Effects of privatisation

There is considerable debate around the effect of railway privatisation, especially since the structure now in place is considerably different from that originally envisaged at the time of the Railways Act 1993. Some of the most common arguments for and against are:
• Customer Service: Privatisation was supposed to bring improved customer service and many rail lines have seen improvements in this field with better on-board and station services. In the early years, however, customer service was dented when too many drivers were given voluntary redundancy by the new TOCs and trains had to be cancelled. Also, the impact of the Hatfield rail accident in 2000 left services seriously affected for many months after.
• Fares and Timetable: In an attempt to protect passengers' interests, certain fares (mostly commuter season fares) and basic elements of the timetable were regulated. However, the TOCs still had quite a bit of latitude in changing unregulated fares and could change the number of trains run within certain regulatory and practical limitations. While average fare prices have changed little since privatisation, this masks substantial changes. Although the price of commuter season tickets has fallen in real terms, many unregulated fares have increased as demand levels shifted, particularly 'walk-on' fares on inter-urban routes where operators have urged passengers to use the cheaper 'advance purchase' tickets. In fact, this has become so common that Virgin Trains now charge £219 for a standard open return ticket between Manchester and London, a journey of only 200 miles each way.[6] So far as the timetable is concerned, many more trains are being run each day than under BR as operators have tried to run more frequent, but usually shorter, trains on many routes to attract more customers.
• New Trains: The promoters of privatisation expected that the ROSCOs would compete against each other to provide the TOCs with the rolling stock they required. In practice, in most cases the individual TOCs required specific classes of trains to run their services, and often only one of the ROSCOs would have that class of train, resulting in their having to pay whatever the ROSCO concerned cared to charge for leasing the trains. Old rolling stock was extremely profitable to the ROSCOs, as they were able to charge substantial amounts for their hire even though British Rail had already written off their construction costs. As trains grow older, the cost of their lease does not decrease. This was due to the adoption of 'indifference pricing' as the method of determining lease costs by the government, which was intended to make purchasing new trains more attractive when compared to running life-expired trains. In practice, the average age of trains in the UK is no different to that under the last years of BR.
• Rolling Stock Manufacture The rolling stock manufacturers themselves suffered under privatisation; with the hiatus in new orders for new trains caused by the reorganisation and restructuring process, the former BREL works at York (now owned by ABB) had been severely downsized and eventually closed. The former Metro Cammell plant in Birmingham (later owned by Alstom) followed suit in 2005, closing its doors once the last of Virgin Trains' new Pendolino units had rolled off the assembly line. Only the former British Rail research centre and associated BREL works in Derby and Crewe survive to the present day; now owned by Canadian conglomerate Bombardier.
• Punctuality and Reliability: The privatised railway has not shown the improvement in punctuality and reliability that was hoped for. The contracts in place between companies were intended to incentivise improvements in these areas, but with the large increase in the number of trains run while using more or less the same amount of rolling stock and track, there has been less room for manoeuvre when problems occur, with consequent impacts on punctuality. This was also compounded by post-Hatfield disruption.
• Level of Traffic: It is unclear whether privatisation was intended to increase traffic, but that is what happened in the early years of the privatised railway with many more trains run, more passengers carried and more freight (in terms of weight and distance - in terms of weight alone there was little change) lifted. Opponents of privatisation argue that some increase would have been expected anyway in line with the improved UK economy and the sharp rise in road congestion and bus fares; it took until just 1997, three years after privatisation before traffic exceeded to the levels achieved by BR in the late 1980s at the height of the previous economic boom. More passengers are now being carried each year than at any time since 1957, when the network was twice the mileage. In addition rail's total passenger kilometres has reached the highest level since 1946.