Starting 2008 on the wrong track

Another New Year, another public relations disaster for the railways. The over-running engineering works at both Liverpool Street and Rugby have been a fiasco which the media has delighted in seizing as an opportunity to rubbish the railways. It seems that our railways are becoming almost as unloved as that other pariah of public transport, the bus. I often think that we hate our public transport systems with such an unjustified vehemence that we forget the vast improvements that have been made. It is a flippant comment often reeled that of course it was all so much better when the railways were state owned and the loathed British Rail is now recalled with misty eyed nostalgia. Come back BR, all is forgiven. The reality of course is a lot more complex than that. The main problem with the current system is that privatisation of the railways was botched. It was rushed through and further ill-conceived reforms by successive governments have resulted in the current ill-adapted structure we have today. There is the ludicrous suggestion that Network Rail could face a hefty fine from the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) for the over-running works at Rugby. What is ridiculous about this is that the government will provide Network Rail with the money to pay the fine, which is then passed back to the government coffers via ORR! Where is the sense or benefit to either the tax payer or the fare paying passenger in that?

What hasn't helped is that the problems at Liverpool Street and Rugby have coincided with the annual fares increase. You could be forgiven for thinking that the two are inextricably linked, rather than just unfortunate timing. As Tom Winsor, the former Rail Regulator pointed out when interviewed on BBC News 24 yesterday, the fare rises are as a result of a political decision that more funding for the railways should come from the fare box (i.e. passengers) and less from the tax payer. Hence, fares have in some cases increased by a substantial margin. But of course, in the spin of media-speak the greatest increases are mentioned as if they are typical across the country.

What I feel is unforgiveable is that Network Rail faced a similar situation to that at Rugby last Christmas. Over Christmas 2006 it planned to complete and commission a new signalling system at Portsmouth. The project fell behind schedule with a limited train service only possible until full commissioning, following further blockades of all lines in the area, in October last year. It is a failure to properly plan that seems to have been the cause of the current difficulties at Rugby, a lesson that does not seem to have been learned from the Portsmouth fiasco.

There is no question that projects such as those undertaken at Portsmouth and Rugby have and will deliver benefits to rail passengers. What is in question is whether the works are too ambitious and that again there seems to have been little thought given to contingencies in the event of an over-run. The problems are exacerbated by the lack of suitable diversionary routes although there are alternative rail links available for most journeys to and from stations on the West Coast Main Line north of Birmingham.

Network Rail really needs to get its act together because further delays such as those at Rugby will only further erode the perceived benefits that these works deliver. It is particularly important, with some key milestones in the WCML project to be delivered over the coming months not least the launch of a new timetable from December 2008 and the Bletchley/Milton Keynes re-signalling and remodelling project.