[HN Gopher] UK Rail services to come under unified state control
___________________________________________________________________
UK Rail services to come under unified state control
Author : petewailes
Score : 265 points
Date : 2021-05-20 06:33 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| whazor wrote:
| Applause for the Transport Supremo for getting this done (for
| reference check Bed of Nails from Yes Minister).
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Ah yes, the Transport Muggins!
| [deleted]
| cies wrote:
| And so the privatization experiment come to an end. Bye bye
| Thatcherism. I hope this silly belief in the cure-all of "small
| govt" will die with it.
|
| Sure govt's should not supply all food, or luxury good, or ...
| But public transport, schools, hospitals, ...
|
| I think we should make a good set of rules by which we can decide
| which typed of biz should be in private hands, and what we prefer
| public.
|
| The Fed, Blackwater, prisons, rail, hospitals, banks... What
| could possibly go wrong?
| leskat wrote:
| For what it's worth, even Thatcher thought rail privatisation
| was "a privatisation too far" [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...
| cies wrote:
| Thatcherism went beyond the namesake :)
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > The Fed, Blackwater, prisons, rail, hospitals, banks... What
| could possibly go wrong?
|
| This is not a universal truth. Come enjoy an African government
| hospital, then sample one of the listed private hospitals.
| fnord123 wrote:
| "There exists a private hospital in a country of superior
| quality to a public hospital in the same country" is a weak
| claim. Even weaker is "there exists a private hospital in the
| world of superior quality to a public hospital also in the
| world".
| samatman wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that the claim you're replying to is
| that private hospitals in the countries in question are
| consistently better than public ones.
| fnord123 wrote:
| If that was the claim, then why consider African
| hospitals instead of any hospital?
| samatman wrote:
| Because those are the countries in question.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| because:
|
| 1. its were I live
|
| 2. its where glib statements about the virtues
| government-run organisations slam into cold hard reality.
| More so than say Switzerland.
|
| 3. try get an EU/US/CA/AU/NZ/JP expat to work in Africa
| and expect his family to use government hospitals.
| Really, try.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Private hospitals are usually nicer than public ones
| everywhere, but that's obviously to be expected.
|
| However, that misses the point of state involvement in
| education and healthcare, which is universal access. Of
| course people with money will have access to (good) schools
| and (good) healthcare. The state is involved so that
| _everyone_ has access to those services.
| fnord123 wrote:
| Education and healthcare also have network effects. If
| people near you are ill then you're likely to also become
| ill. If people around you think taxation is theft and
| coercion then they can band together and elect people
| with similar brain worms into government.
| Traster wrote:
| No it doesn't, this is absolutely not the end of privatization.
| Private companies will still be running all the trains, the
| only difference will be they'll be run under the branding of
| GBR so that people can't complain about the private companies.
|
| All this does is move the accountability away from the private
| companies.
| cies wrote:
| Sadly.
| JgiuX76h wrote:
| This type of "privatization" doesn't make the government any
| smaller. There is still exactly the same amount of coercion and
| government control.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Building railways roads and essential national
| infrastructure... Coersion?
| JgiuX76h wrote:
| Yes. Taxing people to pay for those things requires
| coercion. Preventing other people from providing completing
| services requires coercion.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I have lives in 3 coubtries and never seen a government
| preventing anyone from building private roads, railways,
| etc. Somehow essential infrastructure is not a popular
| business investment
|
| Also by that logic stopping people from dueling or
| stabbing each-other on the street is coersion . Stopping
| coersion by mafia is coersion. How is this a usefull
| concept?
| modo_mario wrote:
| So how are they prevented from building competing tracks
| and more importantly how would one build competing tracks
| if allowed?
| cies wrote:
| Tax could befall only businesses, which are coerced
| anyway (as you need a license to start a business). Then
| the businesses increase prices for their products, for
| which consumers ultimately pay (uncoerced).
| supernova87a wrote:
| I was always wondering how the experiment in British rail would
| write its next chapter.
|
| The logic of privatization seemed odd to me: "You have a choice
| now -- if you weren't satisfied with the service you received on
| your trip to Manchester, you can go to Leeds instead!"
| scatters wrote:
| Some intercity routes are (were) open access, particularly the
| East Coast. Of course this was dependent on spare capacity
| being available.
| bsd44 wrote:
| Yes please! It's long overdue! The state of current rail services
| cannot possibly be any worse!
| dash2 wrote:
| I suspect a key divide in reaction to this news is between those
| of us who are member British Rail and those of us who don't. I
| do. It was like stabbing yourself with broken glass.
| jpswade wrote:
| This is fantastic news.
| 0898 wrote:
| It's not impossible that one day our rail network could stand
| shoulder to shoulder with GOV.UK and the NHS - which I don't
| think it's too hyperbolic to suggest are both the envy of the
| world.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| UK rail suffers from the service provider having zero
| accountability to the paying customer at the point of service.
| It's the DMV on rails.
|
| Obviously there are no competing train companies / train tracks /
| signalling systems. If you want to vote with your wallet you only
| have two ways of leveraging better service: demand compensation
| or stop using the trains altogether.
|
| The problem with a nationalised rail system is... _it will also
| have zero accountability to the paying customers!_
|
| What would be really helpful would be to have an independent and
| powerful ombudsman who can crack down on sloppy service, and I'm
| pleased to see this given brief mention in The Guardian's
| coverage. We shall see.
| jabl wrote:
| What is actually changing here? The article says GBR will be
| responsible for ticketing, prices and schedules, which makes
| sense that you can buy a ticket for anywhere on the rail system
| regardless of which company happens to operate which line at
| whichever moment.
|
| What I don' understand, is that the article says that the
| 'government has ended rail franchising', which AFAIU was the
| process where private companies bid to handle certain routes. Now
| this is to be replaced with 'concessions', which AFAIU is a
| bidding process where private companies bid to operate certain
| routes. What's the difference?
| dua2020 wrote:
| A concession means the private company operates the railway for
| a set fee and a set operational standard, the state owner will
| retain ticket revenue (and risk). This is how the London
| Overground concession works.
|
| A franchise basically gives all operation responsibilities and
| ticket revenue to the private operator, in return, the private
| operator gives a lump sum bid for the contract at the
| beginning.
| carlsborg wrote:
| Fantastic. Train fares in the UK are prohibitively high. It is at
| times cheaper to fly via Spain than it is to travel to London
| from the North East by train, as this story demonstrates.
|
| https://metro.co.uk/2017/06/27/man-flies-from-newcastle-to-l...
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| There is no way the Treasury has agreed to renationalisation in
| order to put the fares down. Expect them to go up, if anything.
| baby wrote:
| Yup. I lived in London for a year and pretty much just traveled
| by train the whole time. I feel like I missed out on a lot of
| cool trips around the city because train tickets were absurdly
| expensive.
| abainbridge wrote:
| Isn't transport by plane just cheaper to provide than rail? You
| don't need to maintain railway lines, bridges, tunnels, points,
| overhead power lines, signalling or intermediate stations.
| Routing congestion is reduced because planes can move in 3D.
| There is no rolling resistance and air friction is reduced due
| to flying high-up where the air is thin. Airports are built
| away from city centres, where land is cheap. The natural
| monopolies of rail-track providers are avoided. I think it
| would be amazing if train travel was as cheap as air travel.
| markus92 wrote:
| The energy requirements are vastly different, rolling stock
| is a lot cheaper than airframes etc.
| abainbridge wrote:
| Good points. A 737 costs about $90M and seats about 162
| people. Let's say it lasts 10 years and does 4 journeys per
| day, that's 14600 journeys in its life. So $38 per journey
| is needed to pay for the plane. A train costs $15M and has
| about twice as many seats. So, yeah train wins.
|
| According to
| https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_121.shtml Trains are
| about 8.5x more energy efficient than planes. So yeah,
| trains win that too. For context, planes do about 80 MPG
| per passenger.
|
| On the other hand, building HS2 might cost PS75 billion. It
| might carry 100 trains per day, so 32000 passengers per
| day, if all the trains were full. That's 11.7M per year. If
| it runs for 25 years without costing anything more, that's
| 292M passenger journeys, so PS256 per passenger journey.
|
| I _think_ that demonstrates that the infrastructure costs
| are larger than the costs of extra energy requirements and
| airframes. But we're clearly into "it's complicated"
| territory, so I concede.
| switch007 wrote:
| Are you suggesting fares will come down? If so, based on what?
| steve_gh wrote:
| Note: I have spent the last 7 years working in consultancy, much
| of which has been involved with both Metro Rail (eg TfL) and
| Heavy Rail in the UK.
|
| There are certainly some messy aspects to UK Rail, but the
| current system was not nearly as bad as made out by some posters
| , and there are some very good arguments against further
| centralisation.
|
| A lot of the problem as I see it has been the misalignment
| between Network Rail (running the tracks) and the train operating
| companies (TOCs).
|
| Firstly, NR is a huge and bloated bureaucracy - it is incredibly
| slow moving, and many of the problems (e.g. lack of modern
| rolling stock) can be directly traced back to problems with NR
| signing off on new rolling stock (they have to authorise each
| type of rolling stock to be run on each line).
|
| Second, there are definite problems with timetabling - the TOCs
| are told the timetables they have to run. Unfortunately, the
| people who designed the timetables haven't worked out that in
| some congested areas (eg the approaches to Waterloo station in
| London), there is no way on earth that the timetables and service
| frequency of movements in and out of the stations are actually
| going work.
|
| Thirdly, NR's investment in new systems has been very patchy. It
| is worth noting that the Welsh Government removed control of the
| Central Valley lines (serving the valleys North of Cardiff) from
| NR, and took direct control themselves, because they were sick of
| decades of underinvestment from NR, which generally takes a very
| London-centric approach.
|
| Going forwards, I'm hopeful that we will see NR effectively split
| up into regional entities aligned with the TOC regions, so we can
| get much better alignment between infrastructure and rolling
| stock / services in each region. This may also enable a more
| equitable distribution of funding for infrastructure, which would
| enable infrastructure and service improvements especially in the
| North.
|
| Finally, commuter rail and long distance passenger volumes have
| grown vastly over the past 20 years, which is a good thing. What
| is needed is infrastructure investment (particularly in modern
| signalling systems - ETMS) to enable trains to run much more
| closely together, and enable a higher service density. However, I
| think it is unlikely that the government will be prepared to make
| this investment.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The timetables bit is key here.
|
| the reason a lot of services failed so horribly in 2018/2019
| was because as OP pointed out, greyling fucked up the
| timetabling.
|
| Not only that, they decided to pick a fight with the unions on
| southern rail, which turned out to end in a messy stalemate.
|
| https://www.londonreconnections.com/ has some good references.
| mrow84 wrote:
| This isn't an area I know anything about, but is it correct to
| say that the points you are making are in some sense orthogonal
| to the nature of the ownership, i.e. public or private?
|
| I struggle to see how much meaningful competition can be
| achieved, so remain unclear about the value of private
| ownership, but it strikes me that decentralisation is perfectly
| within the realm of possibility for a publicly owned entity.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Network Rail which the GP was mostly talking about isn't
| privately owned.
|
| Rail Track, its predecessor was privately owned but it
| collapsed in 2002 after the Hatfield train crash. Following
| that it was bought by the government to create Network Rail.
| mrow84 wrote:
| The thrust of steve_gh's argument seemed to be that
| decentralisation of that (publicly owned, as you are
| noting) body, and particularly alignment with the train
| operating company regions, would improve the situation.
|
| I wanted to get their views on any industry-specific
| constraints around the orthogonality of "centralisation"
| and "ownership", because I feel like they are too
| frequently conflated (not by anyone in this thread, to be
| clear), despite not being inherently linked - but there
| might be some good reasons for that in the context of the
| current state of the British railway network.
| qmmmur wrote:
| What they fail to mention is that those two aspects were
| broken up initially by the government after privatisation in
| the first place because the accountability and running of
| both aspects simultaneously was so bad.
| mcdowall wrote:
| I similarly spent a few years working in this space (TfL,
| digitising their data and website etc). It always struck me
| just how nuts the weekly meetings between different station
| operators and TOCS within the GLA would be, essentially a
| shouting match to determine who would have to keep their
| station open that weekend. Resultant timetable changes on the
| fly were always fun content to keep updated.
|
| Timetabling (at that point) remained very much a manual
| process, I think they had to bring a poor chap out of
| retirement who wrote them by hand.
| matsemann wrote:
| Norway's railroad also went "private" a few years ago, and have
| butchered it up into (not all):
|
| - we have a directorate of railway deciding where to build
| tracks, what providers must adhere to, their timetables etc
|
| - one government owned company building - one government owned
| company building and maintaining the tracks
|
| - one government owned company owning the trains
|
| - another one maintaining the trains
|
| - one government owned company responsible for all ticketing,
| purchasing, route search, providing timetables etc
|
| - 3 different companies having won a bid for different routes.
| They have to lease the trains. But since they have monopoly on
| their route and the directorate decides everything, having
| multiple hasn't really led to any competition. Sure, they fought
| somewhat on price for the bid, but for the next 10 years the only
| thing they really do is provide personnel for the trains.
|
| Nothing here made train a better or more viable alternative for
| the people. Just 5x the amount of highly paid directors. And more
| overhead and less cooperation. In fact it's now often more
| expensive to take train long distance, as you end up paying
| (price + price) from two companies instead of a single rebated
| long distance ticket.
|
| One of the companies now driving in Norway is the not-very-
| popular British Go-Ahead, even.
| audunw wrote:
| I feel like the decision to do this is based on an outdated
| idea about how to do business effectively. Take car makers. It
| used to be that the winners were outsourcing everything except
| their core competence (engines and assembling/marketing
| vehicles). But these days it seems like vertical integrated
| companies are the winners, with Tesla being a good example in
| the car industry. I think politicians that have pushed for this
| was inspired heavily by all this out-sourcing happening at the
| end of the previous century.
|
| It's not that vertical integration is good everywhere. But
| neither is avoiding vertical integration. You have to use your
| brain and look at what's beneficial in a given market. And
| train operation strikes me as a place where vertical
| integration is essential to long term success and efficiency.
| If it was actually a free market, I'm sure that it'd converge
| to a few vertically integrated companies with monopolies in
| large geographic areas.
|
| I'd also argue that government owned corporations have become
| better at operating efficiently. Business has almost become a
| science. You're not as reliant on brute force through
| competition.
|
| And when government corporations are more expensive, it's
| usually just because they treat their employees better.
| jabl wrote:
| The 'vertical integration vs. outsourcing' seems to be
| largely a fashion thing. When giant vertically integrated
| conglomerates are the status quo, you have the self-appointed
| thought leaders writing business books and speaking at
| expensive dinners arguing for outsourcing and focusing on
| core competences. Then as the tides turn and 'outsource
| everything' becomes the norm, the next generation of self-
| appointed business thought leaders argue for vertical
| integration. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I see the same in our company. Every few years we have a
| leadership shuffle, which then cascades as the new leaders
| replace all the layers underneath them in the months
| afterwards. Once things become stable, a new leader is
| hired and the whole things starts again.
