The benefits, per Virgin’s submission, will be more capacity: it plans to put on 20 daily return trips. It would be risky for Virgin or any of the trio of rail companies that had been vying for access to the East London depot to commit to pricing or passenger targets. But there are some proxies. Total rail journeys between Madrid and Barcelona increased by 58 per cent three years after unleashing competition; between Paris and Lyon train trips rose by a quarter.