Why does the government waste so much on rail?

By johnredwood on November 26, 2025

I never understand why Greens like railways. The UK system is wanton with the amount of CO 2 it creates, as it tips our taxes into its huge black hole for subsidies. Very few people live near a station and very few want to go to a station location, so if you travel by train there is normally a couple of bus or taxi journeys to factor in as well. They all generate CO2 as well as creating extra delay in getting to your destination. Many diesel trains still run on the UK network. Trains specialise in waiting in stations with their engines running to increase the use of fuel. The electric trains draw power from a grid which is often more than 50% supplied by gas generated electricity. Too many trains run with few passengers , forcing much fuel to be burned for very few people benefitting from travel.

The rail system in the UK is swallowing far too much of our cash. In 2023/4 it took £22.3 bn of taxpayers money with another £7.1bn for nationalised HS2 costs, making a total of more than £30 bn. That is nearly £1000 per employee in the country and over £1000 per household. Rail accounts for just 2% of all trips made compared with 60% by car and 4% by bus. If you take miles travelled, rail is 8% of the total compared to 78% by car. Walking is 29% of trips but just 4% of miles.

So why do we spend so much, or why are railways so poor at getting us to use them more with all the subsidy they enjoy to take more of the strain off our inadequate, poorly maintained and too little invested in roads? The government does everything it can to make motoring too expensive and too vexatious, yet the underlying flexibility and convenience of the car triumphs over the rail.

The reason the railways attract so few and cost so much is bad management. Rail managers see the government as their main customer , knowing however much they lose they will be bailed out. They devote their time to Whitehall games to maximise their subsidy and capital take from national budgets, ignoring the needs of their passengers and the opportunity to sell them more by offering better service.

The national rail system, nationalised for most of my lifetime apart from a brief period in private hands with Railtrack, failed to invest in the new routes and the new stations that provided opportunity. For many years there was no mainline station to serve one of the world's busiest airports at Heathrow. There is still no good link from Oxford to Cambridge to complete the golden triangle of science based activity. When there are big sporting or entertainment events there are insufficient train specials to get the audience to the location. In London tube stations local to a big event are often closed for it for fear of too big a crush. The railways are not energetic in promoting rail excursions linked to a holiday break, a shopping trip or other travel opportunity. That is because they rightly see the government as a much bigger source of cash than the potential traveller.

Travelling by train you look out on a dystopian world of waste, mess and graffiti. There are once great stations literally falling to bits or with paint peeling. There is grafffiti all over structures, broken fences, weeds and shrubs growing out of the lesser used tracks and sidings, rusting old equipment left to die without thought, stocks of materials for repair left to decay. It is all symptomatic of a management that does not care, does not have control of its stocks and fixed assets, and wastes money on a gargantuan scale.

The new management of the transition and then of Great British Rail should only get bonuses if they either boost the fare paying passenger revenue or cut costs or do both. Paying people over £500,000 a year to make the huge mess and lose the huge sums run up by recent managements is a disgrace. All taxpayers should be offended and say No.