|
| All the new management hires will then want to put their
| own stamp on things which means doing things differently
| than before. So we've been going back and forth between
| different paradigms. Sometimes within months! We seem to be
| going back between role-based teams ("we have too many
| silo's, we need to join all technologies of a role in a
| team!!") to technology-based teams ("we have too little
| focus, we need to focus on all responsibilities for one
| technology per team!!"). Literally several times we've made
| this switch over the last years, back and forth.
|
| It just feels like each new hire just has to change it just
| to be seen to be doing something by their bosses. No newly
| hired manager every wants to leave things the same even
| though they are working just fine.
|
| The thing is that we are very versatile. We can deal with
| the drawbacks of each model. We collaborate even though
| we're not in the same team. We can't work properly with all
| this ongoing reorganisation though. It's like the chair is
| being pulled out from under us for no reason.
| Skinney wrote:
| They don't have to lease their trains from the government, they
| can bring their own trains if they'd like, but leasing is
| likely cheaper.
|
| The company maintaining the trains do have to bid on the
| contracts, as well, and can bid for contracts in other
| countries if they wish.
|
| The directorate of railway was there pre-privatization.
|
| It's the infrastructure company that decides the timetables,
| not the directorate. The directorate assigns the contracts, and
| the contracts specify the minimum fee for a ticket.
|
| Operators are free to decide the interior of the trains, and
| any additional products on top of the minimum fee. Meaning they
| can charge more for better seating, reserved seating etc. Vy
| has their own ticketing service in addition to the government
| provided one, which they use to sell bus and taxi services to
| cover as much of your trip as possible. GoAhead doesn't have
| their own ticketing service, instead relying on Vy and the
| government service to sell tickets. This saves them money on
| development, but makes them lose out on any additional revenue
| that Vy makes for extra sales.
|
| GoAhead has higher customer satisfaction than NSB (the national
| train company pre-privatization).
|
| Idealy you'd have more competition between the operators, but
| since Norway is mostly single track that is difficult to do.
|
| Still, the government will save an estimated 12 billion NOK
| over the next 9 years based on the current contracts.
|
| That's not to say it's all good. Long range travel has gotten
| more expensive (more than one operator involved) and there are
| now more directors with million kr saleries. Not to mention
| that the effects of one of these operators going bankrupt will
| be worse than if one national company did everything.
| matsemann wrote:
| I'm one of those (many) people that don't believe in that 12B
| figure. It is _only_ based on "we used to pay X for this
| route in the old model, and now we pay Y", but that's two
| different things to compare and ignores lots of new costs as
| well. All the offers were also based on traffic growth,
| meaning subsidies for the tickets in 7-8 years would go down.
| This would have happened irregardless of the bids (except the
| contractors have budgeted with it and now carries the risk).
|
| And before when it was the government paying the government
| owned NSB, it was basically the government giving themselves
| money. Now whatever profit the new companies make are instead
| going out of the country. Government takes the cost, others
| take the profit.
|
| So unless this happens to result in a much better experience
| for the customers I think it will be a net loss for society.
| But time will tell, hard to say too much based on the last
| year.
| Skinney wrote:
| Considering most train routes operate at a net loss, <<we
| used to pay x but now we pay y>> is really the only
| interesting metric, no?
|
| Profits from subsidies aren't really profit when you're the
| one paying the subsidy.
|
| Keep in mind, that before any profit, the government still
| makes money taxation (sales tax, employee income tax etc.)
| and several companies are going to operate at a loss for a
| few years until trafic picks up. I think government saving
| money on this isn't unlikely.
|
| That's not the same as customers saving money, though.
|
| I agree that time will tell. Until Norway has more double-
| tracks and can have proper competition, this could go
| either way.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Operators are free to decide the interior of the trains, and
| any additional products on top of the minimum fee."
|
| So by the sounds of it, you have tp hunt fpr tickets on
| different websites and exchequer looses out, but in exchange
| I get a different of seat, and packet of crisps?
|
| I am really not getting 'free market innovation' vibes here
| Skinney wrote:
| If all you care about is the cheapest possible ride, you'll
| get that through the government ticketing service.
|
| If you travel the same distance often and want to pay extra
| for more comfort or whatever, you'll benefit from using
| whatever ticketing service the operator wants you to use.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The best description of this I've seen is "playing at shops":
| there's no real _market_ , it's just set up to look like one.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The other crazy side to it is that the government still own
| and pay for the track - the only bit that doesn't even make
| any money. And is crazy expensive!
|
| Privatise the profit, socialise the loss.
| jabl wrote:
| Tracks are certainly very valuable infrastructure, it's
| just hard to monetize (and very expensive to build, as you
| say). So in a way it makes sense for the government to
| handle it.
| pydry wrote:
| The way to monetize is property development and rent
| around stations. That's how it works in Japan, where
| private companies sell tickets at a loss and still make
| profits.
|
| In the UK that land got sold off to private equity and
| the like who are making the real dough while they funnel
| some of that into donations to the Tory party.
| jabl wrote:
| > The way to monetize is property development and rent
| around stations. That's how it works in Japan, where
| private companies sell tickets at a loss and still make
| profits.
|
| Yes. It's just really hard to do afterwards - having the
| government expropriate land around the stations and
| giving it to the railway companies is guaranteed to be
| wildly expensive and unpopular.
|
| Japan's private passenger railways IIRC make about 50% of
| their income from ticket sales, the rest comes from
| leveraging the (very!) high value land around the
| stations. Many other metropolitan rail systems also get
| about 50% of the income from tickets, but since the
| railways don't own the land they have to get the rest
| through some form of government subsidy.
|
| I think some of the problems with the British privatized
| rail system is how fragmented it is, with nobody
| responsible for the whole. And there's lots of government
| meddling in every interface between all these myriad
| private companies, providing ample opportunity for
| corruption and massively misaligned incentives. I suspect
| it would be better to either nationalize the whole lot
| under one roof, or then go back to the old pre-
| nationalization type regional monopolies with a single
| company owning tracks, trains, stations as well as
| operating them (a bit like the privatized Japanese
| railways).
| pydry wrote:
| >Yes. It's just really hard to do afterwards - having the
| government expropriate land around the stations and
| giving it to the railway companies is guaranteed to be
| wildly expensive and unpopular.
|
| Expropriation of land would be unpopular (it would get
| the tabloids in a jitter as they fearmonger that the
| government is going to expropriate your garden next) but
| introducing a special tax on nonresidential property
| within 500m of a train station and subsidizing the price
| of tickets with it - probably not so much.
|
| "Oh look my season ticket got cheaper" while private
| equity reports lower earnings and google's tax bill
| shoots up - this is going to be popular.
|
| It could then be extended to residential property. The
| government could also go into business itself - building
| a shopping mall or two and funding government budgets.
|
| This is a frog that could be boiled.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Yes in the Netherlands the railway operator makes a lot
| of money from their train stations as well.
|
| A train station in 2021 is basically a big shopping mall
| in a prime location with massive foot traffic.
| apexalpha wrote:
| The Dutch Railways even made a slim profit in the UK in
| 2020 after getting EUR1,5 billion in subsidies from the
| UK government through Abellio.
|
| No idea how this new nationalisation will work out for
| either party, though.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Track is what defines the railway, maximum speed, 85% of
| maintenance cost, etc.
|
| UK tried to privatise it, but the firm collapsed and had
| to be nationalised.
|
| What do private companies add, if on a good day they earn
| the profit and on a bad day tax payer picks up the tab.
| jabl wrote:
| > Track is what defines the railway, maximum speed, 85%
| of maintenance cost, etc.
|
| > UK tried to privatise it, but the firm collapsed and
| had to be nationalised.
|
| Yes, absolutely.
|
| > What do private companies add, if on a good day they
| earn the profit and on a bad day tax payer picks up the
| tab.
|
| I think the best way to run a railway is to either
| completely nationalize it all under one roof, or then
| have it completely privatized, with a single company
| being responsible for everything. Yes, this would create
| regional rail monopolies, but OTOH they wouldn't be
| completely free to extract monopoly prices since there's
| still competition from other modes of transport (cars,
| airplanes, buses, trucks).
|
| The current UK system with a myriad public and private
| entities with very complicated contractual relationships
| is just a mess. Unfortunately it seems the EU is hellbent
| on imposing the same model across the EU.
| makomk wrote:
| The seperation of track ownership and operation from actually
| running the trains is mandated by EU directives, so that part
| is going to be the same pretty much anywhere in the EU. I think
| some countries like Germany bend the rules a bit by having them
| run by nominally independent divisions of the same state-owned
| company (and sometimes go father than is allowed and end up on
| the losing end of court battles), but the UK is probably going
| beyond what it could do as a member of the EU here.
| duxup wrote:
| What is the EU's reason for that rule?
| makomk wrote:
| In theory this is meant to be a good thing because it
| allows for competition between train operators which sounds
| like it should lead to better outcomes for customers.
| There's also a desire for companies to be able to operate
| commercial trains that don't have government backing on an
| equal footing with the government-chosen operators, which
| only works if the other train operators also have an arms-
| length commercial relationship with the track owner and
| operator.
|
| Also, you need to bear in mind that European governments
| benefit from the _other_ governments strictly following
| this rule because it means their train operators can run
| trains in those other countries, but are often less keen on
| doing so themselves. So there 's an interesting dynamic
| where a lot of countries insist that of course _they 're_
| following the rules, it's all the other European countries
| that are unfairly bending them to benefit their train
| operators.
| duxup wrote:
| Ah that makes sense, yeah I can see say Country A not
| being keen on giving Country B's trains a fair shake if
| their own rail company wants time on the tracks.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Control & standardization.
| apexalpha wrote:
| Before this rule all tracks AND rolling stock would be
| owned by single, national entities in every country. If you
| were a Austrian train operator wanting to run trains to
| Germany you'd have to ask Deutsche Bahn for space on the
| rail, and they would (obviously) give priority to their own
| rolling stock.
|
| This would happen to the point where it was almost
| impossible to organise cross border rail connections.
|
| By seperating the track from the train you can make the
| train companies compete with each other on a (more) equal
| footing.
|
| Ironically, most of the 'private' train companies now
| running on UK tracks are actually Dutch, German and French
| state owned railway companies competing with each other.
| diftraku wrote:
| It's a very similar case in Finland, case-in-point when HRT
| (Helsinki Region Transport) requested bids from operators to
| run the trains in the greater capital area (Helsinki, Espoo,
| Vantaa and the neighbouring municipalities).
|
| - Rolling stock is owned by HRT
|
| - Transport Infrastructure Agency (Vaylavirasto) is responsible
| for the tracks and stations
|
| Which means the bid is mainly for personnel operating the
| trains.
|
| There were couple companies that placed bids for this, most of
| them withdrew before the end of the call, essentially leaving
| one competing bid along with VR's (then and now current
| operator).
|
| In the end, nothing changed and VR still operates the trains
| using HRT's own rolling stock. The only real change going
| forward are the plans to have a dedicated maintenance depot for
| HRT's own stock, since VR does not want to have the burden of
| maintaining stock they don't directly own.
|
| At least with freight, it's going to be different... right?
| jabl wrote:
| There's a law giving HRT the right to handle rail operations
| in the Helsinki metropolitan area. In the rest of the country
| VR has a monopoly, and sadly seems completely uninterested in
| developing commuter rail services in other metropolitan
| areas. As a result, there are efforts to amend the law to
| allow other regional authorities the same kind of rights HRT
| has. We'll see what happens.
| [deleted]
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| For anyone who appreciates 1980s British comedy, there's a sketch
| by Ronnie Barker about the joys of British Rail.
|
| "I told BR to be off. Then they offered me PS1000. I said I'm not
| a man who can be bought. Then they offered me PS2000. Good
| evening."
|
| "We're going to replace the existing fare structure, with a very
| unfair structure"
|
| "British Rail intend to maintain our standards. But now for the
| good news!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV2lmSDKvO8
| intsunny wrote:
| The title seems heavily editorialized.
|
| The Guardian's "UK railways to be simplified but still
| substantially privatised" seems more accurate:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/19/uk-rail-ove...
| Jolter wrote:
| Moved to url: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57176858
| Neil44 wrote:
| This is very strange. The BBC article has gone 404 and there's
| nothing on the guardian or daily mail. But I also heard this
| discussed on radio 4 earlier. Odd. 8:04am.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/19/uk-rail-ove...
| edf13 wrote:
| Page not found??
| nasmorn wrote:
| 8000 pounds for a 50min train ride season ticket is absolutely
| insane. Are the trains fancy like the orient express?
| elric wrote:
| This is an interesting shift. When I lived in the UK, I was
| rather fond of how well public transport worked - in general, and
| trains specifically. In my native Belgium, on the other hand,
| it's all basically shit. While Belgium is slowly pushing for
| _less_ state control in public transport (allegedly on account of
| EU competition rules), the UK is now changing direction.
|
| Can anyone summarize the background of this decision? Has there
| been passenger backlash against the current system?
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Guess it depends on what you consider to be shit. Public
| transport in Belgium is incredibly widespread and affordable,
| and while trains are somewhat often delayed (but people love to
| kvetch and exaggerate all the time,
| https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard) due to years
| of neglect of the infrastructure, at least you don't have to
| pay an arm and a leg as you would for e.g. a short trip between
| London and Brighton. Public transport in London is pretty good,
| but doesn't strike me as being way better than it is in big
| cities in Belgium like Antwerp or Brussels.
| elric wrote:
| Their way of calculating punctuality is pretty misleading. It
| takes into account the predicted arrival at the final
| destination, without taking into account where passengers
| actually go. Delays along the route are hidden that way, even
| though most passengers don't go from origin to terminus, i.e.
| hardly anyone travels from Liege to Ostend, but the start &
| end of that 2hour+ journey are what's used to compute delays.
|
| If they were to count what percentage of _passengers_ arrived
| on time, things would look radically different.
|
| Adding to that: a 5 minute delay on a 2hr journey is fine,
| but a 5 minute delay on a 12 minute journey is awful.
|
| As for cheap .. I wouldn't exactly call trains cheap in
| Belgium. Especially if you factor in how uncomfortable they
| are, how most stations have zero accessibility options, how
| frequently things go terribly wrong, and how nonexistently
| awful their customer support is.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| This is the kind of talk I often hear from people who never
| take public transport. The question then arises: do they
| not take public transport because it really is that awful,
| or do they actually have no idea whether it's truly awful
| because they don't take it? Or a little of both? :-) One
| thing you ought to know, though, if you often travel by
| train, is that trains in Belgium almost never make up for
| lost time, that's just wishful thinking on the part of the
| conductor and instead delays just seem to cause more
| delays, so arrival time at the final destination (together
| with delays to/from Brussels, which is where most people
| go) is not a perfect metric but not all that bad.
|
| Anyway, just joking around, public transport in Belgium
| could be better, that's for sure.
| michaelt wrote:
| The UK's rail "privatisation" has always been bizarre, for
| practical reasons.
|
| * Because rail is vital national infrastructure, important to
| keeping congestion down, and needs to be accessible even to poor
| people, every train operator receives government subsidies.
|
| * So travellers can buy tickets for a complex four-train
| itinerary and large stations can have multiple operators sharing
| platforms, much of the ticketing system (including the main types
| of ticket on offer) is centrally controlled.
