The privatised passenger railway could have cost £51 billion more to operate than if British Rail had remained in state hands, a new study suggests. A Very Costly Industry – the cost of Britain’s privatised railway was written by John Stittle of Essex University and Sean McCartney of the University of London. It was published in 2017.
The £51bn figure represents a best-case scenario of British Rail reducing its costs by 2% per year from 1997-98, had unit costs remained stable at 1993-94 levels. Even so, the projected figure of £132.5bn is still less than the actual cost of running passenger services from 1997-98 to 2013-14 of £154bn, a difference of £21bn.