As for remvoving the involvement of the DfT, someone has to specify at least a minimum service requirement. OPRAF did it first, then the SRA and now the DfT. If you just leave it to market forces then some people will likely be left without a service.
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Bring back british rail!
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RichmondCommu
Established Member
With the exception of the TGV (which I admit is very good) the rest of the SNCF network is very run down and many of the staff are down right rude. Which reminds me of BR back in the 80's.
The way I see it is there are different types of rail service (just my opinion):
There is Intercity, a generally profit making enterprise which could prosper without government involvement due to high fare yields and constant demand. Competition is provided by coaches, potentially flights and the private car.
Then there is regional rail/community service rail, which needs state support. This could be done on a local/regional level though, with PTE bodies covering the whole of the country, which is a system used in certain continental European countries.
Sometimes they overlap and some routes aren't clear cut. I am leaving out commuter rail here though.
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Main line services into London make a lot of money. Some of the branch lines lose money (and that's factoring in the benefit of transfers), which is one reason why Southeastern needs such a big subsidy.
DaveF
Member
I've enjoyed reading this thread and can understand the different points of view expressed. Some comments though:
First:
I can remember trying to make journeys using British Rail in the 60s and 70s - usually dirty(often filthy) coaches (that's inside as well as outside), frequent cancellations, weekend trips were a joke - no substitute road coaches, just take your luck with diversions, no published arrival times.
Second
Railways in Britain (with a tiny number of exceptions) were privately financed, built and operated until the end of 1947. Are some people saying they should always have been built and owned by the state? I suspect many lines would not have been built - after all you'd only need one route to Scotland!
Third
If the current system is so bad why are more people using trains than for a very very long time and why are more trains running each day?
David
First:
I can remember trying to make journeys using British Rail in the 60s and 70s - usually dirty(often filthy) coaches (that's inside as well as outside), frequent cancellations, weekend trips were a joke - no substitute road coaches, just take your luck with diversions, no published arrival times.
Second
Railways in Britain (with a tiny number of exceptions) were privately financed, built and operated until the end of 1947. Are some people saying they should always have been built and owned by the state? I suspect many lines would not have been built - after all you'd only need one route to Scotland!
Third
If the current system is so bad why are more people using trains than for a very very long time and why are more trains running each day?
David
As due to climate change and peak oil there has to be a shift to sustainable transport.
12CSVT
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It should be rememberd that when things go wrong, staff are working under extreme pressure liasing with signallers, traincrew depots, other train and transport operators etc.
If thing went wrong under British Rail (points or signal failure for instance) it is likely that the station staff would be down the track, hand signalling or working the points by hand, which was part of their duties. Now you would have to wait for ages for a Network Rail MOM to turn up.
The reason you have automated announcements is so the TOCs don't have to employ announcers. With no announcers it is inevitable that there may be very few manual announcements at times of disruption.
Dream on!
More folk are travelling by rail because services are more reliable, quicker, and a better alternative to the awful motorways.
Who the heck considers climate change when planning a journey?
It's the job of governement to entice people away from cars and onto trains to counter climate change by pricing strategys. What do we see? Car travel cheaper in real terms than it was 20 years ago, rail a heck of a lot more expensive!
Politicians are more interested in garnering votes tha saving the planet*. Cynical? No - REALISTIC!
A government truly wedded to saving our place on this planet (*not saving the planet - it will be just fine when we are gone) would skew transport pricing through the tax system to favour rail above road. Do you see that? NO!
They talk the talk. They DO NOT walk the walk!
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No need to, the current situation is simply not sustainable long term.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
The East Coast journey planner shows CO2 emissions.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Congestion on motorways is only going to increase as the government realized that you can't keep building them and that the private car is not sustainable long term so the only option is for people to switch to public transport. This would still likely be the case even without rail privatization.
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And I can point you at countless websites which tell that story. Doesn't change a thing! Only the politicians through taxation policy (ie price to travel by train verses car) can change that. Joe public when planning a journey is guided by his wallet, not by climate change factors.
Your post is admirable in its green ambitions, but not very realistic!
Or you could leave it to market forces which I would have thought you'd be quite keen on. The price of fuel is likely to increase significantly in the long term so it may well be that most people won't be able to afford a car. For someone that is so keen on having a privatized railway, why should it be the job of the government to set the price of travel?
That may happen long term, but don't count on it; it might be 100 years off, by which time the planet may not support life. The oil industry is very active in extraction. Fracking, extracting oil and gas from shale, is just the latest way to get more carbon fuel out of the ground and could keep us going another 25 years. And it wont be the last extraction technology.
