The Williams-Shapps White Paper represents a massive, welcome commitment to the future of the industry. This would be remarkable at any time, but especially when the industry has been haemorrhaging income during the pandemic and there are real doubts about future passenger levels. It also sets out an attractive, seductive future vision for the industry, which has been widely applauded. So it feels ungrateful to worry about the detail, but that is where the devil will lie.
The scale and complexity of the work necessary to deliver the desired step change for passengers is enormous. Taking punctuality as a key requirement, it’s clear the proposed Passenger Service Contracts will incentivise private sector operators to run the trains on time. However, bidders will not take financial risk for infrastructure failures. In an extreme case, a major infrastructure blockage could close a key route for several weeks, as with the Stonehaven accident or the Dawlish sea wall failure; even day-to-day, the majority of delays are down to Network Rail, not the train operating company (TOC). Yet despite this, the White Paper has a cheap shot about 400 people arguing about the responsibility for delays, including a disp…
