City Mayors have made a new bid to make sure that they have a ‘central role’ in running railway services in their areas, as the Rail Reform Bill takes shape.

One of several uncertainties about the detail of railway reform is how Mayors in the city regions and other combined authorities will work effectively with the national ‘directing mind’ Great British Railways.

The Urban Transport Group has published a new report, ‘Harnessing the opportunity of our local railways’, which makes the case for integration. This will include decisions about local rail being made at a local level without departing from national policy.

Greater Manchester has voiced ambitions to include local railways in its integrated Bee Network, as Transport for London already does. TfL has been operating various suburban lines under the badge Overground since 2007.

But the creation of London Overground by former mayor Ken Livingstone required the agreement of the Department for Transport, which had just taken over responsibility for National Rail franchises.

The Government has launched a consultation on rail reform, ahead of the planned Rail Reform Bill.

The report includes a series of recommendations which include a duty for GBR to work with devolved authorities to ensure that any plans reflect local ambitions for growth and for rail.

It also discusses timetabling, fares and ticketing, and stations.

Urban Transport Group director Jason Prince said: ‘We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine our railways and harness the potential for rail to become part of devolved and fully integrated local transport networks.

‘As a minimum, rail reform should ensure that there is a clear duty on central government to devolve powers and funding on local rail to devolved leaders and authorities, where this would bring enhanced outcomes for communities and taxpayers.

‘If our railways are to contribute to the Government’s Plan for Change and help to grow local economies, it is devolved leaders who are best placed to ensure passengers and businesses are front and centre of plans for local rail services.’


Readers’ comments

Of course concurrent with rail legislation separate legislation is being enacted regarding the devolved powers of Mayors and in this context their responsibility for public transport in their areas with particular emphasis on integration. As the rail legislation will be responsible for redrawing the legal framework for the industry the shadow GBR team have been presented with a blank canvas to create the operational structure for the reinterpreted passenger railway. As the current former franchised operators can trace their roots to BR's sectorisation era passenger sub sectors it would be so easy to recreate the three great passenger sectors from that era. However while the South Eastern commuter routes and radial intercity routes from London could be easily moulded back into strong businesses, devolution offers an opportunity to reshape the structure to manage devolved the metropolitan networks. The experience of TfL, ScotRail and increasingly TfW shows that strong devolved leadership is important in promoting and improving the public transport offer. For GBR the imperative will be to create a directorate to manage the devolved areas especially those currently covered by Northern where neighbouring mayoral areas cover overlapping passenger flows. The rapid advance in digital and contactless payments offer a great potential to manage these conflicts by creating overlapping zonal fare structures. I believe GBR's final structural challenge is to create a strong inter urban business. As a basis this would embrace the current TPE and Cross Country operators. In addition this could initially embrace Northern's own inter urban network. While the great Northern cities are conducive to their own hub networks the inter urban business deserves a strong independent business promotion of the services that tie the regions together.

Chris Jones-Bridger, Buckley, Flintshire 

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