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UK Rail services to come under unified state control

bbc.com

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Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#51

Post by Skinney »

matsemann wrote: post #12

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 govern…

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.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#52

Post by gorgoiler »

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.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#54

Post by steve_gh »

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.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#56

Post by scatters »

supernova87a wrote: post #50

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!"

Some intercity routes are (were) open access, particularly the East Coast. Of course this was dependent on spare capacity being available.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#57

Post by rich_sasha »

madaxe_again wrote: post #46
petepete wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 £100 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 w…

£100 a month? It’s £200 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.

There’s also “leaves on the track”, my personal favourite. Sometimes I struggle to believe trains were invented in the UK!

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#58

Post by chalst »

Y_Y wrote: post #32
rich_sasha wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.
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