Few railway workers or passengers need telling that rail privatisation has been a flop.

Since 1994 the cost of running the railway has rocketed four-fold and fares have risen to make British train travel the most expensive in Europe.

It’s frustrating for railway managers too, who want to run a high-quality service but find the bureaucracy and costs associated with doing anything to improve services and facilities prohibitively high.

While foreign state-owned railway companies are free to pick off profitable British rail franchises, devolved governments such as Scotland’s are told they cannot select a publicly owned operator that is based in Britain.

The current race to win the lucrative new ScotRail franchise involves state-owned bidders from Germany and the Netherlands, as well as home-grown private companies.

So what’s the alternative to the current mess?

The option of going back to the old British Rail has merit — some aspects of running a railway need a strong degree of centralised control.

But there are many downsides. Britain is a very different place from what it was in 1993, when the Railways Act was passed.

Scotland, and also London and Merseyside, have got a strong degree of control over their own rail networks.

The Welsh government and northern local authorities want similar powers.

Devolution has delivered for rail, with investment in electrification, new trains and line reopenings, though it is marred by the profits from rail franchises going to private or foreign state-owned shareholders, not into improved rail services.

Handing power back to centralised control in the Department for Transport would be a big mistake.

A centralised, state-owned railway would be a Treasury-controlled railway and it seldom did BR any favours.

Based on passenger satisfaction scores, the most successful operations in the last 20 years have been relatively small franchises like Merseyrail, Chiltern, ScotRail and London Overground where management has a clear focus on its operation and, in most cases, a degree of long-term stability.

There’s also a close relationship with the public body managing the contract, in many cases a devolved authority such as Merseytravel, the Scottish government through its executive arm, Transport Scotland, and Transport for London.

The lesson is that rail managers deliver best when they have stability, a close and positive relationship with the public body which funds the service and a manageable business size which isn’t too big.

There are countless examples from continental Europe that reinforce that lesson, not least in Germany and France.

Franchising, however you structure it, is a fundamentally unsuitable way to deliver rail services which need very long-term planning horizons.

A recent report by the Co-operative Party, Aslef and the Socialist Environmental Resources Association on Scotland’s railways argues for the abandonment of franchising and the creation of a “people’s ScotRail” that would be owned by the people of Scotland — with employees and users having a major stake, together with the Scottish government.

What about infrastructure? Network Rail, a not-for-dividend company established during the last Labour government in the wake of Railtrack’s collapse, is developing a stable, dynamic programme of investment in the railway infrastructure despite unacceptable demands by the Office of Rail Regulation for it to cut costs.

It needs to be more accountable and play a strong part in developing a long-term vision for rail, working in close partnership with the operators. And it needs to say goodbye to the obscene levels of bonuses awarded to its top directors.

Now is the time to develop a more radical and innovative approach to “regional” franchises like Northern Rail, which come up for renewal in 2016.

An incoming Labour government in 2015 should insist that options other than simply going for private-sector bids are explored.

The northern England local authorities, led by the large transport authorities in the metropolitan areas, should have the power to create an arm’s-length not-for-profit operation or contract its running to a social enterprise.

In the case of InterCity we need a Britain-wide approach. The structure is already there, in the form of state-owned Directly Operated Railways (DOR) — current operator of East Coast, which the government is rushing to privatise.

DOR was set up by the government to come to the rescue of franchises that goes bust.

However, it has the expertise to develop into an “InterCity UK” business operating a reunified network bringing each InterCity franchise — West Coast, East Coast, Cross Country and the long-distance parts of Great Western, Midland and Greater Anglia — into a single body as franchises expire.

It should have strong and inclusive governance with representation from the Scottish and Welsh governments, passenger and employee interests.

A huge driver of costs under privatisation has been rolling stock.

Most trains are now owned by the banks and they have extorted huge profits from leasing their trains to operators.

Government needs to place a cap on these profits or — better still — look to set up new, not-for-profit companies to own trains.

There would be an incentive to operators to own their own fleet, if the short-termism and instability of franchising came to an end.

This approach could be delivered without major upheaval and at no extra cost — and it would be popular.

It would allow the profits currently going into shareholders’ pockets to go into building a better railway which is accountable to the people who use it and who work for it — a people’s railway.

Professor Paul Salveson set up the Association of Community Rail Partnerships and was a senior manager in the railway industry.

His book Railpolitik: Bringing Railways Back to Communities was published by Lawrence and Wishart in September. Morning Star readers can get a £3 discount on the cover price by entering “railpolitik” in the discount code when buying on line at www.lwbooks.co.uk. The Co-operative Party, SERA and Aslef’s report on A People’s ScotRail can be read at tinyurl.com/pph6way.