If the railway companies and the Government that continues to subsidise them seek a large-scale passenger mutiny, they are going about it very purposefully indeed. As we report today, train fares in Kent appear set to rise by more than 15 per cent above inflation over the next five years, with every prospect of being followed by similar price rises across the network as other rail operators’ franchises are renegotiated. There is, by contrast, little prospect of the country’s most crowded trains becoming much less crowded, or of the commuters who use them suddenly finding alternative ways of getting to work.

Rail travel in Britain is already expensive. The trend is now likely to continue, if not accelerate, against a background of only marginal improvement in the train operators’ performance and some unconscionable pay deals for their executives and unionised drivers. The result will, in many respects, be the reverse of new Labour’s plans eight years ago on taking control of the rail network after its botched privatisation. These hinged on luring the travelling public out of their cars and into more environmentally acceptable alternatives. What has transpired instead has been a costly, chaotic and, all too often, tragic period for the railways and their customers.

No transport system that also serves as a financial black hole is tenable, and it is a major failure of policy and management that Britain’s rail network has, on average, devoured more taxpayers’ money annually since privatisation than before. Total subsidies are now running at £5 billion a year compared with about £1 billion in real terms under British Rail. The taxpayer’s contribution to the average ticket has risen from 25 per cent five years ago to 55 per cent today. Network Rail, which receives the bulk of these subsidies in the form of fees from operators, is a non-profit organisation with no private shareholders. In existence for three years, it is already showing the classic symptoms of inadequate accountability, while at the same time heavily burdened by new, post-Hatfield safety regulations. Its task is to satisfy these regulations while cutting costs in real terms. It cannot be allowed to give the impression of doing so by offering inflated estimates only to lower them in its final accounts.

Network Rail’s challenges are hard to overstate, however. The Hatfield crash in 2000 triggered a massive rail replacement programme on an already dilapidated system. The operating companies have, likewise, been forced to absorb the substantial unanticipated costs of the disaster.

It is lamentable that the country that launched the age of rail travel lags so far behind its European and Japanese rivals two centuries later. While they upgrade their bullet trains, George Stephenson’s disparate heirs can do no more than creep towards modest punctuality targets. Yet this is no argument for not making whatever investments are necessary to modernise Britain’s basic rail infrastructure.

In the meantime, that infrastructure is being used more than ever. Last year more passengers used it than at any time since 1959, when the network was half as big again. They have not been priced out of their cars, which, thanks to the freezing of fuel duty, are now a cheaper way to travel. Rather, the Government that promised an historic shift away from roads and on to public transport is now contemplating pricing people off the railways.