There’s a lot more to TPE’s improvement than just RDW. The timetable was cut back to something more achievable and major progress was made in reducing the training backlog. Iirc both of those were OLR implementations.
The single biggest change was the RDW agreement. What does that, or any of the other changes you describe above, have to do with the change of ownership? The DfT are running the privately owned operators via NRCs as closely as the publicly owned ones via the OLR.
And? It's a public service that's actually usable for most passengers now rather than something completely useless. As a taxpayer I'm happy with my money going towards that.
Almost everybody would agree with the above statement because I’m sure we all want a usable railway service. I would ask what ownership of the entity providing the service has to do with that?
Arriva Rail London, for example, are delivering an excellent service as a private sector concessionaire, far better than OLR owned Northern rail are providing.
Taxpayers subsidise roads, why not railways?
You do realise taxpayers subsidise railways under the current system?
To me it acknowledges quite clearly that nationalisation is not a "silver bullet" but what it would allow is a way forward that would maximise a singular entity that would work for the public. I cannot see any benefit to privately contracting out the services under Shapps plan, may as well just run them under the public sector. Can anyone explain how I am wrong?
Because part of the cause of the current issues is that TOCs are being paid a fee by the government, regardless of how good or bad the service they provide is, or even whether they deliver it at all. Hence they simply don’t care.
Removal of private sector involvement in the delivery of train services risks entrenching the current position, and taking us back to the days of BR. There will be no incentive whatsoever to provide a servide to the public, and the attitude will be “like it or lump it”. A lot of people on here complain that the railway is already like that, so expect it to get worse!
I see Louise Haigh hasn’t set her lights properly in the picture on page 5. Let’s hope she’s rather better at driving the DfT
.
One tghing it would achieve is fares equity between north and south London. The "TOC tax" paid by SWR, Southern and SET's customers victims always existed but thanks to Khan's fares freeze not applying to NR fares is now nearly 50% - even more if you want to venture beyond the London terminal onto the Tube.
You’ve still got several TOCs serving north London, though? I take the point there are far fewer TFL services in SE London.
Has everyone commenting here actually read Labour's proposals and understood them in the context of the problems facing today's railways?
There’s a lot of good stuff in there, and the idea of a “reset” is to be welcomed - anything is better than the current situation. I just think what they want to achieve could be done more simply and easily using the concession model.
