Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UK Rail services to come under unified state control

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 383 posts

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#261

Post by stdbrouw »

elric wrote: post #257

This is an interesting shift. When I lived in the UK, I was rather fond of how well public transport worked - in general, and trains specifically. In my native Belgium, on the other hand, it's all basically shit. While Belgium is slowly pushing for less state control in public transport (allegedly on account of EU competition rules), the UK is now changing direction. Can anyone summarize the background of this decisi…

Guess it depends on what you consider to be shit. Public transport in Belgium is incredibly widespread and affordable, and while trains are somewhat often delayed (but people love to kvetch and exaggerate all the time, https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard) due to years of neglect of the infrastructure, at least you don't have to pay an arm and a leg as you would for e.g. a short trip between London and Brighton. Public transport in London is pretty good, but doesn't strike me as being way better than it is in big cities in Belgium like Antwerp or Brussels.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#262

Post by beck5 »

reedf1 wrote: post #65
beck5 wrote: post #49

Most will sympathise with public run railways (rightly or wrongly) so it is worth highlighting some positives from private companies running of the railways. The private companies have pushed for a very large increase in the number of operating trains, with around a 50% increase in the past couple of decades, they are trying to squeeze every drop possible out if the tracks. The train companies are also often making a…

> Profits are also capped so these are not potential cash cows people suspect. British tickets are expensive because the government doesn't subsidise the ticket price, which is a separate debate. The system is capped and collared meaning their profits are guaranteed by the government as well as limited. This system incentivised them to underperform on their contract, buy assets, claim losses. When the franchise compl…

Some of the franchises did make decent profits, westcost/virgin etc. This generally happens at the end of the franchise once most of the up front investment happened. A lot of other franchises make a loss so it isn't quite so black and white.

With the previous model a lot of the risk was on the private company, if times were good profits were there, in bad times they made losses. Now with the new model the risk has gone over to the UK government, for better or worse.

The new setup should guarantee a low level of profitability for private companies, with a theoretical lower max, what will be interesting is to see how many companies actually bid.

The private companies actually own very little when running a franchise, most things are leased, such as rolling stock which is largely owned by German funds if memory serves. Investments into stations/parking/ticketing etc is left in place for the next person to take the keys.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#263

Post by throwaway210222 »

fnord123 wrote: post #99
samatman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that the claim you're replying to is that private hospitals in the countries in question are consistently better than public ones.

If that was the claim, then why consider African hospitals instead of any hospital?

because:

1. its were I live

2. its where glib statements about the virtues government-run organisations slam into cold hard reality. More so than say Switzerland.

3. try get an EU/US/CA/AU/NZ/JP expat to work in Africa and expect his family to use government hospitals. Really, try.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#264

Post by teachingassist »

secretsatan wrote: post #215
iso1631 wrote: post #154

Earlier 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 just don't think that's how rail should work, I'm not booking a flight to go to another country, I should be able to turn up to a train station and get on a bloody train.

This does work in many other European countries, but there simply isn't enough rail capacity for this in the UK.

Turn up to any mainline station during peak hours and you can observe this for yourself (also non-peak hours in many cases). Trains which require reservation have scarcely any standing room.

Other countries would be quick to complain if you don't get the seat that you paid for.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#265

Post by Closi »

vmateixeira wrote: post #256
de_keyboard wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very strange. In the UK you often pay a fortune to sit on a nearly empty train. This doesn't even seem like pricing optimized for profit, let alone general carbon reduction across all modes of transport.

And it's often cheaper to buy 2/3 separate tickets, for stops along the way of a long journey, than just simply buying straight from A to B.

This is to profit-maximise.

Under the rail franchise agreement during the bid process, the terms might mandate that journeys from A to B cost £10, and that journeys from B to C cost £5. There might be no obligation to price travel from A to D via B & C at a particular cost, so a rail operator might make that more expensive.

It’s silly from the consumer perspective, but it makes sense for the rail operators to do this in order to maximise profits.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#266

Post by darkwater »

iagovar wrote: post #236
jokethrowaway wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As an Italian living in Spain for a long while, I can say that 10 years ago the difference was abysmal in favor of Renfe and now the gap it's smaller (due to Renfe not keeping up) but I still think the average Spain's train station and service is better than Italy's. I can still see (refurbished for the 3rd time) trains from ~25years ago operating in Italy nowadays.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#267

Post by scatters »

chanc3e wrote: post #149
scatters wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High fares (and they aren't that high) aren't a result of privatization; they're because of a lack of subsidy. In the UK, despite the obvious environmental benefits, subsidizing rail is politically awkward because it's regressive.

They are high. I had to get from the West, to London, and then to the north last week. Wiltshire to London: ~100miles, £24 London to Derbyshire: ~120miles, £158 I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt about peak times, but I started my journey at 10:30am. The prices make no sense; unless viewed through the private entities ability to gouge. Whenever I'm in Europe and buy a ticket I spend an extra 20secs at the tick…

You're lying or deluded. STP-DBY, 10:32 on Monday 24 May: £53 Advance, £67 Off Peak. The most expensive ticket is the First Class Anytime, at £145.50.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#268

Post by cameronh90 »

de_keyboard wrote: post #252
_Wintermute wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trains in the UK seem ok in terms of the number of services and reliability, but they're so expensive. It's almost always cheaper to fly or rent a car than it is to use the train for anything approaching long distance.

It's very strange. In the UK you often pay a fortune to sit on a nearly empty train. This doesn't even seem like pricing optimized for profit, let alone general carbon reduction across all modes of transport.

Because it isn't.

The pricing, timetables and services were basically all centrally controlled. The train operators put in requests to change them, then the government (or Network Rail or whoever they delegated the power to) would approve/deny them. Since they're sharing access to the underlying infrastructure, they can't do what they want.

Additionally, there are many trains that are unprofitable but the operators are required by law to run them for public interest reasons. When they designed the franchising system, they tried to "balance" each franchise so it had roughly the same number of profitable and unprofitable routes.

The idea that our existing franchising system was anything remotely resembling free market is absurd. Then on top of that, because decision making and control was distributed amongst 40 or so different corporate entities, trying to make a change to the ticketing system was damn near impossible.

If anything, this new concession-like system will likely be more competitive, even if the government is acting as an intermediary.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#269

Post by bluGill »

oblio wrote: post #231
Guthur wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If there was only one issue to vote on. However party C will have some other negative that I hate that party A is best on and party B is okay.

The only system that doesn't have voting negatives to me is one with a population of less than 10 where I'm sole dictator. Any population more than that and someone will get mad at me and kill me. Republics with some form of voting are the best option I know of for large populations of people who aren't "mind numbed robots" with no ideas of their own, and there is room to tweak the voting system. However they are still terrible for getting good results.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#270

Post by iso1631 »

varispeed wrote: post #259
iso1631 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't you use Southern? When are you talking about? There was a lot of investment in the (laughably named) Thameslink 2000 program, which was put in place to dig the route out of the mess that the nationalised rail network had left it in by the 90s, it started in 2009 and is still undergoing improvements

Because the trains were not showing up. If a train showed up, there was likelihood of a delay. It was also common that rush hour trains were short - so even if the train arrived, you were unlikely to be able to get in. It was a lottery with odds against you. I was constantly late because of that and employer could only be patient for so long. I am disabled (not visibly) and using Thameslink as an alternative was exha…

So Southern wasn't turning up and Thameslink was poor?

When was it?

Post reply on HN