|
| * Because it would be nigh-impossible to have multiple companies
| trains with different prices (or different on-time performance)
| operating on the same route, each route is essentially a monopoly
| +.
|
| * To prevent price-gouging of commuters on monopoly services, the
| rate of increase of ticket prices is capped by government. (And
| yet despite the subsidies and price caps, some train tickets
| remain absurdly expensive)
|
| * It would be absurd for a company losing a rail franchise to get
| stuck with a bunch of trains they no longer need, or a bunch of
| employees in the wrong part of the country they have to fire. So
| when a rail franchise changes hands, the trains, drivers,
| stations, and station staff move with it.
|
| * Any long-term investments in things like new trains won't pay
| off in the duration of a single rail franchise - so they have to
| be agreed with the government upfront.
|
| * Rail workers are represented by powerful unions, and industrial
| disputes tank the train operators' performance numbers, so
| operators can't control their staffing costs - they can only wait
| out a long industrial dispute with government backing.
|
| * To prevent rural communities losing their rail service (or
| having it reduced to unusable levels) the government tells the
| franchisee where the trains must stop, and how often.
|
| * Because tracks and signals all have to be maintained to the
| same national standards, and often multiple trains will use the
| same tracks, the train operators don't own the tracks or
| signalling equipment. So they can't upgrade track for automation
| or to run more/faster/more reliable services.
|
| * Because re-tendering a franchise is very time-consuming, train
| operators who under-perform are seldom replaced or punished
| (except by making less money than they hoped they would)
|
| All of this means the train operators are boxed in on every side
| - Can't run more trains, can't run fewer trains, can't raise
| prices, can't change pricing models, can't embrace tech like
| driverless trains, can't cut staff. Their only powers seem to be
| choosing the train's colour scheme, taking the blame for poor
| performance, and giving some bigwig a fat salary.
|
| Given that the trains have always been de-facto under state
| control, making that true de-jure makes sense.
|
| + Except for one or two services like london-to-birmingham, and
| competition from cars and teleworking.
| gsnedders wrote:
| > (And yet despite the subsidies and price caps, some train
| tickets remain absurdly expensive)
|
| This is by design; the subsidy per passenger km has been going
| down over time, with a greater proportion of costs being met by
| farebox revenue. And given that's a governmental decision, will
| GBR actually change that?
| Tsiklon wrote:
| I hope this decision leads to better value railway journeys for
| regular people.
|
| I love taking the train places, for me when I'm going on holiday
| the journey is part of it, I find rail travel to be low stress
| and relaxing. The trip from St Pancras to Amsterdam (4hours) was
| very calm.
|
| I hope that one outcome of this change is that other people
| rediscover leisure travel by rail.
|
| That said the anorak in me will miss all the different liveries
| for each of the companies
| baby wrote:
| France went private more than a decade ago. It made no sense to
| me at the time, I'm wondering what's the post mortem on that.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Lots of comments about how this is a good thing, but if private
| companies are still running the trains, and fares are set
| centrally, how are they expected to make a profit?
|
| Reduce the staff, or reduce the staff salaries. Either way,
| unions get involved and there will be strikes just like the "good
| old days". More retail in and around stations perhaps?
|
| I look forward to being able to just a buy a single ticket from X
| to Y and one that perhaps doesn't cost 5-10 times as much as it
| would to drive.
| dastx wrote:
| I could be mistaken but if I understand correctly, this is
| similar to how the TfL is run. If it is, this will be a huge
| boost and is a step in the right direction. TfL has its faults,
| but, in my experience, it is a thousand times better than
| anything the franchised train operators have been able to
| deliver.
| jp0d wrote:
| This is a working link.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57176858
| chillydawg wrote:
| I'm looking forward to seeing the new GBR company privatised in
| 20 years, making a small group of people a very large amount of
| money. Again.
| saos wrote:
| Still loads of smoke. I want to see the fare prices. If they're
| flexible and affordable then maybe I can move out of London!!
| maxehmookau wrote:
| The UK does not and cannot have a free market for train travel,
| so we should stop pretending that it's possible.
|
| Private companies have proven time and time again that they
| cannot be trusted to run train services in the UK. Profit always
| came before passenger comfort, safety and value for money. I
| don't believe that the state is better at everything, but in this
| case they're going to be the least bad option!
| danjac wrote:
| Page 404s. A bit like a British rail scheduled service.
| makomk wrote:
| Some issue with the bbc.com vs bbc.co.uk split I assume. The UK
| version is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858
| petewailes wrote:
| They changed the URL after I posted it. Can someone update it?
| dmje wrote:
| It's just blindingly obvious to me that some services absolutely
| have to come under some kind of longer term (and therefore state)
| control, and preferably away from the whims of political change.
|
| You absolutely can't build infrastructure, education, health in
| 4-year cycles. These are 10,20,50+ year projects. Personally I'd
| have these under control of something cross party, totally away
| from electioneering.
| markb139 wrote:
| Sounds like it's going to be similar to the local London trains.
| i.e private companies running the system with "Transport for
| London" branding.
| cybervegan wrote:
| OP's URL doesn't work for me, but the article is here:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858
| cirrus-clouds wrote:
| The flexible season tickets are welcome. However, missing from
| this news report is any mention of making the cost of rail travel
| more affordable for the public.
|
| The report quotes the former boss of British Airways about "
| _greater flexibility in the way that fares are operated in the
| future_ "
|
| What does this mean? Can we expect less expensive tickets?
|
| The UK already has some of the most expensive rail tickets in
| Europe. Yes, you can book in advance for cheaper tickets, but
| often there is limited availability, and you have to book at
| least a month or longer in advance. In short, the conditions
| which make cheaper tickets available are simply impractical for
| most passengers, especially regular commuters.
|
| Here is a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017: UK vs
| Continental Europe:
|
| - UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season
| ticket cost: PS387 (approx $547/EUR448)
|
| - UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) |
| Monthly season ticket cost: PS292 (approx $412 /EUR344)
|
| - Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season
| ticket cost: PS85 (approx $120 /EUR98)
|
| - France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season
| ticket cost: PS61 (approx $86 /EUR71)
|
| - Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost:
| PS61 (approx $86 /EUR71)
|
| - Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket
| cost: PS75 (approx $106 /EUR87)
|
| Source: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-
| much-...
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And you will may have to stand up all the way for many of those
| journeys on UK trains.
| midasuni wrote:
| Why should frequent travellers get 50% plus discounts on
| journeys? When I travel to london I pay about PS1 a mile in the
| peak on a fast train. A season ticket holder pays about 20p a
| mile.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Because buying in bulk gets you a discount, one of the most
| universally understood things in economics.
| pydry wrote:
| >However, missing from this news report is any mention of
| making the cost of rail travel more affordable for the public.
|
| I thought that omission was glaring also. #1 concern of the
| public is price and they pretend it doesn't exist.
|
| It's a strong signal that prices will increase YOY above
| inflation.
| mFixman wrote:
| It wasn't mentioned in this article, but a commonly repeated
| complaint during COVID times is that season tickets don't work
| for people who commute 2-3 times per week and work from home
| the rest of the days.
|
| A possible flexible solution is to have the option of buying
| bulk tickets for a discount and using them whenever you want.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In fact we have foreign governments operating train service in
| UK and turning a profit:
|
| Https://independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trains-uk-railways-
| renationalise-countries-operators-companies-a9058961.html
| alecco wrote:
| I know this one. Privatize and pocket money. Mismanagement with
| both unions and suppliers lining their pockets for a while. Then
| bailouts and/or expropriation and the bill goes to the taxpayer,
| again. Rinse, repeat.
| apexalpha wrote:
| I've found that these two YouTube video's do an okay job
| explaining the actual 'market forces' actually at play here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njJ94o1B0qI
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTq8DbRs4k
|
| It takes a bit of understanding _why_ regular market forces kind
| of can 't apply to a system like rail transport.
| daverol wrote:
| Maybe this will remove the need for adjudicating between the
| companies currently involved - from the White Paper:
|
| "Previous adjudications include, among other things, who was
| responsible for a train being so crowded that a passenger
| fainted, causing delays while they were taken off; and whether a
| pheasant is a small bird (in which case, according to the
| principles at the time, the train operator was to blame for a
| delay caused by hitting one) or a large bird (Network Rail's
| problem)."
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| the people on the Wendover YouTube channel did a video on this
| back in March which explained the issue really well.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlTq8DbRs4k
| flarg wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that UK rail is too complex to be
| managed in siloes and it should be renationalised for the
| national good and to save money.
| kmlx wrote:
| Japan managed to do it just fine. Completely private, excellent
| service, fastest trains, huge infrastructure.
| theYipster wrote:
| As far as I've seen, Japan is the only country that can make
| a complex rail system work with private actors. There are
| many factors for this, including:
|
| 1. Japanese rail operators are in most cases multi-industry
| conglomerates that own land, surrounding infrastructure,
| hotels, retail, and more.
|
| 2. The national investment in rail in Japan is much greater
| than that in the UK.
|
| 3. Modern post-war Japan was literally built around the rail
| network, and this was not accidental nor a matter of
| happenstance. Rail access is ubiquitous across urban and
| suburban areas (not just in Tokyo,) and even rural rail
| services are in a different category than those in the UK.
| ourmandave wrote:
| I'm reading all the comments here in my head with a proper
| British accent.
| bogdan wrote:
| Working link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Dang.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Um, I was flagging to dang that the URL was broken. Thanks
| for the nice down votes tho!
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| A tried and true management system: To appear effective,
| centralize things that are distributed, and distribute things
| that are centralized. You can claim benefits either way. And in a
| few years, put it all back again and claim more benefits.
| sir-alien wrote:
| If you want to see a good train service look at Japan. Went there
| for a holiday and used the train service all over. They are a
| classic example of what a train service "should" be like.
|
| Fast, efficient, cost-effective. The only time trains was a
| little difficult was in the super-peak hours on the underground
| in the very dense parts of the cities.
|
| I think the world should learn from Japan in many aspects.
| yboris wrote:
| I'd like to second that - Japan has an amazing train (and
| subway) system.
|
| Here's a great explainer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFpG3yf3Rxk
| tailsdog wrote:
| They also apparently make a rather healthy profit
| speps wrote:
| Another point of view:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/19/uk-rail-ove...
| nw05678 wrote:
| I still hate Thatcher.
| heurisko wrote:
| The link is now 404, new link:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858
| DanBC wrote:
| I want to know how much money will be spent painting _fucking_
| Union Jacks on all the trains.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| This sounds like many niceties, BUT the elephant in the room is
| the utterly uncompetitive way private contractors are chosen to
| run the routes, and as a result, high prices / low quality of the
| actual journeys. Operators have a nice oligopoly on the routes,
| with barely any competition for tenders.
|
| One example is that different routes have different hardware
| requirements. And guess what, the only provider who has the right
| kit available immediately is the one whose contract is just
| expiring. Please name your price and sign on the dotted line.
| bauc wrote:
| I thought all the rolling stock was owned by a different
| company to the ones running the actual franchises. Which is
| separate from controlling the timetable. Although very
| confusing.
| jlokier wrote:
| That didn't work for Virgin trains, after running a service for
| 22 years, undoubtedly still having the right kit in place, and
| probably the best on-station support staff in the UK for
| disabled travellers. It was a good service, shame to see it go.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/10/stagecoach-...
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I found it ironic that Virgin lost their contract,
| considering they operate by far the best service in the UK.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| One would hope that being a single entity at the top, they
| would be able to help negotiate better rates around the country
| .. but then as it is a government project it will probably end
| up more expensive!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I read the article with that question in mind, it doesn't
| mention any changes to sourcing the contractors.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Here's the formal press release from the UK government:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/great-british-railways-
| fo...
|
| And this is the actual document weighing in at 116 pages:
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads
| /...
|
| Pages 52 and onwards: "Replacing franchising" details the
| exact vision on how those contracts are to be set up. It
| states:
|
| > TfL Overground services and many railways across Europe,
| including local and regional services in Germany and
| Sweden, use a concession model to contract with private
| partners to operate trains. These contracts have been more
| successful than franchising in enabling operators to be
| held to account for running trains on time, delivering
| passenger satisfaction and controlling costs.
|
| > Our new system of Passenger Service Contracts will build
| on this approach. Great British Railways will specify the
| timetables, branding, most fares and other aspects of the
| service and agree a fee with the competitively-procured
| passenger service operator to provide the service to this
| specification. In most contracts, fare revenue will go to
| Great British Railways, with operators delivering to the
| specification and managing their costs in doing so.
| Operators will take cost risk but will need to balance that
| with service quality, in order to be efficient while also
| meeting the needs of passengers.
|
| > Operators will be held accountable and risk termination
| of their contracts if they are not delivering punctual,
| effcient and high-quality services. The government will
| retain its operator of last resort function to enable
| services to continue seamlessly for passengers in such
| cases, just as it did with Northern Rail in early 2020.
| Learning from the experience of the pandemic, it will adapt
| this function as the sector is reformed so that operators
| can be held to account more effectively to targets in their
| contracts and so that interventions can be made in the
| interests of passengers and taxpayers if this is required.
|
| > Passenger Service Contracts should broaden interest and
| open up the market to new commercial partners, including
| those who can help to modernize and improve the railways by
| bringing expertise in technology and innovation. This
| diversity should increase competition between bidders and
| therefore create better outcomes for taxpayers and
| passengers alike.
|
| It's a white paper on which there's a consensus: "this is
| how we would like to move forward". It's not a detailed
| business plan though. The entire thing only exists on paper
| at the moment. The next steps are working on a concrete
| implementation. Which can still deviate in many regards
| from this vision.
|
| The UK already axed the franchising model late last year.
| There's a concrete need to replace it with a different
| model. That's what this paper is trying to answer. And
| there's a clear vote for a "concession model" over a
| "franchising model"
|
| The questions you're posing are valid, but they pertain to
| the finer details. The answer you're going to get if you'd
| ask those involved would be: "we're going to figure this
| out in the next stage."
| jabl wrote:
| I still don't understand what's the difference between
| the old franchising system and the new concessions. Can
| you ELI5?
