18 Jun 2025
The government’s Railways Bill is making its way through Parliament - creating Great British Railways to own and run our railway. 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:
- Reduce your rail fares or make them simpler
- Use the money from busy services to pay for rural areas to be connected
- 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. Watch this recording of our live speaker event and hear a panel of experts discuss the key changes we need in our railway to make sure public ownership is a big success.
Speakers:
- Christian Wolmar - Britain's leading transport commentator https://www.christianwolmar.co.uk/
- Ellie Harrison - founder, Bring Back British Rail
- Emily Sullivan - co-founder, Association of British Commuters and researcher in equality and human rights law
- Jonathan Tyler - Rail timetabling expert
- Cat Hobbs - founder, We Own It
- Dr. Grace Brown - Research Associate in Global Remunicipalisation, University of Glasgow; co-author of the ASLEF report "A Public Vision for Financing Scotland's Railways"
(NB please use the Closed Captions function in YouTube if you would like to watch with subtitles.)
Comments
Antony 3 weeks 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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Mike Richardson 3 weeks ago
The Treasury will never agree to cut fares. The way to lower fares is by enabling ADS, an availability feed from RARS - GB rail's central reservation system. That will enable retailers to produce fare displays that will make it really easy for customers (who are flexible) to find the cheaper/quieter services. Currently finding cheaper fares is too "hit and miss".
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John Rich 3 weeks ago
Gas, water, electricity, telephone and Royal Mail, British Rail, all privatised and all poorly performing AND charging us more and more for the privilege! Lessons learnt?
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Rosemary Raine 2 weeks ago
I believe the only successful route is FULL and complete nationalisation.
I don't do any social media so cannot share but am willing write to my MP.
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frank heyes 2 weeks ago
time the railways were brought back to nationalisation for the good of the country not used as a cash cow for shareholders.
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