Ah, the search for a profitable core! That's been tried before, but like flat earthists it never quite goes away.
I was not realistically suggesting that as a country we should try searching for a profitable core. But just with any loss making business, I’m sure some ‘bright spark’ could be found to do a hatchet job and then tell the government that they have sorted out a down sized business that can make a profit. Is this not what happens when a new owner buys a failing chain of shops and then proceeds to close a very large number of them with a comment like ‘we are focusing on our core business’?
As indicated earlier, closing any significant number of services is currently not politically acceptable. The real question is not could the railways make a profit, but what level of financial support should there be from government? And can the railways be more efficient?
Certainly, the answer to the last part is yes. There is wasted money just in the infrastructure side alone. Partly due to the way that renewal and improvement projects are put together the way they are.
For example, it’s occasionally (just a bit) mentioned about the cost of electrification programmes. One of the costs is renewal or alteration of the signalling system so that it is compatible with the electrification system. With the electrification programme on the Western, unfortunately money was wasted due to various items of signalling equipment being renewed, only for it some of these having to be renewed again after the OHL had been designed and installed because of insufficient clearances. Or because track work had taken place to realign junctions. Or because the track needed to be lowered in tunnels and there were existing cable routes under the track. It’s not exactly cost effective to only get a couple of years service from an item of equipment that normally should last ten years or more.
And where one project overlaps with another project, and one is running behind schedule, this can also increase costs and hence reduce efficiency. The four tracking of the Filton bank between Bristol T.M. and Filton Abbey Wood is an example. The signalling system on the line was supposed to have been renewed well before the track work. But it was not. In order to clear the area where embankment work and track work was taking place, a lot of the existing signalling equipment had to be removed, and new conventional signalling equipment installed on the other side of the line. This new signalling equipment was only in use for a short time (just less than a year I think) before it became redundant when the intended new signalling system (of a different design) replaced it.
In the past, there have apparently been comparisons between the cost of construction of a new railway line and of a new road with equivalent capacity. And apparently the cost of a new railway line is said to be cheaper per mile (I don’t think this included electrification).
But obviously the running and maintenance costs of a railway line are greater than the equivalent road.
And how the public views the road network is distorted due to the way that the road network is funded.
For example, does anyone know how much, as a proportion, of a bus fare goes towards the maintenance and running costs of the roads that that bus service runs on?