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| So, this is about control.
|
| Largely, the two systems are alike. They both grant
| permission to an organization to operate a railway
| service. The difference is in how the relationship is
| defined.
|
| Franchising typically is about giving license to a
| franchisee allowing them to use intellectual property,
| know-how, products and so on in exchange for a fee and
| adhering to a set of obligations. The franchisee then is
| free to setup a business selling branded services and
| products.
|
| A concession contract is different. It's an (exclusive)
| right which is granted to a concession holder giving
| permit to use an asset required to operate a service.
| Between private parties, a typical example would be a
| concession stand in a sports stadium (permit is giving
| for you to operate a drink, food, souvenir stand on the
| premises). Usually, the concession holder will pay a fee
| to the concessionaire.
|
| A public service concession is a subcategory, and,
| depending on local legislation, works in a different way.
| The management contract doesn't provide leeway for the
| concession holder as to how to operate the service. The
| management contract specifies almost everything: fares,
| timetables, performance indicators, awards/penalties and
| so on. The operator collects revenue on behalf of the
| public authority.
|
| So, why sign up for a public service concession? Because
| the concession holder gets a predictable source of
| revenue through public funding.
|
| The theoretical benefit to the public is that the mode of
| operations resides with a public body which holds
| responsibility, and therefor can be held publicly
| accountable in a direct way as to how railroad systems
| are operated. In practice, disparate political interests
| can (and will) influence and even cause friction in how
| these concessions are governed.
|
| That doesn't mean franchising is necessarily the better
| option. In this model, public control over the entire
| operational aspect of railway servicing is largely
| relinquished to private actors, any requirements set
| towards franchisees only represents a minimum bar for
| quality of service which they need to attain.
|
| Shifting dynamics within the private market of
| franchisees (actors entering/leaving/getting
| acquired/...) may also impact the overall reliability of
| services. In a concession model, there's an (perceived)
| assurance that the same actors will continually operate a
| service for a predefined period of time according to set
| requirements.
|
| As to which model is "better". I think exploiting
| national railway services is a complex problem domain
| which requires specific business expertise. Beyond the
| occasional reading online, I can confidently say that I'm
| absolutely not in a position to attribute absolute value
| to one over the other. Especially not at a point where
| information for this concrete case publicly available is
| limited to a white paper.
| jabl wrote:
| Thanks for the thorough explanation!
| gsnedders wrote:
| > Franchising typically is about giving license to a
| franchisee allowing them to use intellectual property,
| know-how, products and so on in exchange for a fee and
| adhering to a set of obligations
|
| Note that over the past 15 years or so, the franchises
| have had much more in way of obligations set on them from
| on-high (the Department of Transport, Transport Scotland,
| and Transport for Wales) than British Rail ever did, and
| in many ways the service provision is much more
| micromanaged by political motives than has historically
| been the case.
|
| That said, due to the nature of franchising it was often
| the franchisee that took the blame for the franchiser's
| decisions in setting the contract (and _many_, nay,
| _most_ of the problems with the GB rail network come from
| government decisions).
| onethought wrote:
| Love to be proved wrong. But public transport's goal never was to
| turn a profit. It's a public good, and should be measured by its
| "public good"ness.
|
| Extracting profit feels like something that disproportionately
| targets the poor/working class and leads to either an exploited
| workforce and worse service... without a reduction in overall
| costs.
|
| Now this trend of a "Nationalised Brand" over a "privatised
| service" just feels like insult to injury...
|
| Can capitalism hurry up and eat itself so we can try something
| else...
| kmlx wrote:
| Japan is completely privatised, extremely efficient, huge
| network, fastest trains in the world, and is profitable. One of
| the many ways they did it was by converting stations into mini-
| malls and charging rent. Also, a strong partnership with the
| state helped.
| onethought wrote:
| Huge network... Japan... sure if you're Taiwan I guess you'd
| think it's huge.
| jonplackett wrote:
| There must be a better way to set up incentives.
|
| Eg.
|
| Company is chosen - they get a temporary monopoly on a route, for
| free instead of having to pitch a ridiculous low ball
|
| But...
|
| Every time a train is late, they pay PS100,000
|
| Every time a train is cancelled they pay PS1,000,000
|
| They pay PS10 for every passenger complaint.
|
| Etc etc
| ferongr wrote:
| Does the state pay the company when delays, cancellations and
| passenger complaints are a result of publicly owned
| infrastructure and timetable planning?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why would a company sign up to be flogged like this, though?
| gsnedders wrote:
| The existing management contracts pre-COVID19 (primarily London
| Overground and the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern
| railway (yes, that's all one company!)) _did_ have penalties
| for late running, partial cancellations, or full cancellations.
|
| One can argue whether increasing the fines would lead to better
| service, or whether it would just increase the cost they bid
| for the concession to cover those costs, effectively resulting
| in increased subsidy.
|
| There's also the fact that in many cases there's limitations to
| what the concession can do: the existing ones have had much
| decided by the body granting the concession (such as rolling
| stock, thus limiting their ability to procure more reliable
| rolling stock if needed), and they don't have any control over
| infrastructure (and e.g. signal failures or flooding).
| mvzvm wrote:
| Good. This is wildly overdue. The privatization of public
| infrastructure (ex:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail) was
| a crime of the highest corruption.
|
| Edit: Link broke?
|
| Edit 2: Thank you @bogdan
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858
| zelos wrote:
| Following the link from that page, the impact of privatisation
| is debatable:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...
|
| Reduced subsidies (per journey), massively increased passenger
| numbers, improved satisfaction and (apparently) a slower rate
| of season ticket price increase than under British Rail would
| appear to be some of the positives.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Given the currently UK leadership, I can't imagine this going
| to be anything other than a nightmare of bungling and
| corruption that I will be reading about in Private Eye in years
| to come.
| carnagecity786 wrote:
| Unfortunately this isn't actual nationalisation. The railway
| will still be operated by private firms, this is only a
| transfer of franchising from the department of transport to
| this new "Great British Railways" department; which is a new
| franchising model. It's supposed to allow them to set unified
| fees, and have greater control over branding and speak with a
| unified voice, but apart from that I don't see any of the
| issues that we've had with privatised rail going away - those
| issues being incredibly high fees, understaffed and underpaid
| workers, under maintained infrastructure, and a lack of real
| investment in areas with little to no infrastructure at all
| (the north).
|
| Also, you can really tell who the government are targeting this
| campaign at, and that's what it is, a media campaign. "Great
| British Railways"? Appealing to nationalist sentiments whilst
| doing little to nothing is the entire modern tory agenda.
| scatters wrote:
| High fares (and they aren't that high) aren't a result of
| privatization; they're because of a lack of subsidy. In the
| UK, despite the obvious environmental benefits, subsidizing
| rail is politically awkward because it's regressive.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Yes, it's hard to argue I should be putting my hand in my
| pocket to pay for the train fare for my neighbour so they
| can earn a London wage.
|
| People do complain about the fares but the trains are full
| so it's questionable whether they are too high.
|
| If I'm looking at it from an environmental perspective I'd
| argue the other options (cars, planes) are too cheap.
| chanc3e wrote:
| Interesting that you see rail as a method to earn a wage.
|
| I think it's positively evil for society that someone on
| minimum wage can't visit family or relations because they
| can't afford the fare.
|
| That hurts everyone.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Interesting that you see rail as a method to earn a
| wage.
|
| Because that is the reality for the majority of rail
| travel. Off-peak is an afterthought.
| rbanffy wrote:
| If privatisation of essential services is a crime (it's
| not, but it should be), privatising the subsidies and
| directing them to private companies is much worse.
|
| If one has a basic right to healthcare, education, and
| freedom of movement, then all those things should be
| provided by the state.
| chanc3e wrote:
| They are high.
|
| I had to get from the West, to London, and then to the
| north last week.
|
| Wiltshire to London: ~100miles, PS24 London to Derbyshire:
| ~120miles, PS158
|
| I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt about peak times,
| but I started my journey at 10:30am. The prices make no
| sense; unless viewed through the private entities ability
| to gouge.
|
| Whenever I'm in Europe and buy a ticket I spend an extra
| 20secs at the ticket machine thinking I've made a currency
| conversion badly before realising, no, European trains are
| great value and UK trains are an exercise in exploiting a
| captive market.
| scatters wrote:
| You're lying or deluded. STP-DBY, 10:32 on Monday 24 May:
| PS53 Advance, PS67 Off Peak. The _most_ expensive ticket
| is the First Class Anytime, at PS145.50.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Re infrastructure, my worst memories involve commuting
| between Oxford and London (a major rail route in the grand
| scheme of things) and it breaking down a few times a month,
| especially in winter, due to "signalling failures".
|
| It turns out rail signals were controlled by buried cables
| without adequate insulation, so when it was wet they
| literally stopped working. And yes, this was 21st century,
| not steam trains.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > It turns out rail signals were controlled by buried
| cables without adequate insulation, so when it was wet they
| literally stopped working
|
| More than that: buried cables without adequate insulation
| and nobody knew where they were buried.
|
| Railtrack (the unlamented privatised company that
| originally took on the railway infrastructure) threw out
| the engineering diagrams. So when the time came to dig up
| the Great Western Main Line out of London for
| electrification, signalling failures were a routine
| occurrence because someone had put an excavator through a
| signalling cable... again.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Alas this seems to be best served by bus nowadays. The
| buses are comfortable and cheap, and connect several places
| in Oxford to Victoria coach station.
| chalst wrote:
| My experience of road travel in the south was that delays
| were too frequent for journeys crossing the M25 for me to
| depend on it. That's from before good consumer traffic
| analysis apps; maybe those improve things enough.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Cheap, certainly. Also slow, and comfortable's in the eye
| of the beholder (I can't read in a road vehicle, so not
| for me). The Paddington services are much better these
| days, and there's also the excellent (new) Marylebone
| service. I live just outside Oxford and wouldn't dream of
| getting the bus.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There are nice, fast trains from Paddington to the West,
| including Oxford.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Actually the Oxford to London bus services have been
| shutting down because of falling passenger numbers and
| traffic congestion.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
| oxfordshire-50992888
| yrro wrote:
| A lot of those passengers went over to Stagecoach's
| competing Oxford Tube service, which served a couple of
| different stops within London, but (in my experience)
| offered a much more frequent service.
| petepete wrote:
| Until lockdown I commuted to Manchester on the Rochdale
| line in Leyland-branded Pacers[0]. Trains with an intended
| lifespan of "no more than twenty years", that are now 35-40
| years old. The tickets cost PS100 per month and in the
| years I did it, only managed to find a seat on a handful of
| occasions. I had to wait at the station because the train
| was too full more frequently than finding a seat - often
| they'd show up with only two carriages.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_(British_Rail)
| mjbeswick wrote:
| PS100 a month not bad. My season ticket used to cost
| PS4400, for a 25 minute ride to London waterloo, and tube
| to Hammersmith. Still cheaper than PS28 for the day!
| verytrivial wrote:
| Same here, but newer trains no-one was really asking for,
| and tickets about three x what you were paying (about
| PS290/month and no seats from my stop in, 25 minutes.)
| The line -- Thameslink -- got so bad the government took
| over paying the _compenstation rebates_ for distrupted
| customer journeys while letting the operators continue to
| trouser all the fares in addition to something a 4
| billion pound operating payment regardless of how badly
| they performed.
|
| This is pure, Tory mansion-building stuff and apparently
| exactly what everyone who bothers to vote in this country
| wants. Yay.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| Ah yes, the Pacers - they were literally based on
| remodelled bus designs. Did yours smell strongly of
| mildew?
| petepete wrote:
| To be fair they were clean and well-maintained. They also
| had the benefit of being flushed through with fresh air -
| a result of the doors not forming a seal around the
| edges.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| We had ones which smelled like the seats had been left in
| a damp garage for a couple of years.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| PS100 a month? It's PS200 return for a day for Bristol to
| London - and that's if the train gets you there, and
| doesn't dump you somewhere outside of Chippenham because
| it's the wrong kind of sunny today and the rails have
| buckled, or it's cold and the rails have frozen, or it's
| raining and the train is poorly with diesel cholera. All
| of these are acts of god, of course, so aren't
| compensatable events.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| There's also "leaves on the track", my personal
| favourite. Sometimes I struggle to believe trains were
| invented in the UK!
| cosmodisk wrote:
| This one,albeit sounding funny,is a pretty serious issue:
| leaves get crushed under the weight of a train and
| eventually form a teflon like film on the tracks, which
| makes it very slippery. Not an expert in this area,so no
| idea how it's dealt with in various countries.
|
| My favourite is: the carriage is deflated. People
| couldn't stop laughing when told so, but what it meant in
| reality is that the support cushions deflated and the
| carriage can't have passengers on board.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Most systems with wet leaf problems use sand dispensers
| for added traction.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| And there's the rub. Is that network rail's problem, or
| the operator's? Network rails's rails... operator's train
| wheels, leaves in the middle. The leaves are undefined,
| and are therefore probably nobody's problem but the
| passengers'.
| slifin wrote:
| Yep just wanted to echo this I live in Bristol and have
| been stung by outrageous tickets prices too many times
|
| It's buses or coaches only now, I'm not surprised
| everyone drives here
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| The last time I had to travel from London to Bristol and
| back, I rented a car from Heathrow airport and it cost me
| a quarter of the price the train would. It takes the same
| amount of time, but the car is more comfortable and worse
| for the environment. The system is _so_ broken in the UK.
| 7952 wrote:
| Problem is that there is massive pent up demand. Cheaper
| tickets mean more people travelling longer distances to
| work when there isn't capacity. The last thing we need is
| even more regular commuting to London from outside
| greater London.
|
| This demand is caused by high house prices and lack of
| opportunities outside of the SE. Trains are a sticky
| plaster that gives lots of subsidy to middle class
| commuters whilst local bus services are cut. Distance is
| also environmentally problematic regardless of mode of
| transport.
| petepete wrote:
| PS100 per month for six miles each way when bought as a
| season ticket.
|
| A Bristol to London season ticket is PS1300 per month for
| ~120 miles each way. Bargain!
| thorin wrote:
| Something like 160 pounds at peak time from Nottingham to
| London. Service is good but it's just inconceivable that
| private individuals would be paying that, all the
| travelers are on expenses or are self employed
| contractors/consultants. When I started working and up
| till about 2005 the same journey was about 40 pounds - a
| massive increase!
| chalst wrote:
| Indeed. At the time of privatisation, I commuted to Oxford
| from a small village that was 20 min train ride away.
| Privatisation encouraged me to make the switch to the 45
| minute cycle ride, which I suppose was good for me. I do
| remember seeing the automated departures table being 80%
| filled with notices of cancelled services or trains that
| were over an hour late.
| AdmiralGinge wrote:
| It's even worse in the other direction; I used to go from
| Oxford to Aberystwyth quite often and Arriva Wales were
| truly appalling. They only ever ran two carriages for part
| of the route despite Aberystwyth being a university town so
| even when the Biblical unreliability of the trains wasn't a
| factor you were inevitably crammed in like cattle for the
| slaughterhouse. I've heard things are a bit better now
| Transport for Wales has taken over.
|
| Beeching's axe really did a number on Wales, the country is
| effectively cut in half by rail and travel between North
| Wales and Cardiff takes a massive 3+ hour detour across the
| border to Shrewsbury. Reversing some of his cuts and
| reopening the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen line has been
| seriously talked about in recent years and I think it would
| be a very good idea. Beeching's cuts were extraordinarily
| myopic and allegedly the government of the day was in bed
| with road haulage companies who had an interest in hurting
| the railways. At any rate I hope his route to the afterlife
| involved a tediously indirect detour via limbo and
| purgatory!
| Sosh101 wrote:
| "Great British Railways" -eyeroll-
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Well they can't call it the United Kingdom Railways now the
| UK is falling apart.
| isthisnametaken wrote:
| Also, more precisely, it doesn't cover Northern Ireland,
| which is separate and has its own system linked to the
| Irish rail network.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NI_Railways
| pjc50 wrote:
| Also this is less nationalised than ScotRail, which will
| actually be state run: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| scotland-scotland-politics-564...
| Gaelan wrote:
| Can they still do that, now that the ScotRail franchise is
| (presumably) no more?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Transport is a devolved matter, so that shouldn't be
| affected. Although this is often confusing and badly
| reported.