Market forces only work up to a point. Politicians have to put their money (votes) where their mouths are! Don't hold your breath!
Would you support the privatization of the road network then? Private companies would then charge each vehicle to use the road and so move more of the cost of a car journey to the point of use and closer to a level playing field with public transport.
RichmondCommu
Established Member
I don't always agree with you but you've hit the nail on the head this time! Before privatisation BR was a lazy organisation with no customer orientation what so ever.
Back in the late 80's, having received my first bonus I decided to travel back to Derby for the weekend first class. I'd been up all night, looked a mess and I when I boarded the train the guard said "standard class is down there mate". Mate? I wasn't his "mate" and further more he'd made no attempt to check my ticket. This would never happen on todays privately run network.
My father and grand father were both career railwaymen and members of the IMechE and I'm extremely proud of both of them but BR was run by idiots. When will people learn that the state is no good at running industry?
Absolutely! That HAS to happen if road and rail are to compete on equal terms. The present system sees the taxpayer footing the bill to build and maintain roads. Jeremy Clarkson would say "I pay road tax and fuel tax etc" which indeed he does. The HGV and coach industry however make our roads very expensive (in gradients, quality of road building, bridge strength etc compared to what private cars need) and cause about 99% of road wear and tear, but pay a fraction of those costs in road and fuel tax! (They'll argue different, but it's true - the car subsidises HGVs).
I'm all for a level playing field in transport users paying their costs!
Snapper
Established Member
So can I!
But in the rose tinted world of nostalgia all those things are forgotten. Just like the memories people have of their childhood, when the sun always shone!
I've just re-edited hundreds of old rail pictures from 1998 - 2003 and put them on my website. The reason I mention this is because looking through them again I was struck by how filthy and run down so much of the network looked - especially the trains.
Can you imagine any modern operator allowing this?
http://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/p274681663/h17cecbce#h17cecbce
Schnellzug
Established Member
My lords, this argument is still continuing? I'm afraid that, while state ownership & vertical intregration and all the rest of it may be the best in the best of all possible worlds, I'm afraid that it's all a mere castle in the air while we have the current system of governement, which seems to be designed to guarantee the maximum degree of incompetence. Consequently, while we have this system that provides us with an endless cycle of one incompetent Government after another, then i would much rather that the Politicians kept their little controlling hands off of as much as is possible. For that reason, even if state control may be ideal theoretically, as long as we insist on telling ourselves that our current political system is anything other than irredeemable inept, I'd much rather we did not.
BR is consigned to history. It has played it's part in giving us the modern railway that we know of today. What we should be debating is whether the current system gives the tax payer value for money. Could the railways be re-organized in such a way that the bill to the tax payer was lower, in real terms.
Is the current system of franchising cost effective for the tax payer?
If not, are fewer, larger franchises required?
Do you need both a Northern Trains and Trans Pennines?
Is there really any competition between the TOCS ?
Could Network Rail be run more efficiently with perhaps savings of 1 billion per year?
If the answer is no to most or all of the questions, then let the status quo remain. If the answer is of course we could make great savings by being more efficient and better managed , then let's bring in this shangri la!
But it won't be state run and owned.
Is the current system of franchising cost effective for the tax payer?
If not, are fewer, larger franchises required?
Do you need both a Northern Trains and Trans Pennines?
Is there really any competition between the TOCS ?
Could Network Rail be run more efficiently with perhaps savings of 1 billion per year?
If the answer is no to most or all of the questions, then let the status quo remain. If the answer is of course we could make great savings by being more efficient and better managed , then let's bring in this shangri la!
But it won't be state run and owned.
Old Timer
Established Member
Would you perhaps care to enlighten us upon what these social responsibilities are please ?
The odd thing is that all large companies will have a Corporate Social Responsibility Policy & Plan, and almost certainly some staff who's main job is to work on this. It will involve charitable works, safety, involvement in the community, preventing corruption, etc.
Of course this isn't done totally altruistically, but that's hardly the point. It's part of standard corporate governance these days (and you can bet that those staff certainly believe in what they're doing - I've met some).
Old Timer
Established Member
No I am sorry but that just is not true whatsoever.
There were Special Traffic Notices published in advance, and all timings for diverted or altered trains were notified to the Passenger Commercial dept who prepared the various posters which were displayed at stations. Please do not try to tell me that is wrong because part of my job many years ago was to put up and take down these posters, and later on I worked in the train planning section doing the Engineering Work alterations. These were not that complicated given that many services did not start properly until after lunch, and pretty much all engineering work finished for 16:00.
