Unsurprising soundings-off about fares rises for some dominate much of the national press coverage of the McNulty report– despite his careful and judicious recommendation that overall fares should stay the same, meaning there will be plenty of winners to offset the losers.

There are also predictable warnings from the unions, who can see the writing on the wall – McNulty’s report is full of eye-opening tables and graphs showing how a good proportion of the ‘efficiency gap’ in UK rail is due to constant above-inflation rises for rail workers. His report could well spell the end of all that.

Elsewhere, reception seems generally favourable – perhaps because McNulty shied away from recommending abolishing or merging the main players, or going too blue-sky about renationalisation or complete privatisation (though he jokes that he is not “theologically opposed” to either).

The DfT also used the launch of the study to announce the details of the West Coast franchise process, with behind-the-scenes negotiations (and maybe some strong-arming) still ongoing over the potential extension of Virgin’s franchise until December 2012.

The franchise documents certainly paid lip-service to McNulty’s recommendations to stop micro-managing so much, although whether they go as far as he intended is very debatable: the habit of so many years is hard to break, and there could be real political fallout from being walked over by operators in negotiating the franchises by giving them too much ‘freedom’.

Will the West Coast franchise be the first to be let on the McNulty model? It’s too soon to tell, but it’s not looking sure yet.