Train Fares: Taken for a Ride? Panorama

Overcrowded, ofpbt late and overpriced. I think the fares are

scorch gnat. I've had flights which are cheaper. They're shocking.

your place for a ride on Britain's railways. It feels like they're

taking the mickey. Railway bosses say train travel is more popular

than levels. Increased punctuality, satisfaction. Fares are higher than

anywhere else in Europe. It's deeply depressing that we can't run

a railway the way they can abroad. Every day is a crisis. I believe --

the bleep is on all the time. Tonight, why are fares so high? We

track down the millions that get wasted on our railways. Britain

goes to work and every day around two million of us rely on the

railways, just as the recession threatens, the Government's has put

up fares by 6%. It's making customary courteous commuters see

red. Neil Middleton, a senior risk analyst, will now pay �3,300 a year

for his journey into London every morning. What do you think of fares

going up? It's very depressing. They're selling to captive market.

We have no choice in it whatsoever. Setting off from Havant, a former

naval officer, David Habershon. He once served on the Royal Yacht

Britannia, their moto - unon trucive excellence. I spend a lot

of time on the train, 20 hours a week. It's crowded at the end. The

seats are uncomfortable on a lot of the trains. I'm paying a lot of

money for it. I want a reasonable journey. He'll pay nearly �5,000 a

year after the latest fare rises. think they're pretty appalling.

They're really bad this year. Well above inflation, which they haven't

been in the past. That is a big factor in future, whether I travel

by train or no. -- not. Whitehouse commutes from Wellington

to Birmingham. That will cost over �1500 a year now. The service gets

quite crowded between Wellington and Wolverhampton. Over the last

few weeks instead of putting on a full four carriages, it's two

carriages instead. It means you're trying to cram the same number of

people into a shortened train. People have been complaining about

the heat and about not being able to get on, not being able to get

off. It's just, there's no explanationment -- Explanation.

moans about the railways live on Twitter. He's known as

Benjionthetrain. Does it make you feel better whinging your way to

work? I don't see it as whinging. I see it as giving a voice to...

Rather than complaining in my head, thinking this should be different,

I'm doing something about it. It's nice to feel part of the commuting

community. Dom Utton is fighting back. He commutes to Oxford via

London via Reading, where trains are often held up. Every time he

gets in late, he sends a managing director the train company an e-

mail that will take the same amount of time to read. Today's delay - 17

minutes. Winter has come Mark, the seasons have turned. That Indian

summer we were enjoying so much, you remember that Indian summer...

They're wasting my time every day, I'm going to waste their time.

many words of complaint have you E mailed First Great Western so far?

I was working it out. It's around 40,000 now. That's nearly the

length of half a novel. This is War And Peace on the Oxford to London

lieb. -- line. I have a lot of nonsense to talk about. It shows

the scale of the delays I think. The last Transport Secretary called

the railway a rich man's toy. Now the minister says we've got to pay

even higher fares to get a better one. We want to give better value

for money to taxpayers and fare payers by getting the cost of the

railways down. Many the meantime passengers will benefit from a

major programme of upgrades. Their fares are helping to pay for the

upgrades. The train companies say that despite the fares, there have

never been more people travelling by train or enjoying it so much.

think probably the right people to ask are the people who use the

railways, the passengers. And through the independent watchdog

Passenger Focus we know satisfaction is at 84%, a record

high. That's a statistical ready familiar to passengers. The 84%,

it's easy to hide behind that number. Are you 84% satisfied?

I'm not. I'm going to make a badge saying I'm a dissatisfied customer.

You love to quote that statistic, but the next question in the survey

tells us only 44% of passengers think the level of their fares,

ticket price, is value for money. That seems to make nonsense of the

84% doesn't it? It shows we still have much to do as an industry.

Value for money is as much as anything, a function of the price

at which we offer fares, which in turn, is driven by the cost of

running the railway. OK. So why does running the railway cost so

much? The present system was created when the last Tory

Government privatised the railway in 1993. They separated the running

of the trains from the operation of the tracks and infrastructure, now

Network Rail's job. Overall, a former Tory Transport Minister

awards himself... About seven out of ten. Very good in parts. I think

there's really common agreement across the political spectrum that

privatising train operations was exactly the right thing to do.

