One thing I keep on wanting to get around to looking at is what publicly available data is available on the trains in the UK and the answer to a few questions?
- What proportions of the trains in the UK are run by foreign governments?
- At a rough guess it is in the region of 20% based on not very much
- How would this be measured? Passenger miles?
- Why can the French, Dutch and German governments run UK rail franchises but not the UK government? It makes no sense!
- What subsidies are given to the different franchises?
- Are the original tenders released publicly?
- Do the train companies live up to these documents?
Whilst I’m sure most of the above has been looked at elsewhere I’d like to look at it myself and then maybe compare my outcomes with what others have done. I’d like to do as much of this with data from data.gov.uk possibly with some references to Wikipedia to get the breakdown of who owns different franchises. This info maybe available elsewhere but Wikipedia is just easier sometimes.
So what is available?
All of the data seems to come from the Office of Rail and Road data hub https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/ which you need to register for to access the data. This was accessed from data.gov.uk. To name a few the datasets available are:
- Private investment on rolling stock, stations, track…etc.
- Revenue support grants
- Cancellations
- Passenger kilometres
- Number of passengers
- Lots of freight data (hadn’t even thought of this)
- Number of injuries, assaults, and accidents on the trains
The place I’m going to start is this dataset, the list of train operating companies (TOCs) and then their parent companies which I’ve acquired from Wikipedia. The data below is in a very raw form, my next task is to tidy it up into a more presentable form.
One thing that instantally stands out is the number of different countries that have a finger in the pie. There is Germany, France, The Netherlands, Hong Kong and Belgium. Even the province of Quebec (in the form of its pension fund) has an interest.
A spreadsheet containing this can be found here: TOC Ownership.
| Operator | Parent - Layer 1 | Parent - Layer 2 | Parent - Layer 3 |
| Abellio Greater Anglia | Abellio | Nederlandse Spoorwegen | State of the Netherlands |
| Arriva Trains Wales | Arriva | Deutsche Bahn | Federal Republic of Germany |
| c2c | National Express Group | Public (LSE: NEX) | |
| Caledonian Sleeper | Serco | Public (LSE: SRP) | |
| Chiltern Railways | Arriva | Deutsche Bahn | Federal Republic of Germany |
| CrossCountry | Arriva | Deutsche Bahn | Federal Republic of Germany |
| East Midlands Trains | Stagecoach Group | Public (LSE: SGC) | |
| Eurostar | Eurostar International Limited | SNCF (55%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (30%), Hermes Infrastructure (10%), SNCB (10%) | French Republic (SNCF), Province of Quebec, Kingdom of Belgium (SNCB) |
| First Great Western | FirstGroup | Public (LSE: FGP) | |
| First Hull Trains | FirstGroup | Public (LSE: FGP) | |
| First TransPennine Express | FirstGroup | Public (LSE: FGP) | |
| Gatwick Express | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| Grand Central | Arriva | Deutsche Bahn | Federal Republic of Germany |
| Great Northern | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| Heathrow Connect | First + Heathrow Express | Public (LSE: FGP) | |
| Heathrow Express | Heathrow Airport Holdings | FGP Topco Limited | |
| Island Line | South West Trains | Stagecoach Group | Public (LSE: SGC) |
| London Midland | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| London Overground | LOROL | 50% Arriva, 50% MTR | Federal Republic of Germany (50%), MTR(50%, 76% Hong Kong Government, 24% Public ) |
| London Underground | London Underground Limited | TFL | Greater London Authority |
| Merseyrail | Serco-Abellio | 50% Public (Serco), 50% State of the Netherlands (Abellio) | |
| Northern Rail | Serco-Abellio | 50% Public (Serco), 50% State of the Netherlands (Abellio) | |
| First ScotRail | FirstGroup | Public (LSE: FGP) | |
| Abellio ScotRail | Abellio | Nederlandse Spoorwegen | State of the Netherlands |
| South West Trains | Stagecoach Group | Public (LSE: SGC) | |
| Southeastern | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| Southern | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| Stansted Express | Abellio | Nederlandse Spoorwegen | State of the Netherlands |
| TfL Rail | Greater London Authority | ||
| Thameslink | Govia | Go-Ahead (65%), Keolis (35%) | Public (Go Ahead [LSE:GOG]), Keolis(70% SNCF [French Republic], 30% Province of Quebec) |
| Virgin Trains | Virgin Rail Group (51%), Stagecoach (49%) | Virgin (Private), Stagecoach (Public LSE:SGC) | |
| Virgin Trains East Coast | Stagecoach (90%), Virgin (10%) | Virgin (Private), Stagecoach (Public LSE:SGC) |
Now I just need to tidy this up and get access to the other government data.