The Passengers That Took On the Train Line

There's a problem with our trains.

They're not working.

Trains are late, overcharged, overcrowded.

Complaints of cancellations, delays.

-TANNOY:

-Southeastern apologises

for this late running and the inconvenience caused.

And ticket price increases have become a thorn in the side of train

companies who transported more than a billion passengers

in the UK last year.

They take not a blind bit of notice.

I think they're very contemptuous.

Crap service. Lower fares.

Protests over train company plans to cut back on guards

have also left commuters hot...

..bothered...

Crap service. Lower fares.

..and at breaking point.

Write to MPs, I've tried to contact the Transport Select Committee.

-No-one cares.

-Yeah.

Five very different passengers on one busy commuter train

have had enough and have agreed to take on the seemingly impossible.

Why don't YOU take over your own train

and run it yourselves?

They're going to attempt to bid for a franchise

to run their own train line.

-You as commuters are going to run Southeastern?

-Yeah.

Can they persuade the Department for Transport

that they could do a better job than the industry bigwigs?

I don't think anybody's attempted this before.

It's not normal. It's never been done before.

It is literally ground-breaking.

Will the voice of the commuter count for anything...

I could run it better than that bunch of monkeys.

As they embark on this mammoth journey,

they'll find out just how complex the train industry is.

Most people would say,

"What on Earth do you want to be at that business for?"

Who really owns our train companies?

British commuters are essentially subsidising German, French

-and Dutch commuters.

-They are, indeed.

Why some services are so shambolic...

It's like all the crap is dumped on us.

..and whether THEY can ever be improved.

When someone says,

"Do you want the opportunity to find out what's possible?",

you have to say yes. You have to go for it.

This is the David and Goliath struggle...

..of the passengers that took on the train line.

A packed commuter train heading into Central London.

If I can't find a handful of disgruntled passengers

willing to take on the behemoths of the train industry here,

then quite frankly, I'm not going to find them anywhere.

It's very frustrating in my day.

Especially in the mornings, when they're delayed,

the trains are delayed

and I feel that we're never going to get to work.

Every night, you just want to get home and, of course,

you're waiting for a train that sometimes never comes.

It's like all the crap is dumped on us.

And we're still paying the same premium that everybody else pays.

I miss putting my kids to bed, I miss seeing my wife.

She's tired, you know, she's only up for another hour or so from when I

get home, so if I'm delayed by half an hour then, you know,

I don't get to see her.

You kind of do the washing, put the dishwasher on,

eat some dinner and go to bed and do it all again.

For those relying on some of the UK's

busy urban commuter train networks,

these complaints have become a depressingly familiar story.

And as this protest over the poor service provided by one particular

London rail company shows,

passengers are no longer prepared to put up with it.

Beyond bad. It's beyond farce.

-It's immoral if not fraudulent and illegal.

-Yeah.

It seems quite clear where the core problems in the system are.

Delays, overcrowding, ticket pricing,

customer information, or lack of,

and dirty, out-of-date trains.

Since when did 21st-century train travel mean cattle-class conditions?

Commuters often say that they're treated like livestock,

but are they?

Come on, sheep.

Go on.

There are 44 pages of regulations

governing the transportation of sheep like these.

Strict rules about overheating and overcrowding.

There are no such rules on a commuter train.

Train operators can pack them in as much as they want.

Southeastern Rail, which covers London,

Kent and parts of East Sussex

earned the lowest customer satisfaction rate

in the country last year.

So when the franchise to run this line came up for sale,

it got me thinking.

Could I persuade any of its disgruntled passengers to buy it?

It's not an original idea.

The 1950s Ealing comedy, The Titfield Thunderbolt,

saw villagers take over their train line.

A railway of your very own.

Just a pipe dream. A castle in the air.

For you, perhaps but not for them.

They ran a railway of their own.

But that was then.

And this is now.

That was fictional.

Oh, adieu.

How very delightful.

And we're proposing to do it for real.

'I'm meeting Phil Marsh,

'one of the rail industry's most respected experts who has experience

'of winning contracts for multi-million pound franchises.'

'Is our proposed passenger takeover even possible?'

So, Phil, what would you say if I put to you

a proposition, which is that

the commuters take over the train line?

That they bid, that they put together a credible plan,

put it to the Department for Transport

and see whether they can run the line instead.

In theory, you can do it.

All you've got to do is get a bunch of commuters together.

They need to have certain skills, seriously good management, finance,

safety, organisational skills.

They need to understand the railways,

but a lot of commuters can do that.

The amount of people that commute into the city on Southeastern,

there's got to be probably 1,000 people that are qualified.

If you're going to do it, now's the time to start

because you've got two years to do it, probably.

So you need three months, as they say, to mobilise,

ie, you get in touch with everybody,

you set up a website saying, "Who wants to run a franchise?

"It's you, running your trains, for you."

-Then...

-See, look, you got excited there.

-Well, it's...

-When you thought about that, you got excited.

Let's hope Phil's optimism is infectious.

Because just getting your head around

the complex ownership structure of the train operating companies

is enough to make anyone head for the hills.

Imagine this is the 12.15 Virgin train from Manchester to London.

