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

301–310 of 383 posts

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#301

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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…

How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort.

Capacity is physically constrained, especially on an ancient network like the UK's.

Timetable slots are scarce and have to be centrally coordinated and managed.

There is no sparkly market magic that will make these constraints disappear and somehow give customers more choice about where to go, when, and with whom. And there is no chance whatsoever that operators can compete on price.

The only way to lower prices is nationalise the entire industry and replace privatisation with direct investment, on the basis that transport infrastructure is a social cost with significant indirect benefits, and cannot possibly be run as a self-sustaining profitable business on a national scale.

The idea that competition for passengers will somehow make profitability possible is a dilettante-level view that has no insight into how the industry actually operates.

We've already had decades of this kind of thinking, and the result has been mediocre services, vastly increased direct subsidies, and ballooning fares.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#302

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #301
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…

How are customers on trains supposed to vote with their wallets? It's not as if you can set up competing parallel networks running trains side by side between identical destinations at varying levels of speed and comfort. Capacity is physically constrained , especially on an ancient network like the UK's. Timetable slots are scarce and have to be centrally coordinated and managed. There is no sparkly market magic tha…

[deleted]

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#303

Post by fabioborellini »

virtualritz wrote: post #232
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…

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.…

Italo is lovely. They got the ticket sales right, which has been really hard for the rigid former railway monopolies. It is nice onboard, too. Actually, I chose Italo over Trenitalia the last time just because of the nicer ticket sales system.

With Italo, I could buy tickets well in advance using PayPal, all in English. A lot nicer than some monopolies using some local credit card processing gateways with missing translations and connections.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#304

Post by mastax »

lathiat wrote: post #276
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…

Wendover Productions made a great video about this ridiculous system. It’s totally mad. https://youtu.be/DlTq8DbRs4k

Wow that was very good and comprehensive. Glad Wendover decided not to burden the runtime with an unfunny joke every 25 seconds.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#305

Post by squiggleblaz »

midasuni wrote: post #114
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.

Hahahahaha Oh wait you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder. Efficiency leads to profits and thus dividends. The government cares more about politics than efficiency. Look the the problems southern have had because the government insisted on getting rid of guards - they effectively nationalised southern (GTR) years ago because they refused to let the private sector run it how they wanted. Compare with chiltern who co…

I don't get this kind of argument. Efficiency doesn't mean a good service. It means to minimise the costs in meeting your contractual requirements. It's not unusual for a company to be set up specifically to bid for a government contract since they're so lucrative and so hard for the government to respond to: a very profitable approach is to compete for a contract and then offer the shittiest service for which you are not subject to penalties. In some cases the senior management of reputable public transport service providers with decades of service provision have basically just upped and left the country before the contract is even through.

The free market certainly provides benefits, but there needs to be some meaningful recourse to removing your custom while the provider depends on it. Otherwise, it's simply not a free market at all, no matter the circumstances that surrounded the bidding process.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#306

Post by iso1631 »

varispeed wrote: post #299
iso1631 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

2017 onwards e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42707560

So after it was nationalized. Southern and Thameslink are the same company.

You suffered from the political decision that the government made to get rid of guards. No company would take it as a franchise because they knew the fight with the union would impact both profits and users, so they got GTR to operate it under a management basis.

This is now what is happening to every other TOC.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#307

Post by buzer »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #279
oblio wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In decent voting systems, you vote in party C.

I don't think there's any voting system that genuinely gives you three choices to lead government at every election. Even in proportional systems, you might be able to select someone who more closely represents your interests and can advocate them in parliament, but the government is probably going to be led by one of the same two parties over time. If party A and party B are both ideologically inclined to fuck up ra…

> but the government is probably going to be led by one of the same two parties over time.

Finland has generally had 3 major parties ducking it out usually around 15-25% for each. 1995 was last time single party got over 30% of seats. Depends a bit on time which exact ones they were.

English wikipedia doesn't have the historic list, but Finnish does https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduskunta#Kansanedustajat_puol... Divide by 2 to get the % (there are 200 members)

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#308

Post by iso1631 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #284
iso1631 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's available and fine, as long as you leave Euston after 0845. You can take the 08:46, arriving in Manchester at 12:13 - an average speed of about 60mph. The £300 is an option that few choose, because that journey gives them major benefits. The money raised from that is plowed back into the railway and used to subsidise services to Harrogate, Holyhead and Hungerford

Average speed of 60 mph? Is this 18th centurely where rail competes with horse carriages? You do realise that a country needs 21st century rail service to be competitive interbationally?

You can pay a £20 premium each way to up that to about 100mph average. Competition and choice is great.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#309

Post by DanBC »

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…

UK trains are really variable.

If you're going from most major cities to London you get a newish train, on a fastish route. If you're going between major hubs you're probably going to have a nice experience.

But the local trains, the short trip commuter trains, can be very old and very very busy. People pay huge amounts of money to be crammed into old, slow, smelly, trains and there's not enough seating so they have to stand.

The carriage supply operates on a "trickle down" model. The new trains get used for London and those routes. The trains that are replaced by the new trains get sent to the South East and South West, who send their old trains to the Midlands, who send their old trains to the North, who send their old trains to Wales. Some of the carriages are really rough.

Post reply on HN