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France’s new high-speed trains

citylab.com

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Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#131

Post by ldng »

Zombiethrowaway wrote: post #46
supernova87a wrote: post #31

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pr…

The French government passed a law in mid-2018 that ends the special "cheminot" contract for new hires. It will effectively grandfather the old way in 10-20 years, and make it smaller every year. So I don't think this is fair or accurate: "rather than addressing the fundamental issues (inability to fire people, change cost structure"

Nor did that changed anything. Most employees are contractors nowadays.

French politics must stop playing with trains and grow up. And fire the management that's been there for 10 years and made it worst.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#132

Post by elcomet »

ownagefool wrote: post #128
supernova87a wrote: post #31

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pr…

Err UK rail was famously terrible before "privatisation". Not that privatisation is the answer, nor that being public was at fault, but I'm not sure rewriting history is helpful. Looking at UK water companies being privatised so their owners can stuff them full of debt to get around the profit caps is probably a better case study. Profit percentage caps are silly because the obvious way to make more money is to make…

I read in a lot of articles that it is actually more terrible for a lot of tracks after privatisation in the UK.

What happens is that companies focus on the most profitable tracks, so the other ones are not well maintained.

An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-gu...

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#133

Post by AltmousGadfly »

Italy has had an open-access competitor on high speed service for years: ItaloTreno. The policy of forcing national state railways to separate track management from train operations is essential in opening up high speed rail to competition and preventing cross subsidization of service operation (since it requires subsidized services to be done so in a transparent manner and not out of other profits from railway operations)

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#134

Post by chosenbreed37 »

pas wrote: post #73
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair. And, if we take a global / universal perspective it makes sense to optimise production where it’s most economical. I guess my wider point is: we ignore nationalistic sentiment to our own detriment, as evidenced by Brexit. We probably ought to consider there is a spectrum rather than an either/or.

> we ignore nationalistic sentiment to our own detriment, as evidenced by Brexit. What do you mean by this? Could you explain this a bit please?

I'm not the op so I'll pass on addressing the question directly. An earlier comment gave a robust criticism of protectionist policies. In general I'm inclined to agree. But I'd like to draw attention to potentially negative impact to society if things are not managed properly. And really a lot of it comes to trade offs. It might be more efficient to manufacture certain goods elsewhere but it is undesirable to see local industries collapse without alternative employment for the people concerned. I think that in some ways it is better to have a local relatively inefficient sector that keeps people employed. As an example I'm told that of late the French economy has been operating significantly more efficiently than the UK. But conversely unemployment in the UK is at record lows. The suggestion being that it takes more people to produce a unit of work as compared to France. I'd rather have it this way. The thing is that being a steel worker, a builder, machine operator in a car factory is about more than earning a living. As a result when a local industry is dismantled people lose a lot more than their paychecks. This is not to say that local industries should be protected at all costs but that perhaps thee could be a way to gradually re-train the workforce ahead of time.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#135

Post by C1sc0cat »

elcomet wrote: post #132
ownagefool wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err UK rail was famously terrible before "privatisation". Not that privatisation is the answer, nor that being public was at fault, but I'm not sure rewriting history is helpful. Looking at UK water companies being privatised so their owners can stuff them full of debt to get around the profit caps is probably a better case study. Profit percentage caps are silly because the obvious way to make more money is to make…

I read in a lot of articles that it is actually more terrible for a lot of tracks after privatisation in the UK. What happens is that companies focus on the most profitable tracks, so the other ones are not well maintained. An example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/05/the-gu...

And when franchises change the outgoing franchisee just milks it for the last two years or so - which lead to the complete fracking disaster of the thames link.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#136

Post by C1sc0cat »

mcv wrote: post #118
distances wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all land within city limits should be publicly acquired with eminent domain before zoning and building of utilities. No reason to let the land value increase fall to private landowners when it's all due to build-up of public services. Better use the profits for maintaining the services.

That's roughly the case in Amsterdam. All land is technically owned by the city, and homeowners lease it for 50 years. When the lease will run out is always a detail to pay attention to when buying a home.

Leases that short must make getting a mortgage hard.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#137

Post by mcv »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #136
mcv wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's roughly the case in Amsterdam. All land is technically owned by the city, and homeowners lease it for 50 years. When the lease will run out is always a detail to pay attention to when buying a home.

