Publicly owned rail is popular. But is it making the trains run on time?

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The early afternoon of Wednesday 6 August was an unremarkable one on the rail network. Then suddenly, shortly before 14:00, a power failure brought trains across the north-west of England to a halt. Chaos ensued: passengers told the BBC they were stranded on platforms for hours, with some having to book hotels for the night. This incident, stemming from a short power cut that affected Network Rail's operating centre in Manchester, was, in itself, unusual. But it added to a difficult summer for train passengers. Repeated heatwaves required risk control measures like speed reductions to avoid tracks being damaged in the heat, leading to delays and cancellations. There was a serious derailment near Lewes, East Sussex, and another smaller-scale incident near Wickford in Essex soon after. Against a backdrop of relatively high cancellation rates and steep fares compared with previous decades, rail users could be forgiven for forming the impression that things are not working. Something is changing, though: Labour is steadily bringing nearly all passenger rail services into public hands. Nationalisation is a popular idea - a YouGov tracker poll suggests almost two thirds of the public support public ownership. But in reality, plans are still in their early stages. Big structural changes have yet to be introduced. And experts caution that it's too early to say how successful these will be. So can rail nationalisation meet the public's expectations? Or are the ongoing delays and cancellations that we're currently seeing under a part-nationalised network a sign that it might struggle to deliver real improvement? What the data says South Western Railway (SWR) was nationalised in May 2025, the first of six services to be brought into public ownership under Labour so far. At Woking station, which is served by SWR, regular commuter Leo tells me he had been optimistic about public ownership, but hasn't noticed it making any difference so far: "I think the phrase 'emperor's new clothes' comes to mind… it's still unreliable." SWR saw a clear increase in cancellations during its first year in public hands. But how much of this was due to nationalisation? The Conservatives have cited SWR as an example of how public control does not necessarily mean improvements or fix key problems. But the government argues SWR's early period in public hands was affected by high summer temperatures, signal failures and trespass incidents. Lord Hendy, the rail minister, says work to turn the operator around has included introducing long-delayed new trains on suburban routes and recruiting more drivers, resulting in a drop in those cancellations that are due to staff shortages. TransPennine Express was nationalised in May 2023, under the Conservative government. Many passengers had been at their wits' end as the operator struggled to fulfil its timetable and suffered from poor industrial relations. A plan to improve reliability was put in place, which included cutting some services and even removing one type of train as a way of sorting out staffing problems. A new deal with the drivers' union also helped - something an insider at the former private sector operator claimed to me their company had not been permitted to do. So has it worked? Cancellations have fallen noticeably. But they were still above the Great Britain average in the year to August. It's really important to say the data can only tell us so much. There are so many different factors that might affect the performance of each service: for example, the state of the infrastructure it relies on, weather events or simply how well it was working before the government took over. Plus, of the operators nationalised since Labour came to power, only SWR and c2c have completed a whole year in public hands. Even for those nationalised years earlier, the picture is clouded by the impact of the pandemic, when passenger numbers fell off a cliff. But according to Alex Hynes, chief executive of DfT Operator Limited (DfTO), the government company that currently owns publicly-run operators, it has been possible to make some short-term changes. Notably, these include making one team jointly responsible for managing infrastructure and passenger train services in some areas including the south-west of England. "The railway is a system: track, train, people," he says. "So by putting one person in charge, they can fix all elements of the system to deliver a better service to customers." Hynes also gives examples of changes on the recently nationalised Thameslink; investment in better cleaning, improving toilets and replacing unpopular upright "ironing-board" seats. But when it comes to the pure performance data of operators nationalised in the past few years - delays, cancellations - can we really draw any conclusions yet to tell us whether the policy is working? "I think it's completely hopeless to try and do that assessment over such a short period," Stephen Glaister, a former chair of regulator the Office of Rail and Road who is now emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London. He thinks a decade is needed to assess the impact of nationalisation. The government argues that official data suggests publicly owned train operators are performing better on punctuality and cancellations overall than those still under DfT contracts to private operators. Experts point out that whoever is running the passenger trains, some limitations remain. Many delays happen because infrastructure, like signals, fails. There's only so much capacity on the existing network. And getting better trains or more staff can take years. Beyond the private-public binary The view that privatisation ultimately failed, leaving unreliable services and high fares, may be widespread. However, Prof Glaister argues that for a few years in the 1990s, the old privatised system actually worked well. Operating costs and subsidies were falling while the number of train services and passengers went up, he says. And in the current context, it's important to be clear about what nationalisation really means. The railways Labour inherited weren't, in truth, completely privatised, and nationalisation doesn't mean a return to British Rail. For example, the infrastructure manager Network Rail has been fully under public control for over two decades. A number of train companies including LNER