It's partly owned by Virgin, which is a private company,

but it's partly owned by Stagecoach, which is publicly listed.

Which means you or I could buy shares.

Quite a few franchises are run by the most unlikely companies.

If you take the Caledonian sleeper, that is run by Serco,

who also run prisons.

But then it gets complicated.

I mean, take the 12.33 Southeastern from Maidstone.

That has a number of parent companies but ultimately

a quarter of it is owned by the French government.

These people here on platform four

are waiting to board the Greater Anglia service.

That is solely owned by the Dutch government.

And the driver of the Chiltern train into Birmingham,

he works for Arriva and who ultimately owns them?

The German government.

It turns out that about 3/4 of Britain's train companies,

Britain's privatised railways, have in fact been renationalised.

They're just owned by other countries.

So can a small but perfectly formed group of commuters

at the end of their tether even compete on that playing field?

I have bought a fine selection of peanuts and crisps

that I hope will bribe these people into giving up six months

of their life to buy a train line, run a train line.

-Thank you.

-Hi.

Hello. Come in, come and sit over here. That's it.

Just over there.

Until today, these passengers have never met.

How was everyone's journey?

Surprisingly all right.

Was it? Brilliant.

Thank you so much for coming.

I appreciate you putting,

you know, taking time out to come this evening.

I've got an idea and I want to put it to you.

Why don't YOU take over your own train

and run it yourselves? You can do it.

We've all asked ourselves, "Could we do better than they can?"

-Oh, definitely.

-Yeah, every time.

-Yeah.

-You know, "How can they be so bad?

"Surely it can't be that hard."

It's not actually that far-fetched.

You know, considering all the whingeing we've been doing,

considering everything we throw at Southeastern when they give us...

-We can't be worse.

-Yeah, quite.

What better bunch of people to run a train franchise,

a rail franchise, than passengers?

This is Phil. He's our ace in the pack.

Phil has worked for British Rail, Railtrack, franchise,

franchises that have been successful.

Phil, what do we need?

What do we need to make this happen?

Patience and hard work.

And structure.

And the first thing of the structure is to form a company which is meant,

if you know, is quite as simple as even buying one off the shelf.

It's not a big deal

but it's not a company like you might run for yourself.

You need to have a serious company with lots of financial backing,

lots of expertise.

It's all out there as you're travelling on the trains

with your fellow commuters,

because there must be a selection like you times 10,000.

It's completely mad but I like it.

It's the voice of the customer so it's the most powerful thing.

So if you've got people who do it everyday instead of execs

and people who probably don't do it,

then you've got a great insight as to where the problems lie.

We buy and sell and create and form companies every single day and

there's probably less skilled people in the room doing it than us.

In fact, I can tell you there is less skilled people in the room.

How could we do this? Where do you start?

It's such a big commitment.

Yeah, and just getting the right people to do it at the right time

and kind of ploughing on.

Maybe I've had one too many beers.

Of you five now sitting there,

I'm going to ask you a very simple question. In or out? In or out?

-In.

-In.

-In.

-In.

Definitely in.

We've got our core team

so now we need to figure out what sets us apart.

This newly formed group have just six weeks to launch a franchise

application from scratch.

And as commuters, they think they have a trump card up their sleeve -

putting commuter concerns at the top of their agenda.

If we are trying to set up a people's franchise,

it's important that we've spoken to the people.

Excuse me, are you a Southeastern commuter?

What sort of things would you like to see?

I think there could be longer trains.

-We always hear about signalling problems.

-OK.

I could run it better than that bunch of monkeys.

So here I am, trying to prove that I can. We'll see!

Better customer service. More trains, punctuality, longer trains.

Cheaper tickets. Anything that...

-All of the above.

-All of the above.

If there were particular things that have driven you mad about

Southeastern that you'd want us to be changing first?

Being on time.

In terms of the train you'll get home tonight,

-do you expect to get a seat?

-Probably not.

-Probably not?

-You genuinely think it's overpriced?

-Yeah, it is overpriced.

I agree with you, as well.

Is your train on time tonight?

No, I think it's just been cancelled.

-OK.

-Do you know why?

-No.

It seems like there's a little bit of rain.

It stops. A little bit of sunshine, it stops.

A little bit of snow, it stops.

-Yeah.

-You think the service is good?

-Yeah.

He thinks the service is good!

He'll learn.

The passengers have come up with a three-point pledge.

Seats for everyone.

Better communication and a timetable that works.

Our unique selling point is that we don't lie to our customers

and we've got the improvements

that have to be made on the lines to make sure...

to ensure that the trains we're running, A,

that they are big enough to carry everybody...

We're putting this proposal together and we're going to be

raising this money to do the pitch for the franchise,

then it seems to be screaming

that we need to have money for investment.

And as the others canvass opinion on the platform,

fellow campaigner James is finding it a tougher sell at home.

The plan is to put together a company

that can put a viable bid in for the franchise.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-So you as commuters are going to put a bid together

to run Southeastern?

Yeah.

Right.

-OK.

-You know, I moan about it, so why don't I do something about it?

Yeah, and then you'd actually have to run it.

Yeah. With the help of the commuters.

You'd have to run one of the biggest companies...

-..in the South East.

-Mm.

Like, you could...

