Will any government let the railway prosper?

The Man Who Pays His Way: Even on a dreadful train on a dismal day, rail is better than the alternatives

Buffer state: long-suffering taxpayer is pumping £220 every second into running the rail network, even if he or she never goes near a train (Simon Calder)

For the long-suffering rail passenger, this has not been the best few days.

On Wednesday, the annual ritual of calculating next January’s fare increases showed that the cost of some inter-city journeys will rise above £1 per mile.

By Thursday, the government confirmed that the train operator that has done more than any other to improve standards, Virgin Trains, will reach the end of the West Coast main line just before midnight on 7 December. The Department for Transport is stripping Sir Richard Branson of the franchise.

And on Thursday, The Independent revealed that some UK cities are so badly connected by rail that the small Cornish village of Par has better links than Leicester and Cardiff, while Liverpool and Glasgow have seen their repertoire of direct trains depleted.

Connectivity matters. If you can board a train, sip tea and watch Britain roll past the window without the prospect of an against-the-clock change from platform 1 to 12 at Birmingham New Street, you are more likely to choose rail over road or air.

Yet easyJet is so confident that the railway is not going to improve any time soon that it has just announced a new jet link between Birmingham and Glasgow.

Meanwhile, the equally long-suffering taxpayer is pumping £220 every second into running the rail network, even if he or she never goes near a train.

The long-suffering passenger aboard one of the well-past-their-scrap-by-date Pacer trains on Northern Rail can take some comfort from knowing that for every 10 miles they travel, the public purse contributes £4.20.

Many other nations do much the same, of course: France and Germany subsidise their rail networks to the tune of billions of euros. On the continent, as in Britain, the majority of the beneficiaries are people who can live in agreeable surroundings while working in busy cities. Even on a dreadful train on a dismal day, rail is better than the alternatives.

Nations around Europe and the world all agree that, rail is a social good that supports the economy and brings people together without trashing the environment. In plucky Luxembourg, unlike in Britain train fares will not rise in line with inflation in 2020. In fact, they will fall by 100 per cent across the Grand Duchy. With the exception of a supplement for first-class travel, all travel on Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois will be free from next March onwards.

One day, perhaps, a British metropolis will recognise the economic and environmental gains and do the same. But before that, the Rail Review chaired by the long-suffering Keith Williams (he used to run British Airways) will conclude that civil servants in London are not the ideal people to prescribe every detail of how the railways should be run. Instead, let the regions – and the passengers – decide, while an omniscient “Fat Controller” works on reconnecting cities and optimising the capacity of an overstretched network.

Equally important: scrap a hopeless fares system that, on my journey from Merseyside to Yorkshire this morning, incentivises me to buy three separate tickets. Set prices to respond to demand, with lower fares to fill empty seats on less popular trains.

But will politicians grasp the nettle and tell passengers on peak services the uncomfortable converse that they must pay more to secure the scarce resource of a seat? Until they do, they are doing a disservice to travellers and taxpayers.