There were even Sunday timetables printed and supplied to the public.
With regards to "dirty (often filthy) coaches" comment may I point out that it is passengers not Railway staff who make the coaches dirty. Indeed an excellent cartoon appeared in Railnews (in the 80s I believe) along the lines of your assertion. A train could leave the Carriage Sidings in a good state of cleanliness and within a short time become akin to a rubbish tip, hence why some TOCs now have roaming cleaners.
In the 70s, the Country was within a downward spiralling economy which meant that the Railways along with other Nationalised Industries were used by the Government as a means of controlling money and finance. Thus the Railways were the first to lose out when it came to money, especially when compared to the Miner's who used emotive historical arguments to win ever greater pay rises - the money for which had to come from somewhere, in other words the Tax Payer - or had large industrial muscle such as the T&GWU which could be, and indeed regularly was, used to bring widespread Industrial disruption. The fact therefore is that for pretty much all of the 70s the subsidy paid to BR was falling in real terms (remember inflation in double figures and 18% pay rises ??) and the Railways were given no latitude. Any sort of "Improvement" was treated by the Government and the Treasury as "Investment" which meant that the money came from a different and much smaller budget.
We were thus locked into a nightmare situation that whilst it would not have cost much more to relay a section of track in long welded rail which would have generated considerable savings, financial dictates from Government resulted in us renewing like for like 60-foot track panels with all the attendant mid and long term maintenance problems these brought. You can add to that the ever increasing costs for maintaining that track as well, truly a spiral of financial decline
Government restrictions on us recruiting, as well as the holding down of Railwaymen's pay meant that it was difficult to recruit, and more difficult to keep staff, bearing in mind that you could probably earn twice as much at British Leyland, work a lot less harder and have your weekends free.
So within this bubbling pot it was extremely difficult for us to recruit and retain carriage cleaners as this was and is still regarded as one of the worst jobs possible. You, for example, want clean carriages but I very much doubt you would be willing to go out cleaning them for a pittance ?
Given that what would your decision be - send out a train not completely clean or cancel it ?
I note also your throw away comment on cancellations which is normally the sign of someone who has taken this comment from the generally publicised urban myth about Railways in the 70s. I reckon on having done somewhere in the region of 250,000 train miles a year in the 70s, and I recall, and my records show, very few cancellations or indeed failures.
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NSEFAN
Established Member
ivanhoe said:
This argument for privatisation particularily grinds my gears. I'd argue that competition only exists with longer distance routes, such as Exeter-London, Birmingham-London, Scotland-London, etc. On a more local scale it is silly to talk about competition. Even if the infrastructure can take more trains from competing operators, the DfT won't allow it to happen.
A lack of competition over a line can be both good and bad. If you've got a crap TOC like Connex then the lack of choice makes using the train a nightmare. If you put an organised, forward-thinking company like Chiltern Railways in charge, then having a self-contained network run by one operator is a very good arrangement. I guess it actually depends on how well the system is run, rather than who owns it. Ideally I'd like to see the government own everything, but provide long franchises with a specification on what sort of service should be provided. The actual running of the network should be down to the railways themselves.
I am too young to remember the service that BR provided, so I can't really comment on how things used to be except from looking at old timetables and asking people who used the service. The general response that I get is that things are better now. As you have said, Ivanhoe, BR no longer exists, so we should be looking forwards to see how the service can be made better rather than try to turn the clock back.
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Old Timer
Established Member
No doubt.
When people had BR they complained and were unwilling to pay for it to be properly financed, and wanted BR gone.
Now they have that wish granted, and a system that is starting to make them pay the true costs of the modern Railway system, they are still not happy.
They dont want a Nationalised system because they do not want to pay through higher taxes but then they dont want a private system as heaven above, they may have to pay what it actually costs ?
That is unfortunately the most non-sensical argument I've heard on this thread so far.
The gap in rolling stock orders occurred precisely because everything was suddenly thrown in the air because of the upcoming privatisation. At least BR had a plan to progressively develop and renew rolling stock as and when the need arose.
It used to be said when the NHS was founded that whenever a bed pan fell to the floor, the sound would echo through the halls of Westminster. We now have a similar situation on the railway where instead of it being able to get on with rolling stock renewal as it always had done in the past, even the smallest order is now headline news. It is a sign of just how involved Government is in these matters.
