After all this time, Labour still has no idea how to improve the railways

It is almost as much a part of Christmas as Slade and "When did you say last posting day was?" – the annual news of rises in train fares, timed to induce maximum fury in those about to make the rail-borne pilgrimage to visit relatives.

It is almost as much a part of Christmas as Slade and "When did you say last posting day was?" – the annual news of rises in train fares, timed to induce maximum fury in those about to make the rail-borne pilgrimage to visit relatives.

As in most years, there is rather less to the shock of "up to" 10 per cent fare increases than meets the rising gorge of passenger impatience. The unnoticed truth is that since privatisation rail fares have risen by less than the costs of motoring and by considerably less than average disposable income.

The rather better-noticed truth is that some fares are quite spectacularly expensive. If you do not book in advance and want to travel when everyone else does, the train companies will skin you for the sort of money that might just pay to repair a headlight on a BMW but which looks obscene when charged for what is still regarded as a public service. On the other hand, better marketing has cut many off-peak, pre-booked fares to bargain levels and sold them better, helping to generate the 14 per cent growth in passenger numbers since privatisation five years ago.

The fact that passenger numbers have increased is the bottom line of the recent history of the railways. Despite a level of service that quite miserably fails to live up to reasonable expectations, despite the excessive disruption caused by the upgrading of the network after the Hatfield crash just over a year ago, despite complaints about high fares, more people have chosen to travel by rail. Many will complain that they have no choice, because the alternative on the roads is worse, and certainly part of the rise in rail traffic is explained by economic growth, although that never halted the decline in rail passenger numbers before 1996.

The story of the railways after privatisation, therefore, is not one of unmitigated disaster. But the mitigated disaster which this country has suffered and is suffering is bad enough. Attempts to measure punctuality and reliability have produced perverse incentives and meaningless statistics that bear no relation to the misery endured by millions of individuals. Four-and-a-half years after the election of a government committed to an "integrated transport policy", we have no sense that Stephen Byers, the sixth transport minister since 1997, has any idea of how to do the simple things the railways need. Instead, Labour allowed the defects of the Tory privatisation scheme to work themselves out until the Hatfield crash belatedly forced Mr Byers to put Railtrack out of its – and our – misery. He even managed to mishandle that to such an extent that the City will now look even more askance at funding partnerships with the public sector in future.

The simple things needed to turn Britain's railways from a mitigated disaster to a success are to run more trains, more reliably while ensuring that incentives to safety are uppermost in managers' minds. It may be technically difficult to design such a railway, but the principles are simple.

It does not inspire confidence, however, that the Labour Government should in effect be starting from scratch now, while the performance indicators for a demoralised Railtrack have been sliding since the company went into administration.

Whatever the blueprint for the future, whatever the mix of public and private, and wherever the balance between integration and competition is struck, one fact is unavoidable. We will not get a better railway in this country unless we are prepared to pay for it. That is a truth Tony Blair is prepared to spell out in relation to the health service, but shies away from in this case.

The reasons for that are obvious. Which politician would like to tell rail passengers that taxpayers as a whole cannot be expected to bear the entire burden of improving the railway and that fares really ought to rise by more than they are doing this Christmas?