| grlass wrote:
| The ScotRail brand was operated by the private company
| Abellio, who lost the contract due to long term failure
| to meet its requirements of reliability etc - was in
| trouble before the impact of the pandemic.
| flukus wrote:
| > this is only a transfer of franchising from the department
| of transport to this new "Great British Railways" department
|
| Sounds like it's designed to further distance government and
| it's ministers from any sort of accountability. Just like any
| government owned corporation.
| IndySun wrote:
| >doing little to nothing is the entire modern tory agenda
|
| Spot on. Only I venture it is worse. More public money to
| business friends. The point of public transport is to allay
| the burden of cost to the public, having no choice but to
| travel for work. I'll say that again - no choice (zero work
| where they live) and physically travel to work.
|
| Despite the pandemic, an extreme example of people forced to
| stay home to work, the number of people that had to continue
| to travel to work was surprisingly high. And, as ever, the
| people with the least suffer the most. This is a PR exercise
| by any other name. The devil is in the details, as is being
| pointed out.
| sampo wrote:
| > The privatization of public infrastructure (ex:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail)
| was a crime
|
| From that same Wikipedia article:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_ye...
|
| So, during the 1948-1995 nationalized period, train ridership
| was in almost constant decline, and from the 1995
| privatization, train ridership started a steady and steep
| increase.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...
| ant6n wrote:
| The infrastructure had been renationalized for quite a while.
| Its the Operators that have still been private, which in
| general can be made to work. In Britain it didn't work well.
| chalst wrote:
| Don't expect the people who lined their pockets during
| privatisation to lose any money. Do expect Tory party donors to
| do well in whatever actually happens.
| gadders wrote:
| Where on that wikipedia link you cited does it say it was a
| crime and corrupt?
| chalst wrote:
| Wikipedia doesn't make such claims in so-called 'in-wiki
| voice', since they are contested.
|
| Rail privatisation was enormously complex. If you want to see
| a clear example of Tories using economic liberalisation to
| achieve political ends in immoral, a much better example is
| demutualisation of the building societies.
|
| https://www.mutualinterest.coop/2020/02/how-conversion-of-
| co...
| gadders wrote:
| I think you could describe that as contested as well.
| chalst wrote:
| "that"? The account given of the effect of
| demutualisation in the article I linked to is not
| controversial. Obviously my claim that the policy of a
| political party was immoral is, but I know Tories who
| agree with me about this.
| OJFord wrote:
| Hurrah! Even as a free market conservative I've long been in
| favour of this: bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a
| line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where
| rail users could vote with their feet and wallets.
|
| There's effectively only one operator anyway, for a given
| journey, it should be the state, awarding the multi-year contract
| to the elected government is strictly better than to a private
| company where there's little/much more indirect incentive to do
| anything in the interest of the consumer.
|
| You don't travel with X from A to B because you think X is great
| value for money and provides a really top notch service; you do
| it because you need to get from A to B and X happens to be the
| operator.
|
| However.. I'm pessimistic... I'm sure operators will push back on
| 'under one brand', and argue they need this that and the other in
| order to differentiate themselves and effectively compete...
| lbriner wrote:
| > awarding the multi-year contract to the elected government is
| strictly better than to a private company
|
| This is objectively not true otherwise no-one would every
| privatise the railway. Although the answer is not agreed, my
| own experience of working on the public-owned railway in the UK
| in the 1990s was that public-sector organisations have
| virtually no incentive to be clever or efficient, at best they
| are indifferent, at worst they are job-creation systems that
| cost billions to the tax payer.
|
| The theory is that private companies have a reason to make
| things more efficient, which is to maximize profit, reducing
| costs and being overall cheaper to the tax payer.
|
| Of course, this brings it own dangers in terms of service
| reduction due to unprofitable services but it would be
| simplistic to think that somehow the tax payer should subsidise
| those who actually use the trains. Ultimately, they should cost
| what they cost to run and if that is too much, then they need
| to change.
|
| I would also say that the services and overall quality are much
| higher on the privatised railway.
| varispeed wrote:
| They privatised profits, but not responsibilities. I don't know
| why even a single person thought this was a good idea (unless
| they were on it for money).
|
| I think the privatisation could work if multiple companies
| could bid for a given journey / timetable slice, rather than
| having entire routes for themselves with no realistic way of
| removing them if the service goes bad.
| iso1631 wrote:
| They did privitise the risk too. After the failure of the
| east coast franchise recently, the government bailled out
| virgin, but that's not the fault of the system.
|
| If I want to travel from Birmingham to London I have a choice
| of 3 different train companies, as well as a coach company
| and driving (either hiring a car with or without driver, or
| using my own car). That's tons of competition, and it shows
| given the choice.
| permo-w wrote:
| out of all those options, it may even be cheaper to fly
| iso1631 wrote:
| The lack of accounting for externalities with flights may
| make it cheaper, but there aren't any flights from London
| to Birmingham, and even if they were they'd be far slower
| than getting any of the train options, and probably
| slower than the coach.
| varispeed wrote:
| I lived on a Southern line and alternative was Thameslink
| with uncomfortable trains (crammed seats, no tables for
| coffee or anything - at least they were running mostly
| empty as nobody wanted such discomfort). Trains always
| late, I almost lost my job because of that. I had to get a
| car and drive 100 miles each day because train journeys
| were not sustainable. Has anything happened to Southern? I
| doubt.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Why didn't you use Southern?
|
| When are you talking about? There was a lot of investment
| in the (laughably named) Thameslink 2000 program, which
| was put in place to dig the route out of the mess that
| the nationalised rail network had left it in by the 90s,
| it started in 2009 and is still undergoing improvements
| varispeed wrote:
| Because the trains were not showing up. If a train showed
| up, there was likelihood of a delay. It was also common
| that rush hour trains were short - so even if the train
| arrived, you were unlikely to be able to get in. It was a
| lottery with odds against you. I was constantly late
| because of that and employer could only be patient for so
| long. I am disabled (not visibly) and using Thameslink as
| an alternative was exhausting (as mentioned - small
| seats, very uncomfortable). If I recall also Thameslink
| had much slower service than Southern. I hate driving, so
| imagine how bad it was if I found eventually going by a
| car was much better experience for me.
| iso1631 wrote:
| So Southern wasn't turning up and Thameslink was poor?
|
| When was it?
| varispeed wrote:
| 2017 onwards
|
| e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42707560
| iso1631 wrote:
| So after it was nationalized. Southern and Thameslink are
| the same company.
|
| You suffered from the political decision that the
| government made to get rid of guards. No company would
| take it as a franchise because they knew the fight with
| the union would impact both profits and users, so they
| got GTR to operate it under a management basis.
|
| This is now what is happening to every other TOC.
| flarg wrote:
| Southern was a government funded battle with the trade
| unions
| iso1631 wrote:
| And both Southern and Thameslink are run by the
| government (via a management contract to GTR), have been
| since 2014.
|
| Southern is the reality of modern railway
| nationalisation, a little better than BR perhaps.
| secretsatan wrote:
| I just don't think that's how rail should work, I'm not
| booking a flight to go to another country, I should be able
| to turn up to a train station and get on a bloody train.
| iso1631 wrote:
| That's certainly how I use the rail network (and often
| the plane network - I've booked a flight from Europe to
| the far east with just a few hours notice on more than
| one occasion), and you can do that (unlike in europe
| where you have to book long distance trains in advance in
| many countries). I don't see the conceptual difference
| between going London - Paris or London - Edinburgh
| though?
| teachingassist wrote:
| This does work in many other European countries, but
| there simply isn't enough rail capacity for this in the
| UK.
|
| Turn up to any mainline station during peak hours and you
| can observe this for yourself (also non-peak hours in
| many cases). Trains which require reservation have
| scarcely any standing room.
|
| Other countries would be quick to complain if you don't
| get the seat that you paid for.
| andrepd wrote:
| >If I want to travel from Birmingham to London I have a
| choice of 3 different train companies
|
| Great, now talk about _literally any other line in Britain_
| signal11 wrote:
| London to Birmingham is an exception because you have
| three train companies but also two separate sets of
| tracks -- the West Coast Main Line (WCML) and the
| Chiltern Line. This builds a lot of resilience into the
| system. I wish other lines had this as well.
|
| That said, the WCML is extremely well run _relative_ to
| the horrow shows in S and SE England.
|
| If you live along the WCML (think Bucks, Coventry, etc),
| you have two providers: Avanti (formerly Virgin) and
| London Northwestern/West Midland (formerly Midland). You
| actually have Southern as well, but they are... not a
| credible provider.
|
| HS2, if it's ever done, will further reduce pressure on
| the WCML and increase resilience.
|
| But on the other hand, go up North and there used to be
| trains which are modified bus bodies[1]. Are those still
| there? So yes, absolutely, the rail network does need to
| improve across the country.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_(British_Rail)
| iso1631 wrote:
| Go up North and you have Northern, which as well as
| running pacers for years (I think they're all gone now)
| drained funds, because running a rail network with few
| passengers is expensive.
|
| That means either higher tax to subsidise it, or it means
| higher prices on profitable parts of the network to
| cross-subsidise it
| iso1631 wrote:
| _Alternate routes with competitors_
|
| London-Edinburgh (West coast vs east coast. West Coast is
| slower but cheaper)
|
| Bristol-Manchester (XC via Birmingham vs ATW via Hereford
| - I usually take the slower cheaper Wales train as I
| prefer the route and the seating)
|
| Manchester-Norwich (via Sheffield-Peterborough, Via
| London, Via Leeds-Doncaster)
|
| London-Reading (GWML from Paddington vs South West from
| Waterloo)
|
| Exeter-London (Paddington via Westbury on GWR vs Waterloo
| via Salisbury on SWT)
|
| Manchester-Warrington (ATW via Newton, EMT via Birchwood)
|
| London-Hastings (via Tunbridge Wells or via Haywards
| Heath)
|
| _And different competitors on the same track_
|
| Milton Keynes - London (West Coast, London Midland,
| Southern)
|
| York - Newcastle (TPE, LNER, XC)
|
| Manchester-Glasgow (Northern+WestCoast, TPE)
|
| Stoke-Manchester (Northern vs XC vs West Coast)
| Reason077 wrote:
| The end of the rail franchise system is not new news.
|
| The franchise agreements were effectively terminated in March
| 2020 when the government bailed out operators due to Covid.
|
| By July, the ONS announced that rail operators were now
| considered part of the public sector for statistics purposes,
| signalling that they had effectively been nationalised:
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/news/theonsclassifiestrainoperat...
|
| In September 2020 the government announced that franchises
| would be not return:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/21/uk-covid-19...
|
| What's new with this announcement is that the functions of
| several organisations (Network Rail, ATOC/National Rail, etc)
| will be merged together into a single new entity.
| lathiat wrote:
| Wendover Productions made a great video about this ridiculous
| system. It's totally mad. https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k
| mastax wrote:
| Wow that was very good and comprehensive. Glad Wendover
| decided not to burden the runtime with an unfunny joke every
| 25 seconds.
| himinlomax wrote:
| They do that on their other channel. That is why they have
| another channel.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Which one is the other channel?
| intellirogue wrote:
| Half as Interesting. It's more short form, humerous
| content. Wendover is the longer form, more serious stuff.
| midasuni wrote:
| I'm not. I have a choice on the WCML of multiple different
| providers. Manchester to London walk up far for almost any time
| can be PS300 return for the fast train arriving in london
| before lunch and getting home before 9pm, or PS50 for a slower
| train with a change.
|
| Same with crewe-Manchester, Birmingham-london, Edinburgh-london
| etc.
|
| Quite happy with the competition and no government
| interference.
| pydry wrote:
| You're saying there's clearly plenty of competition when a
| flight from London to New York can be had for the price of a
| fairly normal rail ticket from London to Manchester?
|
| Those PS50 tickets are about market segmentation - separating
| the customers who have time flexibility or are willing to
| suffer from those who don't or aren't.
| thu2111 wrote:
| You're comparing apples and oranges. Rail is as expensive
| as a plane ticket that goes much further because the
| railways have far more limited capacity than the skies do.
| It's not related to competition or lack of it - those rails
| just cannot safely take more vehicles.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Lol, no, rail has 10x to 50x more capacity than skies do,
| a single train can carry thousands of passengers and
| China has invested in modern raileay because their
| airspace is clogged. Now they have more high-speed rail
| than the rest of the world conbined while plans for HS2
| are older than I am and are still nowhere
| iso1631 wrote:
| That PS300 return subsidizes train services in rural parts
| of cornwall. That's a political decision. Other options are
| to have more taxpayer subsidy, higher prices in Cornwall,
| close services in cornwall, or reduce operating costs
| (which are heavily staff and rolling stock based --
| something that HS2 will slash)
|
| P.S. I just looked up an equivalent London-New York economy
| flight (flexible flight leaving this evening and returning
| tomorrow), and it's PS2,481.02
| pydry wrote:
| It also subsidized Richard Branson's lifestyle. This is
| also a political decision.
|
| I looked at London-NY - if I put it off one week I can
| easily cross 1/3 of the world for less than the price of
| a day trip to Manchester tomorrow.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Where does the subsidy for Branson's lifestyle come in?
| Branson hasn't been involved in the UK rail network for a
| couple of years.
|
| If I look at Manchester-London in a weeks time with a
| non-flexible ticket it costs PS45 return (actually for
| PS45 it's pretty flexible - you are just limited to one
| firms trains, a bit like that BA fare, and can't travel
| in the morning rush hour)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/CNCzmKu.png
|
| That's less than 9p per mile. What do you think a fair
| price would be?
| pydry wrote:
| A fair price would be a PS45 return ticket London to
| Manchester if I bought it at 9am tomorrow at the station.
|
| This would bring the UK rail prices more in line with
| most other European countries.
|
| PS300 is gouging.
| iso1631 wrote:
| That's available and fine, as long as you leave Euston
| after 0845.
|
| You can take the 08:46, arriving in Manchester at 12:13 -
| an average speed of about 60mph.
|
| The PS300 is an option that few choose, because that
| journey gives them major benefits. The money raised from
| that is plowed back into the railway and used to
| subsidise services to Harrogate, Holyhead and Hungerford
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Average speed of 60 mph? Is this 18th centurely where
| rail competes with horse carriages?
|
| You do realise that a country needs 21st century rail
| service to be competitive interbationally?
| iso1631 wrote:
| You can pay a PS20 premium each way to up that to about
| 100mph average. Competition and choice is great.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Quality services and products are great, choice for the
| sake of choice has no value.
|
| Otherwise we would bring back bloodletting, leeches and
| snakeoil salesmen to get more choice in cancer treatment.
| Camas wrote:
| http://www.leeches.uk.com/
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| PS300 for a train ticket and you are happy? Have you been on
| a train in China, France or even Czech Republic?
|
| This parody for 'competition' has given us most expensive
| fares in Europe and soviet-block quality of rail service.
|
| It's a new disease, 'neoliberalism of the brain' that
| maintains 'free market' even at the cost of organ failure
| disabled wrote:
| Austerity literally kills, and often leads to
| neoliberalism. "The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills" by
| David Stuckler MPH PhD and Sanjay Basu MD PhD is an
| excellent read on the subject.
