Railways need better management

Someone called Oliver Wright has recently written in a national newspaper about the state of Britain's railways.  I do not know who this Oliver Wright is, although there is a television producer by that name.

Some readers may be wondering if it matters who he is, but it does sometimes help when reading a political essay to have some idea where the author is coming from.

Mr Wright slams one rail operator for its atrocious customer service, which may surprise those of us who come from a business background.  After all, businesses tend to thrive on the basis of good customer service.

You could argue that rail operators enjoy a certain immunity from customer service issues, given that they operate in a near monopoly market.  Suppose you live in Guildford and commute into central London on weekdays.  So far as I am aware, your zero option is South West Trains.  Therefore South West Trains might seem in a strong position to continue enjoying your custom.

Then again, maybe South West Trains is not your zero option.  Maybe you can afford to drive into London, or maybe you can afford to move house and live in a town served by a different rail operator.  Depending on your personal circumstances, you might even take early retirement, and give up on commuting altogether.

I have heard of employers in London being unwilling to recruit people who live in areas served by railway lines with a reputation for slow running trains.  Nevertheless, far too many of our rail operators seem to have an unsatisfactory attitude.

I have never approved of rail franchises.  They encourage a short-term mindset, and are not based on the critical factor of vertical integration.  This means that the companies which operate the franchises do not own the tracks or the signalling upon which their trains inevitably rely.

Ideally the railway tracks should be owned by whichever company runs the fastest trains on those tracks.  This is because the faster the speed at which a train travels, the greater the danger if it derails.

Many people see a return to national ownership as the solution, but British Rail was far from perfect.  In the 1950s (when it was known by the more cumbersome name of British Railways) it was still building steam locomotives, as if the future did not matter.  It used High Speed Trains on inappropriate routes.  Its record on track maintenance was hit and miss.  Most shamefully, it allowed people to die from falling out of moving trains, because it refused to admit that its external doors were not safe.

Nevertheless British Rail did enjoy the benefits of vertical integration.

Oliver Wright criticises the state-owned east coast rail service, noting that it cost him over a hundred pounds to buy an off-peak single ticket to Wakefield, travelling on a near-empty train.  Mr Wright does not specify where he was travelling from, but I have just found a weekday single railway ticket from London Kings Cross to Wakefield for £39.50, or £57 for first-class.

There are cheap tickets available.  You just have to know how to buy them.

Mr Wright suggests the John Lewis style of management for Britain's railways, whereby rail company employees are also shareholders.  One of the more highly rated comments reads:

I worked for John Lewis and I can assure you that no one on the shop floor has any say. JL is just the same as any other company, there are the workers and the top management, all this talk of the workers having a share is just a publicity stunt. As for a share in the profits - JL shop assistants are paid just above the minimum wage, the so-called bonus barely tops it up to the living wage.

The only sensible answer with the railways is that no system is guaranteed to be effective.  The government should insist on vertical integration, but otherwise should not assume that either private or state ownership will necessarily deliver a good service.