Opinion
investment and, importantly, will now become manned. At Eaglescliffe, near Middlesbrough, similar investments are underway. A new Office for Rail Competition and
Utilisation (ORCU) should be set up to deliver more rail competition and identify where capacity exists on the network. The present bodies tasked with doing this, the Office for Rail Regulation and Network Rail, have failed and are a drag on delivering a better policy.
ORCU should be mandated to:
stations with open access rail service competition stations without open access rail service competition average change for all stations
• encourage as much competition as possible between train companies and to free up as many routes as possible. E.g. Network Rail must also be better incentivised to maximise the capacity available on all routes through its role in the timetabling process
more competition will limit or prevent their ability to pay the government the franchise premium as smaller competitors would ‘poach’ or abstract their business. However, new statistics show that increased competition brings more passengers to the railway, and therefore the franchise holder. Take ‘East Coast’; it is easily able to pay its premiums (which have increased year on year and are the largest of any of the long- distance franchises), even though it faces competition with Grand Central and First Hull Trains at stations like Northallerton, York, Doncaster and Wakefield. At Wakefield, East Coast uses Westgate station and Grand Central services call at
the city’s Kirkgate station.
The most recent official passenger satisfaction survey shows open access operators Grand Central and Hull Trains registering 96 per cent and 94 per cent overall passenger satisfaction respectively. Importantly, they also scored top in value for money.
These operators have also taken the decision to directly serve new locations, such as Sunderland and Halifax off the ECML, at their own risk and initiative, which the franchise avoids. This has led to private sector investment in disused and near derelict stations such as the locally infamous Wakefield Kirkgate which is enjoying millions of pounds of new
• take over certain Office of Rail Regulation duties to work and make sure that the rail network is used most effectively with a view to better rail competition, where capacity exists
• identify and explain to ministers and Parliament the benefits of more rail competition (alongside franchises) and how it can reduce industry costs and boost passenger satisfaction, in line with initial Conservative rail privatisation ambitions
• act as an official link between open access operators and the DfT in order to maintain and boost their role on the network
• detail, in light of the rail franchise collapse of 2012, how open access should play a bigger part alongside soon to be re-let franchises.
On the back of last year’s rail franchising debacle the government should seize the opportunity with a clear policy to encourage and allow more open access competition, alongside franchises. Only by embracing more on-rail competition, alongside franchises, can government deliver better and lower cost railways, with lower fares, more routes and more choice for passengers. Open access applications are being considered by the government on the West Coast Main Line. This is an important test; which way will the DfT jump?
Tony Lodge is a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and author of, ‘Rail’s Second Chance – putting competition back on track’ published this Spring by the CPS
June 2013 Page 45
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