|
| The British, in no exaggeration, get taxed to death. You
| get horrible value for your tax dollar. I am saying this as
| an American who lives in Croatia, who pays quite a bit in
| taxes. However, I prefer to pay Croatian taxes (in addition
| to my US taxes) as a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen, just
| for a stable, relaxed society.
|
| There is a very high baseline level of stress and anxiety
| living in America. It's not worth living there again.
| Seriously, Croatians have a great lifestyle, with perhaps
| the best lifestyle in all of Europe. Also, if you die of
| coronavirus in America, it is nothing more than a statistic
| to both the government and the American population, which
| is not only unbelievably disgusting, but downright
| sadistic.
| dadelion wrote:
| I couldn't be more surprised by this comment as someone
| born and raised in Croatia.
|
| You are the first person I heard who likes paying
| Croatian taxes. Do you follow the national news? There's
| always a steady stream of corruption news, especially
| recently.
|
| It's ironic you post this in a thread about rail. Croatia
| has a truly horrible rail system. It's universally mocked
| as useless.
|
| Regarding COVID, I would have agreed with you that
| Croatia did great last year in March, but from late
| summer 2020, it's been catastrophic. And Croatia depends
| on tourism, so there's a big incentive to get things to
| normal levels so tourists come. We could have been better
| than Portugal now.
|
| Also re COVID, have you witnessed the vaccination
| campaign? Have you seen how many politicians and their
| friends got vaccinated ahead of the elderly, despite
| guidelines saying vaccines should be given according to
| age? The rector of Zagreb university got a vaccine before
| my grandma. How is that not sadistic?
|
| Croatia has some great pros, such as a relaxed lifestyle,
| but you're really stretching it with calling it a
| rolemodel society and good value for taxes
| disabled wrote:
| Nobody likes paying taxes. I see it as my civic duty and
| absolutely worth it for a stable society.
|
| Of course Croatia is no role model society. Corruption is
| always widespread.
|
| However, we still do have it very good. That is a point
| that is very frequently understated in Croatia.
| iso1631 wrote:
| https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-
| comparison.html
|
| > the next time someone says (or you read) "Britain has the
| highest rail fares in Europe", you'll know this is only 15%
| of the story. The other 85% is that we have similar or even
| cheaper fares, too. The big picture is that Britain has the
| most commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the
| highest fares designed to get maximum revenue from business
| travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more
| revenue by filling more seats.
| morrbo wrote:
| I'm sorry but this article is bullshit. Go and actually
| check the train prices (because I did) now. Book
| Sheffield to London 1 month in advance, comes out to PS70
| odd return (nearly 4x more than article states) with a
| first class upgrade for an extra PS70....Paris to Leon 1
| month in advance? PS20 odd return with another PS20 first
| class. Idk if something has changed but you can't quote
| this article anymore. Train prices in the UK are
| criminal.
| Camas wrote:
| Prices are "criminal" but not worth you doing more than a
| cursory search for a cheaper ticket?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Everything is more expensive in the UK - salaries are
| higher too, compared to Europe.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Train fares aren't (although the tax payer in France pays
| far more for train services -- services which are pretty
| rubbish compared with the UK.
|
| Compare somewhere like Lesparre (population about 5,000
| and 40 miles from Beudeux), which has about 10 trains a
| day taking 90 minutes.
|
| With Cononley (25 miles out of Leeds) with 4 trains in
| each direction the next hour.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| London might be a beacon, but UK has the poorest regions
| in Western Europe. In fact some ex-soviet countries do
| better
|
| https://highpaycentre.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/High_Pa...
| smcl wrote:
| Seconded, this article is quite misleading. The UK fares
| always seemed quite unpredictable to me when I used them,
| with variances similar to those you see when booking
| flight tickets. Maybe the fares have an extra component
| based on demand? If I look for second-class tickets from
| Edinburgh to Montrose (which I went on semi-regularly) @
| scotrail.co.uk on 1st June I see prices that fluctuate
| from PS9.30 to PS24.60. Maybe the guy only looked at the
| lower-bound on the London-Sheffield route?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Yes, train fares are based on demand, same as plane and
| coach fares. Same as they are in Europe (The Paris-Dijon
| journey in a months time is between EUR31 and EUR71
| depending on what time you choose)
|
| For _walk up fares_ , Edinburgh to Montrose is 100 miles
| each way, an "off peak" return (so any time after 0930)
| is PS34 if you limit yourself to LNER trains or 17p/mile,
| or PS41 return for a choice of LNER or Scotrail trains.
| If you want to travel before 0930 on whatever train turns
| up next, it's PS48.60 or 24p/mile.
|
| What price do you think you should be paying? In 2019
| Scotrail carried 1.8 billion passenger miles got PS482.8m
| subsidy - a 27p per mile subsidy. The company made a
| PS11m loss too.
|
| How much should the tax payer subsidise your Edinburgh-
| Montrose journey? 35p/mile/ 45p/mile?
| [deleted]
| iso1631 wrote:
| The article actually explains this, with different
| options
|
| > For travel today, bought at the station, immediate
| departure, outside the peaks...
|
| And
|
| > If travelling today in the business peak hours...
|
| It acknowledges that finance bros travelling from
| Manchester to London for a 9AM meeting and traveling back
| on the 1630 will pay more. That doesn't affect most
| people
|
| The summary makes it quite clear.
|
| _The big picture is that Britain has the most
| commercially aggressive fares in Europe, with the highest
| fares designed to get maximum revenue from business
| travel, and some of the lowest fares designed to get more
| revenue by filling more seats._
|
| Basically a tax on last minute business travelers to
| subsidise leisure travelers and commuters.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah I'd known about peak/off-peak, but it always seemed
| odd that there was such a wide range and that there were
| so many differently priced tickets within that range and
| I never knew the formula. An even longer journey I take
| here (Brno-Prague) seems to always be either 205kc or
| 245kc (PS7-8.50).
|
| I know British rail travel is more expensive, it's the
| (to me) unpredictable ticket pricing that I would like to
| decrypt
| iso1631 wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/bvviAcJ.png
|
| PS17.60 on the 12:05 departure on Jun 16th on trainsplit
| with one change - 10p/mile.
|
| And on the well-advertised and more expensive trainline
| on Jun 17th
|
| https://imgur.com/ymtzPhw.png
|
| PS31.50 on the 12:37 direct. PS43.50 first class .
|
| The 11:22 SNCF Paris-Dijon on the same date is EUR31, or
| PS27. The 12:22 is EUR40 (PS35). One way.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/1Zs0APR.png
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| As someone coming from a country (Italy) with nationalised
| railway I always found the trains in the UK to be pretty great.
|
| Sure, you have a few delays but it's eons better than what I
| had in my country. I never understood why people were
| complaining about trains in the UK.
|
| Italy added a private offering some time ago, which I
| personally never tried, but my friends back home always praise
| them for working - unlike Trenitalia.
|
| It's sad the government imposed lockdown killed another
| industry - but I certainly won't rejoice for this
| nationalisation.
| virtualritz wrote:
| Not sure when you last traveled by train in Italy.
|
| Yes, it was shite a decade ago. But all my journeys by train
| in Italy have been great in the last five years.
|
| My sample size is certainly limited though. About two to
| three long distance journeys by train/year in that country.
| But still. A decade ago there were always delays and serious
| hiccups. No more.
|
| Trains were clean and on time. Mind you, this is long
| distance. I.e. Milano-Firenze.
|
| I guess the private company, Italo, may be responsible
| indirectly for this as they generated pressure to up their
| ante on Trenitalia?
|
| Your mileage with short distance train travel in Italy may
| differ. I do not have enough experience to hold an opinion
| there.
|
| In any case, it's much better than in my home country,
| Germany. Everything is a joke here when it comes to long
| distance rail travel. Punctuality, service, offering, price,
| ergonomics (planning, ticket purchase, app).
|
| I travel long distance every two weeks, I feel the pain every
| time. Literally every 2nd time the train is late by at least
| 20mins.
|
| Best experience in Europe for train travel to me seems to be
| France btw.
| fabioborellini wrote:
| Italo is lovely. They got the ticket sales right, which has
| been really hard for the rigid former railway monopolies.
| It is nice onboard, too. Actually, I chose Italo over
| Trenitalia the last time just because of the nicer ticket
| sales system.
|
| With Italo, I could buy tickets well in advance using
| PayPal, all in English. A lot nicer than some monopolies
| using some local credit card processing gateways with
| missing translations and connections.
| matwood wrote:
| I've ridden trains in Italy during a few different
| vacations. The local trains were hit and miss, but the long
| distance trains were pretty good.
|
| All over the EU, the biggest issues I've had with train
| service always seem to be strike related.
| tehbeard wrote:
| I'm really curious as to what route you were on, and also
| have to assume you've never had to ride the commuter trains.
|
| I've had to commute by rail since 2014, I now have to head
| out half an hour earlier than at the start, purely to account
| for consistent 5-10 minute delays.
|
| Atleast once a month the train is packed beyond standing
| room.
|
| Several times I've had to say fuck it and use the slower,
| further away tram to have any hope of reaching the office.
|
| And if your train is cancelled (dozen plus times a year)
| station staff are fucking useless and annoyed you interrupted
| their chinwag to ask how to get home.
| iagovar wrote:
| Then travel more man. Trenitalia is pretty competent for
| whats out there. They even have boats to move entire train
| carriages with the passengers inside to islands? That's
| pretty cool! Here in Spain we have RENFE, and they are pretty
| good overall, but pricey.
|
| I know that many lines run at deficit so they have to
| compensate with the ones that don't, but they recently
| launched AVLO as a low-cost service in response for OUIGO and
| private competitors coming to Spain, so there was probably
| ways to make it cheaper...
| darkwater wrote:
| As an Italian living in Spain for a long while, I can say
| that 10 years ago the difference was abysmal in favor of
| Renfe and now the gap it's smaller (due to Renfe not
| keeping up) but I still think the average Spain's train
| station and service is better than Italy's. I can still see
| (refurbished for the 3rd time) trains from ~25years ago
| operating in Italy nowadays.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >I can still see (refurbished for the 3rd time) trains
| from ~25years ago operating in Italy nowadays.
|
| If that's the problem, then do not try to use polish
| railways. You can still find non-modernized EN57 from
| 60s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKP_class_EN57
|
| Long distance trains can be no better tho...
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/
| 973...
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't see why that's a problem. Airplanes have a
| lifespan of 30 years.
| darkwater wrote:
| OK, it's 2021 already, sometimes I forget, so we are
| probably already north of 30 years. Anyway as I said they
| have been refurbished and they are OK, at least on the
| comfort side (AC and heating, sits quality). I hope they
| are the same on the safety and mechanical side...
| DanBC wrote:
| UK trains are really variable.
|
| If you're going from most major cities to London you get a
| newish train, on a fastish route. If you're going between
| major hubs you're probably going to have a nice experience.
|
| But the local trains, the short trip commuter trains, can be
| very old and very very busy. People pay huge amounts of money
| to be crammed into old, slow, smelly, trains and there's not
| enough seating so they have to stand.
|
| The carriage supply operates on a "trickle down" model. The
| new trains get used for London and those routes. The trains
| that are replaced by the new trains get sent to the South
| East and South West, who send their old trains to the
| Midlands, who send their old trains to the North, who send
| their old trains to Wales. Some of the carriages are really
| rough.
| malinens wrote:
| on other hand I am amazed how good are Italian trains ehen I
| travel there- they are fast, cheap and go almost everywhere
| :)
| _Wintermute wrote:
| The trains in the UK seem ok in terms of the number of
| services and reliability, but they're so expensive. It's
| almost always cheaper to fly or rent a car than it is to use
| the train for anything approaching long distance.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Prices fell with privatization (and efficiency went up).
|
| The ownership structure doesn't matter. The UK has lots of
| publicly-owned and privately-owned transport systems that
| work well. The problem has been management. This is
| unlikely to change that.
|
| I live somewhere in the UK that already has publicly-owned
| rail. Not as bad as the South-East, but it is still bad. I
| have no real idea how...but they manage it. EDIT: it
| actually hasn't transitioned yet...so we will see.
| bsd44 wrote:
| I drive to work because it's cheaper to pay for car
| insurance, road tax and diesel fuel than it is to purchase
| a season train ticket, not to mention it takes less time to
| get to work and the commute itself is more comfortable. UK
| trains are not a sane alternative to driving. Until the Gov
| steps in and fixes that only people who absolutely much use
| trains will continue to do so. With ever so popular and
| becoming the norm remote working, the train service
| companies are in for a big surprise.
|
| EDIT: Also I wouldn't call UK trains reliable. I see a lot
| of stations having a fleet of coaches ready or sometimes in
| use because the trains are out of service. That's very
| poor.
| AM1010101 wrote:
| Yes this is the problem. Using the train is often a non-
| option. What's costs PS25 fuel will cost PS70 for a rail
| ticket and often take longer if you are not going between
| major cities. It's even worse if there are multiple people.
| I would love to commute on the train (use your time more
| effectively, lower CO2, less stress) but it's just too
| costly as it is.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > What's costs PS25 fuel will cost PS70 for a rail ticket
|
| Where are you planning on parking when you get there
| though?
|
| I'd rather pay quadruple for a ticket to London, than
| drive into London and then try to park a car. I can't
| imagine driving into a city - seems insane.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| If visiting a city centre location then trains are great.
| If you need to get to a place near a city then trains are
| the worst, at least airports tend to be outside of the
| city near the arterial routes.
|
| I am originally from the outskirts of Glasgow and now
| live on the outskirts of London. For my partner and I to
| get to my parents house by train takes about the same
| time (assuming all 4 changes go according to plan), costs
| 6x as much and is far less flexible than driving. We tend
| to stop at a cheap hotel midway so we can set off after I
| finish work.
| [deleted]
| vmateixeira wrote:
| They couldn't agree more. [1][2]
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190912051032/https://www.
| stand...
