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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

#101

Post by sampo »

mvzvm wrote: post #5

Good. This is wildly overdue. The privatization of public infrastructure (ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail ) was a crime of the highest corruption. Edit: Link broke? Edit 2: Thank you @bogdan https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57176858

> The privatization of public infrastructure (ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail) was a crime

From that same Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_ye...

So, during the 1948-1995 nationalized period, train ridership was in almost constant decline, and from the 1995 privatization, train ridership started a steady and steep increase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#102

Post by fnord123 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #45
fnord123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There exists a private hospital in a country of superior quality to a public hospital in the same country" is a weak claim. Even weaker is "there exists a private hospital in the world of superior quality to a public hospital also in the world".

Private hospitals are usually nicer than public ones everywhere, but that's obviously to be expected. However, that misses the point of state involvement in education and healthcare, which is universal access. Of course people with money will have access to (good) schools and (good) healthcare. The state is involved so that everyone has access to those services.

Education and healthcare also have network effects. If people near you are ill then you're likely to also become ill. If people around you think taxation is theft and coercion then they can band together and elect people with similar brain worms into government.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#103

Post by jabl »

audunw wrote: post #92
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…

I feel like the decision to do this is based on an outdated idea about how to do business effectively. Take car makers. It used to be that the winners were outsourcing everything except their core competence (engines and assembling/marketing vehicles). But these days it seems like vertical integrated companies are the winners, with Tesla being a good example in the car industry. I think politicians that have pushed f…

The 'vertical integration vs. outsourcing' seems to be largely a fashion thing. When giant vertically integrated conglomerates are the status quo, you have the self-appointed thought leaders writing business books and speaking at expensive dinners arguing for outsourcing and focusing on core competences. Then as the tides turn and 'outsource everything' becomes the norm, the next generation of self-appointed business thought leaders argue for vertical integration. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#104

Post by Reason077 »

OJFord wrote: post #48

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…

The end of the rail franchise system is not new news.

The franchise agreements were effectively terminated in March 2020 when the government bailed out operators due to Covid.

By July, the ONS announced that rail operators were now considered part of the public sector for statistics purposes, signalling that they had effectively been nationalised:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/news/theonsclassifiestrainoperat...

In September 2020 the government announced that franchises would be not return:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/21/uk-covid-19...

What’s new with this announcement is that the functions of several organisations (Network Rail, ATOC/National Rail, etc) will be merged together into a single new entity.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#105

Post by jabl »

jonplackett wrote: post #89
pjc50 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best description of this I've seen is "playing at shops": there's no real market , it's just set up to look like one.

The other crazy side to it is that the government still own and pay for the track - the only bit that doesn’t even make any money. And is crazy expensive! Privatise the profit, socialise the loss.

Tracks are certainly very valuable infrastructure, it's just hard to monetize (and very expensive to build, as you say). So in a way it makes sense for the government to handle it.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#106

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

rich_sasha wrote: post #17
carnagecity786 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this isn't actual nationalisation. The railway will still be operated by private firms, this is only a transfer of franchising from the department of transport to this new "Great British Railways" department; which is a new franchising model. It's supposed to allow them to set unified fees, and have greater control over branding and speak with a unified voice, but apart from that I don't see any of the…

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.

> It turns out rail signals were controlled by buried cables without adequate insulation, so when it was wet they literally stopped working

More than that: buried cables without adequate insulation and nobody knew where they were buried.

Railtrack (the unlamented privatised company that originally took on the railway infrastructure) threw out the engineering diagrams. So when the time came to dig up the Great Western Main Line out of London for electrification, signalling failures were a routine occurrence because someone had put an excavator through a signalling cable... again.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#107

Post by midasuni »

OJFord wrote: post #48

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…

I’m not. I have a choice on the WCML of multiple different providers. Manchester to London walk up far for almost any time can be £300 return for the fast train arriving in london before lunch and getting home before 9pm, or £50 for a slower train with a change.

Same with crewe-Manchester, Birmingham-london, Edinburgh-london etc.

Quite happy with the competition and no government interference.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#108

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

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.

Cheap, certainly. Also slow, and comfortable's in the eye of the beholder (I can't read in a road vehicle, so not for me). The Paddington services are much better these days, and there's also the excellent (new) Marylebone service. I live just outside Oxford and wouldn't dream of getting the bus.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#109

Post by jabl »

diftraku wrote: post #38
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…

It's a very similar case in Finland, case-in-point when HRT (Helsinki Region Transport) requested bids from operators to run the trains in the greater capital area (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and the neighbouring municipalities). - Rolling stock is owned by HRT - Transport Infrastructure Agency (Väylävirasto) is responsible for the tracks and stations Which means the bid is mainly for personnel operating the trains. The…

There's a law giving HRT the right to handle rail operations in the Helsinki metropolitan area. In the rest of the country VR has a monopoly, and sadly seems completely uninterested in developing commuter rail services in other metropolitan areas. As a result, there are efforts to amend the law to allow other regional authorities the same kind of rights HRT has. We'll see what happens.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#110

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

carlsborg wrote: post #53

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...

There is no way the Treasury has agreed to renationalisation in order to put the fares down. Expect them to go up, if anything.
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