Trains running across Berkshire will be renationalised next year, the government has announced.
Southwestern Railway will be taken into public ownership in May 2025 after the passing of The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2020 in Parliament last week.
The operator runs more than 1,500 services per weekday across south west London and the south of England.
In Berkshire, these include Railway the Reading to London Waterloo service – a key commuter train – which stops at Bracknell, Wokingham, Ascot and Winnersh, among other stations.
Longer journeys run south towards Southampton Central, Weymouth, Exeter St Davids and Portsmouth.
The Labour government plans to set up a new body, Great British Railway, which will take over service contracts currently held by private firms as they expire in coming years.
Railway services were publicly owned until the mid-1990s and became largely privatised by 1997.
Some have since been taken under public control during the pandemic, including East Coast Mainline, TransPennine, Northern and South Eastern.
Southwestern Railway will become the first service to be renationalised next year, before C2C does the same in July 2025 and Great Anglia in the Autumn. This is in line with the expiration of rail operator contracts.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the aim of the scheme was to ‘improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellations, the waste and the inefficiency we’ve seen over the last 30 years’.
Ms Alexander said it would boost economic growth and save £150 million per year in fees.
The government has not guaranteed lower fares but has promised a ‘best fare guarantee’ to make sure people are always paying the lowest fare for their journey.
The Transport Secretary said the move should reduce cancellations and lateness.
But Rail Partners, which represents private train firms has criticised the move, saying greater investment in railways is needed rather than a changing of hands.
It eventually wants to take over responsibility for maintaining and improving rail infrastructure from Network Rail.
It comes as Reading stations have seen hundreds of thousands more journeys taking place, according to new figures.
Reading central station was the ninth-busiest in the country outside of Reading, according to the Office of Rail and Road.
But footfall in stations across Bracknell Forest has failed to return to pre-pandemic levels.
There were 2.3 million recorded entries and exits across the four stations in Bracknell Forest in the year to March – down 25 per cent on 2020, when there were 3.1 million entries and exits.
