How to fix Britain's railways

As the industry haemorrhages money, a leading transport expert tells Simon Calder how better railcards, reservations and more first-class carriages might bring in extra revenue

- By Simon Calder

The rail industry is in a mess. In the second that it took you to read that sentence, another £400 of taxpayers' cash was tipped into the gaping void between what the government spends on the railway and how much passengers pay to travel by train in Britain. In the course of a year, that amounts to a £12.5bn subsidy (excluding the ballooning cost of the HS2 project).

Cutting costs has always proved difficult, not least because the rail unions are adept at extracting higher pay in return for increased productivity. Significantly thinner timetables save only a morsel of cash, because the fixed costs of the railway are astronomical. But I fear we may soon see some swingeing cuts to services in a desperate bid to reduce the deficit.

How about approaching the destination of lower subsidy from the opposite direction: increased revenue?

Long-suffering commuters may shudder at the prospect of even higher fares. Yet there could be painless ways to persuade more passengers on board. That’s according to Thomas Ableman, mobility guru and former Transport for London director of strategy and innovation.

In his latest blog, he comes up with some radical ideas.

Reservations for any train