What would the fare system be like if the Serpell Report had been implemented?

[A S Leib]

Would the current fares system be likely to be in place had the Serpell Report been enacted (and no subsequent mass reopening of lines occurred)? There'd have been a much clearer division between intercity and non-intercity services, and things like route restrictions would have been made obsolete by the fact that there was only one route between most surviving stations.

 

[Indigo Soup]

Which recommendations of the Serpell report are you proposing to have been enacted? Only about half of the report was concerned with closing unprofitable lines, and that half didn't actually make any recommendations - only outline a range of options from 'do nothing' through to 'throw money at it'. The other half of the report actually did make recommendations, the vast majority of which were to do with BR's financial management processes.

One point made early in the report is that it was government policy - introduced under Labour between 1974 and 1977 - that

• Freight, parcels, and (from 1977) inter-city passenger services should be operated on a commercial basis
• The grant paid to the railway should not exceed that paid in 1975 in real terms

This position was backed by the 1974 Rail Policy Review. Serpell came out of a failure to keep within that cap on subsidy. Today, that subsidy cap would be about £7 billion - about a third of the railway actually receives.

 

[A S Leib]

For argument's sake, what would the fares system look like if the only passenger rail lines in the UK were a few intercity lines to / from London (to Bristol / Cardiff via Bristol Parkway; Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow including the Trent Valley; Leeds / Newcastle) and a number of lines in the south east? I'm not looking for 'what would have happened with Serpell's implementation' specifically as much as I'm looking for 'what would fares look like with a bare-bones network'.

 

[RT4038]

For argument's sake, what would the fares system look like if the only passenger rail lines in the UK were a few intercity lines to / from London (to Bristol / Cardiff via Bristol Parkway; Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow including the Trent Valley; Leeds / Newcastle) and a number of lines in the south east? I'm not looking for 'what would have happened with Serpell's implementation' specifically as much as I'm looking for 'what would fares look like with a bare-bones network'.

Perhaps look at Viarail Canada on the Quebec-Windsor corridor for some inspiration? With only a few lines and stations I would expect compulsory reservations and yield managed fares to be the norm.