Should the railways be nationalised.
Poll: Should the railways be nationalised.
Total Members Polled: 227
Discussion
Amazing that so many back nationalisation (as a percentage).
BR was awful. Poor performance, low staff morale, old rolling stock, dirty stations. Cost the taxpayer a fortune.
Now it costs us more in subsidy, but we have some new trains. Woohoo!
Anybody know what became of the fibre optic link that (allegedly) runs alongside all tracks in the UK?
BR was awful. Poor performance, low staff morale, old rolling stock, dirty stations. Cost the taxpayer a fortune.
Now it costs us more in subsidy, but we have some new trains. Woohoo!
Anybody know what became of the fibre optic link that (allegedly) runs alongside all tracks in the UK?
excel monkey said:
blueg33 said:
The cost in my car is circa £1 a mile according to whatcar
I'm glad the numbers work for you, but most cars cost a lot less than a pound a mile to run, and consequently the train seems expensive by comparison.I travel all over the uk for work and the majority of the time it is cheaper and easier by train, and its not just me that thinks that, pretty much every senior guy in our business travels around the various offices, all but 1 do it by train because its cheaper and more predictable.
RichB said:
johnfm said:
Putting aside ownership for a moment, I heard an interesting idea the other day about the railways - the lines are mostly empty.
A train from A to B every 20 minutes or whatever means that the track is virtually 'empty'.
He was suggesting many more, smaller 'trains' running every few minutes - effectively 'filling' the track with little 10 person 'mini trains'.
I suppose it would then turn the railways into a form of automated motorway.
It will never happen, but the concept was interesting.
As I mentioned earlier, everyone thinks of railays as passenger lines and forget freight yet my objective would be to get as much heavy freight off the roads onto the rails. Ideas like tarmacing tracks or mini trains overlook freight. A train from A to B every 20 minutes or whatever means that the track is virtually 'empty'.
He was suggesting many more, smaller 'trains' running every few minutes - effectively 'filling' the track with little 10 person 'mini trains'.
I suppose it would then turn the railways into a form of automated motorway.
It will never happen, but the concept was interesting.
Equally, if dual purpose vehicles that could drive on these tracks and the roads could be built, I imagine you'd increase the amount of freight using them significantly; the main factor - I imagine - that stops companies transporting their freight on the railways is the necessity to get goods to and from the railhead at each end, meaning they have to use the roads anyway.
The problem with trains as they are is the enormous time gaps between them necessitated by the current signalling system - something like my above system would largely remove this problem. I repeat my earlier point that if we were building a mass transit system from scratch it would not look like the railway we now have.
excel monkey said:
blueg33 said:
The cost in my car is circa £1 a mile according to whatcar
I'm glad the numbers work for you, but most cars cost a lot less than a pound a mile to run, and consequently the train seems expensive by comparison.I pay £4500 a year to commute to London daily - a 250 mile would be about £50/day in my car for fuel alone. Then there is tax, insurance, wear and tear, maintenance...
In the grand scheme of things, I have a long commute. 2 hours door-to-door, of which 90 minutes is spent on a train. It's air conditioned, generally fairly comfy and 95% of the time I get a seat - if not a seat with a table. It's air conditioned, so comfortable year round.
I can read, work, chat, or sleep on the train. Hard to do three of those in a car...
OK, sometimes things go wrong (suicides or
s stealing cable, generally) and it becomes a bind - but having driven up and down the M1 for years, I'd take the train every time.Johnnytheboy said:
RichB said:
johnfm said:
Putting aside ownership for a moment, I heard an interesting idea the other day about the railways - the lines are mostly empty.
A train from A to B every 20 minutes or whatever means that the track is virtually 'empty'.
He was suggesting many more, smaller 'trains' running every few minutes - effectively 'filling' the track with little 10 person 'mini trains'.
I suppose it would then turn the railways into a form of automated motorway.
It will never happen, but the concept was interesting.
As I mentioned earlier, everyone thinks of railays as passenger lines and forget freight yet my objective would be to get as much heavy freight off the roads onto the rails. Ideas like tarmacing tracks or mini trains overlook freight. A train from A to B every 20 minutes or whatever means that the track is virtually 'empty'.
He was suggesting many more, smaller 'trains' running every few minutes - effectively 'filling' the track with little 10 person 'mini trains'.
I suppose it would then turn the railways into a form of automated motorway.
It will never happen, but the concept was interesting.
Equally, if dual purpose vehicles that could drive on these tracks and the roads could be built, I imagine you'd increase the amount of freight using them significantly; the main factor - I imagine - that stops companies transporting their freight on the railways is the necessity to get goods to and from the railhead at each end, meaning they have to use the roads anyway.
The problem with trains as they are is the enormous time gaps between them necessitated by the current signalling system - something like my above system would largely remove this problem. I repeat my earlier point that if we were building a mass transit system from scratch it would not look like the railway we now have.
I haven't done the maths; one driver hauling 1,000 people is cheaper in labour terms than fifteen times as many bus drivers for the same passenger count, but I'd be willing to wager that the overall cost would be a fraction. And it would also open the door for entirely novel bus (and bus propulsion) design.
Johnnytheboy said:
Not necessarily, it just depends what you get to drive on the tarmac. Rail carries a small and IIRC decreasing proportion of the nation's freight, and freight is a small proportion of rail traffic. If you tarmacced over the lines but retained/installed some kind of electric power, you could have freight/passangers carried by a fleet of tram lorries/busses. No reason why it couldn't work and no reason why such things couldn't be designed to the available loading gauge.
