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What Philip Hammond and Sir Roy McNulty are pussyfooting around is the fact that the current structure is the root cause of the high costs of our railways (Report, 19 May). When other European rail services are 30% to 40% less expensive, the most outstanding difference is the single national operator every other country has and our fragmented "system", with nearly 20 different players, that has let the cost of replacing a rail on the UK system become 40% more than in France, the Netherlands or Germany.
If changing to a single operator is too akin to renationalisation for the current Tory government, then the private company structure from before the second world war would be far more efficient and cost-effective than the present institutionalised chaos. As for the spin that the railways are only used by the wealthier sections of society, that's because the rest of us cannot afford the ticket prices, and limiting future price rises to RPI+3% will not change that when almost everyone except the immorally super-rich is experiencing a reduction in their income.
The suggestion that labour costs are too high does not seem to be backed up by comparisons with the labour costs of European rail systems, so this looks like a ruse to move responsibility for high ticket prices from the real cause, the inefficient structure, to the rail workers.
Just think what British Rail could have done with a £5.2bn annual subsidy, The present mess on the rails is enough to make you weep – and John Major should be weeping for what he did to British Rail!
Alan Mathison
Harrow, Middlesex
• Sir Roy McNulty's report ('Better deal for all' as railways face radical overhaul, 20 May) states "more than nine out of 10 trains now arrive on time". Not very hard when you alter the timetable to let trains take longer! Though routes and stops have changed, most of today's trains run to a slower timetable than 50 years ago. Bingo callers shouted "5 and 9, the Brighton line" because it took 59 minutes for London to Brighton; no chance today!
Michael Gold
London
• Wouldn't it be a better economy for the taxpayers' subsidy for the franchise companies' shareholders' dividends to be cut first? In these hard times, a single franchise company ploughing its profits back into the rail system would be better value for taxpayers and is acknowledged to be cheaper to administer and operate.
John Veit-Wilson
Newcastle upon Tyne
