Nationalisation of West Midland Railway: Now the real journey begins
News that West Midlands Railway and its sister brand LNWR are to be nationalised in February next year are likely to divide opinion.
For many, it will be a cause of celebration, the honouring of one of the central pledges that the Labour government was elected on little more than a year ago.
For them, it will mark the end of a failed experiment of trying to bring artificial competition into a national monopoly, and an end to big business taking profits from an essential public service.
For others it will be a return to the bad old days of shabby, outdated rolling stock, unreliable services, the Beeching cuts and stale sandwiches.
And then there is a third group, probably the majority, who will greet the news with a weary shrug of indifference. These are the people who care little for the politics, and just want the trains to be run efficiently.
And that is where the real test for the Government will come.
It is certainly true that the franchised model operational model has enjoyed, at best, mixed results.
While some operators have performed well, offering a more trains and a more customer-orientated service, others have failed dismally, offering little or no improvement while fares rose exponentially.
The operators will argue that they have become victims of their own success. Between 1997 and the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020, the number of passengers increased by 128 per cent. If getting people back on the trains is a performance target, then privatisation has achieved at least a modicum of success.
On the other hand, over the same period of time rail fares have increased faster than inflation. This would not be so bad if punctuality and reliability had shown a corresponding improvement, but this has evidently not always been the case.
Nationalisation-sceptics will remember how the old British Rail became a symbol of national decline, starved of investment and used as a political football by successive governments, where every attempt at investment came under intense scrutiny, with competing calls for the money to be spent elsewhere. If GB Railways is to succeed where the old British Rail failed, ministers will need to come up with a strategy for sustained investment that is not buffeted by political headwinds.
Time will tell whether the renationalisation of the railways will be seen as a commonsense move to stimulate economic growth, or just another distraction motivated by political ideology.
For all our sakes, we hope it is the former.
