Some context. At the end of the 1990s, Britain’s previously state-owned railway network was splintered into a thousand parts, with many different companies owning the trains, operating them, owning, and maintaining the tracks. And it’s all gone pear-shaped.
French-owned Connex, one of the least-loved train operating companies, has been stripped of it’s franchise. They’d already lost one franchise, South-Central, and now their South-East operation, including many of London’s busiest commuter lines, has gone the same way. Cynics will suggest that Connex were no worse than a lot of other operators, but they had the misfortune to serve an area heavily populated by powerful and influential people, who are better at complaining and live much closer to the political centres of power than the users of someone like Arriva Trains Northern.
Another stunning example of the triumph of privofragmentisation, in which we end up paying more and more (in both taxes and fares) for a service that’s getting worse and worse.
Will Hutton lays into the whole broken system of fragmentation and short-term franchises.
The truth is that if we want a great rail system, we have to have great organisations running it, organisations that are passionate about delivering a great service to their customers and passionate about being railwaymen and women. In the entire debate about the rights and wrongs of rail privatisation, this obvious point is all too rarely made.
The Conservative government under John Major created the current monstrosity because it genuinely believed that just the magic wand of being private and pursuing the profit motive would build dynamic rail organisations. New Labour has been paralysed in devising an alternative system because it genuflects to the same totemic set of beliefs.
If either government – and senior officials – had any understanding of business, they would know that successful businesses are, above all, successful organisations made dynamic by an over-riding sense of purpose at their core. The question that should be asked is whether the current structure of the rail system fosters the growth of great rail companies with such a passionate commitment and sense of purpose. The answer is an emphatic ‘No’.
You cannot build a great rail company if you know that your licence to operate is temporary and if one of the key aspects of your success – the infrastructure of railways, stations and signalling – is outside your control. You are condemned to be a franchisee with a franchisee culture.
From the opposite end of the political spectrum, on Patrick Crozier has this to say:
All this is yet one more block section on the branch line to railway Gotterdamerung. At some point, someone is going to say “enough is enough”. And then what? Railway closures, higher fares, an end to upgrades or maybe a quiet acceptance of a worse service at a greater cost? Or will the real culprit ie fragmentation ie the wheel/rail split be identified? And if it is will anyone have the gumption to stand up to the EU and demand its removal?
Meanwhile, Notwork Rail goes from worse to worse. BBC News has this classic quote:
“The administrators are accountants, they didn’t know very much about running the railway.”
If only the tabloid press had found out about John Major and Edwina Currie in the mid-90s.
But… It’s now six years since that hopeless adminstration was flushed down the toilet of history by the Great British Public. Tony Blair’s New Labour have had six years to sort out the mess, and so far have failed to bite the bullet and reform a fundementally broken structure. Not that we should really have expected anything different 
Update: Brian Micklethwait has some ideas.
