Avanti West Coast – Britain’s worst-performing train operator – is heading back into public ownership, as Andy Burnham said the company’s passengers had been failed “time and time again”.
Avanti ran the fewest trains on time and had the second-highest cancellation rate last year, and the Prime Minister has promised in its place a state-run service that “actually works for the people who use it”.
But leading rail experts are sceptical that Avanti’s nationalisation in March will actually improve its services – or lower train fares – any time soon.
The biggest cause of Avanti’s delays is the West Coast Main Line. Problems, including insufficient track and signal failures, on this “congested” line are the underlying problem behind Avanti’s issues – and nationalisation won’t fix this, experts say.
Avanti customers have also been warned not to expect cheaper ticket prices once Burnham’s Government is in charge.
Public ownership is “not the magic bullet that solves everything”, William Barter, an independent rail consultant, told The i Paper.
Avanti’s record of ‘underperforming’
Passengers have been paying the price for Avanti’s record of “underperforming”, said Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander as she announced the nationalisation this week.
Only 37.9 per cent of Avanti trains were “on time” in the 2025-26 financial year – the single worst performance of any operator, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which is responsible for regulating Britain’s railways.
When it comes to cancellations, the record isn’t much better. Some 5.6 per cent of all Avanti trains were scrapped that year – the second-worst performance behind CrossCountry, which saw 7.8 per cent of its trains cancelled.
However, much of the disruption suffered by Avanti customers was down to Network Rail, the public body responsible for railway infrastructure.
Network Rail issues were responsible for 66 per cent of Avanti’s delayed minutes last year, according to the ORR.
‘Pushed to its limits’
Rail expert Christian Wolmar, author of Fast Track and Broken Rails, said a lot of the disruption is down to “infrastructure and capacity issues” on the West Coast Main Line.
“It’s a very crowded line,” added Wolmar. “Really improving things would require quite a lot of [extra] spending to fix infrastructure and capacity issues.”
Last year, Avanti was poised to run a “ghost train” without passengers from Manchester to London to ease congestion issues, but the move was reversed following criticism from the public and Government.
Barter said capacity was “being pushed to its limits” on the West Coast Main Line, calling it “very congested, very heavily-used”.
Key junctions on the line have become regular “bottlenecks”, where there is “no opportunity for a fast train to overtake a slower one”, he said, explaining the regular delays.
Nationalising Avanti will not solve this issue, the experts said.
“I don’t think nationalisation can fix and improve the issues that come from that lack of capacity,” Barter said. “It’s certainly not the magic bullet that solves everything.”
Rail upgrades – but are they mostly ‘maintenance’?
The Government has said that Avanti’s nationalisation would be supported by “much-needed infrastructure improvements” – acknowledging that West Coast Main Line problems were the “biggest cause of disruption”.
Network Rail already has a £400m programme of improvement works for the West Coast Main Line. The plan announced in January – which includes signalling upgrades, track renewals and overhead line renewals – is set to be completed by March 2029.
More efficient signalling systems – which help keep trains safely separated – could help address some of the problems with bottlenecks and could reduce delays, experts told The i Paper.
But Wolmar said the £400m works are mostly “maintenance” projects rather than offering any great expansion in capacity that will lead to a significant improvement for passengers.
Avanti West Coast is ‘underperforming’, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says (Photo: Avanti West Coast/PA)A Network Rail spokesperson said the £400m programme would improve “reliability and performance” for passengers on the West Coast Main Line.
“As we move towards Great British Railways, bringing track and train closer together, we’ll be able to work more effectively to respond to incidents, reduce disruption for passengers and help services recover more quickly,” they said.
Some benefits ahead – but not on ticket prices
Experts were still relatively positive about Avanti’s nationalisation, saying it could help the operator communicate better with Government-owned Network Rail.
Labour’s plan is for the state-owned Great British Railways to absorb Network Rail, taking overarching control of infrastructure and all day-to-day services. This could help GBR “operate a bit more efficiently as a result,” said Wolmar.
Understanding the infrastructure problems in more detail could also help Avanti come up with a more efficient and “resilient” timetable, said Barter. “That can help you recover more quickly from disruptions without knock-on, domino-effect delays.”
Nationalised services are being rebranded with Great British Railways (GBR) livery (Photo by Charlotte Coney/Getty Images)But state ownership “won’t bring down fares”, said Glaister.
“That will only happen if the Government finds a lot more money for the railways. And I suspect the Treasury will be keen to reduce the amount spent, rather than spend more.”
The Government has not committed to lowering fares, with Alexander telling The Times: “While I recognise that there is a link between price and demand, I’ve got to find a way to ensure that we’ve got a financially sustainable operation at the same time.”
An Avanti spokesperson said it was “proud of what we’ve achieved over the last six years” – when it took over Virgin Trains on the West Coast Main Line – pointing to refurbished stock and increased services.
They also said that “more needs to be done to improve our performance”, adding that it was working closely “to make sure our operation runs better, day in, day out”.
New calls to revive HS2 in the north
The original plan for the HS2 rail line, running from London to Manchester, would have made a real difference to the underlying capacity problem, the experts said. But the northern part of the route – from Birmingham to Manchester – was scrapped by the last Conservative Government.
An HS2 line to Manchester would have “relieved pressure” on the West Coast Main Line, said Wolmar, adding that he would still like to see more railway built in northwest England.
“To significantly increase capacity it will take investment,” said Stephen Glaister, former chair of the ORR. “You will have to make the case for public money and whether that’s the best way to spend it.”
Avanti’s nationalisation is “not likely to make much difference” to the underlying infrastructure issues, added Glaister, now an emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London.
Burnham’s Government is examining how the HS2’s northern leg could be at least partly revived, The i Paper revealed in August.
Map showing the cancelled legs of HS2 (in grey) and what remains (in orange)Does nationalisation work?
London North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the first to be re-nationalised by the last Tory Government in 2018. Labour’s rail minister, Peter Hendy, has described it as a “blueprint” for how it should be done.
LNER has successfully reduced cancellations in recent years. Only 2.95 per cent of trains were cancelled last year – down from 4.41 per cent in 2022-23.
However, the number of “on time” trains has dipped slightly, falling from 59.2 per cent in 2022-23 to 55.3 per cent last year.
But ticket prices have not gone down. In 2024, LNER scrapped basic off-peak fares as part of a pilot scheme, with the Transport Secretary suggesting at the time she wanted to see the pilot expanded elsewhere as part of rail nationalisation. But analysis showed that the pilot had added more than £100 to some other journeys.
So far, 12 of the 16 major franchise rail operators in the UK have been brought back to public ownership, with the others expected to be nationalised by the end of 2027.
It is “too early to tell” whether nationalisation is beginning to help reduce the transport chaos faced by passengers, said Wolmar.
Glaister added: “It will take some years to look back and say whether it’s worked.”
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