Transport Insights

It’s good to see transport ministers plugging the recently nationalised rail franchises in advance of Great British Railways (GBR), which was of course a Tory invention. But are the improvements claimed for what the Department for Transport (DfT) is calling South Eastern Railway all they are cracked up to be?

South Eastern Railway is what you get when Southeastern trains and Network Rail Kent “unite under a single leadership team”.

The DfT says that with Southeastern under public ownership it has been able to work increasingly closely with Network Rail for over a year.

This collaborative approach has resulted in greater efficiency with better, faster decisions for customers and taxpayers, leading to an improved railway. For example:

• consistently low levels of cancellations
• customer satisfaction at 86%
• subsidy required to operate Southeastern expected to reduce by £50 million year on year

There’s no detail behind “consistently low levels of cancellations”, except that it is said elsewhere to be “some of the lowest cancellation rates nationally”.

That’s a similar claim to boasting about an 86% customer satisfaction rate, which is barely above the national average 85% in the latest Transport Focus survey.

As for an expected reduction in subsidy, that’s happening on a national level.

The DfT says this “new integrated, collaborative approach across the south-east sets the path for how GBR will operate”, which raises the question of whether setting up GBR is really necessary.

Under the Tories, the DfT often pointed out how much could be done in the meantime and maybe Labour ministers are thinking on the same lines, with GBR not expected until at least the end of next year.