Rail franchises aren't working | Campaign for Better Transport

Blog post on how franchising isn't working:

3 October 2012: The Government's plans to relet the west coast mainline franchise collapsed today. Surely there's a better way to run the rail franchise process? Most rail services in the UK (outside Northern Ireland) are run through a franchise process, with private train companies bidding to win franchises. The process has been changed recently with a move to longer, often fifteen year, franchises. Longer franchises should mean that train companies have more of an incentive for investing in the stations and services they run as they then have more certainty that they would get the return on the investment. But adapting the current franchise system to longer franchises means both train company and the taxpayer (through the Department for Transport) are taking much more of a risk as they're less able to predict what might happen in future years. This seems to have been wha...

Full article: http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/traffic/rail-fran...