The bid could actually be successful.

What an opportunity, though.

I would be inclined to say...

..go for it, but don't mess up.

Cheers.

The commuters now have a name for their franchise bid.

LSE Rail - The People's Railway.

But behind the slick looking website things aren't quite so professional.

We don't have an office or anything yet.

We've been surviving in various pub back rooms and cafe terraces,

so this is the brains of the operation.

I'm just checking the website's live, which it is.

One of the most important things we needed

was a central place to direct people.

So we threw together a nice website.

It's put together in a few days by all of us.

Communication with passengers is a key concern for the group,

so Ollie wants to ensure that the lines are always open.

We've got our height of technology phone.

Hopefully it'll ring at some point.

I'll just set up the voicemail.

Ooh!

Calls to this number are barred, so our phone line doesn't work.

Thank you for calling. I'm afraid there is no-one available

to take your call currently.

There's currently no-one available to answer your call.

Your call is important to us,

but there is currently no agent available to take your call.

Go-Ahead, the company that owns Southeastern,

made well over £100 million in profit across the whole

of its transport portfolio last year.

And the Southeastern franchise, the one we're bidding for,

was given to them without any competition.

But this time they do have competition.

Us.

But running a train company is a huge task

and we need to know what the Government expects from our bid.

This is a passport and it's the first stage of the process

of buying a train line

and what you have to demonstrate is that you know what you're doing.

That you have technical expertise, you know how to run a train,

and here's a key thing. Commuter satisfaction.

Collaboration with stakeholders and with the community.

So surely that means us?

They want new blood, they want fresh ideas and that's what we've got.

And, secondly, you need experts on board, people who've done it before.

They don't want any schmuck. Everything hinges on this.

Basically, you don't do this properly and you're out of the game.

So the hunt for those all-important rail experts is on.

As the only commuter in the group with contacts in the city,

it's fallen on finance manager Ross to make the first move.

I'm here by myself, the first meeting by myself.

I'm flung into situations that are quite ad hoc in work,

but never something of this scale, or size.

So the pressure's on. The pressure's definitely, definitely on.

Today he'll try to secure the support of Mark Winter,

a former banker turned rail freight entrepreneur.

Probably the best place to start is to explain me and who I am

and who I'm representing.

So there's a group of commuters that have kind of gotten together.

Our aim is put together a bid for the franchise.

Yeah. It's a laudable ambition,

but you face enormous challenges to, you know, get it across the line.

And I guess it's, you know, a question of whether you can gather

the right kind of momentum by drawing into your project

the right kind of experts that you're going to need.

None of us that are involved in this

know that we're anywhere close to being experts.

We're just commuters,

so everyone feels they've got a real stake in it and it's run

by the people for the people.

You've got to understand, fundamentally,

you're going to be running a train company,

and all these other things are add-ons.

They're all laudable and good things to try and achieve,

but you're fundamentally running a train company.

I'll probably just cut straight to the chase.

We would like you to be involved in it.

Some of the stuff you've been involved in,

I think you've got first-hand experience of how challenging

it's been and you can give us a lot of guidance to steer from it.

I don't know how you imagine this is going to work.

My world is slightly different.

I have no particular aspiration to operate trains at the moment.

Yeah, that's quite disappointing.

Probably need to regroup and actually just talk through with folk

what we've seen today, what we've talked about

and kind of what our options are.

It's a knock-back so early in the campaign.

-After you.

-Oh, thank you.

But not to be derailed, the team have hatched a new recruiting plan.

-Good morning.

-Good morning.

Good morning, you're listening

to BBC Radio Kent Breakfast with John and Maggie.

Thank you very much for joining us this Thursday morning.

Chrissy and Ollie are going all out to attract rail experts

that actually use Southeastern

and have a vested interest in fixing the problems.

So, Christine and Oliver, you actually want to...

-We want...

-You want to be a rail company?

We want to be a rail company. Yeah, definitely.

I mean, it's very exciting for us.

From a serious point of view, how far do you expect to get with this?

When someone says, "Do you want the opportunity to at least, you know,

"find out what's possible?" You have to say yes, you have to go for it.

At the moment we're asking people if they can lend their time,

if they can lend their resources to us.

We're looking for people who've got the expertise.

So who are looking for?

You can give them a bit of a shout out now if you want.

We need a company secretary, we need an HR director,

negotiation specialists.

We need regulatory experts, we need safety and standards specialists.

Our focus now is the next four weeks.

If we don't find these people, if we don't get the required resources,

then this could be all over before we've begun.

It's been almost a week since the radio call-out

and we still haven't got any industry experts signed up.

I'm off to see the one expert who has been with us since the start,

rail franchise specialist, Phil Marsh.

I'm hoping he's had better luck boosting the numbers.

I have made I don't know how many phone calls,

but it's in the dozens and dozens.

Most of them do not want to get involved

because they're involved in other franchise bids,

or they're working for a franchise.

OK. I'm pretty worried, you know?

Because they've got nobody on board, they've got no experts.

Not one, not a single person,

and we've got less than four weeks to get this thing in.

All this has demonstrated to me

is what I've suspected over the last 20 years.

The barriers to entry with franchising are so high.

I think scepticism is another barrier to entry.

