I'm looking forward to seeing the new GBR company privatised in 20 years, making a small group of people a very large amount of money. Again.
UK Rail services to come under unified state control
171–180 of 383 posts
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It becomes a campaign issue (or does if it is an issue), which is what I mean is 'strictly better'. Not great, probably, but not worse in any other way that I can think of, and that is a positive (to whatever extent).
Look how much hay Mussolini made from running the trains on time (which wasn't even the case, they just padded the schedule).
LOL Switzerland (i.e. extremely punctual society) actually does this with their rail system. There is a time buffer in the rail schedule for each of the stops. If a train is running late, and is /expected/ to be late, according to the estimated time of arrival, the train adjusts its speed, going faster, to arrive at the originally planned scheduled time. Failures on the rail system are of course rare.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way to monetize is property development and rent around stations. That's how it works in Japan, where private companies sell tickets at a loss and still make profits. In the UK that land got sold off to private equity and the like who are making the real dough while they funnel some of that into donations to the Tory party.
> The way to monetize is property development and rent around stations. That's how it works in Japan, where private companies sell tickets at a loss and still make profits. Yes. It's just really hard to do afterwards - having the government expropriate land around the stations and giving it to the railway companies is guaranteed to be wildly expensive and unpopular. Japan's private passenger railways IIRC make about…
>Yes. It's just really hard to do afterwards - having the government expropriate land around the stations and giving it to the railway companies is guaranteed to be wildly expensive and unpopular.
Expropriation of land would be unpopular (it would get the tabloids in a jitter as they fearmonger that the government is going to expropriate your garden next) but introducing a special tax on nonresidential property within 500m of a train station and subsidizing the price of tickets with it - probably not so much.
"Oh look my season ticket got cheaper" while private equity reports lower earnings and google's tax bill shoots up - this is going to be popular.
It could then be extended to residential property. The government could also go into business itself - building a shopping mall or two and funding government budgets.
This is a frog that could be boiled.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
They did privitise the risk too. After the failure of the east coast franchise recently, the government bailled out virgin, but that's not the fault of the system. If I want to travel from Birmingham to London I have a choice of 3 different train companies, as well as a coach company and driving (either hiring a car with or without driver, or using my own car). That's tons of competition, and it shows given the choic…
I lived on a Southern line and alternative was Thameslink with uncomfortable trains (crammed seats, no tables for coffee or anything - at least they were running mostly empty as nobody wanted such discomfort). Trains always late, I almost lost my job because of that. I had to get a car and drive 100 miles each day because train journeys were not sustainable. Has anything happened to Southern? I doubt.
Southern was a government funded battle with the trade unions
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#175Hurrah! 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 sure operators will push back on 'under one brand'
You're probably right, but I don't think they'll succeed. Everyone and their dog can see that TFL has worked well compared to the rest of the country.
I don't particularly like our government, but I don't doubt their commitment to populism. This looks like a vote winner to me so I'd put low odds on a u-turn here.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
It becomes a campaign issue (or does if it is an issue), which is what I mean is 'strictly better'. Not great, probably, but not worse in any other way that I can think of, and that is a positive (to whatever extent).
Indeed the government has incentives to spend time, money and energy on campaigning. Unfortunately running things is a different matter.
Ultimately both governments and private entities can run things efficiently. And both governments and private entities can run things badly. The UK government has an excellent recent record of running rail franchises when it has had to step in and bail out franchises (it ran it profitably, and with excellent customer feedback on service), so it's a good bet that it'll do better than the existing providers for the time being.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lived on a Southern line and alternative was Thameslink with uncomfortable trains (crammed seats, no tables for coffee or anything - at least they were running mostly empty as nobody wanted such discomfort). Trains always late, I almost lost my job because of that. I had to get a car and drive 100 miles each day because train journeys were not sustainable. Has anything happened to Southern? I doubt.
Southern was a government funded battle with the trade unions
And both Southern and Thameslink are run by the government (via a management contract to GTR), have been since 2014.
Southern is the reality of modern railway nationalisation, a little better than BR perhaps.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually they are because unlike shareholders who cares more about dividends then efficiency and service levels the government have stakeholders who care about efficiency and service levels.
Removing the incentive to make profit does not create incentives to improve efficiency and service. The government has no such incentives.
Yes, they do, campaigning on a program of better services and then not delivering anything is very much against career politicians' interests.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#179I'm reading all the comments here in my head with a proper British accent.
Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> awarding the multi-year contract to the elected government is strictly better than to a private company where there's little/much more indirect incentive to do anything in the interest of the consumer. Well... the incentives really aren't different for the government.
Actually they are because unlike shareholders who cares more about dividends then efficiency and service levels the government have stakeholders who care about efficiency and service levels.
It would certainly simplify the structure. At the moment it's all contracts and metrics and fines and lawyers when things go wrong.
Perhaps the end to the ultimate metric for whether operators get fined or not being whether trains are on time which leads to bizarre situations like trains switching platforms at the last minute and leaving empty due to all the passengers being on the wrong platform.