Make Great British Railways truly great - take action
Our railway is coming into public ownership - but private shareholders are fighting tooth and nail to cling on.
The upcoming Railways Bill - which will create Great British Railways to own and run our railway - must get public ownership right so that it can truly deliver for passengers.
For the Railways Bill to truly deliver for us, the government must:
- Introduce new duties for the railway to benefit passengers, communities and the environment, and scrap the wasteful competition laws that are getting in the way
- Say no to cherry picking by private companies wanting to run new routes on the railway, and bring open access operations into public ownership to integrate them properly into the rest of the railway
- Turn Transport Focus into a membership organisation for passengers, which elects representatives to sit on the board of Great British Railways, so that our voices can be part of the design of the services we use
- Launch Great British Trains to begin bringing rolling stock (the trains themselves) into public ownership as current rolling stock contracts end and old trains are decommissioned
- Create one publicly owned ticket retailer to deliver simpler and lower fares
- Streamline the rail timetable, adopting lessons from the best railway in the world, Switzerland, so that every town knows what service level it is getting, and
- Invest in rail - every £1 creates £2.50 in economic benefits.
Can you take just 2 minutes to send our letter to your MP now?