An open letter to MPs - we wrote to them to highlight the role that fuel duty could play as a revenue raising alternative to benefit austerity.

Removing the 'temporary' 5p fuel duty cut would raise approximately £ 2 billion per year, which would offset the proposed changes to benefit regime.

On Sunday 25 May 2025 all that happened is that South Western Railway now has a new shareholder - and it’s the DfT who have effectively been dictating many policies to SWR since the pandemic. New Great British Railways livery unveiled by Transport Secretary on 22 May.

When the option for contactless payment for your journey to and from London is provided it comes with big flaws. These flaws need fixing:
- Railcard discounts need to be available when paying by contactless
- Cheaper weekend fares need to retained or reinstated
- An easy pay solution is needed for families

Passenger rail service on the Northumberland Line between Newcastle and Ashington commenced on 15th December 2024, in large part due to campaigning by Dennis Fancett, chair of Railfuture-affiliated South East Northumberland Rail User Group. Dennis being interviewed at Ashington station for Sky News - photo by Jerry Alderson for Railfuture.

The Transport Secretary has committed to improve the performance and reliability of rail services, ensuring the rail sector can operate effectively and become financially sustainable. Stewart Palmer, the former managing director of a train operator, explains what is required to achieve this. A poor passenger experience for Cross Country passengers at Banbury on a Saturday evening. Perhaps the passenger disturbance was due to the extreme overcrowding earlier in the day. The 1855 arrived at Southampton over an hour late, and the following 1955 was cancelled. Photo by Chris Page for Railfuture.

Railfuture Policy Director Ian Brown visits Innotrans, the rail supplier exhibition held in Berlin. Is the grass greener on the other side? Every photograph illustrates a current rail issue in Britain. Photo by the author.

Railfuture advises any prospective government to follow this 10 point action plan, which has been presented to the shadow Rail Minister, Stephen Morgan, and offered to the other political parties.
Time is of the essence for rail. Photo of Waterloo station clock by Chris Page for Railfuture.

Rail is the most environmentally sustainable form of transport, particularly for freight. The government's freight growth target of 75% by 2050 is no more than keeping pace with expected economic growth - so it is effectively a no-modal-share growth target. The most cost-effective way to achieve net zero carbon from transport is to set a target of at least doubling rail freight in the next 20 years. 92019 Dollands Moor to Daventry 4M38 Jaguar Land Rover Whitley (from Neuss, Nievenheim, Germany). Image by Train Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ticket Office closure consultation over the summer of 2023 showed the value passengers place on a properly staffed station, complete with the right facilities for those staff to meet passenger needs. A warm welcome greets passengers in Bicester Village's customer support lounge at the station that serves the shopping centre. Photo by Chris Page for Railfuture.

The government must either proceed with HS2 Phase 2 or resolve the network pinch points exposed by the cancellation. If the discussions on privately funding phase 2 do not succeed, it is essential that options for the future are not closed for good so land must not be sold. The constraints must be mitigated - as an absolute minimum the Euston terminus and the delta junction east of Birmingham must go ahead. Sign installed at Crewe station, the planned destination for HS2 when phase 2 approved, was still in place after cancellation. Photo by Chris Page for Railfuture.

Opportunity, not threat. Railfuture suggests that there is a way of making road user charging politically acceptable. Appropriate branding for an HGV. Photo by Richard Says under <creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/> via Flickr.

Transport Focus, the non -departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Transport, regularly surveys passenger satisfaction and says “Satisfaction with punctuality/reliability is, by a distance, the most important driver of satisfaction...”
Photo taken by Stewart Palmer on 5th January at Dorchester South station. If train operators cannot display up-to-date information, what trust can passengers have in service reliability? Would M&S tolerate this?

The Prime Minister announced his decision on HS2 on 4 October 2023, the last day of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, held at Manchester Central, ironically Manchester’s former Central station which hosted the prestige Midland Pullman train from Manchester to London. This is a factual briefing and will be updated when more is revealed on timescales and funding. Blue Pullman at Manchester Central in the sixties, from disusedstations.org.uk.

The Rt Hon Mark Harper MP, Transport Secretary, gave an address at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London on 7 February 2023 in what was billed as the big announcement on Great British Railways.  Photo via gov.uk.

We’re pleased that tthe 2023 rail fare increases will be in line with earnings increases, not inflation, so announced as 5.9%.

But this is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The service currently being offered to passengers simply isn’t value for money, even when there isn’t industrial action. Too many cancellations, a focus on cost, not the bottom line, so ignoring that most of the railways’ funding comes from passengers and that the service offered needs to meet their needs if revenue is to grow image from WikiPedia