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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

#231

Post by oblio »

Guthur wrote: post #226
OJFord wrote: post #125

Earlier 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).

And what happens when party A fucks up and you vote in party B who also fuck it up your are officially out of options. The tender approach for time limited monopoly was just terrible though and had no good incentives at all, and so I'm not really sure a government monopoly will be much worse.

In decent voting systems, you vote in party C.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#232

Post by virtualritz »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #207
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…

As someone coming from a country (Italy) with nationalised railway I always found the trains in the UK to be pretty great. Sure, you have a few delays but it's eons better than what I had in my country. I never understood why people were complaining about trains in the UK. Italy added a private offering some time ago, which I personally never tried, but my friends back home always praise them for working - unlike Tre…

Not sure when you last traveled by train in Italy.

Yes, it was shite a decade ago. But all my journeys by train in Italy have been great in the last five years.

My sample size is certainly limited though. About two to three long distance journeys by train/year in that country. But still. A decade ago there were always delays and serious hiccups. No more.

Trains were clean and on time. Mind you, this is long distance. I.e. Milano–Firenze.

I guess the private company, Italo, may be responsible indirectly for this as they generated pressure to up their ante on Trenitalia?

Your mileage with short distance train travel in Italy may differ. I do not have enough experience to hold an opinion there.

In any case, it's much better than in my home country, Germany. Everything is a joke here when it comes to long distance rail travel. Punctuality, service, offering, price, ergonomics (planning, ticket purchase, app).

I travel long distance every two weeks, I feel the pain every time. Literally every 2nd time the train is late by at least 20mins.

Best experience in Europe for train travel to me seems to be France btw.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#233

Post by ceejayoz »

secretsatan wrote: post #202
ceejayoz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Late at night, if one of the regional trains is late to a local hub, the local trains wait for it to arrive so you're not stuck getting home. In general though, I'm so used to the trains being on time, I start tutting if it's even a minute late

Yeah, my last visit to Switzerland they announced one of the trains would be three minutes late and apologized for the inconvenience.

Meanwhile, I've arrived in NYC fourteen hours late on Amtrak.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#234

Post by oblio »

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.

That's just good planning.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#235

Post by permo-w »

iso1631 wrote: post #154
varispeed wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They privatised profits, but not responsibilities. I don't know why even a single person thought this was a good idea (unless they were on it for money). I think the privatisation could work if multiple companies could bid for a given journey / timetable slice, rather than having entire routes for themselves with no realistic way of removing them if the service goes bad.

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…

out of all those options, it may even be cheaper to fly

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#236

Post by iagovar »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #207
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…

As someone coming from a country (Italy) with nationalised railway I always found the trains in the UK to be pretty great. Sure, you have a few delays but it's eons better than what I had in my country. I never understood why people were complaining about trains in the UK. Italy added a private offering some time ago, which I personally never tried, but my friends back home always praise them for working - unlike Tre…

Then travel more man. Trenitalia is pretty competent for whats out there. They even have boats to move entire train carriages with the passengers inside to islands? That's pretty cool! Here in Spain we have RENFE, and they are pretty good overall, but pricey.

I know that many lines run at deficit so they have to compensate with the ones that don't, but they recently launched AVLO as a low-cost service in response for OUIGO and private competitors coming to Spain, so there was probably ways to make it cheaper...

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#237

Post by disabled »

dadelion wrote: post #220
disabled wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austerity literally kills, and often leads to neoliberalism. “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills” by David Stuckler MPH PhD and Sanjay Basu MD PhD is an excellent read on the subject. The British, in no exaggeration, get taxed to death. You get horrible value for your tax dollar. I am saying this as an American who lives in Croatia, who pays quite a bit in taxes. However, I prefer to pay Croatian taxes (in additi…

I couldn't be more surprised by this comment as someone born and raised in Croatia. You are the first person I heard who likes paying Croatian taxes. Do you follow the national news? There's always a steady stream of corruption news, especially recently. It's ironic you post this in a thread about rail. Croatia has a truly horrible rail system. It's universally mocked as useless. Regarding COVID, I would have agreed…

Nobody likes paying taxes. I see it as my civic duty and absolutely worth it for a stable society.

Of course Croatia is no role model society. Corruption is always widespread.

However, we still do have it very good. That is a point that is very frequently understated in Croatia.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#238

Post by modo_mario »

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.

So how are they prevented from building competing tracks and more importantly how would one build competing tracks if allowed?

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#239

Post by jabl »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #167
jabl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what's the difference between the old franchising system and the new concessions. Can you ELI5?

So, this is about control. Largely, the two systems are alike. They both grant permission to an organization to operate a railway service. The difference is in how the relationship is defined. Franchising typically is about giving license to a franchisee allowing them to use intellectual property, know-how, products and so on in exchange for a fee and adhering to a set of obligations. The franchisee then is free to s…

Thanks for the thorough explanation!

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#240

Post by croon »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #197
nicoburns wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incentives on one is to maximize profits, which in a monopoly means just extracting more money and spending less.

Incentives on the other is electability (or ideology, perhaps rare), which at least has the possibility of meaning doing a good job.

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