Greater Anglia is due to enter public ownership on Sunday, taking another step towards the government’s planned Great British Railways. The timetable has welcomed the news by displaying “on time” with the composure of an employee who has not opened the email.
The Department for Transport says the transfer will make Greater Anglia the third operator to move into public ownership under the Passenger Railway Services Public Ownership Act. It also says almost half of the passenger journeys eventually overseen by Great British Railways will then be operated by publicly owned companies.
This is a substantial organisational change. It is also the sort of change that arrives with fresh acronyms, a ceremonial folder and a promise that the passenger will be at the heart of everything, preferably somewhere near the front of the queue.
“We are joining up the network,” said Gordon Signalbox, Commissioner for Scheduled Clarity. “Our first priority is ensuring every replacement bus understands that ‘replacement’ is not an aspirational word.”
The government presents public ownership as a route to a simpler, more accountable and more reliable railway. Those are reasonable ambitions. They will still require working trains, useful announcements and tickets that do not behave as though they have been issued by rival kingdoms.
Greater Anglia is being presented as a model operator, with the government citing punctuality figures, new trains and a recent industry award. That creates an awkwardly high standard for the handover. It is difficult to relaunch a railway as a national example when the morning’s main achievement is locating the person holding the transfer spreadsheet.
The new structure is expected to bring operators and infrastructure teams closer together. This should improve accountability, although passengers may reserve judgement until the track, train and information board are all giving the same answer to the question “where is it?”
At the transfer ceremony, the outgoing management handed over a key, a badge and a platform announcement from 2017. The incoming team thanked them, filed the announcement under “historic optimism” and asked whether anyone had seen the 08:42.
Public ownership may prove its worth. For now, the railway has gained a new family, a larger organisational chart and one immediate responsibility: making sure accountability reaches the passenger before the train reaches the next county. The 08:42 is expected to arrive shortly after the inquiry into why nobody can find it.
Real story: Department for Transport and DfT Operator Limited.