Utton, the e-mail man, doesn't give seven out of ten. His season ticket

costs him nearly �500 a month. Delays cost valuable family time.

So I've got two kids, four-year-old and three-year-old. Money is tight.

I am the bread winner in the house. It is the fact that I'm not getting

what I'm paying for that annoys me the most. If it's going to cost

that much, I expect at least it would work properly. Like most of

us, Dom Utton has a go at the train company when things go wrong. But

on the privatised railway things aren't that simple. Who is in

charge? Good question. When the train is badly delayed, an

expensive blame game kicks in. are sorry... All over Britain train

companies and Network Rail have teams of people ready to argue

about whose fault it was. There are 600 people, I understand, in the

industry whose jobs are delay atery buegs staff there to blame each

other. That's their job. That's right. There are 600 atery buegs

people, people think that contract and legal frameworks and fines and

blame can improve an industry. It doesn't do it at all. It's complete

rubbish. The public don't want to hear all that. They don't want

excuses. They don't want to hear people blaming each other. They

just want the railways to run as efficiently as they can and drive

down the costs. In the end, I know everything we get comes from the

taxpayer. Precisely. The public subsidy to the railway has gone on

and on rising. It's now �4 billion a year. But how much of that money

is wasted? The costs are running the railways is higher than in

other European countries. It isn't fair on taxpayers or passengers to

ask them to pay for inefficiency in the railways. Passengers now have a

champion, dedicated to cutting costs. Sir Roy McNulty reported to

the Government last year that we're subsidising an industry that's been

Crownically overspending. Both taxpayers and passengers are paying

too much for the railway. We would say about 30% too much. 30% sounds

a huge amount over the odds? It is a lot over the odds. But it's a big

expensive railway and there are opportunities to reduce the costs.

So, every time you buy one of these, a big chunk of the money you're

spending gets wasted. Simple. Sir Roy McNulty says that our railways

are costing us 30% more than they should. Wow. That's huge. Our fares

are 30% higher than they are in Europe. Probably for a lesser

service. You're probably right, yeah. That's very depressing, very

depressing indeed. And the key reason, he said, was down to

Network Rail. Poor budget control on infrastructure projects,

renewing and improving the railway. You put Network Rail's

infrastructure costs fairly and squarely in the frame in your

report. It's the biggest single element of the railways' costs.

It's an area where it has been identified repeatedly that there is

significant scope for improvement. Network Rail say that's not fair

because the projects they have to manage on busy British Railways,

like remodelling Reading to cut congestion, are often bound to cost

more than they do abroad. We don't accept the 30% figure. We have

questions over how it was derived. Sir Roy says there's a major factor

in the 30% efficiency gap. He's repeated to us it's the cost of

your infrastructure project. infrastructure cost there's

certainly a huge penalty in building infrastructure on our

railways. We just can't shut the railways for large periods of time

to build major renuelz. That's the big difference of costs here than

in Europe. But Network Rail's critics don't buy that. They say

not only does it waste public money, but it's not properly accountable

to taxpayers. At present, nobody has actually given us a really

credible explanation for the differential in costs between the

UK and our European partners. to know where your money goes on

the railway? Neil Middleton, we met him earlier, works in the City and

deals with financial facts and figures every day. I know that

actually I have very little influence over how that money is

spents. The accounting is very unclear. He tried to find out more

by applying to be one of the members of Network Rail's board

appointed by the general public. They turned him downment -- down.

Whose railway does it feel like? Nobody 's. It seems accountable to

itself rather than the travelling public. We tried to crack the great

railway mystery to track down what a particular project had cost.

Rugby on the West Coast main line. The upgrade on the line as a whole

was started by Railtrack and ended up �6.5 billion over budget. Yes,

billions. Finally Network Rail took over. So Rugby station is down to

them. Now express trains whistle through. Terrific. Unless you live

in Rugby and want more trains to stop there.

