Can the railway 'break even' and is it desirable?

[Bald Rick]

This is, IIMO, a most sensible and realistic approach to the question posed by the OP. I have yet to hear anyone argue that other forms of infrastructure (sewers and water treatment or electricity provison) ought to pay for themselves without the need to be subsidised by the taxpayer, but, for some reason, this understanding does not seem to apply to the railways.

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that in England, the ownership and provision of water / sewerage infrastructure is almost entirely in the hands of private companies, and funded by the consumers. (Acknowledging the debt write off at privatisation).

 

[WatcherZero]

Its even closer, £2.4bn of Network Rail 'expenditure' is amortisation of capital spending (repaying loan capital) and £0.9bn is interest payments, so that £3bn subsidy is pretty much solely financing costs not a operating deficit and reflects the way in the past the government rather than giving them cash to fund expenditure has instead given them debt (with longer term rammifications).

 

[deltic]

Parts of the UK rail network that require no subsidy when allowing for all costs including infrastructure and upgrades:

SWT
VTEC
The Thameslink / GN part of GTR

Parts that nearly do, and on current forecasts will do in the next few years:
Greater Anglia
c2c
The rest of GTR
VWC

With Southeastern not far behind

The above represents well over half the railway in terms of both income and passenger miles. Within a few years it will be turning a profit.


The big subsidy goes to Scotrail, Northern, Wales, and (in passenger miles terms) London Overground and Merseyrail.

Clearly then there are ways of making a UK railway profitable, however that would be rather undesirable, for the users of the most subsidised railways at least.

This is not quite correct. The only operator that makes a "profit" is SWT which, taking account of government grants to Network Rail as allocated by the ORR between operators, paid £133m to Govt in 2015/16.

Essex Thameside only needed £11m of support and East Coast £20m.

Scotrail and Northern on the other hand required around £600m support each.

 

[Voglitz]

Recent financial reports show that the passenger/taxpayer split is now around 75/25 for funding the railway as whole. In fact if the railway was being kept in a steady state without any upgrades it would actually be almost breaking even now.

Almost breaking even? I don't think so.

This is Rail Delivery Group make-believe.

 

[Bald Rick]

This is not quite correct. The only operator that makes a "profit" is SWT which, taking account of government grants to Network Rail as allocated by the ORR between operators, paid £133m to Govt in 2015/16.

Essex Thameside only needed £11m of support and East Coast £20m.

Scotrail and Northern on the other hand required around £600m support each.

You are quite correct, although VTEC, GTR and c2c are rather close as you say. I suspect they will be there next year (albeit GTR may not be due to the strikes)