-ticketing structure does not need to be simplified. Fares just need to be reduced in price.With the £2.00 bus fare in England: no existing fares were abolished; no existing fare types were abolished; no existing ticket types were abolished; no new fare types were introduced; no new ticket types were introduced. Everything which already exists was retained, they just substantially reduced the price of what already exists.Do not abolish any existing fares, do not abolish any existing tickets, do not introduce any new fares; retain everything which already exists; as a blanket, across-the-board, universal action just reduce the price of all turn-up-and-go fares by 30.0%, and leave it at that.
Bring Back British Rail (The railways). Nationalisation is not a virtue in and of itself; it is only a good thing if it is done well.As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'.Some people might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure on the railways would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options.Some people might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure on the railways would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER.Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true. (Just take a look at LNER).Reform is not a virtue in and of itself. Reform is a neutral concept—neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform.I am not opposed to the principle of nationalisation of the railways, and I don't think that they should have ever been privatised in the first place, but there is the very real problem that very many people's support for nationalisation (of everything) is from a place of ideological fundamentalism tantamount to being a secular 'religion', so when nationalisation is achieved, the outpouring of 'religous' ecstasy by the 'faithful' could blind them to the actions of the 'clergy'.As the idiom goes: 'The Devil is in the detail'; there is the concern that in their state of ecstasy and elation of it all, some members of the general public, some trade-unionists, some members of public-transport campaign organisations and some Members of Parliament will neglect to subject plans and proposals to forensic scrutiny to find any potential the-Devil-is-in-the-detail negative implications.If you support nationalisation of the railways, campaign for it, and make it happen, but that isn't where your job ends. It is then necessary to ensure that it is implemented well, and that specific proposals, as opposed to general aims, are sound.It's fun to march down the street waving a banner and chanting; it is boring to read a 73-page official document draughted by a civil servant at the Department for Transport, but scrutiny of that document, to check the Devil in the detail, is potentially the difference between nationalisation done well, and nationalisation done badly.
View more comments