Down at the wheel tappers on Railway Terrace, the locals feel

ignored. Our particular concern was to maintain and improve the level

of service for Rugby. And did you get an improved service through

Rugby as you hoped? Definitely not. We suffer the pain of the

disruption, whilst the work was going on, but our overall level of

service at the end of it was poorer. At one point during the project, at

the beginning of 2008, the service wasn't just disrupted, it was non-

existent. The engineering work had badly overrun and the train

companies weren't going to take the blame for that. They say it's their

fault failure of Network Rail to complete work. From their point of

view it's unclear whether it's Virgin Trains Network Rail or nb

else. There were no trains to get them to their destination. The job

was finished eventually. Network Rail was fined �14 million for this

and two other engineering overruns. But how much of the Rugby project

finally cost? The word on the street they had gone several

million over budget. We were determined to solve the mystery.

Network assured us their accounts are a model of openness. Yet

they're anything but an open book to us. We weren't the only ones to

It is very difficult to get Network Rail to tell you what the original

cost of a project was supposed to be and what it actually turned out

to be. It is an incredibly opaque process of accounting that appears

to make this almost impossible figure that they arrive at. In any

private business you would expect that information to be instantly

available, good or bad. Who else could help us find out how much of

our money had been spent? Surely the industry's official regulator

could offer us enlightenment? We asked you guys while we were making

this programme to help us. At the end of the day, you could not help

us to understand the system any more than we could in the first

place. I think we told you to get the data from Network Rail. That is

their data and this is their business and it is not for us as

the regulator to give out third- party's data that does not belong

to us. So you did know what the projected costs of Rugby station

where? And you knew what the costs were in the end but you did not

think it was our business to ask you? We did have that information

on the West coast renovation project as a whole, but I cannot

confirm whether we had it for the Rugby station project individually.

This is our money. Is it looking the other way or oversight? This is

effective oversight. We still did not have an answer to a simple

question. Did Network Rail overspend or not? We pressed on.

The chief executive finally told us... You are absolutely right.

There was a substantial cost overrun on the Rugby project. It

was material, there is no doubt. But what were the numbers? Network

Rail said they would give us the actual figure of how much they

overspend remodelling Rugby station. We are still waiting. That is

shocking because this is public money. As taxpayers we want to know

where that money goes. Will fare payers and they have to be

accountable to the public. -- will fare payers. They are not currently

accountable. Network Rail has been overspending

and they have not been keen to tell us by how much.

But is there any other way to run the railway? This is a little

station called Warwick Parkway. It is on the Chiltern Line. And this

man risked his own company's money to build his own brand new station

at a price that they could afford. 30 went about it the usual way and

asked Railtrack to quote him at the a price. -- first he went about it

the usual way. They quoted as 13 million and we could not afford

that so we did it ourselves. They build their own station for 5.2

million, yes, less than half. Chiltern believe that train

companies that deal directly with customers are the best people to

handle investment and control costs on the railway, not Network Rail.

They just love their customers at Warwick Parkway. This is Judy, the

station host. Last year the customers gave me an award,

customer-service his award, which was very nice. What did they give

you? A bottle of champagne but champagne glasses. It was really

moving. Do you think there'll railway staff up and down the

country being given champagne at for the job they are doing? I would

not know. We have special people at Warwick Parkway. Of course you do.

But the Chiltern revolution was not just about one rather windswept new

station. Chiltern have invested their own money to rebuild the

railway line that they run their trains on. We have done all of

those things to the tune of �500 million on Chiltern Railways over

the last 15 years. There is more to come. The plan to cut the journey

time on their existing line from London to Birmingham by 20 minutes.

It was Chiltern's grand design. They were in charge. So it was your

specification for your higher speed railway? Totally. And your money?

Totally. Mr Shooter turned the privatised railway that the Tories

invented inside out. Chiltern say that you can improve railway lines

like theirs without taxpayers' money. Now they say that Network

Rail have come on board. We decided a few months ago that it would work

even better than it was by combining our teams with the

Network Rail team. Network Rail is becoming more customer focused but

nevertheless it is our scheme, we specified it, we are paying for it

and our contractor has done it. Government like the Chiltern model.

They are just about to announce a big shake-up for the railways. They

have told us that it will include giving train companies longer

franchises so that they have more incentive to invest their money on

their lines. The train operators and the commercial side of the

railway industry should have a bigger say. This excess of a longer

franchise for Chiltern I think demonstrates benefits for

passengers. -- this excess. Your plan is longer franchises and let

them have a bigger say in the investment of my money on a railway

they are running? They will have a bigger say within a framework set

Passengers do not much care who runs the railway. I just want to

have a reasonable seat in a puncture or, speedy train which is

at a decent cost. It is somebody else's problem how we achieve that.

