From the
Daily Mail today
Three companies raked in £1BILLION over five years by leasing out train carriages to rail firms
Yes - a billion pounds is a lot of money, but is it a lot of money out of proportion to what they do, or is it a big number because of what a lot they do?
Taking the most recent data, 1.75 billion passenger journeys were made by train in the last year, and the Rolling Stock compansies (RoSCos) made a profit of aroun £200 million pound between them. Each single passenger journey brought an income of around £2 (
House of Commons Briefing Paper) - total revemue £3.4 billion pounds. That's around 6% of passenger fares - 12p per journey in £2.
Having put the money roughly into proportion in your train fare - is it reasonable? Does that profit allow for the RoSCos to invest into the new capital trains needed for a bigger fleet for a bigger (passenger number) railway, or is it payout to shareholders? How much of that profit comes back to you and me, the British taxpayer, from profit taxes on the companies?
I am not a financier - so I don't know the answers to my further questions. I worry about assumptions in my school boy arithmetic; I have assumed all trains owned by the RoSCoS (but I know First Group own some trains) and I have assumed that the National Rail train leasing business is the only business of the RoSCos (but do they lease also to
TfL» , Tyneside Metro, etc).
