Great British Rail

[Brew_DD2]

Well I'm old enough to remember BR and it was significantly worse than what we have today by a significant margin. I don't commute by train so might have a different view if I did, especially if I lived in and around London, but from my perspective rail travel is far far better than it was back in the BR days. Far more investment has actually made it to the ground...stations overhauled and refurbished, new lines, new and upgraded infrastructure, new rolling stock, in the most part, and far better reliability. All this stuff takes time to happen and deliver benefits but at least it's happening. Back in the BR days train breakdowns was regular and eating around on a cold unheated carriage for rescue and I remember once even having to disembark the train in-between stations, walking across a muddy field to a bus to complete my journey, and there was little or no investment in any infrastructure, and what we did invest in was an abject failure and wasted significant chunks of public money.

The only downside is ticket prices, but hey, travel is expensive..all forms of travel has become more expensive over the years so no reason or justification why rail should escape this.

Just cant believe with everything else going on around us at t moment the re-nationalisation of the railways should be anywhere high up enough on the list of priorities that we're even talking about it...just demonstrates its actually a political stunt to appease the more militant and extreme end of the Labour Party.

Are those things not just things that would have progressed anyway? It was a long long time ago that it was privatised. Do we not already pay a huge amount to keep the railways running? It's not all come from private investment. If there was genuine competition then I'd imagine things would run much better, but I'd rather we took control of it than the current monopoly system.

 

[jof]

The only downside is ticket prices, but hey, travel is expensive..all forms of travel has become more expensive over the years so no reason or justification why rail should escape this.

This is part of the deliberate ploy by goverment & business to reassert the Feudal system in the UK & limit the freedom of movement of the serfs.

 

[Bitter_Dave]

Up until a few years ago I used rail on a daily basis to get to work in the South and I can tell you it was absolutely grim + incredibly expensive. I won't bore you with endless tails of woe, but it really can't have been much worse. Some of my colleagues had to get rail replacement buses for MONTHS because they had to close a major station because they were unable to run a full service. I was delayed pretty much every day at some point.

One of the problems with BR was because governments (most of them Tory, let's face it) sucked the profits out of the industry rather than reinvesting them.

It is correct that there has been significant investment in the system in recent years, but the funds came from us and there is absolutely no reason this had to be done under a privatised system. I agree it is a mistake to pretend all was well under BR or that renationalising the system will resolve all the problems overnight. But the current system makes absolutely no sense because there is no real competition because it has to be highly regulated (including prices and schedules) in order to work. It is also highly subsidized (as shown during the strikes when the government compensated companies for loss of earnings while tying their hands in terms of reaching a negotiated solution). Why would we be paying over the odds to ensure the train companies turn a profit?

 

[The Baron]

Well I'm old enough to remember BR and it was significantly worse than what we have today by a significant margin. I don't commute by train so might have a different view if I did, especially if I lived in and around London, but from my perspective rail travel is far far better than it was back in the BR days. Far more investment has actually made it to the ground...stations overhauled and refurbished, new lines, new and upgraded infrastructure, new rolling stock, in the most part, and far better reliability. All this stuff takes time to happen and deliver benefits but at least it's happening. Back in the BR days train breakdowns was regular and eating around on a cold unheated carriage for rescue and I remember once even having to disembark the train in-between stations, walking across a muddy field to a bus to complete my journey, and there was little or no investment in any infrastructure, and what we did invest in was an abject failure and wasted significant chunks of public money.

The only downside is ticket prices, but hey, travel is expensive..all forms of travel has become more expensive over the years so no reason or justification why rail should escape this.

Just cant believe with everything else going on around us at t moment the re-nationalisation of the railways should be anywhere high up enough on the list of priorities that we're even talking about it...just demonstrates its actually a political stunt to appease the more militant and extreme end of the Labour Party.

Bang on Hoppyscotty it is a simple appeasement for the support of the Unions and will end with worse time keeping and lazy people refusing to do jobs unless it meets Union terms. I too remember the old British Rail and it was diabolical much worse than today.

 

[Bitter_Dave]

Bang on Hoppyscotty it is a simple appeasement for the support of the Unions and will end with worse time keeping and lazy people refusing to do jobs unless it meets Union terms. I too remember the old British Rail and it was diabolical much worse than today.

If you don't mind me asking Baron, how much do you use the railways?

