COMMENT
Rail services
elegates from transport authorities, councils, TOCs,
rail businesses and
associations came together in Manchester to discuss the devolution agenda across the UK network, which could see more local control over rail operations and infrastructure.
accountability, cross-border issues, the balance between local decision-making and economies of scale, and ensuring ‘medium-sized’ schemes worth £150-200m don’t get ‘lost’, if they are not urgent national priorities but are too big for local areas to take charge of.
Baker said: “Of course, local authorities and PTEs in England can, to some degree, already infl uence the rail services in their areas – and PTEs have been rather better at it, than say county councils have been. But the consultation provides the opportunity for a step change in the level of commitment and involvement from local communities.”
RTM attended the conference on May 17, where speakers included transport minister Norman Baker – who announced the go- ahead for the South Yorkshire tram-train pilot on the same day – as well as Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) rail programme director Stephen Clark, Arriva Trains’ policy director Roger Cobbe, Professor Paul Salveson, Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg) director Jonathan Bray, Cumbria County Council’s rail offi cer John Kitchen, as well as representatives from Leigh Fisher, IPPR North, Abellio, Bircham Dyson Bell and HITRANS.
The DfT has been consulting on devolving more responsibilities for rail services to PTEs and local authorities, which the conference organisers said “potentially heralds the most signifi cant change to the railways since privatisation”.
Baker said: “I refl ect…in this wonderful Town Hall, why it has been that over recent decades, we’ve had decisions about Manchester taken so much in London – or decisions about Birmingham and our other great cities taken in London. That cannot be right.
“As someone who, before I was an MP, was leader of the local council, I recall with some bitterness the irritation I felt at being told by London what should be happening in my area by people who’d never been to it and were unaccountable when local opinion had clearly decided something else should happen in that area.
“The move towards devolution and localism is not a fad, not a sound bite or a headline. It is absolutely serious, and as far as I’m concerned, a one-way street.”
Baker said devolution would require a
“mindshift” for some, as local regions get powers to make their own decisions, rather than having to win approval for everything from the DfT, but he said it does raise “signifi cant challenges” too – including democratic
16 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 12
Commuting patterns in the North of England. Source: IPPR North
He said he’d been “encouraged by the enthusiasm” for devolution, and hoped it would lead to more ‘corridor
solutions’ to
transport problems across multiple modes, including rail, rather than people “defaulting to a road answer”. He said: “The best time to get involved in this is when a franchise is being renewed.”
Refranchising and devolution
TfGM’s Stephen Clark began by saying “our cities are changing”, meaning railway use has
i More stories like this at:
www.railtechnologymagazine.com/ fares-rail-policy-and-dft-news
run from town halls, not Whitehall D
Adam Hewitt reports on the ‘Devolving Rail to the Regions’ event held at Manchester Town Hall.
changed too, with a greater concentration of jobs in the service sector in city centres, meaning different travel patterns. There is an intent to set up “compacts” between the 10 Greater Manchester combined authorities and the neighbouring authorities and LEPs to pursue common agendas.
He said: “It refers very positively to moves to devolve responsibilities to the north and to a joint arrangement between northern local authorities, specifi cally in respect to the Northern and Transpennine refranchising.”
He said rail decentralisation is coming at a “great time” and said the upcoming re-letting of those two franchises is “clearly the opportunity to be seized”.
But those two franchises cover fi ve metropolitan areas, 19 unitary councils, nine shires and Scotland, meaning a balance has to be struck between inclusiveness and effi cient decision-making: a single executive body will have to manage the relationship with the TOC concerned, and different public bodies will bear different amounts of risk. Many decisions are yet to be made on the authorities’ role in the franchise specifi cation, its governance and the fi nances, he said.
A county view
The conference also got a shire county perspective from places where railways work in a very different way to the big cities. Cumbria County Council’s rail offi cer John Kitchen said it was important that counties like Cumbria have a say in franchising decisions, rather than it all being in the hands of the metropolitan areas, and also spoke about the railways’ role in dealing with the impact of the Workington fl oods in 2009.
Richard Burningham, manager of the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership and a former PR man and travel centre manager for British Rail, talked about devolution from his perspective, saying devolution could end up as ‘one franchise, multiple specifi cations’, or just the status quo but with more formalisation of the partnership responsibilities of TOCs, or maybe ‘devolution light’, or what he called the ‘virtual railway company’.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92