At the moment I don't think it is being achieved. Dom Utton does not

think so either. He is still exacting poetic justice with his

terrible time-wasting email attack. The frost returns to Rajhastan. The

mighty Ganges freezes over once more. Elizabeth and Leicester, the

beating oars, the sterns formed of a gilded shell. Now it's over. Our

Indian summer's gone. One big reason for his train arriving so

late so often, on its way from Oxford to London it has to find its

way through one of the worst bottlenecks on the railway. Reading

station. Now it is being rebuilt by Network Rail. The Government

believes that on large, complex infrastructure projects like these,

with lots of train companies involved, Network Rail should

remain in charge. It is their star project, and a multi- million-pound

acid test of whether they can keep their spending within bounds.

are going to build five more platforms, so when we finish this

project there will be 11 through platforms. To the West of Reading

where it is really constrained we are building a huge flyover.

overall command is one of the army's top engineers, known as the

Brigadier around here. What is it like to rebuild a railway when you

have got trains running through it? Challenging. It is like conducting

an orchestra. There are 700 trains going through it every day. 14

million passengers a year. We have to pick the times that we have

access to the railway and choreograph really care FLA, I am

talking about choreographing every half hour of every activity. Take

your seats, ladies and gentlemen, Network Rail presents, with no

expense spared, the Greatest Show How was it for you? How much is

this project going to cost? Reading project will cost �850

million. We know that we need to be leaner and fitter and we will be.

To do things more efficiently, to do things more effectively, to a

price. Convinced? �850 million is an awful lots of money from hard-

pressed taxpayers and rail travellers in an industry that has

been criticised for overspending by 30%. How will Network Rail do this

time? We asked the former Tory transport minister. It all I can

say is that history would tell you that if the price is 850 now before

the work has been completed, then it is likely to be substantially

more than that. That is not something we should ever accept as

being normal. Then we went to the MP who is the guardian of the

public purse. Do you think, terrific, I am confident that money

will be perfectly spend? completely think, oh, my God. How

much money are we wasting? Could we have done this better? Will we ever

know if we got value for money under the current structure? Hardly

a vote of confidence in Network Rail. I think you might be

depressed at the level of scepticism from people used to

examining the industry as to whether you can do Reading on time.

And on budget. There is a massive project, �800 million. I would just

say look at what we have done so far. We have made a very good start

to the process. So why should trust you? It is OK now? You and the

public should look for results. You should look for the continuing

ongoing reduction costs that we have achieved consistently. You

should expect more of that. While the work continues, who is keeping

an eye on our money? What do you think of the Reading station

remodelling project and the way that is being carried out as the

regulator? Reading seems to be going well. It seems to be a good

example of collaboration between Network Rail and its industry

partners. Obviously it is not yet finished and we will have to wait

and see what the outcome is. seems to be going well? I would

expect a slightly more robust dancer than that when there are

�850 million of money riding on it. The project is not finished and I

cannot tell you now if it will be finished on time and on budget. But

in terms of where we are in the project plan right now, looking at

where we would expect to be, it is going OK. It is meant to be

finished in 2015. Of course if it does end up over-budget then it

will be too late to do anything about it. But how will we ever

know? The new man at Network Rail admits it is time to be more open

with us about how they spend our money. I intend that by the middle

of 2012, that we will make available a substantial increase of

information about our organisation to the general public, under a

banner of transparency. We have hired the people, set up the

systems, and I intend for a substantial release of information

from June onwards. The railways have been set a target to cut their

costs by 30% within seven years. Will they? Haven't we heard all

these promises on the railways, that things will get better and

cost will be driven down before? Certainly there have been many

attempts to do this and so far they have not been successful. I think

you have probably hit on the key concern. How can we be certain that

it will be different this time round? We are determined to succeed

on this because we know it is vital if we are going to give passengers

Between them our four commuters are shelling out �15,000 a year on

fares. Until he feels he is getting value for money, the Bard of Oxford

will go on and on complaining. going to listen to the New Seekers

1974 hit, You Won't Find Another Fool Like Me, a much underrated