and Northern had already been nationalised under the Conservatives. Scotrail, Transport for Wales and Caledonian Sleeper are controlled by devolved national governments. And even those operators still on contracts issued by the DfT at Westminster have been heavily controlled by the government for years. During Covid, private operators started being paid a fixed fee to run services, while the taxpayer took on the financial risk. The terms of the contracts meant train companies had to "ask government for permission to blow their nose", according to one senior industry executive, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely. Highly profitable rolling stock companies ("ROSCOS") still own the actual trains. Freight companies operate privately too, and there are a handful of fully commercial "open access operators" on the rails like Lumo, Hull Trains and Grand Central - although there are concerns within the industry that these could end up squeezed. So what is often referred to as the nationalisation of the railways, in fact amounts to gradually returning passenger train operators run by private companies to public hands as their contracts expire - and making this the default. What will Great British Railways do differently? This is not all that's happening, though. The government hopes that re-organising the railways under a new publicly run body, Great British Railways (GBR), will make a big difference. This will bring together the running of trains and tracks, ending the current fragmented system. A botched rail timetable introduction in 2018 was the spark for the then-Conservative government to eventually propose GBR as a new overarching body - although the Tories believe private competition should not be excluded from the system. Some trains are already covered in distinctive GBR branding, but the organisation still doesn't exist. A new law to create it is making its way through parliament. Unknowns remain, like exactly how GBR will interact with devolved governments, and who its senior leaders will be. Transport expert and author Prof Jon Shaw, of the University of Plymouth, says the idea of a "single guiding mind" should create "a better planned railway that's more aligned to the customer". Prof Shaw thinks potential benefits include better long-term planning around rolling-stock and timetables, and the removal of "the compensation merry-go-round", where train companies and Network Rail argue about whose fault a delay was. Hynes says: "The way you get the railway to work is you get the infrastructure and the trains and the people working in harmony because it's a system. And we can do that in a publicly owned GBR railway in a way that we haven't been able to do for a generation." But Prof Shaw cautions of potential pitfalls. For example, "there remains very little money", and "a massive issue is whether or not the rail minister or DfT more generally - or the Treasury - will be able to butt out" and leave rail leaders to run the railway. Prof Glaister also fears politically sensitive aspects such as fares and levels of service could lead to politicians trying to run the railways themselves, because of the amount of public money involved. "Actually, governments are not very good at running railways," he says. "So you want management who are somewhat independent and able to run it." Lord Hendy insists that despite the Transport Secretary having ultimate sign-off on GBR's strategy, the body will be genuinely arms-length from government. "The point of this is to get a cadre of people who are committed to the outcomes that the secretary of state and I want for it, who can go off and run it on their own," he says, adding: "They'll have a lot more chance in the future than they've had in the last 20 years." A question of cost The railways are currently subsidised to the tune of around £12bn a year - not including spending on major projects like HS2. The Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says that she wants to see subsidy levels fall. Meanwhile, Network Rail has acknowledged a squeezed budget means difficult choices, and shoring up the network against the effects of more extreme weather requires investment. Prof Glaister says: "When the public is hoping for a better level of service, more reliability, fewer breakdowns and lower fares, what they're really asking for is more money to be put into the railway. "I don't think it's likely the government is going to be able to find more money, probably [it will have] less, actually. And so I think there's a real problem with ministers raising expectations from this policy." But Hynes doesn't see a contradiction between reducing taxpayer subsidy and making train services better. "My two north stars are performance up and subsidy down," he says. "If the service is better, we get more customers, we get more revenue." Lord Hendy and Hynes also push back on the idea that the answer to improving reliability might be running fewer trains. Hynes says: "In an industry with high fixed costs, the best way of getting the subsidy down is to go for growth." Questions also remain about how GBR will manage industrial relations. Terms and conditions currently vary across operators. What will cost-conscious ministers do if unions seek to standardise these at the most generous level across the network? While ministers argue they are getting on with improvements that people will notice, there's acknowledgement that the speed of improvement will vary between operators. Lord Hendy says some changes "ought to be dead boring… to make sure tomorrow is a little better than today if you can do it". But he says "more than 30 years worth of behaviors" will need altering to make the railway run solely in the interests of the customer. At Woking, is there optimism that things will improve in the long run? "I really hope so," says Leo, "it would be amazing - as it's not the best service now." More from InDepth - AI is creating a 'human premium' for art made by people. But will it hold? - Published2 days ago - Mark Zuckerberg has an image problem - so why is Meta's business booming? - Published4 days ago - The Republican candidates walking a Trump tightrope - Published5 days ago BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. Emma Barnett and John Simpson bring their pick of the most thought-provoking deep reads and analysis, every Saturday. Sign up for the newsletter here Get in touch Are you personally affected by the issues raised in this story?