Schnellzug
Established Member
I think on the whole, I'd agree. What i think would be the ideal, and would lead us to that blissful tomorrow of which we all dream, is for, essentially, the concept of franchising to be retained, but with fixed terms and a guarantee that the contract would be renewed more or less automatically, if performance & customer satisfaction and so on was up to standard, and if promises that had been agreed with the relevant authorities regarding improvements, new rolling stock & so on had been met. In other words, the exact opposite of the utterly absurd system used by the Departmentfortransport, of not taking past performance into account and basing it purely on who puts in the cheapest bit, or promises the tastiest pie in the sky. That way, companies could plan ahead, and order new rolling stock and therefore either make the old stock available on the open market, or cascade it by an agreed programme, on a steady & regular basis. But not Vertical Integration, at least not everywhere; that might be the best option for self-contained commuter networks, but it would lead to all sorts of arguments & complaints where more than one operator shares tracks.
There, I think that's pretty much covered it now.
One thing, as has been mentioned above, is that engineering works were handled in the Old Days with the interests of the Traveller more in mind than the convenience of the infrastructure provider, it is true; I'd much rather have diversions than to have to get a Replacement Bus Service; and you got some interesting rare haulage over rare track as well.
Although the three-axle Olympians that Stagecoach used to use for Bus replacement were quite fun, to be fair, but I may be digressing now.
DaveF
Member
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Old Timer
Established Member
Right, so in fact timings were avaiable but were in the booking office, then, which is somewhat different to what was originally suggested. Definitely one of the better places for them I would have thought.
I have given you the actual reason why rolling stock would not have been as clean as would have been liked. It is always very easy to criticise BR "Senior Management" from the comfort of an armchair and 40 years but there is no BR "Senior Management" only us at the front line level.
You can only clean something if you have the staff to do so, and I have explained why that was not the case. Most of BR senior Management's time was spent needlessly in trying to balance ever-reducing budgets against ever increasing costs, with us at middle and junior management level trying to balance one priority against another. Whatever decision we would have taken would obviously not met with your approval and thus we stand condemned by you, someone who I think has not even bothered to read fully what I have written.
Rather than being "poor managers", the Private sector discovered very much to their cost that in fact we had managed the impossible, and that there was no "fat" or inefficiencies to be gained when they came in.
There was also a subsequent realisation that the biggest idiot can manage a profitable business, where you simply put up charges to cover costs. This was and is not the case in the Railways, which then and to a certain extent now have to be managed as "cost" rather than "profit" centres. This requires a far different skilled Manager, something BR Managers were far more adept at than the Private Sector, as indeed bothSouth West Trains as well as Virgin Trains discovered when they removed Railwaymen form the key posts and then watched their businesses disappear down the plug-hole until they had to go cap in hand to recruit former BR staff to take back the management of the busineses.
It is recognised Internationally that given the level of subsidy against costs, and the services run, BR and its former Managers were at the top of the league amongst international Railways. Even today former BR Managers are highly regarded and sought after by some of the largest private Companies and State Operators in the World. The salary levels that former BR managers and engineering staff can command from Railways worldwide, and which these Railways are extremely happy to pay, are considerably larger than their modern counterparts within Network Rail and the TOCs are paid by comparison when abroad.
I would suggest that the willingness of other Railway systems to engage former BR staff more than balances out the very negative view you appear to hold on our competence and abilities.
I seem to recall in my BR-travelling days that fares were much flatter, simpler and generally a lot cheaper such that you didn't have to do five split tickets or book months in advance to get a decent fare.
However the services left a lot to be desired - the regional structure meant that inter-regional trains were always the poor relation with shabby stock, poor timekeeping and total lack of imagination. Travelling Manchester-Peterborough in the 1980s was a nightmare, going via Sheffield to Doncaster on two DMUs before getting an inter-city train. And the cross-Pennine services were very poor compared with the frequency today.
BR always seemed obsessed with line closures, track singling,and withdrawal of just about anything other than the most basic service they were obliged to provide between given points. Adrian Vaughan's signalman books chart that well, though there was always money for chauffeur-driven senior managers to poke their noses in to what railway professionals were trying to do with scant resources.
However the services left a lot to be desired - the regional structure meant that inter-regional trains were always the poor relation with shabby stock, poor timekeeping and total lack of imagination. Travelling Manchester-Peterborough in the 1980s was a nightmare, going via Sheffield to Doncaster on two DMUs before getting an inter-city train. And the cross-Pennine services were very poor compared with the frequency today.
BR always seemed obsessed with line closures, track singling,and withdrawal of just about anything other than the most basic service they were obliged to provide between given points. Adrian Vaughan's signalman books chart that well, though there was always money for chauffeur-driven senior managers to poke their noses in to what railway professionals were trying to do with scant resources.
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