Where Britain does badly is in the crucial area of reliability. Although its long-distance trains are pretty punctual by European standards, its short-haul ones run late. Britain comes 19th out of 26 European countries for punctuality on local routes— and these are the ones that cause most anguish, as commuters rely on them to get to work on time.
英國在可靠性這一關鍵領域表現糟糕。盡管按照歐洲標準，中國的長途列車非常準時，但短途列車卻晚點了。在26個歐洲國家中，英國在當地航線上的守時率排在第19位，而這些都是最讓人頭疼的，因為通勤者需要準時上班。
The franchising business has also sometimes proved chaotic. The East Coast mainline franchise has gone bust three times—in 2007, 2009 and 2018—as operators overpromised how much they could pay in track-access charges. Even Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, a libertarian think-tank which pioneered the idea of separating the management of track and trains, admits that franchises “didn’t work out as we intended”.
特許經營業務有時也被證明是混亂的。東海岸干線的特許經營已經三次破產——分別在2007年、2009年和2018年——由于運營商在軌道接入費用上承諾過高。甚至亞當•斯密研究所的埃蒙•巴特勒也承認，特許經營“并沒有像我們預想的那樣成功”。
Faced with these problems, the government is thinking about new approaches. On some long-distance routes it is running an “open-access” system, under which different companies are allowed to run services along the same route in competition with each other. The idea is to offer passengers a choice, driving down prices and encouraging innovation—something that is discouraged by franchising, in which rail companies are tied to contracts so detailed that some even specify how often train carpets should be shampooed.
面對這些問題，政府正在思考新的方法。在一些長途線路上，政府正在運行一個“開放-接入”系統，在這個系統下，不同的公司可以在同一條線路上運行服務，相互競爭。這個想法是為了給乘客提供選擇，降低價格，鼓勵創新——特許經營是不鼓勵這種做法的，在特許經營中，鐵路公司與非常詳細的合同捆綁在一起，有些公司甚至規定火車地毯應該多久洗一次。
The results are encouraging. On the East Coast mainline, open-access operators such as Hull trains and Grand Central now compete for passengers. Average fares are lower than on the West Coast mainline, where the West Midlands trains franchise for stopping services and the Virgin trains franchise for express ones hold near-monopolies. Three of the four train companies with the highest passenger-satisfaction ratings last year were open-access operators, not franchisees.
結果鼓舞人心。在東海岸干線上，Hull train和Grand Central等開放入口的運營商現在正在爭奪乘客。平均票價低于西海岸干線，而西海岸干線West Midlands的停車服務專列和Virgin的特快專列幾乎處于壟斷地位。去年乘客滿意度最高的四家列車公司中，有三家是開放接入運營商，而不是特許經銷商。
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