 

[The Baron]

I used to use them a lot but I have a bus pass so can not justify the extortionate prices when my travel is free now

 

[Chippy_Tea]

it is a simple appeasement for the support of the Unions and will end with worse time keeping and lazy people refusing to do jobs unless it meets Union terms.

I dont think unions have the same powers they did back then and if i take my employer and my sons as a measure they definitely dont have the huge number of members they did, where i work hardly anyone is a member as we are paid a decent wage and our conditions are good there seems little point in paying £200 a year for something *i am probably never going to need.
*haven't had a reason to use a union rep in the last 9 years

 

[The Baron]

I agree Chippy they do not have the same power but watch that power ramp up once labour get in.
Labour will not get their full support unless they give it's only natural

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I agree Chippy they do not have the same power but watch that power ramp up once labour get in.
Labour will not get their full support unless they give it's only natural

Time will tell but i dont see it going back to the bad old days of strikes and power cuts etc, Labour know if it does they will be outed at the next GE, they need to get this right in their first term or it will be their last for a very long time as the Tories all be wearing their -

 

[Bitter_Dave]

I used to use them a lot but I have a bus pass so can not justify the extortionate prices when my travel is free now

Thanks for your reply Baron. I don't disagree that things were not great under BR in the past (as I said, partly because of under-investment). But I'm not convinced by the argument things have improved under a private model. Incredibly expensive and unreliable. Privatised rail is the worst of all worlds

 

[ClownPrince]

Time will tell but i dont see it going back to the bad old days of strikes and power cuts etc, Labour know if it does they will be outed at the next GE, they need to get this right in their first term or it will be their last for a very long time as the Tories all be wearing their -

View attachment 98808

Tories only have two shirts in opposition. This one and the one that says 'We broke everything, but get on our high horse when you struggle to fix it'.

 

[dad_of_jon]

The TOCs don’t own the trains, they lease them from one of the two or three privatised rolling stock leasing companies. They are the ones really raking in the profits.

yup I did know that, but what I didn't know was about the lease length of the stock. surely that would be tied in with the length of the contract to run trains? Will the ex train companies be able to buyout of the lease if their lease is 20 years but the franchise was for 10?

 

[JockyBrewer]

A funny thing about European railways is that for journeys an hour or less they're similar cost and time to UK.

I did Ghent - Antwerp a few days ago and it is about 60km and cost 23 EUR return. That's about the same as Leeds - Sheffield which costs £14.50, or London - Chelmsford which is £26.80. Likewise on a trip last year Dusseldorf - Koln is about 40km and cost 21 EUR return.

On the other hand Berlin - Hamburg is 280km and costs 45-50 EUR depending upon the train. It's a similar distance to London - Manchester which is £90!

 

[ClownPrince]

A funny thing about European railways is that for journeys an hour or less they're similar cost and time to UK.

I did Ghent - Antwerp a few days ago and it is about 60km and cost 23 EUR return. That's about the same as Leeds - Sheffield which costs £14.50, or London - Chelmsford which is £26.80. Likewise on a trip last year Dusseldorf - Koln is about 40km and cost 21 EUR return.

On the other hand Berlin - Hamburg is 280km and costs 45-50 EUR depending upon the train. It's a similar distance to London - Manchester which is £90!

We did Bucharest to Brasov return which is a similar distance to Manchester to Whitby. I think it was £22 each compared to over £100 for Manchester to Whitby.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

We did Bucharest to Brasov return which is a similar distance to Manchester to Whitby. I think it was £22 each compared to over £100 for Manchester to Whitby.

And the Romanian minimum wage is £3.43 as opposed to £11.44 here - your point is?

Nationalisation is no panacea - see this inside account from the guy who ran the East Coast line when it was in government hands for a few years a decade ago :
https://www.railmagazine.com/news/network/nationalisation-a-dead-end-argument

One of the key problems is that they become subject to the Treasury borrowing rules (in other words, they can't borrow...) which means they can't implement projects even with short paybacks that would make a big difference to passengers, like replacing old motors responsible for many breakdowns.

But most of the problems with the railways come down to a lack of capacity - they're chocker (in part because of the success of private operators like Virgin who in 30 years increased passengers on the West Coast from 14 million to 40 million) which means they have no resilience if something goes wrong, a single broken train clogs up the whole network. And a lack of capacity also means there's just no room for alternative providers to compete.

Of course, when a project is started to massively increase rail capacity - ie HS2, Rishi Sunak cancels it without so much as mentioning it in Parliament.