They don't want to join a group that they don't know

because it may rock the boat for future franchise bids.

-It's a closed shop.

-I was just going to say.

-It is a closed shop.

-Is it the case, Phil,

that if we get one big name on board that there'll be a kind of domino

-effect of people?

-I think so.

You get them on board and it gathers a bit of momentum and that's what we

need, and I think the more of a basis of a team on the top tier of

management we can show people, they will be more inclined to sign up.

No-one said it would be easy,

but we believe there has to be a better way

to successfully run a train network.

And there is.

Switzerland.

Like us, they have a competitive franchise system, and like us,

huge passenger pressure.

But unlike us, they have a rail system that works.

Clean, efficient, on time and the passengers love it.

Chrissy and I have come to Zurich, one of Europe's busier stations,

to see what our bid can gain from some Swiss thinking.

Look at that. It looks like a blooming Concorde, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah! Do you notice something about the board?

Yeah, everything is working, everything's going.

-There's no cancellations.

-There's not one delay.

-No.

-Not one delay.

-Not one delay. Wonderful.

I think we should live here.

You know, if you were to say things that you want from a station,

you know, when you go in as a commuter, what are the things...?

Well, I think you need to have clear communication

-of what's going and if not why?

-Yeah.

-Clean. Cleanliness, definitely.

-Yeah.

But it looks very nice. It's very nice. It looks lovely, doesn't it?

Really clean, well kept.

It just feels like the 21st century as opposed to the 19th century...

That we're living in. Yeah, exactly.

We're meeting with Daniel Ackermann who works for Switzerland's

largest train company, SBB.

It's owned by the government, but operates like a private company.

It just seems to be going so well, you know?

Everything seems to be very smooth.

What are we doing wrong?

It's a repeated timetable from the morning at six until at least ten at

night. So every train leaves at the same minute to the same destinations

every half an hour. So you actually don't need a timetable,

you just know it by heart.

Of course, we do have cancellations from time to time.

You can have an engine failure,

you can have a tree on a power line or something like that,

but it's sort of rather a rare occasion, basically.

On the train to Basel,

Chrissy wants to know how the Swiss deal with problems that bring

Southeastern to a grinding halt, like faulty trains.

So in all your time driving one of these high-speed trains,

do they break down very often, or...?

Absolutely not. It's very rare that the train can really not run.

If you have some small problems,

but the small problems may be things that the passenger

will not recognise.

If the train can maybe not run,

there are some trains in reserve we call,

then we take another one.

And what happens if, say, you're not well?

Do they have another stand-by driver?

Absolutely, yes.

So, Adrian, will we on time getting into Basel?

Yes, we will arrive in about four minutes in Basel.

-Fantastic.

-On time.

-Fantastic.

It's just a given in Switzerland that poor service is not an option.

It must be very easy access, it must be personal,

it must be linked and connected and it must be very easy to use.

You do not even need to think one second how to use it.

Like a toothbrush. You don't think, you just use it.

Go to the bathroom, use the toothbrush.

We just use the public transport system like that.

Rather than waiting for things to go wrong,

maintenance staff walk the track nightly to locate tiny cracks in the

track and fix them way in advance.

OK, he's now cutting out a section of the track so we can change

the two slightly damaged sections

that we've got here in front.

And because they're all given longer franchises,

the train operators here have an incentive to invest long-term.

They WILL get their money back.

In a way, they were laughing.

It was almost embarrassed laughter because it was like,

"we can't imagine that we'd run a train system where the timetable,

"all the trains would say cancelled."

-No.

-Or you wouldn't be even told why a train was cancelled.

-No.

-To them, that's inconceivable.

There's communication, which I think clearly is the key, isn't it?

Yeah. Even though they're excellent,

even though it's the number one train service on Earth,

they're still saying, well, there's real room for improvement.

I was like, what(?)

For us, it's as though it's an afterthought, you know?

It's just inconceivable how they would even think of us, really.

One of the key things that we could take back for our bid is basically,

all the profits that they make, and they do make a profit...

-Yeah, of course.

-Is ploughed back into the transport system.

So it's always reinvested,

and that's why they're able to keep the infrastructure up-to-date.

Since privatisation the UK rail network has a much more fractured

ownership structure than the Swiss system.

We already know that the French,

Dutch and German governments have huge financial stakes

in some of OUR train companies here.

But who is benefiting from the return on THEIR hefty investments?

Academic John Stittle spent 20 years following the rail privatisation

scheme and has a personal view on where the profits are going.

70% of our railways are basically owned by foreign owners.

How many of those are government owned, so owned by the state railway

of Germany or Holland or France as opposed to private companies?

Ultimately, a lot of the profits

are distributed in the form of dividends and it's

going to support their railways.

Going back in the last 14, 15-year period,

there's probably been about £3.5 billion

that have left the franchise,

which had they not have been a privatised company,

-those funds could've been reinvested in the railway industry.

-Wow!

It's amazing, really.

The UK Government can't run them, but overseas companies,

state companies can, and they do.

And we heard a couple of years ago the German Ministry of Transport was

actually saying, "We're skimming off the profits on our investments

"in the UK to reinvest in Deutsche Bahn."