Leases that short must make getting a mortgage hard.

When the lease is about to run out, it means you need to reserve money for that, meaning the price of the house will be lower. I think you can still use the mortgage to pay for that lease. So overall it doesn't make much difference, it's just an extra thing to pay attention to, or you'll end up with unexpected costs.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#138

Post by atoav »

close04 wrote: post #120
speedplane wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public rail is a money-losing venture, ... But it's important to have. Just how much money-losing depends on the political environment and skill of the management. Arguably, all public rail should lose money. Quality transportation is a huge economic driver of regional economies. If a rail service is making money, it likely means governments are underinvesting in their own economies.

It usually does. Actually I am not familiar with one example where public rail actually makes a profit, in real terms. All public rail systems I know or have read about are subsidized by the state either directly or via subsidizing the fare for the traveler (or both).

I think we should stop counting profit as “how much tickets you sold” minus “how much money you spent”, but look at the effects of a public train system on the whole economy.

I grew up in the Alps and I can guarantee that certain very profitable touristic locations wouldn’t even remotely work if there was no affordable and reliable train network that connected them to a airport, unless you want to turn some alpine area into a huge parking lot. On the same line that connects that spot to the cities there might be ten completely uninteresting villages whose population kinda relies on these trains to e.g. go to school, go shopping in the city etc. Some lines might not have any touristic benefit, but they raise the value of the whole network because it increases the destinations you can reach via train.

In nations that have high petrol prices and where train networks already exist, train networks can be unprofitable and still boost economy as a whole.

The question is: should everybody finance everybody elses mobility to a certain degree when it benefits economy as a whole?

For me the answer is quite clear. I grew up in small village in some valley in the alps. Without affordable public transport I would have been devastated as a teenager. A profitable train network usually takes that profit from somewhere and that somewhere is typically public.

I’d rather have an unprofitable train network that works, paid by my taxes than a profitable that doesn’t work even if I were prepared to pay for it. Same goes for Internet, Mobile networks, Water, Electricity.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#139

Post by tremon »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #98
jabl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Separating track, rolling stock and station building into three different companies was nuts. Public subsidy plummeted after privatisation, until inadequate maintenance was identified as cause of the Hatfield crash. Then reached never before seen peaks. They're still fiddling around to try and remove the systemic consequences of how it was privatised. Nothing that even slightly resembles the integrated transport Th…

Whether by accident, or design, The Netherlands seem much more able to have transport options that join up. Buses that terminate at the train station, tram routes that serve both, park and ride that serves all. With compatible timetables and ticketing. After reading the piece about Delft cycle routes yesterday, I suspect a reasonable part was by design. I'm sure someone native can point out some major holes, but stil…

Whether by accident, or design, The Netherlands seem much more able to have transport options that join up. Buses that terminate at the train station, tram routes that serve both, park and ride that serves all. With compatible timetables and ticketing.

The timetabling is partly by accident, I suspect -- or rather, it's a consequence of having high-frequency routes. Most inner-city buses and trams have a ride every ten minutes or less, so there's always an option that joins up. The NS (railway) does invest a lot of effort in matching their arrivals and departures with the most-used transfers, and I suspect regional bus services do the same. But I'm not aware of any timetable coordination between different operators.

On the other hand, it's very rare for train stations not to be serviced by at least one other type of public transport, and that's definitely by design. Even inter-city bus routes have their termini at train stations rather than the city centers of the cities they connect.

Re: France’s new high-speed trains

#140

Post by conjectures »

supernova87a wrote: post #31

SNCF is fiddling with the wrong things. It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition. What it needs to do is cut the number of excessive public sector workers, reduce costs, and stop running the business like a political arm of the government. I can bet that the reason they think they need to do all these things is that cost pr…

"It doesn't need to separate train operations from rail track network maintenance. It doesn't need to open up the network to competition."

This certainly didn't help in the UK. It's been a shameful saga with multiple failures and no clear rationale. The theory was: privatisation -> ??? -> uber efficiency. Ignoring the fact that the economic theory which usually fills in the ??? requires free entry and exit into the market. That doesn't exist in the case of natural monopolies like rail.

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