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210225224745/https://metr
| o.co....
| de_keyboard wrote:
| It's very strange. In the UK you often pay a fortune to sit
| on a nearly empty train. This doesn't even seem like
| pricing optimized for profit, let alone general carbon
| reduction across all modes of transport.
| vmateixeira wrote:
| And it's often cheaper to buy 2/3 separate tickets, for
| stops along the way of a long journey, than just simply
| buying straight from A to B.
| Closi wrote:
| This is to profit-maximise.
|
| Under the rail franchise agreement during the bid
| process, the terms might mandate that journeys from A to
| B cost PS10, and that journeys from B to C cost PS5.
| There might be no obligation to price travel from A to D
| via B & C at a particular cost, so a rail operator might
| make that more expensive.
|
| It's silly from the consumer perspective, but it makes
| sense for the rail operators to do this in order to
| maximise profits.
| vmateixeira wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I had the wrong idea that it
| could be due to, for example, if A->B belonged to a
| different provider than B->C, providers not reaching an
| agreement on what % to take each, for the journey from
| A->C - hence increasing the overall cost for covering
| demands from both.
| gsnedders wrote:
| No, there's long been a centralised system to attribute
| the costs to different companies (IIRC, the system is
| ultimately the descendant of what the British Rail
| regions and later sectors used to split fare revenue
| between them).
|
| There's no negotiations between the companies here,
| though they could ask the regulator (the ORR) to
| intervene if they believed the algorithm gave unfair
| results.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Because it isn't.
|
| The pricing, timetables and services were basically all
| centrally controlled. The train operators put in requests
| to change them, then the government (or Network Rail or
| whoever they delegated the power to) would approve/deny
| them. Since they're sharing access to the underlying
| infrastructure, they can't do what they want.
|
| Additionally, there are many trains that are unprofitable
| but the operators are required by law to run them for
| public interest reasons. When they designed the
| franchising system, they tried to "balance" each
| franchise so it had roughly the same number of profitable
| and unprofitable routes.
|
| The idea that our existing franchising system was
| anything remotely resembling free market is absurd. Then
| on top of that, because decision making and control was
| distributed amongst 40 or so different corporate
| entities, trying to make a change to the ticketing system
| was damn near impossible.
|
| If anything, this new concession-like system will likely
| be more competitive, even if the government is acting as
| an intermediary.
| pydry wrote:
| >The idea that our existing franchising system was
| anything remotely resembling free market is absurd.
|
| As was the idea that this was even possible.
|
| It was never set up to impose market discipline on the
| rail providers. It was set up to be a profitable
| investment. So Richard Branson could (as he put it),
| print money.
| pydry wrote:
| My experience was exactly the opposite - nicer stations, high
| speed rail and vastly cheaper prices.
|
| Please, do let us swap trenitalia for southern rail. I'm not
| such a fan of forking over 1/3 of a median wage for season
| ticket on a train that is delayed every other day.
| flipbrad wrote:
| I'm sorry to say, but these plans still see routes being
| operated by private companies awarded multiyear contracts...
| kitd wrote:
| Pricing and scheduling are to be centralised though AIUI
| tomxor wrote:
| Perhaps, but:
|
| > The government says the new system should look more like
| Transport for London, with multiple operators under one
| brand, offering greater accountability when things go wrong.
|
| If it introduces more accountability, it's basically doing
| it's job. Multiyear contracts do not mean no accountability.
| I'm not a regular passenger but my understanding is that
| reliability of current service is generally poor with little
| to no recourse.
| pydry wrote:
| I didn't see any promises about additional recourse. It
| seems to be more about bureaucratic consolidation than
| accountability.
|
| This is not the nationalisation and price freezes promised
| by Corbyn.
| tomxor wrote:
| I don't see specific details either if that's what you
| mean, other than the suggestion in the statement I quoted
| above.
|
| Perhaps i'm being naive, govt is not exactly my forte,
| though it feels reasonable to suggest accountability is
| implicit to consolidation here... currently they seem to
| get contracted to essentially go and manage themselves
| and their lines; whereas multiple operators under one
| government management structure of some kind at least has
| potential for accountability without relying on the
| operators goodwill (which seems to be as absent as the
| free market forces).
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I'm not a regular passenger but my understanding is
| that reliability of current service is generally poor with
| little to no recourse."_
|
| In my experience, the UK rail system has been running
| fantastically since Covid began! I don't think I can
| remember even a single delayed train since March 2020 and
| certainly no overcrowded ones. So it seems like the real
| problem with the trains was always the passengers ;)
| tomxor wrote:
| Isn't that a bit like saying it's not the ISP's fault
| that they aren't delivering even 50% of the throughput
| they promised? if only there weren't so many subscribers
| - this is literally what happens on cheap mobile internet
| with high contention ratios, when it's sunny outside, the
| throughput and stability shoots through the roof.
|
| It might be "one line", but the number of trains,
| carriages, staff and general stress on the infrastructure
| is based on the number of people using it - if not
| managed well, or resources are stretched to thin to
| squeeze profits, it's not the passengers fault. COVID
| simply created a sudden and unusual surplus of resources
| for them.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| The OP finished with a winky. They were being tongue-in-
| cheek.
| jonp888 wrote:
| Nationalisation is not a panacea.
|
| In France for instance, SNCF runs the non-TGV railway with
| inefficency and carelessness on a "it's our railway and we
| decide how you can use it" basis, and the regional
| governments are chomping at the bit to be able to award the
| contracts for subsided services to someone other than the
| state monopoly.
| another-dave wrote:
| I'd be happier than the status quo even if it just meant
| presented to customers as a single brand -- I always found it
| ludicrous trying to get to, say, Gatwick from London Bridge &
| thinking "There's a Thames Link train leaving at 5 past, I'll
| go for that but if I don't reach the platform on-time, I
| won't be allowed use my ticket on the next train, because
| that's South Eastern, so I'll have to wait for the train
| after that". Unnecessarily confusing.
|
| "Flexible season tickets" is also a really welcome one,
| especially if people go to WFH/office hybrid set-up.
| OJFord wrote:
| So does Transport for London, in some behind the scenes way I
| don't need to know or care about.
| JI00912 wrote:
| > awarding the multi-year contract to the elected government is
| strictly better than to a private company where there's
| little/much more indirect incentive to do anything in the
| interest of the consumer.
|
| Well... the incentives really aren't different for the
| government.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| Actually they are because unlike shareholders who cares more
| about dividends then efficiency and service levels the
| government have stakeholders who care about efficiency and
| service levels.
| JI00912 wrote:
| Removing the incentive to make profit does not create
| incentives to improve efficiency and service. The
| government has no such incentives.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| Having an incentive to make profit doesn't create
| incentives to improve efficiency and service. A private
| companies incentives are the profits, and anything else
| is just in order to serve those.
| eertami wrote:
| >does not create incentives to improve efficiency and
| service.
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess you've
| never used the for-profit rail services of the UK then.
|
| (I know this is quite snarky, but to elaborate, there is
| no incentive for the TOCs, because a operating a stretch
| of railway line doesn't have any competition. You don't
| need to be efficient or give good service because
| customers do not have an alternative choice of train they
| can use.)
| dvdkon wrote:
| Yes, they do, campaigning on a program of better services
| and then not delivering anything is very much against
| career politicians' interests.
| dageshi wrote:
| This was part of the reason why a lot of previously
| nationalised stuff was privatised in the first place.
| MP's would get people complaining to them about the
| quality of their phone lines from BT for example.
|
| It all moves in cycles, I could well imagine the same
| situation happening again in 20 years.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The timeframe for changes is so long that this has zero
| chances of affecting any politician's career
| dvdkon wrote:
| Yes, but they're still judged for their actions, so
| they'll lose voters if they do nothing or take actions
| that will be widely criticised by the press.
| midasuni wrote:
| Hahahahaha
|
| Oh wait you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
|
| Efficiency leads to profits and thus dividends. The
| government cares more about politics than efficiency. Look
| the the problems southern have had because the government
| insisted on getting rid of guards - they effectively
| nationalised southern (GTR) years ago because they refused
| to let the private sector run it how they wanted.
|
| Compare with chiltern who converted the Chiltern line from
| a service about to shut down under the government in the
| 80s to a leading toc massively increasing service and
| options
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| I don't get this kind of argument. Efficiency doesn't
| mean a good service. It means to minimise the costs in
| meeting your contractual requirements. It's not unusual
| for a company to be set up specifically to bid for a
| government contract since they're so lucrative and so
| hard for the government to respond to: a very profitable
| approach is to compete for a contract and then offer the
| shittiest service for which you are not subject to
| penalties. In some cases the senior management of
| reputable public transport service providers with decades
| of service provision have basically just upped and left
| the country before the contract is even through.
|
| The free market certainly provides benefits, but there
| needs to be some meaningful recourse to removing your
| custom while the provider depends on it. Otherwise, it's
| simply not a free market at all, no matter the
| circumstances that surrounded the bidding process.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Chiltern Railways were great, and were one of the few
| TOCs that genuinely competed for passengers against other
| railways, as Chiltern, Virgin (now Avanti) and London
| Midland (now West Midlands / London Northwestern) all
| operated competing services between London and
| Birmingham.
|
| Back in the day, Chiltern had express peak-time services
| to Birmingham which were only marginally slower than
| Virgin's high speed trains. But Chiltern was _much_
| cheaper and would serve you a cooked breakfast and proper
| espresso coffee at your seat - in standard class!
| daverol wrote:
| The white paper extols their open data promise which will
| allow (for example) "Personalised travel offers, like
| free coffee when a service is delayed"
| pydry wrote:
| The government already had to care about that. They were
| losing votes to promises of nationalisation under Corbyn in
| 2017.
|
| This looks like an attempt to present a kind of Potemkin
| nationalisation to mollify the anger of people with PS1k+
| season tickets and cement their hold on voters drawn away
| from Starmer in the last election (who meekly dumped rail
| nationalisation as a policy).
| Stranger43 wrote:
| But they could do nothing about it because of the arms
| length principle, putting things under government control
| shortens the chain of responsibility.
|
| This measure might be too little to really matter but the
| fact is that when you don't have an market(and for
| passenger rail you kind of don't) outsourcing operations
| to for-profit organisations provide nothing but a venue
| to funnel cash out of the system to private shareholders.
|
| When there is an functioning market that is not tied to
| an government backed/guaranteed service it does make
| sense to subcontract work to private enterprise, but
| unless the government contracts represent a relatively
| minor portion of the subcontractors revenue and the
| subcontractor don't have more then say 20% market share,
| there is no functioning market, so all you end up with is
| an mercantilist structure of public risk and private
| profits if you still insist on pushing the task to
| private enterprise.
| adamcstephens wrote:
| I also question whether outsourcing is cheaper too. Once
| you add in all the overhead in managing the contracts and
| contractors, plus the profit for the companies, I
| struggle to see how this is a better deal for government
| (and by extension the taxpayer).
| mnd999 wrote:
| It would certainly simplify the structure. At the moment
| it's all contracts and metrics and fines and lawyers when
| things go wrong. Perhaps the end to the ultimate metric for
| whether operators get fined or not being whether trains are
| on time which leads to bizarre situations like trains
| switching platforms at the last minute and leaving empty
| due to all the passengers being on the wrong platform.
| scaryclam wrote:
| And getting flat out cancelled when it's cheaper to take
| that hit than try to get passengers to where they're
| going in spite of the delays.
| bluGill wrote:
| When the government will take away your franchise in a few
| years - as just happened here - that is the only sane thing
| to do.
|
| Shareholders aren't stupid enough to invest in something
| long term unless their investment will have a return.
| Companies invest when there is a long term profit from the
| investment that makes it worth it. With governments all
| over the world having a history of nationalizing railroads,
| there is no rail investment that can be made with a time-
| frame beyond 7 years - and rail is up front expensive
| enough you need a lot more than a 7 year time frame on most
| investments.
|
| Most of the railroads in the US were funded by 150 year
| bonds. (your history class talked about the government
| giving railroads 10 miles of land on each side of the track
| - but that was only a few routes in the west that got that,
| most rail in the east the railroads had to buy the land at
| market price). I assume most of the rest of the world was
| similar.
| OJFord wrote:
| It becomes a campaign issue (or does if it is an issue),
| which is what I mean is 'strictly better'. Not great,
| probably, but not worse in any other way that I can think of,
| and that is a positive (to whatever extent).
| JI00912 wrote:
| Indeed the government has incentives to spend time, money
| and energy on campaigning. Unfortunately running things is
| a different matter.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Ultimately both governments and private entities can run
| things efficiently. And both governments and private
| entities can run things badly. The UK government has an
| excellent recent record of running rail franchises when
| it has had to step in and bail out franchises (it ran it
| profitably, and with excellent customer feedback on
| service), so it's a good bet that it'll do better than
| the existing providers for the time being.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| It is the same people who worked for the franchises
| working under government control - it is the senior
| management who go but the actual doers are the same.
| croon wrote:
| Incentives on one is to maximize profits, which in a
| monopoly means just extracting more money and spending
| less.
|
| Incentives on the other is electability (or ideology,
| perhaps rare), which at least has the possibility of
| meaning doing a good job.
| fmajid wrote:
| Look how much hay Mussolini made from running the trains on
| time (which wasn't even the case, they just padded the
| schedule).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > which wasn't even the case, they just padded the
| schedule
|
| Well, if I'm a company using rail for freight or a worker
| depending on the rail to get to work, it already is a
| massive improvement if I can at least rely on the train
| being where it should be at the announced time. Improving
| the schedule for faster travel or shorter intervals is
| another thing, but predictability alone makes my life
| easier.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Too right. It's always frustrating if your train is 2-3
| minutes late and just as you step off the train you see
| your connecting train leaving its platform and know you
| now have a 20 minute wait for the next one. The could
| definitely do with a bit more padding for those
| situations.
|
| Thankfully I don't have to take the train very often -
| especially these days lol
| bluGill wrote:
| Both are important, but for different things. If the trip
| time is too long nobody will take the train. If the train
| isn't predictable nobody will take the train. You get a
| bit of leeway in different situations though. The longer
| the trip the less either matters because what else can
| you do? If you are only going a few meters it needs to be
| here now (whenever now is - on time in 1 minute is too
| late!), and it only needs to be faster than walking that
| distance. In between you get some ability to do things.
|
| In the Swiss case on time is critical because they want
| people to depend on their next train being there when
| they get there. They assume most people will get off one
| train and get on another (or a bus) so they all meet in
| the same place at the same time. Early does nothing for
| anyone unless the bus/train they are meeting is early and
| leaves early. This is one good way to run a system. The
| other is run so many trains/buses that whenever you
| arrive there is another waiting for you that will leave
| as soon as you can get on. This second way to run a
| system is much faster and better for everyone - but the
| costs are significantly higher though and so nobody can
| afford to run a large system that way. (large cities
| often can run this way and should where they can). Note
| that system is the key word here. If you only have one
| train the considerations are different.
| disabled wrote:
| LOL Switzerland (i.e. extremely punctual society)
| actually does this with their rail system. There is a
| time buffer in the rail schedule for each of the stops.
| If a train is running late, and is /expected/ to be late,
| according to the estimated time of arrival, the train
| adjusts its speed, going faster, to arrive at the
| originally planned scheduled time. Failures on the rail
| system are of course rare.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If they're _way_ late, they 'll skip stops too, so they
| don't ruin the schedule for the whole network for the
| day.
|
| A few people in one town having to wait an extra 20
| minutes ensures hundreds of thousands have a predictably
| on-time system.
| secretsatan wrote:
| Late at night, if one of the regional trains is late to a
| local hub, the local trains wait for it to arrive so
| you're not stuck getting home.
|
| In general though, I'm so used to the trains being on
| time, I start tutting if it's even a minute late
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah, my last visit to Switzerland they announced one of
| the trains would be three minutes late and apologized for
| the inconvenience.
|
| Meanwhile, I've arrived in NYC fourteen hours late on
| Amtrak.
| oblio wrote:
| That's just good planning.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I think all rail systems have some small buffers build
| in.
|
| On the polish site which tracks punctuality of trains,
| you can often see train delayed for some time, which
| decreases delay by every stop, eventually ending with
| smaller delay or on time.
|
| http://infopasazer.intercity.pl
| bregma wrote:
| What really happened is the trains continued to run the
| same way they always had, but the Ministry of Propaganda
| said they were running on time and people believed them.
| It sounds cynical, but that's only because it worked.
|
| Perhaps also because it's still working.
| Guthur wrote:
| And what happens when party A fucks up and you vote in
| party B who also fuck it up your are officially out of
| options.