So basically, British commuters are essentially subsidising German,

-French and Dutch commuters.

-They are indeed, yes.

-Wow.

-Yes.

We've got just two weeks to get the first stage of our application in,

but we're still struggling to sign up those all-important experts.

If anybody's interested, we are trying to set up a people's railway,

run by the people for the people.

If we can get just one on board, we're hoping others will follow.

We're a group of commuters that have come in together

to look at replacing Southeastern as the rail franchise

at the end of 2018.

So city high-flyer Ross is giving it one final push,

and this time he's not taking any chances.

I do that thing where, it's in a film musical,

that if you're nervous, you just think, "What would Madonna do?"

And, er, in Desperately Seeking Susan.

He's managed to get a meeting with Colin Greenslade,

a strategic planner, who's held very senior positions at Network Rail,

British Rail and the rail regulator.

-Pleased to meet you.

-And you.

-Are you well?

-Yes, sir. Yourself?

Yeah, good, thanks.

If Ross can get Colin to join our bid,

we'll have a top expert on board and the leverage

to get others interested.

We've called ourselves London and South East's Railway,

it's the people's railway.

At the minute, we've got some asset management accountants,

economists, marketing.

So that's where you come in.

Yes.

So we are looking for you to join us,

and to support us in any way that you can to get us

through this process.

Anything that you do do would probably send quite big ripples

across industry to say that this is something that's new,

it's never been tried before and these people are willing to...

And I think that's, that's the positive.

It's novel and it's a strength, really.

The commuters are showing an interest in their own service.

Any help you can give us at all would be greatly appreciated.

No commuter group has ever stepped forward to run a train franchise

before and I think, you know,

that difference of perspective fetches something new to this

and something fresh.

I'm happy to impart my information and knowledge

and see where that takes us.

-That'd be amazing. Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

So Madonna would now take her clothes off

and pour beer over herself.

Yeah, that was... That was awesome. That was really good.

Hi, Ollie, it's Ross.

'How did it go?'

Well, what would you want me to say to you?

CHUCKLES

'What would be good news this point?

'OK, whoever you've met is amazing and wants to jump on board

'and is going to put their name to half the passport.'

All of that.

'Amazing!

'Oh, good, well, I'm glad someone's had a good day.'

It's a major result.

With Colin Greenslade now on board,

other experts have since come rolling in.

And as far as the franchise bid is concerned,

the passengers are one step closer to taking on the train line.

But if we're going to win it,

we've got to prove that we have an idea that makes us stand out.

Phil Marsh has brought me and Ross to Hampshire

to visit a heritage railway line that he thinks could provide us

with some innovative ideas for our business model.

It is really exciting.

Such a romantic way to get to work.

You'd have to dress up, though.

You'd need to wear... You could do, like, an old-school city gent.

I mean, this looks incredible but what's the relevance to us?

It's a medium-sized business.

It employs a lot of people but crucially does not pay a dividend,

so all profits are reinvested back into the company.

If we're to model our franchise on this small but perfectly formed

Mid Hants line,

the £25 million profit Southeastern's owners Go-Ahead made

from its trains in the last financial year

could go towards improving the service.

The fact that this line is run not-for-profit is crucial

to its success as a line.

The railway has made a profit for the last 15 years and all that

profit has been reinvested back into the railway,

-which is why it all looks so magnificent.

-Right. Wow.

So you think the fact it looks like Harry Potter isn't putting you off?

We're on our way to Hogwarts, aren't we?

I didn't really know what the benefit was coming here

because it's... You think it's a bit geeky and it's a bit,

"Oh, it's steam engines,"

but actually they turn a profit, they're really smart,

and a really, really smart enterprise.

If we were to run Southeastern Rail like this,

we'd be Britain's first train operating company to plough all our

profits back into the service.

That would be £25 million in profits not going to shareholders

but back into the trains.

Now, 25 million, that's a lot of money to you or me.

But how much would that actually buy us on the railway?

I've come with Chrissy and a new recruit to our franchise committee,

Summer Dean, to a train manufacturing company.

Adrian Shooter's been in the business for nearly 50 years

and, until 2015, was chairman of Chiltern Rail and London Overground.

When it comes to how far your money can stretch in this game,

he's the man to talk to.

I don't know how much a train costs.

We're thinking at the moment, like, we've got about 25 mil to play with.

What, does that, will that buy a carriage?

Will that buy a seat?

Your, your 25 million

would certainly buy a ten-carriage train.

You'd have a certain amount of change left over.

You wouldn't have enough for two 10-carriage trains for 25 million.

-One train.

-You can essentially buy one train.

You can buy one and a bit trains, I suspect.

We're going to have to look at another option other than buying,

actually physically buying a train.

And something else we've learned today is that most rail franchise

owners don't bother buying their trains.

A typical train operator's franchise lasts for only seven years.

So is there any incentive to invest in trains that they don't own?

Ooh! Really lovely, isn't it?

-It is just like a Tube train.

-Yeah.

It's got 44 seats but it's also got lots of standing space,

and this train is ideal for moving a lot of people not a huge distance

but doing it quickly.

And with the four doors, so we can get people on and off quickly,

so we can keep that dwell time down so that you can run a more frequent

service of trains.

