71–80 of 383 posts
Fantastic. Train fares in the UK are prohibitively high. It is at times cheaper to fly via Spain than it is to travel to London from the North East by train, as this story demonstrates. https://metro.co.uk/2017/06/27/man-flies-from-newcastle-to-l...
Private companies have proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted to run train services in the UK. Profit always came before passenger comfort, safety and value for money. I don't believe that the state is better at everything, but in this case they're going to be the least bad option!
You absolutely can't build infrastructure, education, health in 4-year cycles. These are 10,20,50+ year projects. Personally I'd have these under control of something cross party, totally away from electioneering.
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…
This isn't an area I know anything about, but is it correct to say that the points you are making are in some sense orthogonal to the nature of the ownership, i.e. public or private? I struggle to see how much meaningful competition can be achieved, so remain unclear about the value of private ownership, but it strikes me that decentralisation is perfectly within the realm of possibility for a publicly owned entity.
Fantastic. Train fares in the UK are prohibitively high. It is at times cheaper to fly via Spain than it is to travel to London from the North East by train, as this story demonstrates. https://metro.co.uk/2017/06/27/man-flies-from-newcastle-to-l...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
£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!
My favourite is: the carriage is deflated. People couldn't stop laughing when told so, but what it meant in reality is that the support cushions deflated and the carriage can't have passengers on board.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Building railways roads and essential national infrastructure... Coersion?
Yes. Taxing people to pay for those things requires coercion. Preventing other people from providing completing services requires coercion.
The report quotes the former boss of British Airways about "greater flexibility in the way that fares are operated in the future"
What does this mean? Can we expect less expensive tickets?
The UK already has some of the most expensive rail tickets in Europe. Yes, you can book in advance for cheaper tickets, but often there is limited availability, and you have to book at least a month or longer in advance. In short, the conditions which make cheaper tickets available are simply impractical for most passengers, especially regular commuters.
Here is a monthly season ticket comparison from 2017: UK vs Continental Europe:
- UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £387 (approx $547/€448)
- UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £292 (approx $412 /€344)
- Germany: Dusseldorf to Cologne (28 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £85 (approx $120 /€98)
- France: Mantes-la-Jolie to Paris (34 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 (approx $86 /€71)
- Italy: Anzione to Rome (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £61 (approx $86 /€71)
- Spain: Aranjuez to Madrid (31 miles) | Monthly season ticket cost: £75 (approx $106 /€87)
Source: https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/uk-commuters-spend-6-times-much-...
Hurrah! Even as a free market conservative I've long been in favour of this: bidding for the multi-year contract to operate a line is a poor proxy for (impossible) proper competition where rail users could vote with their feet and wallets. There's effectively only one operator anyway, for a given journey, it should be the state, awarding the multi-year contract to the elected government is strictly better than to a p…
Well... the incentives really aren't different for the government.
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.
A Bristol to London season ticket is £1300 per month for ~120 miles each way. Bargain!