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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

#191

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JgiuX76h wrote: post #36
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #28

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.

I have lives in 3 coubtries and never seen a government preventing anyone from building private roads, railways, etc. Somehow essential infrastructure is not a popular business investment

Also by that logic stopping people from dueling or stabbing each-other on the street is coersion . Stopping coersion by mafia is coersion. How is this a usefull concept?

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#192

Post by ceejayoz »

disabled wrote: post #172
fmajid wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they're way late, they'll skip stops too, so they don't ruin the schedule for the whole network for the day.

A few people in one town having to wait an extra 20 minutes ensures hundreds of thousands have a predictably on-time system.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#193

Post by dua2020 »

jabl wrote: post #94

What is actually changing here? The article says GBR will be responsible for ticketing, prices and schedules, which makes sense that you can buy a ticket for anywhere on the rail system regardless of which company happens to operate which line at whichever moment. What I don' understand, is that the article says that the 'government has ended rail franchising', which AFAIU was the process where private companies bid…

A concession means the private company operates the railway for a set fee and a set operational standard, the state owner will retain ticket revenue (and risk). This is how the London Overground concession works.

A franchise basically gives all operation responsibilities and ticket revenue to the private operator, in return, the private operator gives a lump sum bid for the contract at the beginning.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#196

Post by duxup »

makomk wrote: post #122
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…

The seperation of track ownership and operation from actually running the trains is mandated by EU directives, so that part is going to be the same pretty much anywhere in the EU. I think some countries like Germany bend the rules a bit by having them run by nominally independent divisions of the same state-owned company (and sometimes go father than is allowed and end up on the losing end of court battles), but the…

What is the EU's reason for that rule?

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#197

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

nicoburns wrote: post #176
JI00912 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

It is the same people who worked for the franchises working under government control - it is the senior management who go but the actual doers are the same.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#198

Post by iso1631 »

smcl wrote: post #182
morrbo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this article is bullshit. Go and actually check the train prices (because I did) now. Book Sheffield to London 1 month in advance, comes out to £70 odd return (nearly 4x more than article states) with a first class upgrade for an extra £70....Paris to Leon 1 month in advance? £20 odd return with another £20 first class. Idk if something has changed but you can't quote this article anymore. Train prices…

Seconded, this article is quite misleading. The UK fares always seemed quite unpredictable to me when I used them, with variances similar to those you see when booking flight tickets. Maybe the fares have an extra component based on demand? If I look for second-class tickets from Edinburgh to Montrose (which I went on semi-regularly) @ scotrail.co.uk on 1st June I see prices that fluctuate from £9.30 to £24.60. Maybe…

Yes, train fares are based on demand, same as plane and coach fares. Same as they are in Europe (The Paris-Dijon journey in a months time is between €31 and €71 depending on what time you choose)

For walk up fares, Edinburgh to Montrose is 100 miles each way, an "off peak" return (so any time after 0930) is £34 if you limit yourself to LNER trains or 17p/mile, or £41 return for a choice of LNER or Scotrail trains. If you want to travel before 0930 on whatever train turns up next, it's £48.60 or 24p/mile.

What price do you think you should be paying? In 2019 Scotrail carried 1.8 billion passenger miles got £482.8m subsidy - a 27p per mile subsidy. The company made a £11m loss too.

How much should the tax payer subsidise your Edinburgh-Montrose journey? 35p/mile/ 45p/mile?

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#199

Post by jonp888 »

flipbrad wrote: post #69
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 sorry to say, but these plans still see routes being operated by private companies awarded multiyear contracts...

Nationalisation is not a panacea.

In France for instance, SNCF runs the non-TGV railway with inefficency and carelessness on a "it's our railway and we decide how you can use it" basis, and the regional governments are chomping at the bit to be able to award the contracts for subsided services to someone other than the state monopoly.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#200

Post by adamcstephens »

JI00912 wrote: post #161
Stranger43 wrote: post #97

Earlier 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.

Having an incentive to make profit doesn’t create incentives to improve efficiency and service. A private companies incentives are the profits, and anything else is just in order to serve those.
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