While two-thirds of Britons favour nationalising the railways in principle, this falls to just 6% if fares continue to rise
Who should run the railways has been a perennial question in British politics, particularly since the privatisation of British Rail in 1994. Supporters of the status quo point to improved passenger numbers and newer trains in the last thirty years, while those who favour a reversion to some form of nationalised rail network highlight Britain’s comparatively high ticket prices and poor punctuality.
But change on this front is coming, with the new Labour government pledging to bring train operators into public ownership under a revised franchising system, alongside plans to establish Great British Railways, a public body who will oversee the running of the network.
The government will expect this to be relatively popular – rail nationalisation has had clear majority support for years. Currently, two-thirds of Britons (66%) say they would favour the railway companies being run in the public sector, while just one in eight Britons (12%) say they would prefer the network to be wholly privatised and run by for-profit companies.
Support for nationalisation rises to three-quarters (76%) among the near-quarter of the British public (23%) who say they travel by train at least once a month.
But while this endorsement for an overhaul of the rail system is ostensibly clear-cut, does it give the full picture of public attitudes to the future of the railways?
What drives support and opposition to nationalisation?
Supporters of rail nationalisation are not necessarily drawn to it because of ideological reasons; only four in ten (41%) say they believe that the public sector is inherently better at running things. For 46% of nationalisation supporters, neither sector is generally better, but the public sector is right in this specific case.
One in eleven nationalisation supporters (9%) even say that they actually think the private sector are typically better at running things, it’s just that they feel this has not been the case with the railways.
But dissatisfaction with the existing set-up is not just found in those who support nationalisation. Only one in five (19%) say they feel the private sector has done a good job at running the railways, with two-thirds of privatisation supporters (68%) saying they think the private sector has done a bad job, it’s just the public sector would do worse.
What unites both sides, then, is a belief that the railways are currently in a bad state, with the worst aspect felt to be ticket prices. Three quarters of Britons (77%), including 85% of regular rail users, describe the price of a rail fare as ‘bad’, with half of the public (51%) going as far as calling the situation ‘very bad’.
The current level of investment in infrastructure also comes in for criticism, with a majority of Britons (54%) seeing it as bad, against only one in six (16%) feeling present levels are good. Half of the public (51%) also see the punctuality of services in a negative light, though just over a third of Britons (35%) do see trains as reliable.
Given long-standing criticism of worse services in the north, there is unsurprisingly a small regional divide here, with only three in ten northerners (29%) describing punctuality as good, compared to four in ten (40-42%) of those living in London and the South.
Nonetheless, there are several key aspects of rail travel in Britain that the public tend to see as good. Around half of Britons (47-50%) are happy with the frequency of services and the quality of the trains themselves, against 34-37% who disagree, while nearly two-thirds of the public (64%) feel the range of destinations on offer is good.
Plus, regular rail users tend to be more complimentary of many elements of Britain’s railways than those who rarely or never use the train. Those describing the frequency of services and quality of trains as good rises to six in ten (60-62%) among those who use trains at least once a month, with a majority of regular rail users (55%) positive about the customer service provided, compared to only a third (33%) who rarely or never use the train. Though, of course, it may be the case that those continuing to use the railways have a different level of what is acceptable.
What do Britons expect from nationalisation?
Despite handing out a critical report card on the status quo, on most aspects of rail travel, only a minority of Britons would expect things to get better or worse if the rail network was nationalised in its entirety, though more would generally expect improvement than decline.
For instance, in terms of the punctuality or frequency of services, a third of Britons (32-33%) believe things would get better if things were nationalised, but a similar number (31-35%) expect things wouldn’t noticeably change in either direction, and one in seven (13-15%) believe things would get worse.
Even among just those who support rail nationalisation, only around four in ten (40-43%) expect an improvement in the punctuality or frequency of services under a nationalised network.
But there are two exceptions: investment in infrastructure and ticket prices, which just shy of half of the public (45-46%) and six in ten nationalisation supporters (59-61%) would expect to get demonstrably better under nationalisation.
Indeed, a significant amount of the support for rail nationalisation is contingent on being able to at least freeze train fares. Six in ten Britons (58%) would still support rail nationalisation if ticket prices were to remain steady, slightly down from the two-thirds (66%) who support it in principle. But only 6% of the public, including only 8% of those who ostensibly support nationalising the railways, say they would continue to support nationalisation if rail fares were to continue to increase.
This emphasises the extent to which support for rail nationalisation is not primarily borne from ideological commitment, but rather a sense of dissatisfaction with the current state of the rail network.
Regardless of the nationalisation debate, there is public enthusiasm for investment in the rail network. Eight in ten Britons (81%) support building new rail lines to communities that currently lack railway connections, while 86% support investing in improving capacity on highly-used commuter rail services.
While a little less unanimous, 63% of the public are in favour of building high speed railway lines to connect major cities, with just a quarter of Britons (27%) standing in opposition to such an inter-city network. This includes support from Labour (68%), Lib Dem (67%), Conservative (58%) and Reform UK (52%) voters.
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Photo: Getty
