A new poll of the UK public by Survation for We Own It found that 58%  believed railway privatisation to be a complete or partial failure, over 4 times more than the 13% who said that railway privatisation had been a partial or complete success.

When asked what they thought would happen to rail fares if the railway was in public hands instead of private ownership, 47% believed that prices would be cheaper; a third (33%) believed they would be somewhat cheaper and 14% thought prices would be much cheaper. Conversely, 13% believed prices would be higher if the railway was under public ownership compared to private ownership. Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents believed that rail fares would be the same for either scenario.

Elsewhere in the poll:

• On the topic of Southern Rail and its ongoing dispute with the rail unions, half (50%) of those polled thought that Southern Rail is not suitable to run the service. One in five (20%) thought that Southern Rail was suitable to run the service, with just under a third (30%) of respondents saying that they did not know.
• Of those who thought that Southern Rail was not suitable to run it’s current train services, when asked how they would like to see the service run, 1 in 5 (20%) thought that the contract should go to another private company, 22% thought that only Southern Rail should be re-nationalised and 53% thought the whole railway network should be brought back into public ownership.

Full tables are available here. Survation interviewed 1,029 Scottish adults aged 16+ between 2nd – 7th November 2016. Survation is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

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