The collapse of the Wrexham and Shropshire railway company, which will stop operating tomorrow, has proven beyond doubt that the Tory-led and Labour-backed national transport privatisation policies are unviable and only serve to heighten congestion on the road network.
The company’s closure, which means there is now no direct link between Shropshire and London, came after chairman Adrian Shooter said there was “no prospect” of the service becoming profitable.Wrexham and Shropshire railways was owned by a consortium, ironically including the German state operator Deutsche Bahn. It was one of three "open access" operators, which are train companies which do not receive a subsidy from the Department for Transport to continue operating.
In other words, as from Friday, all but two of Britain’s railway companies receive taxpayer-funded handouts, despite the claim that the railways have been “privatised” since 1993.
The insanity of the multiple company “licensing system” — which has already seen ownership of the railway tracks pass back and forth between the private sector and the state — was nowhere better illustrated with the Wrexham and Shropshire railway company.
As part of its “operating licence,” Wrexham and Shropshire was forbidden from stopping at Wolverhampton or Birmingham because this would breach other train companies’ “rights” to exclusively service those two stations.
The inability to pick up passengers from those major hubs unquestionably contributed to the inability of Wrexham and Shropshire to be remotely viable, and it also illustrates just how fundamentally unfair and impossible the privatisation process has become.
If there was only one state railway (as is the case in almost every other European nation) then none of these issues would affect financial performance.
The worst insult of the whole privatisation process however has to be the fact that the taxpayer still subsidises the “private companies” anyway, which utterly defeats the so-called “logic” behind handing the national transport system over to the private sector in the first place.
It is a logical fact that the size of investment needed to upgrade and maintain the transportation sector means that the state must be involved in the process, as the profit-driven private sector exclusivity will make it too expensive for consumers to use.
This fact is illustrated by the disastrous consequences of the rail network privatisation — it is now cheaper to fly from London to New York than it is to take a train from Manchester to London at peak times.
The privatisation of British Rail was set in motion when the then Conservative government enacted the British Coal and British Rail (Transfer Proposals) Act of 1993, which paved the way for the creation of Railtrack PLC and the Railways Act of the same year.
The New Labour government which replaced the Tories, immediately ditched its election promise to reverse the privatisation process, and instead completed it as quickly as possible.
Since then, the railway tracks (which bizarrely were sold off to a private company which then charged the other private companies a fee to use them) have reverted to state control, as have a number of coach operators.
In addition, train fares have increased by, in some cases, over 1000 percent, The dramatic rise in fares has forced even more people to use road transport, which has further added to pollution and congestion on Britain’s roads.
