Whilst my fantasy Lib Dem blogger Secretary of State for Transport will doubtless by delighted to see the back of National Express, an opportunity presents itself.
No, I'm not calling for nationalisation, not by the back door or even the front. However, we are presented with a chance to see if there is a better way to run a railroad. Is vertical integration the best solution? Is there a level of subsidy that allows fares to be set so as to encourage a switch from air or road to rail? Is open access viable?
My rather touchy free market friends rose to the bait this morning when they rather erratically assumed that I was crediting them with support for the ludicrous system currently in place. Actually, if they had read my usual cautious prose, they would have spotted that I was implying that they hold a pretty rigid view of 'private good, public bad' - a stance I find just as unhelpful as the reverse position.
I have to admit that I'm an 'open access' kind of person. Someone needs to own and maintain the track, and whilst the Railtrack model crashed and burned quite spectacularly, and I would probably prefer it to be in public hands, I'm not overly fussed about who it is. The idea that most passengers would be inconvenienced by only having access to one operating company is made much less of an issue by the current fare structure.
My regular advance tickets specify a particular train at a particular time. Who provides that service is irrelevant to me unless I have a choice of trains which meet my timing preferences, in which case cost, en route service and comfort (and occasionally prettiness) are factors which may well influence my choice. If I want flexibility, I might as well just turn up and pay to travel on the train of my choice at the time of my choice. Allow me to pay my fare on the train, and my problem of which train operator to commit to is solved.
As far as commuters are concerned, multiple options and operators are managed through the Oystercard scheme, so why not for a wider area or areas? And as the level of subsidy is concerned, why look at it as simply a cost? What about a reward for keeping people off of the roads or out of planes, or for helping to reduce the level of carbon emissions? Does the public wish to compensate me for the loss of convenience that using public transport might bring in return for using the 'spare' carbon emissions to sell to other countries as part of an emissions trading system? After all, I'm making it possible.
Ultimately, I want a free market in transport, where my choices aren't punished or rewarded for any reason other than those transparently decided upon by a properly representative government, acting as an enabler and guardian of a framework that supports that freedom.
I'm not going to get that any time soon. In the meantime, the debate about how you ensure manage a right of freedom to travel is something that my economic liberal friends might address their pointy minds to. After all, I'm just a bureaucrat who likes trains...
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