Alex Singleton

On Sunday I was the guest speaker at the Cambridge University Conservative Association’s gin and tonic party. I spoke defending the privatisation of rail by the last Conservative administration, pointing out that, on all major measures, the railways have improved, whether you look at passenger numbers, punctuality, investment levels or safety. I pointed to the […]

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 […]

There’s a quasi-religious view that Europe’s railways would be better off if they were vertically integrated, with track and train operators combined. But it’s difficult to find any current examples around the world to back up this view.
Only two examples of successful vertically-integrated rail systems seem to be proposed. The first is Amtrak, the American […]