How far would our 25 million take us in terms of refurbishment?

If you spent between £100,000 and £200,000 per coach,

you would see a noticeable difference.

It's clear to us how we would spend that 25 million.

But all this talk of rail companies making huge profits isn't a view

shared by everyone.

Other train operating companies, often seen as the bad guys,

just misunderstood.

I'd really like to dispel this myth

that train companies are making a huge amount of money.

They're most certainly not.

If you were looking from outside the industry as a business proposition,

where safety is so important,

customer service is absolutely vital,

and then you're getting the sort of returns,

maybe only 2% or 3% profit on turnover,

most people would say, "Well, what on Earth do you want to be

"in that business for?"

So if there's not as much in it for train operators as we think,

then why do they do it?

Someone who has scrutinised the railway industry

is Manchester Business School professor, Karel Williams.

In 2013, he conducted a study, commissioned by the TUC,

into the franchise system.

His findings showed a privatised rail structure that relies upon

billions of pounds of hidden subsidies and government incentives.

Well, let's think about it in terms of the cafe analogy.

You and I are going to open a cafe.

First of all, we lease all the kit,

the tables, the chairs, the coffee machine.

We're not going to invest in any of that.

We're going to lease it.

And we're renting the premises from a very friendly landlord who spent a

lot of money improving it and has now lowered the rent

specially for us.

Which is basically Network Rail,

which owns the track

and should be charging track access charges.

It does, but it charges super low track access charges

which don't reflect the cost.

So those super low track access fees that Network Rail charges train

operating companies are subsidised by guess who?

The taxpayer is directly subsidising the train operating companies.

So as it turns out,

we kind of have a nationalised rail service

but we pretend that we don't?

Public expenditure on the railway system has more than doubled

since privatisation began.

It's currently costing taxpayers £4 billion a year.

And then at the end,

suppose we've misjudged the suburb in which we've opened this cafe.

Despite the low rent,

despite the fact that we didn't have to invest in the fittings,

we've leased it all, we're still making a loss week by week.

We have an arrangement with the government that we can walk away

with very little penalty whatsoever.

There's no essential downside, pretty much.

If the profit doesn't materialise,

you can walk away without any serious consequences.

After weeks investigating what their core pledges should be,

the group have come up with a clear way

of creating a better rail system.

Reinvest in the system,

refurbish trains to deal with overcrowding,

and greater transparency and communication with the customer.

They've got their core pledges in place,

but so far the passengers behind the LSE rail bid

have been operating from the back of pubs and spare rooms.

Finally, thanks to a supporter of the campaign pulling a few strings,

they have an office.

The whole place is just empty.

It is just a giant new block which they've built.

No-one's using any of the offices.

James, through his connections, has basically sorted it out for us.

-OK.

-Fantastic.

215's where we can have meetings.

And kind of, just basically, try and impress people.

We've reached the deadline for the first stage of the bid application,

with a full board of rail specialists signed up.

Ollie, you already look like you're running things.

We've got 130 years' worth of railway experience now,

or something. It's incredible.

I honestly didn't think we'd get to this point.

It's been a long journey to get here,

yet all that we've really done is fill out the pre-qualification

questionnaire, which is the process that determines whether we can be

shortlisted to tender for the franchise.

So this is it, guys. This is the moment.

Yeah.

That's it. Attach.

Upload confirmation.

-Yikes.

-Yikes, exactly!

Well done, guys. You've done it, you've done it.

-You've done it.

-We're in.

What's it like, having a railway company?

The passengers have done something that's never been done before.

They've submitted a bid to run their own train line.

And they have got serious rail people believing in the idea.

And their fate as a rail company

is now in hands of the Department for Transport.

Rail industry expert Phil Marsh,

who has been with us from the outset,

believes that what the passengers have done today is unprecedented.

I mean, do you think what we've done is different?

I don't think anybody's attempted this before.

You can hire consultants to fill out an application

but it might cost you £200,000.

So therefore, what we've done for nothing,

absolutely zilch, it's not normal, it's never been done before.

It is literally ground-breaking.

We've signed up a top lawyer,

top safety expert, top marketing manager,

a permanent way engineer,

we have got a top team that is credible.

Let's see what they do.

I genuinely cannot wait.

It's been an amazing few weeks, actually.

And it's real now.

If we could pull this off, it would be fantastic.

Absolutely...

Why not? We're trying our best, aren't we?

It's been three weeks since the passport application went in

and I've been called to an urgent meeting by Phil.

So, Phil, you tell me that we've got some news?

Yes. The Department for Transport has said that we need to know,

before we start really assessing your passport application,

and spending taxpayers money on it,

have you got £50,000,000 in assurity?

So... My initial response, because I have a slightly mischievous side,

was to say did you want it cash or a cheque?

There was nothing about this in the passport application form,

absolutely nothing in it in the process, the policy documents,

the confidentiality agreement, there was nothing in it.

So you think...

-They're changing the rules.

-Without telling you.

'This is a major hitch in our bid.

'So we're calling a group meeting, to work out our next move.'

-'Hello, Chrissy.'

-Hello, Phil.

-'Are you all right?'

-Very well, thank you.

Waiting with bated breath.

Hello, Phil, how are you?

