How can we make Britain’s railways work better? On Telegraph.co.uk, I suggest that competition between train operators is key, pointing out two very good examples - Hull Trains and Grand Central - neither of which is a franchise holder. But I argue that the government is not championing competition:

The tragedy is that this sort of embryonic competition is far from the norm. The government has failed to push forward the idea, or indeed engage in any profound thinking about the rail network, perhaps because it was so badly burnt by its misguided nationalisation of Railtrack. The result is that a company that wants to compete on the network finds itself needlessly bogged down by complex rules, uncertainty and tedious consultation processes.

Fortunately, the government has shown little enthusiasm for the hackneyed argument that trains and track should be vertically integrated. That model, which other countries have been abandoning, would truly have the effect of killing off whatever little competition we have. But the government, by failing to be an enthusiastic advocate of competing services, has presided over a system mired by monopoly.