As reported in the Observer we have launched All on Board, a campaign for everyone who wants to make our railways work better. For a full list of supporters click here.
We live in an amazing country full of wonderful people and incredible places. It should be everyone’s right to get around it: to travel to and from our home or work, to see the people we love and all the beautiful places we want to explore.
Our railways should be accessible to all, no one should be put off from traveling. Trains and stations should be beautiful, reflecting the special place in our hearts for a public realm in which we feel free to travel as equals.
We need a publicly owned and publicly accountable railway system that puts the needs of people and the the environment first. So let’s make it happen together.
Join us
Next year on May 7th, the General Election will be the crunch time for our railways. They will either stay the same – broken and privatised – or they can be transformed to work for all of us and the environment. So join our broad network to ensure we can create a people’s railway for all. Here are four ways you can support the campaign:
- Sign our petition and be a part of our broad movement for publicly owned railways (see here)
- Ask an organisation or group you are a part of or know of to sign up to our campaign – we want to hit a target of 100 very quickly (see here)
- Join the conversation and add your story to why we need public railways (see here) and share our facts about the campaign (see here)
- Donate to help support the movement for railways that work for people and the environment (see here)
Privatisation of the railways has for the most part been an expensive mistake.
However I think we need to be clearer about what kind of structure we want to see in the future for a publicly owned railway. While on the one hand we all want to get away from the current fragmented structure, I’m not sure anyone really wants to see a return to a monolithic British Rail style of ownership.
The one strength of the current franchise system is that – at least on the better run franchises – is that they are more manageable sized units and staff at all levels do develop a positive sense of identify with their franchise which can translate into excellent customer service – GNER, which orginally ran the East Coast service, was a good example of this.
So could we not develop a model of ownership, where John Lewis style partnerships took on the running of each franchise? Of course we would also need to think about how we have better integration of rail services, and how we would end the separation between train and track in the new system.
Both because I don’t think anyone has properly thought through these issues and because I would want to avoid imposing disruption on the rail network, I think there is something to be said for allowing the current franchises to run through to the end of the franchise period, and thus effectively having a phased return to public ownership, rather than a big bang renationalisation.