Peer review: Richard Bowker
Former chairman, Strategic Rail Authority
Politics and railways… two words that have always appeared bound together. The main parties seem to have divergent views on pretty much everything (though not, it appears, on HS2).
Peculiarly, the main parties also seem to alternate their positions on a periodic basis. In 2004, Labour decided the industry no longer needed a guiding mind, saying it was sufficient (indeed essential) for ministers to have overall control of strategy, notwithstanding that they already had such powers enshrined in Law by way of the Transport Act 2000. Now, it is the Conservatives who believe the current status quo should be maintained and Labour who is promoting the latest incarnation of a guiding mind.
Railways are genuinely political and the current narrative we are offered is thus: all railways make sense, they offer a route to redemption from our sinful past of over-reliance on the car and we should make them cheaper and more affordable.
However, there is a flaw in this - not every railway makes sense. Railways are efficient at certain things, such as: (1) high-speed, high-capacity long-distance services; (2) high-speed homogenised or containerised freight; (3) high-density, high-capacity urban and commuter services, where the demand justifies it. Beyond those relatively obvious parameters, the case becomes harder to make. Just because a train is full does not mean it makes economic sense, especially when the alternatives are properly considered.
So which of the parties have got it mostly right this time? Well, now that the Government has worked out that HS2 is a capacity scheme with the capability to transform our regional economies, and not a high-speed vanity project, most seem to agree that it is the right thing to do. Crossrail 2 also falls into the ‘pretty smart’ category. Together with Crossrail 1, they will comprise a high-density, high-capacity urban distribution network for which the demand is there both now and in the future.
Other projects are harder to justify - for instance, electrifying everything that moves? Not necessarily, especially in the absence of a genuine UK energy policy and when Network Rail seems incapable of working out how much it will cost. Railways only ‘green the economy’ if the full carbon chain stacks up and until we sort out our power generation strategy, that is questionable.
And as for making trains more affordable (lowering fares), when will politicians be honest with voters and explain that if the farepayer doesn’t meet the cost, the taxpayer has to? There are only those two sources of funding - always have been, always will be! Anyway, political grandstanding over cheaper fares willfully ignores just how well the train operators have done with yield management. Many fares are exceptionally good value, even cheap! We all gladly accept the model on airlines, so why not the railways?
The one genuinely exciting political development of more recent times is devolution. Giving regional assemblies the power (indeed obligation) to make local decisions on how to allocate funds is long overdue. For too long, the PTEs and Local Authorities have been able to blame a failure to invest in railways on Whitehall. Yet Manchester has shown that when decision-making powers are devolved, good decisions are made. So, let’s have more of it! Who knows, it may even mean that Regional Assemblies choose to invest in a whole host of non-railway assets and projects (life sciences, R&D, renewables, education, housing), and disinvest in railway lines, stations and services that perhaps make no real sense at all beyond politics.
Railways have been a decent success story over the past 20 years. But they still consume too much resource in terms of operating costs, they still suffer from constant Whitehall micro-management, and too many people still peddle the myth that absolutely all railways make sense. Instead, we need less central control, with whoever has the genuine relationship with the consumer (and that should never be Network Rail) in the driving seat.
The true guiding mind of the railway should be the end user. Overlay that with genuinely devolved powers for local politicians to make local decisions as part of a local strategy and we have a start. But reinvent a kind of SRA (Labour)? Keep the status quo (Conservative)? Electrify everything and make fares cheaper (Lib Dem)? No thanks - they are all recipes for just avoiding the difficult choices that it’s high time we should be forced to make.
