18 Jun 2025
We Own It live online event - Tuesday 24th June, 7-8pm
The government’s Railways Bill is making its way through Parliament - creating Great British Railways to own and run our railway. As part of that plan, last month the first rail franchise came back into public ownership. This is great news if you care about a railway run for passengers, not profit.
BUT private rail companies are already heavily lobbying the government to let them keep a piece of the pie - so they can have 'an ongoing role' in our railways.
The problem is, YOU can’t get the benefits of public ownership if private companies are sneaking in by the back door.
Ongoing privatisation would mean the government couldn't
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Reduce your rail fares or make them simpler
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Use the money from busy services to pay for rural areas to be connected
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Deliver a simple, streamlined timetable like they have in Switzerland (the best railway in Europe).
The government must give public ownership of railway a chance to truly deliver for passengers, our community and our climate.
That means the government must:
- Introduce new duties for the railway to benefit passengers, communities and the environment, scrap the competition law that's getting in the way
- Say no to cherry picking by private companies wanting to run new routes on the railway
- Turn Transport Focus into a membership organisation for passengers which elects representatives to sit on the board of Great British Railways
- Launch Great British Trains to begin bringing rolling stock (the trains themselves) into public ownership
- Create a publicly owned ticket retailer to deliver simpler and lower fares
- Streamline the rail timetable, copy Switzerland so that every town knows what service level it is getting
- Invest in rail - every £1 creates £2.50 in economic benefits.
We are bringing together a panel of rail experts to discuss the key changes we need in our railway to make sure public ownership is a big success.
Sign up now to join our Make Great British Railways Great open meeting from 7pm to 8pm on Tuesday, 24th June.
400 people have signed up already - don't miss out on your place!
Confirmed speakers include:
- Emily Sullivan (Association of British Commuters) will expose the fact that retaining competition law could kill Great British railway before it gets off the block
- Christian Wolmar (Rail expert and commentator) will talk about why public ownership is a historic opportunity for our railway to innovate
- Ellie Harrison (Bring Back British Rail) will discuss why a publicly owned unified ticketing platform is key to improving passenger experience in our railway
- Jonathan Tyler (Rail timetabling expert) will outline the huge opportunity for creating a streamlined rail timetable that public ownership provides us
- Cat Hobbs (We Own It) will explain how passengers can be given a real voice in Great British Railway
- Dr. Grace Brown (University of Glasgow) will talk about why private ownership of our trains is wasteful
Comments
Antony 2 days ago
FWIW, I have deep reservations about allowing Open Access operators as these will likely undermine the nationalised state operators.I'm not against private operators per se, but the system MUST be totally integrated in order to be effective. Having lived in Switzerland for 2 years relatively recently, why can't we learn from the country that has the best public transport system in the World? That includes all public transport modes, not just rail. The system is highly efficient, totally integrated both in terms of connections and point to point fares. The Swiss system is exactly what any public transport user would want, so why do we in Britain persist with going our own way, overcomplicating everything just to artificially introduce competition wherever possible?
An effective public transport depends entirely on cooperation (e.g. with one mode or service feeding into and/or out of another), and most definitely NOT competition. The real competition is between public and private transport (the car etc), so it is imperative that we develop a public transport system which can offer similar, or better, convenience for an acceptable fare.
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