ALL: Hi!

Where are you? Where are you?

'I am currently on a beach in Amsterdam.

Are you sitting down, because we have some news,

Phil's got some news.

I am. Oh, dear.

I have heard back from the Department for Transport,

about the passport application.

-Right.

-They wondered whether I could

show them that I've got 50 million quid before they market.

50 million?

LAUGHTER

'We better start checking behind the sofa, then.'

I've got two, three, four, five...

£8, £7, is that enough?

So they're just trying to frighten us into backing out,

-with the threat of money?

-'Into submission, yes.'

-Yeah.

That's what they were doing, scaremongering, weren't they?

I think they're just trying to raise the bar, you know,

too high for us, basically, you know, I think.

Oh, my God.

I've never done fundraising in my life...

apart from a cake sale.

I don't think any of my cakes are going to make us anywhere near that.

I think they're trying to scare us.

Definitely.

We've come so far in our bid to take over Southeastern Rail,

but this is a reminder of the multi-million pound companies

we're up against.

Are we fighting a losing battle here?

I've got a meeting with Louise Ellman,

who's the chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Transport to find out

what the passengers should do next about the passport.

So, Louise, I don't know if you know about our project,

but it's essentially we're getting the commuters

to bid for the franchise.

Southeastern commuters to run their own line,

which sounds like an insane idea until, actually,

you look at what we've done.

We've put together an incredibly credible plan.

The department should definitely be looking at a variety of bidders.

They have to look at a financially sound and viable plan.

That is absolutely essential.

But once that is established,

they should welcome a variety of bidders who will put passengers at

the centre of things. That's what public service should be all about.

It's really good to hear you say that because all we've met with

so far have just been obstacles,

or the appearance of openness and accountability but then, actually,

when push comes to shove, then suddenly the walls are put up.

So we were asked to raise £50 million up front that could prove

that we had financial viability.

Well, financial viability is very important and that has to be there,

but once that's established,

I think it's very important that people are committed to running that

-service.

-You are the person,

the one person in that building over there in Parliament who's actually

been questioning what's going on and so what have you concluded?

Well, use of the railway has expanded and that is very welcome,

but often there's not really focus on the needs of the passenger.

In the conventional franchising process, we're told that

the passenger view is part of the consideration,

but it's not really very open about how that's done and indeed whether

it's done, and all the information that we're increasingly getting

shows us it's the passengers who are losing out and whether its

passengers in overcrowded carriages,

never able to get a seat,

whether its passengers on lines that simply aren't working and it seems

that the passengers' interest is really left behind.

So I'd have thought the Department should welcome something with the

passenger right at the centre.

Brilliant. You think we shouldn't give up?

Don't think you should give up. Keep going.

So now all we've got to do is find £50 million.

If there's one person in our team who can do it, it's Ross.

It's a bit annoying that they're asking us to do that when there's

other people I doubt have been asked to do the same.

I think it's a question of how do we play this?

So I sort of feel, and the other guys feel,

that you know about money.

There would need to be some serious business cases put in play before we

could even entertain it, and even then it'd be difficult.

Have you done deals with 50 million quid?

Much, much, much more.

So Ross and Phil are off to a City fundraising evening

to pitch to potential investors.

I have never asked for £50 million.

I've sometimes misplaced £50 million,

but I've had to find it quickly.

As you do!

So you become quite desensitised when you work in the industry,

but it's still a lot, a lot, a lot of money.

So there's a lot of pressure riding on this.

This exclusive event is being hosted

by the biggest social investment bank in the UK.

This is a group of passengers, from what I understand.

How many passengers are involved?

-There is... The core group are six of us.

-OK.

The common theme is everyone's quite passionate about it, you know?

We pay you lots of money every year, we don't get much back.

-You're paying an incredible amount of money.

-Yeah.

'Because we want to reinvest all profit back into improving the

'service, Ross and Phil are focusing on a particular group of investors

'who are looking for projects with social benefit.

'They need the offer of a pledge to the tune of £50 million to fulfil

'the Department for Transport's requirements.'

What we're trying to marry

is disenfranchised commuters with rail industry experts and actually

-running the franchise.

-Just like a community interest group, I suppose.

Yeah, along those lines.

If you can quantify the value you're bringing to the local area,

then that's very attractive.

Yeah. So we want to kind of make it a partnership,

more akin to what John Lewis does where people get skin in the game.

They feel really kind of passionate about what they do.

So operate on a partnership basis.

So, they're looking for the wow factor, so it's...

balancing the social impact and the return.

We need people to understand that it's run by normal people for normal

people to reinvest back into that community.

The money I'm using to invest, I'd rather it be invested in a company

that's actually utilising my money for greater good

rather than for just pure return.

Having piqued the interest of investors,

Ross and Phil make their move.

So you're still interested in it?

Absolutely. So it'd be great to have you guys in.

We'll work with you guys to arrange a time to come in.

We'll bring a larger group of the other passengers who are involved in

this along with yourself and we can talk over what you're looking to do.

The commuters followed up with a meeting and convinced investors

their franchise bid is worth a £50 million financial pledge -

on condition they go through to the next stage.

Despite the bar being raised,

the commuters have managed to jump right over it, and just in time.

