UK Rail services to come under unified state control • Hacker News Board

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#321

Post by ClumsyPilot » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #208

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…

Everything is more expensive in the UK - salaries are higher too, compared to Europe.

London might be a beacon, but UK has the poorest regions in Western Europe. In fact some ex-soviet countries do better

https://highpaycentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/High_Pa...

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#322

Post by hermitcrab » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

cirrus-clouds wrote: post #78

The flexible season tickets are welcome. However, missing from this news report is any mention of making the cost of rail travel more affordable for the public. The report quotes the former boss of British Airways about " greater flexibility in the way that fares are operated in the future " What does this mean? Can we expect less expensive tickets? The UK already has some of the most expensive rail tickets in Europe…

And you will may have to stand up all the way for many of those journeys on UK trains.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#323

Post by _qwfv » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

apercu wrote: post #289

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…

> Even as a free market conservative Interesting that even on hacker news some feel we lead with our political views. lol.

Celebrating nationalisation is a political view, and I think the parent poster wanted to use this as an opportunity to extend an olive branch/empathize with others who hold differing views.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#324

Post by matwood » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

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.…

I've ridden trains in Italy during a few different vacations. The local trains were hit and miss, but the long distance trains were pretty good.

All over the EU, the biggest issues I've had with train service always seem to be strike related.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#325

Post by lbriner » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

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…

> awarding the multi-year contract to the elected government is strictly better than to a private company

This is objectively not true otherwise no-one would every privatise the railway. Although the answer is not agreed, my own experience of working on the public-owned railway in the UK in the 1990s was that public-sector organisations have virtually no incentive to be clever or efficient, at best they are indifferent, at worst they are job-creation systems that cost billions to the tax payer.

The theory is that private companies have a reason to make things more efficient, which is to maximize profit, reducing costs and being overall cheaper to the tax payer.

Of course, this brings it own dangers in terms of service reduction due to unprofitable services but it would be simplistic to think that somehow the tax payer should subsidise those who actually use the trains. Ultimately, they should cost what they cost to run and if that is too much, then they need to change.

I would also say that the services and overall quality are much higher on the privatised railway.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

#326

Post by globular-toast » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Yes, you could. There is an East Coast Mainline and West Coast Mainline and they competed loads over the London-Edinburgh route.

But I think in this age of high-speed trains, overhead electrification and 4+ wide tracks, railways are well and truly a natural monopoly.

But natural monopoly is not about can't have competition, it's about being thoroughly uneconomical to have competition.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

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Post by oblio » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #318

buzer wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... Divi…

Population size is a big problem. The more you scale up a democratic system, the more it becomes difficult to bootstrap and maintain a coherent political movement that can have a realistic chance to win an election, in what is probably a logarithmic scale. So the bigger the country, the more entrenched the options will be, which eventually boils down to two sides when you approach certain thresholds (one for the curr…

France has had a million parties. Romania, too. Italy, same. If there's a will, there's a way. Most of the time there's no will.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

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Post by abainbridge » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

carlsborg wrote: post #53

Fantastic. Train fares in the UK are prohibitively high. It is at times cheaper to fly via Spain than it is to travel to London from the North East by train, as this story demonstrates. https://metro.co.uk/2017/06/27/man-flies-from-newcastle-to-l...

Isn't transport by plane just cheaper to provide than rail? You don't need to maintain railway lines, bridges, tunnels, points, overhead power lines, signalling or intermediate stations. Routing congestion is reduced because planes can move in 3D. There is no rolling resistance and air friction is reduced due to flying high-up where the air is thin. Airports are built away from city centres, where land is cheap. The natural monopolies of rail-track providers are avoided. I think it would be amazing if train travel was as cheap as air travel.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

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Post by himinlomax » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

mastax wrote: post #304

lathiat wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do that on their other channel. That is why they have another channel.

Re: UK Rail services to come under unified state control

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Post by fallingknife » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #266

iagovar wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see why that's a problem. Airplanes have a lifespan of 30 years.