 

[Bitter_Dave]

Interesting post NB. Not sure anyone here is claiming nationalisation is a panacea. But all else being equal, is it really worth renewing train contracts when they come up for renewal and paying towards company profits through our fairs and taxes?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Interesting post NB. Not sure anyone here is claiming nationalisation is a panacea.

If you're claiming "Privatised rail is the worst of all worlds" then you are suggesting that nationalisation is better in every world....

But all else being equal, is it really worth renewing train contracts when they come up for renewal and paying towards company profits through our fairs and taxes?

I have no problem with companies getting rewarded if they're less **** than the way government do things. Say the government way is to not borrow money, and so old trains keep breaking down which means trains are always late or cancelled, and money leaves the company in the form of £5m/year in fines. But the company way is to borrow some money that costs £2m/year to repay, to replace worn out equipment that was breaking down, and it reduces the breakdown rate by 60%. So now they're paying £2m in fines and £2m for the loan, but there's now £1m of "profit" that is only there because of the company running things better than the government did. So why shouldn't they get the benefit of that? (and they will end up paying 25% to the government in tax anyway). Same with increasing passengers - if Virgin can increase passengers on the West Coast from 14m to 40m, shouldn't they get some reward for that? The trouble is that outsiders take operational competence for granted and undercut a company that does a good job - which then leads to Avanti.

Now obviously there is a tension between making profits through competence and through "monopoly". But as Richard Holden explains, privatisation is illusory in the railways because government micromanage the terms of the contracts so tightly that there's not much scope for creativity by the TOCs. And they are also incredibly constrained by the nationalised Network Rail, which gets to do some really stupid things. For instance, building the Ordsall Chord was part of a plan to relieve congestion around Manchester - but that £85m was pretty much wasted because it relied on extra platforms being built at Piccadilly, and the money to do that was taken to bail out Crossrail in London. Same with the money from cancelling HS2 north of Brum that was meant to go into improving other northern railways as part of "Network North" - somehow £235m of Network North money ended up patching potholes in London.

So the "national" in nationalisation is one of the problems - people like Andy Burnham have fought to get more local control of transport but it's still a long way from happening, and London still gets priority. Just to take one random example - London has had trains integrated into the Oyster card system for 20 years, but similar integration still hasn't happened anywhere else. - London got a special system written for it, but they didn't bother writing a more general system that would allow other cities to talk to rail ticketing. Devolution of transport is happening, but very slowly - we need more of it.

 

[old dog new tricks]

Well the Scottish Government effectively did this when the Abellio contract was terminated due to poor performance.
Has instantly fixed things? No but at least private companies are not making excessive profits.
Good points they ran a trial to abolish peak rates just have off peak to try and get numbers up, seems to kinda worked biggest issue is work from home reduces the need for trains for a large number.

I personally think certain basic functions like public transport, energy and water should either be not for profit or public ownership. Making profits from essential public services is morally wrong.

As for trade unions up until a few years ago I was very active with Unite and I can say first head unions have modernised and work with employers mostly the rail strikes were brought about by the employer having terms mandated by the government that destroyed the relationship frankly this government have destroyed every relationship they ever had in every sector. In Scotland agreement was reached quickly even with public ownership so sorry the argument that trade unions cause the issues are no longer valid.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Has instantly fixed things? No but at least private companies are not making excessive profits.

So what do you define as "excessive" profits? 20%? 5%?

Making profits from essential public services is morally wrong.

So Bic are morally wrong for selling biros to any part of government?

Birdseye are morally wrong for selling fish fingers for school dinners?

Either you are arguing for state ownership of essentially everything - so communism - or you need to stop being morally outraged over everything.

 

[old dog new tricks]

Ok everyone is entitled to their opinion but as I say basic functions of life should not be for profit ie water and energy. I class public transport in that as well can't speak for England, Wales or NI but in Scotland public transport is subsided to ensure transport for everyone not just those who can afford a private vehicle. I would much rather they were run not for profit to ensure maximum value for customers and investment in rolling stock.

No I am not a communist far from it I believe in free competition.
Problem is you very rarely have a choice of what train or bus company to use. There is no competition to keep them honest so for me not for profit or public ownership is a better option.

Your analogy of fish fingers or biros no issue with free market competition provided it's value for the taxpayer.

What I will not apologise for is my loathing for the asset strippers that have ruined energy and water that is an outrage the service and investment has declined since public ownership but the profit and dividends have grown so only the investers make money from it.

If that makes me a communist then so be it