My point is that they would not have chosen to collude on it to make the situation more transparent. Why would they, other than to agree to both hold higher prices. They had no economic interest in colluding for good purposes. Also, the problem is not with competition law but with the way the system was set up with some regulated and some unregulated fares. Had all fares been regulated the transparency could have been secured at a national level.
The fares structure requires total reform, but there are many problems caused by EU competition law e.g. bank closures because “competing” banks are unable to share or pool public facing branch facilities for the benefit of customers, while continuing to offer separate products and service. The Network Rail owned infrastructure is effectively pooled and shared between all TOCs, which seems to contradict this.
What strategic efficiency benefits? Any economies of scale ie merging toc depots will be soon outweighed by the usual 'at cost' complacency of the public sector. BR introduced sectors to make the organisation more manageable rather then one amorphous blob.
It may be more effective to have a separate national InterCity operator, but BR was the most efficient railway in Europe and Network SouthEast had a single commuter railway into London. It should be brought back and could be put under the control of TfL, rather than having a separate TOC operate all services out of each London terminus and rather than an amorphous blob of the remaining Regional Railways, a local operator of the same calibre as NSE could provide local services in other cities or areas, retaining ScotRail and TfW, but banning them from running any services entirely within England e.g. Chester - Birmingham or Carlisle - Newcastle. Where these operators run between areas they would have to be joint services, with the advantage being the unified approach to everything with several brands all being part of the same organisation, without the confusion caused for passengers and staff by having so many TOCs all with different terms and conditions. For example, as a blanket policy, bikes should be allowed to be carried on all services at all times, but rather, it varies wildly between different TOCs requiring passengers to check the rules for each one.
Before sectors, didn't BR have regions, divisions and areas? I'm not sure whether regions felt they were in competition with each other as their predecessor companies were?
Yes but other than the Scottish and North Eastern regions, they radiated out from London in different directions, as the present TOCs do but there were only 4 of them, which is not the optimal way to do it. There was a great deal of resentment from the Western Region when it was told it could no longer be great following nationalisation and even more when it had HSTs, originating from another region, imposed on it to replace its own Western Diesel hydraulics. A member of the former GWR Swindon Works staff, who lost his job when Thatcher closed it in 1985, questioned why the original railway works in different regions of the country were not able to compete
against each other for manufacturing and maintenance contracts, rather than involving foreign manufactures to compete against BREL as a whole. If a HST broke down anywhere on the Western Region, even if it was directly outside Swindon Works, it would have to be hauled all the way to Crewe or Derby because Swindon were not allowed to repair it.
