Vertical integration is the new buzzphrase on the railway where regional train companies take over the operation of the infrastructure too. Network Rail wants it. The long-awaited McNulty report supports it. The Department for Transport might even go for it.
Rail privatisation made the fundamental step — flawed, even according to many Tories — of splitting train from track.
A decade and half later, the notion is to address that by disaggregating the national infrastructure company — Network Rail, publicly controlled after the demise of its predecessor Railtrack — where possible and putting it back together again with the local train company.
Merseyrail is unique in the privatised train industry. Running almost 800 trains a day in 59 electric sets, carrying more than 100,000 passengers on an average weekday, it has about 1,200 staff and operates 66 stations on 75 route miles and is one of the most punctual networks in the country.
It is also the one train company in Britain where the decision on who runs it has been delegated to the local public transport quango. Merseyrail also runs on the UK railways’ longest franchise: 25 years starting in 2002.
Advertisement
However, the RMT union fiercely opposes such an idea of localised mini-vertical integration. Proponents say that integration would highlight duplication and inefficiency. The union regards that as a deliberate political attack on jobs. Perversely, the RMT is in favour of the concept of vertical integration but only on a national basis, and in public hands. That would, of course, be what we used to know as British Rail.