|
| The tender approach for time limited monopoly was just
| terrible though and had no good incentives at all, and so
| I'm not really sure a government monopoly will be much
| worse.
| oblio wrote:
| In decent voting systems, you vote in party C.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| I don't think there's any voting system that genuinely
| gives you three choices to lead government at every
| election. Even in proportional systems, you might be able
| to select someone who more closely represents your
| interests and can advocate them in parliament, but the
| government is probably going to be led by one of the same
| two parties over time. If party A and party B are both
| ideologically inclined to fuck up rail, getting party C
| elected as a junior partner probably won't change that.
|
| And if you're just hoping to replace party A entirely
| with party C, FPTP is one of the better systems as long
| as you're not in a country where election laws are set up
| to ensure that the Democrats and the Republicans are
| going to win almost every election. But that's a question
| of candidacy laws and incumbent rights; changing the
| voting system in the US won't suddenly cause other
| parties to get elected.
|
| Anyway, the fact that party A fucked it up and party B is
| fucking it up doesn't mean party A lacks incentives to
| improve it tomorrow. Perhaps they fucked it up because
| their leader was incompetent, and now that there's been a
| change in leadership they will be motivated to improve.
| buzer wrote:
| > but the government is probably going to be led by one
| of the same two parties over time.
|
| Finland has generally had 3 major parties ducking it out
| usually around 15-25% for each. 1995 was last time single
| party got over 30% of seats. Depends a bit on time which
| exact ones they were.
|
| English wikipedia doesn't have the historic list, but
| Finnish does https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduskunta#Kans
| anedustajat_puol... Divide by 2 to get the % (there are
| 200 members)
| toyg wrote:
| Population size is a big problem. The more you scale up a
| democratic system, the more it becomes difficult to
| bootstrap and maintain a coherent political movement that
| can have a realistic chance to win an election, in what
| is probably a logarithmic scale. So the bigger the
| country, the more entrenched the options will be, which
| eventually boils down to two sides when you approach
| certain thresholds (one for the current government, and
| one against it).
| oblio wrote:
| France has had a million parties. Romania, too. Italy,
| same. If there's a will, there's a way. Most of the time
| there's no will.
| bluGill wrote:
| If there was only one issue to vote on. However party C
| will have some other negative that I hate that party A is
| best on and party B is okay.
|
| The only system that doesn't have voting negatives to me
| is one with a population of less than 10 where I'm sole
| dictator. Any population more than that and someone will
| get mad at me and kill me. Republics with some form of
| voting are the best option I know of for large
| populations of people who aren't "mind numbed robots"
| with no ideas of their own, and there is room to tweak
| the voting system. However they are still terrible for
| getting good results.
| conjectures wrote:
| > I'm sure operators will push back on 'under one brand'
|
| You're probably right, but I don't think they'll succeed.
| Everyone and their dog can see that TFL has worked well
| compared to the rest of the country.
|
| I don't particularly like our government, but I don't doubt
| their commitment to populism. This looks like a vote winner to
| me so I'd put low odds on a u-turn here.
| pydry wrote:
| There would be no need for a U turn. Nothing very substantial
| has been promised. Note the way they very deliberately
| avoided the topic of price increases for instance.
|
| I don't doubt this government's commitment to populist
| rhetoric and the appearance of grand, sweeping changes
| either. It's a formula that wins them a lot of votes,
| especially against an opposition that is confused as to what
| it stands for.
| antihero wrote:
| The free market is only as free as the consumer.
| ankalaibe wrote:
| Yea, as if that's going to end up working well.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their
| wallets? It's not as if you can set up competing parallel
| networks running trains side by side between identical
| destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort.
|
| Capacity is _physically constrained_ , especially on an ancient
| network like the UK's.
|
| Timetable slots are scarce and have to be centrally coordinated
| and managed.
|
| There is no sparkly market magic that will make these
| constraints disappear and somehow give customers more choice
| about where to go, when, and with whom. And there is no chance
| whatsoever that operators can compete on price.
|
| The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry
| and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis
| that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant
| indirect benefits, and _cannot possibly be run as a self-
| sustaining profitable business on a national scale._
|
| The idea that competition for passengers will somehow make
| profitability possible is a dilettante-level view that has no
| insight into how the industry actually operates.
|
| We've already had decades of this kind of thinking, and the
| result has been mediocre services, vastly increased direct
| subsidies, and ballooning fares.
| OJFord wrote:
| > How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their
| wallets?
|
| They can't.
|
| > The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire
| industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on
| the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with
| significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as
| a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale.
|
| Hear hear!
|
| I'm not sure if you realise you're agreeing with me, but yes,
| exactly, I agree with you, that was my (intended) point too;
| I wrote:
|
| > bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a
| poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail
| users could vote with their feet and wallets.
|
| Note the '(impossible)' - I mean that in the sense that I'm
| generally pro 'leave it to the free market', but that that
| only makes sense where you can have effective competition,
| which as you say, you can't with national (especially
| physical, electricity for example is fungible and so
| abstracted that it mostly works being privatised on the
| consumer/payments end at least) infrastructure like train
| lines!
|
| In some hypothetical land where there's multiple lines,
| multiple services by different operators at the same time
| competing on service and price, great, I'm all for that, let
| them compete, don't nationalise it, let people vote with
| their feet and wallets. But we live in the real world; they
| can't.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks
| running trains side by side between identical destinations at
| varying levels of speed and comfort.
|
| Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West
| Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-
| Edinburgh route.
|
| But I think in this age of high-speed trains, overhead
| electrification and 4+ wide tracks, railways are well and
| truly a natural monopoly.
|
| But natural monopoly is not about _can 't_ have competition,
| it's about being thoroughly uneconomical to have competition.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West
| Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-
| Edinburgh route.
|
| I've done that route dozens of times in the past. I think
| it's stretching things to say they are in competition
| though. For Glasgow it was 40 minutes faster to go up the
| West coast (if you don't mind the smell of the toilets on
| the Pendolino) and similarly the East Coast was faster for
| Edinburgh because it avoided going all the way out to
| Carluke and back. Of course that missing out the majority
| of people using those trains were using it starting at an
| intermediate station, making any competition slightly moot.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I was referring more to the historical competition[0]. I
| don't think it's as relevant today.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North
| toyg wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly. I would add that the real problem is
| that the current UK political class is too spineless to take
| on the responsibility of running a rail network without going
| broke. So they will continue to maintain some degree of
| chicanery to provide for plausible deniability when the
| trains don't run or the system goes bankrupt.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| How does Japan do it? Can we try to copy them because it's
| very good. My 45 minute journey into Tokyo from Chiba was
| around PS125 per month.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Piecing together the story from
| https://pedestrianobservations.com and other places, I
| would not imitate Japan in this regard.
|
| - Japan's terrain is fairly ideal for rail. Yes,
| mountains make for more work, put people are also
| naturally congregated near the coast, in valleys, etc.
| Additionally, the largest cities with the high population
| form a linear chain from roughly Nagasaki to Tokyo. That
| means more network effects per distance of rail (there's
| no penalty separate than time delay for traveling through
| other cities first).
|
| - Japan has perhaps the best policy around land use in
| the developed world. See
| https://www.sightline.org/2021/03/25/yes-other-countries-
| do-... for some details. This helps greatly with density
| and clustering around rail stations.
|
| - The privatization was triggered by the fright around
| Japan's big deficits after the 80s boom, and perhaps
| still maintained with some fear of that. That doesn't
| make it a good idea, of course, but I'm willing to call
| it more "defensive neoliberalism" than "offensive
| neoliberalism", but maybe that makes it a little less
| ideological given that Japan was the poster child for all
| the neoclassical economic doomsday predictions?
|
| - https://pedestrianobservations.com in particular says
| the privatization and and general being spooked about
| more debt holds back some construction on paper, but
| since the rail is so well established already and
| operationally profitable, there is less to screw up.
|
| In conclusion, I'd say that because Japan gets everything
| adjacent to rail policy so absolutely well done, and the
| rail network was already functioning so way, it continues
| to succeed not because but despite privatization.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| 1) I don't believe for one second that Japan has better
| geography than the UK for rail
|
| 2) we can do much better with planning, however I'm not
| sure Japanese planning is the answer, when I lived there
| I thought most of the accommodation was horrendous.
| Europeans wouldn't accept it.
|
| 3) is JR Rail etc. private? It seemed too cheap!
|
| 4) how is rail profitable in Japan, but not profitable in
| the UK. It's cheaper there and far far better!
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I am no expert in the slightest (I would check the things
| I linked), I'll try to answer
|
| 1) Mountains actually helping is my own pet theory, I
| should disclaim. Japan does seem to have wild swings in
| density, while England seems to have people/towns strewn
| about everywhere and London feels kinda sprawly at
| certain scales. That said UK obviously has cities /
| regional clustering at the scale of HSR.
|
| Someone should do a proper (fourier?) analysis of sprawl
| at different different scales and how that effects rail
| at different scales and until then my theory is just idle
| speculation, and in any event I don't think Britain can
| or should blame it's geography when other flat parts of
| Europe do better, and the Anglosphere clearly sucks at
| rail on the whole.
|
| 2) So Europe is kinda of anti-modern avoiding dense
| downtowns / CBDs, America is downright evil with it's
| single family homes, but weirdly still has tall towers
| people curse driving too. East Asia is largely "correct"
| in having dense workplaces and living places, which you
| want if your goal is both less car trips and classic max
| GDP growth.
|
| I don't think the UK should be like Japan in al respects,
| but London is emphatically way to evenly low-rise,
| housing is not cheap enough I hear, and all those rich
| people LARPing landed gentry commuting 3 hours from their
| quaint South England rural hamlet is a sure sign
| something weird's afoot.
|
| If they get rid of the green belt because no one wants to
| build taller, I will be sad.
|
| 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Railways_Group the
| story is maybe more muddled than I thought, or maybe
| that's just the terminology for historical reasons.
|
| 4) Well, that I think goes back to the unique economics
| of rail. I think good rail becomes profitable, but
| profitable bad rail doesn't become good or isn't even
| possible!
| jabl wrote:
| 4) Japanese railways get about 50% of their income from
| ticket sales, the rest comes from owning the high value
| land around the stations (renting, grocery stores, hotels
| and whatnot).
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| > It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks
| running trains side by side between identical destinations at
| varying levels of speed and comfort.
|
| To an extent, this does exist on _some_ routes. Both LNER and
| Grand Central operate trains up the East Coast Main Line, for
| example. Then there are destinations served by multiple
| routes, like Cambridge, Oxford, and Bedford, where each route
| has its own operator.
|
| Competition is impractical for most journeys, though.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The undiscussed upside of this "privatisation pantomime" is
| that government's are committed to making it work. That means
| it gets investments and bailouts. Compare that to publicly
| owned services who get nothing.
|
| The real question here isn't who owns X, it's will the
| government invest in X...
| andrepd wrote:
| It's a classic tactic: underfund government services, then
| point to how they don't work as a pretext to privatise.
| pydry wrote:
| This is happening to the NHS right now.
|
| 128k deaths thanks to an overloaded, underfunded system and
| Boris Johnson's own nurse rage-quits and the conservatives
| are still gaining electoral ground. It's bizarre.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| 110% correct. Just in the last 6 months we've seen all the
| rail companies (supposedly private) bailed out. TfL, the
| only real public provider was told to cover its bills
| itself and eventually accepted a loan on userous terms...
| apercu wrote:
| > Even as a free market conservative
|
| Interesting that even on hacker news some feel we lead with our
| political views. lol.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Celebrating nationalisation is a political view, and I think
| the parent poster wanted to use this as an opportunity to
| extend an olive branch/empathize with others who hold
| differing views.
| beck5 wrote:
| Most will sympathise with public run railways (rightly or
| wrongly) so it is worth highlighting some positives from private
| companies running of the railways.
|
| The private companies have pushed for a very large increase in
| the number of operating trains, with around a 50% increase in the
| past couple of decades, they are trying to squeeze every drop
| possible out if the tracks.
|
| The train companies are also often making a loss on these routes,
| commonly subsidised by foreign Europeans governments looking to
| expand their rail business, Dutch or Italian tax payers should be
| annoyed at how their taxes are being wasted.
|
| Profits are also capped so these are not potential cash cows
| people suspect. British tickets are expensive because the
| government doesn't subsidise the ticket price, which is a
| separate debate.
|
| The Public Vs private debate will continue until the end of time,
| the truth is there are benefits to both systems.
|
| Disclaimer, my wife is senior in a rail franchise, as well as
| being left leaning, fwiw.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >The train companies are also often making a loss on these
| routes, commonly subsidised by foreign Europeans governments
| looking to expand their rail business, Dutch or Italian tax
| payers should be annoyed at how their taxes are being wasted.
|
| Last i checked one or 2 examples they ran a profit. Surely they
| can run a loss/be funded initially but if you get that money
| back out it's not really what you describe it as no?
| reedf1 wrote:
| > Profits are also capped so these are not potential cash cows
| people suspect. British tickets are expensive because the
| government doesn't subsidise the ticket price, which is a
| separate debate.
|
| The system is capped and collared meaning their profits are
| guaranteed by the government as well as limited. This system
| incentivised them to underperform on their contract, buy
| assets, claim losses. When the franchise completes they
| liquidise and pay out big bucks to shareholders. They very much
| are the cash cows that people think they are.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Yes, the comment you've replied to is spouting a pretty
| important mis-truth by trying to make out they aren't
| profitable for the franchisee.
| beck5 wrote:
| Some of the franchises did make decent profits,
| westcost/virgin etc. This generally happens at the end of the
| franchise once most of the up front investment happened. A
| lot of other franchises make a loss so it isn't quite so
| black and white.
|
| With the previous model a lot of the risk was on the private
| company, if times were good profits were there, in bad times
| they made losses. Now with the new model the risk has gone
| over to the UK government, for better or worse.
|
| The new setup should guarantee a low level of profitability
| for private companies, with a theoretical lower max, what
| will be interesting is to see how many companies actually
| bid.
|
| The private companies actually own very little when running a
| franchise, most things are leased, such as rolling stock
| which is largely owned by German funds if memory serves.
| Investments into stations/parking/ticketing etc is left in
| place for the next person to take the keys.
| drawfloat wrote:
| Appreciate that, but vast swathes of the North and rural areas
| will never be profitable. As a result, entire areas of the
| country have rolling stock that was supposed to be dropped in
| the 80s, a couple of services a day, or aren't even
| electrified.
|
| The one that always stands out to me is the fact that the last
| train from Liverpool to Sheffield (two major cities) is at
| 9:30pm because it wasn't profitable to continue services after
| that time. As a result, flight delays from Liverpool Airport
| (again, a major airport) can leave you stranded in that city -
| or facing an eye watering taxi bill.
| beck5 wrote:
| I completely agree, Northern trains are a disgrace.
|
| I don't think it was a failure of private companies though,
| rather Network Rail failing to deliver. The government has
| speced electrification for decades like you say. The cost of
| eletricifcation has gone through the roof, mainly due to
| health and safety (good thing). We have also lost a lot of
| expertise in electrification, much like how we lost the skill
| to tunnel.
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