Chiltern Railways’ services became the latest to transition into public ownership on Sunday, marking the sixth train operator to be nationalised by the Government.
The UK’s largest train operator, Govia Thameslink Railway, alongside c2c, Greater Anglia, South Western Railway, and West Midlands Trains, have already been brought into public ownership by the Government.
From December, the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed that 25 additional daily Chiltern Railways services will be introduced to help tackle “overcrowding”, delivering 10,000 extra seats during each weekday. This plan incorporates half-hourly weekday trains running along the Chiltern main line between London and Birmingham, as well as an increase in weekend journeys.
Personally i think privatisation only truly works if actual competition can be had. But with trains in particular it’s not like someone can start up a new company and have a competing line in the same place as an already existing one.
There are examples of successful competition from new operators in the UK. Eg Lumo offering a direct LNER competitor from Scotland to London, generally for cheaper tickets than LNER too.
Hull Trains restarted direct trains from Hull to London and also compete with LNER.
Grand Central started a bunch of routes in the north to London and aren’t, mostly, directly competing with LNER but run routes that previously required a connection.
The other two open access operators are Heathrow Express, and Eurostar.
Eurostar will soon face competition from Virgin Trains after space at the depot was allocated to them.
Companies frequently try to launch these services but it’s up to the Office of Rail and Road as to which get approved. They all have to run without subsidies, and none of them are being nationalised. They’ll continue to run the same as today, in the same was freight services will.
Rails are public and each company pays for the ability to send trains through them. I thonk that’s how Spain works.
Its how everywhere in the EU works