So now all they've got to do is convince the Department

for Transport that they're ready to take on the train line.

Two o'clock, Department for Transport.

That's where I'm going now.

We've done everything that's been asked of us

and it's just a question of, can the Department for Transport,

do they have the imagination and the guts to actually do what they say

they want to do, which is to bring in other people to run this thing?

We've done everything and now it's just a question of, do they see it?

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Good afternoon. How are you?

-All right.

I've got your back, but I don't want to have to step in.

-I'm going to stay outside, guys, OK? Good luck.

-See you soon.

-See you later.

-All right, my love.

-Good luck. All right. Good luck.

The Department have vetoed filming during the meeting,

so now I'm playing the waiting game until they're done.

Well, that was fun.

I think we all feel like dressed-down schoolchildren.

What did they say? What did they say?

-What did they say?

-Obviously when they saw that we were a group of

commuters, they were quite shocked,

-but they went with it.

-Shocked?

Sadly they're saying that we didn't have enough evidence

and we didn't answer the questions fully enough.

The level of detail that they wanted was like War And Peace.

We challenged them a lot because they kind of started off by saying

they'd tested this process to make sure the likes of us could go

through this at the same level as the likes of Govia.

I don't believe that that's remotely honest or fair.

They even said that they expect this to be filled out by a bid team over

three or four months where one person is responsible for one

question and then they have a team and they have lawyers.

-For each section?

-How on Earth do they think that anyone other than

the likes of Govia or someone that's turning over a billion every three

-months is going to do it?

-We did pass two sections.

-Yeah.

-Right, OK. Go on.

The mandatory rejection ones cos we're not drug runners or money

-launderers. We passed that one. That was cool.

-OK.

Did you get a sense that any of this was about improving

the railway, about making things better for commuters?

Not in the slightest. This was a government procurement process.

There's nothing about the railways, nothing about improvement,

nothing about customer service, about failings.

The whole system is futile.

What is the point? We've done our best.

We're not a multi-billion euro or pound or dollar organisation,

transport industry.

You'll never succeed. You will not succeed.

It's as simple as that.

'The Department for Transport argues that it does award franchises

'through open competition,

'but it's vital that anyone bidding passes rigorous financial capability

'and health and safety tests.

'It was their view that we didn't meet that criteria.'

I'm pissed off, you know. I've taken a lot of time...

We've all taken a lot of time out of our days, our life to try and put

this together and it feels like when you look at it now,

two months ago there was someone setting up a tripwire which we

fell over, but we didn't realise it.

Today has been quite upsetting, hasn't it?

-It's been devastating.

-Well, devastating.

Since we were turned down by the Department for Transport,

Louise Ellman's Transport Select Committee have declared the entire

rail franchising system not fit for purpose.

Our big idea, to upgrade the overcrowded Southeastern Trains

so they have wider doors and more space

has been echoed by the Mayor of London.

And some MPs have called for longer term franchises,

rather like the system we saw in Switzerland,

to encourage operating companies to invest in their lines,

just as we proposed.

Despite the Department for Transport admitting to me that services on the

Southeastern Rail network have been unacceptably poor for too long,

neither the Rail Minister or Southeastern itself wanted to be

interviewed about future commuter involvement in the franchise system.

It's been a long journey of discovery for the commuters and I

want to know if it's been worth it.

-What do you think?

-For us, I think it's definitely the end of the road.

I think the government and the DFT and everyone involved in it

has sent very clear signals.

But we were doing what the government have asked for.

We came up with the solutions

for what is the problem with the Southeast.

Our solution was bang on.

-I know.

-It was bang on!

But they didn't... They just didn't want us.

It was us!

Our solution was right, they didn't want us.

That guy said to us, when we went in there,

"We had to see you. We consulted our legal experts, we had to see you."

-That's a very good point. "We had to see you." Yeah.

-Didn't he?

-Not, "Wanted to see you."

-They shot us down very quickly,

but it seems that they're using a lot of our ideas.

Talking here about putting customer representation.

That's exactly the wording.

You know, this is exactly what we were saying to the DFT

that we wanted to provide.

This was what was on our leaflets, on our website.

This is all the stuff that we sat in the DFT meeting going,

"This is the stuff that people care about."

It seems that they're taking a lot of what we've asked for on board,

so for that, I think it's wonderful because I'm still commuting,

-we're all commuting.

-So we achieved something?

-So we've achieved.

If we have sort of knocked some sense into it

and that they can realise,

actually, this is what normal people who commute every day,

-this is what they want.

-It's one thing to sign a change.org petition,

but to follow that up and then say,

-"I'm happy to give out leaflets, I'm happy to do this."

-Yeah.

This is how we found each other and look where we got to.

Do you think in this day and age that this is the way that people get

-heard?

-We didn't achieve exactly what we wanted because we're not

running a train, you know, our own train service.

LSE Rail isn't to be,

but we have achieved something in the fact that if things change and

the franchise bids have changed,

then that will impact on all our lives.

Because of the way it's gone,

we have exposed the system for what it is,

and I think that's probably the best catalyst for change you can get.

Cheers. I'm going to drink to that.

To the people's railway.

Long may it live. Long may it live!

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

-To be continued!