Equally, if dual purpose vehicles that could drive on these tracks and the roads could be built, I imagine you'd increase the amount of freight using them significantly; the main factor - I imagine - that stops companies transporting their freight on the railways is the necessity to get goods to and from the railhead at each end, meaning they have to use the roads anyway.
The problem with trains as they are is the enormous time gaps between them necessitated by the current signalling system - something like my above system would largely remove this problem. I repeat my earlier point that if we were building a mass transit system from scratch it would not look like the railway we now have.
Bizarrely, I had the opposite in my head about rail freight. Isn't the WCML one of (if not, the) busiest freight lines in Europe? There has also been significant investment by one of the supermarkets (tesco?) at DIRFT, so clearly someone is looking to utilise the railway on an increased basis.Equally, if dual purpose vehicles that could drive on these tracks and the roads could be built, I imagine you'd increase the amount of freight using them significantly; the main factor - I imagine - that stops companies transporting their freight on the railways is the necessity to get goods to and from the railhead at each end, meaning they have to use the roads anyway.
The problem with trains as they are is the enormous time gaps between them necessitated by the current signalling system - something like my above system would largely remove this problem. I repeat my earlier point that if we were building a mass transit system from scratch it would not look like the railway we now have.
Somewhat intrigued by how the tram lorries / buses would work - or indeed dual purpose vehicles; especially given that the majority of RRVs are converted vehicles that are very much a compromise.
What was the most recent mass transit system built from scratch?
anonymous said:
[redacted]
I said that some were more successful than others 
You could have added the 37s and the 08 shunters to your list of "good 'uns," and the 31s and 33s lasted a fair time - but every diesel that North British built were out of service by the early 1970s. Some of the WR hydraulics could have lasted longer if they hadn't been categorised as non standard. Some, however, like the Warships, probably served a more useful purpose as razor blades after they'd been cut up.
Anybody remember the "Blue Pullmans?" Another early dust-biter
martin84 said:
It seems to me that irrespective of whether the railways are privatised or nationalised, they still seem to cost the taxpayer lots of money and cost the rail users more than it should.
+1Railways only work well if you are willing to view them as a public service
and pour lots of money into them without thinking about the cost, as some
European countries do.
Railways have mostly been losing money in the UK for about the last 60 - 80
years and most Brit taxpayers aren't willing to chuck money into them, relying
instead on moving the cost burden from the general tax payer to the
individual rail user.
Before railways there were canals and after railways, cars came along. No one
bothers much about suggesting bringing back canals as a national transport
system and for very similar reasons, I can't see any economic benefits
of bringing back the railways, nationalised or not.
Railways were good in their day, but newer and better technology in
the car and the lorry has come along since.
dcb said:
Railways were good in their day, but newer and better technology in
the car and the lorry has come along since.
Indeed. the car and the lorry has come along since.
When everyone lived in t'same t'road and worked down t'same t'pit, mass transport worked well.
When the alternative was horse drawn coach, the railways worked well.
The world turns.
Now they should kill the subsidy and see what is still worth doing that way. My guess is that only inter city and profitable commuter misery will survive. But at least we won't all be paying over the odds for an oversized toy train set.
My theory is - those on here who say get rod of railways either don't use them regularly or don't use them properly.
I think the whole thing would be better and cheaper if all operators are allowed to operate every route and compete properly. Otherwise its still one operator per route and that looks like state sponsored monopoly to me.
I think the whole thing would be better and cheaper if all operators are allowed to operate every route and compete properly. Otherwise its still one operator per route and that looks like state sponsored monopoly to me.
blueg33 said:
hidetheelephants said:
Pro rata the privatised railways absorb twice the subsidy BR ever got.
Adjusted for inflation, health and safety laws, per passenger mile?Please show me the figures
The ease with which the DOR caretaker on the ECML has exceeded the performance of the TOC which abandoned its obligations, or the previous incumbent that went bust might be dismissed as a one off, but South Eastern Trains, the DOR which replaced the impressively shonky Connex South Eastern, managed to run a better service at a modest profit. The private sector has no more monopoly on good management than the state sector has on bad management.
hidetheelephants said:
The ease with which the DOR caretaker on the ECML has exceeded the performance of the TOC which abandoned its obligations, or the previous incumbent that went bust might be dismissed as a one off, but South Eastern Trains, the DOR which replaced the impressively shonky Connex South Eastern, managed to run a better service at a modest profit.
Entirely correct. Shame that Go-Ahead have fked it up since.hidetheelephants said:
Per passenger mile is a poor measure as it doesn't change the fixed costs, and more importantly I can't find any figures corrected for that. The railways seem to be delivering about twice the passenger miles and about twice the passenger journeys that BR were in 1994 for 3x the passenger revenue. They are receiving about £4bn in subsidy compared to BR average over the period 90-94 of £1.1bn; according to BoE rates that's equivalent to £1.57bn now. Even if you're generous and link the subsidy to passenger miles alone, they are coining it in. The tracklength in the UK hasn't gone up much in 18 years(320km laid since 1994) and the level of rolling stock was 11,000 in 1994 and 12,100 in 2011, implying an increase in longterm fixed costs of ~8%.
The ease with which the DOR caretaker on the ECML has exceeded the performance of the TOC which abandoned its obligations, or the previous incumbent that went bust might be dismissed as a one off, but South Eastern Trains, the DOR which replaced the impressively shonky Connex South Eastern, managed to run a better service at a modest profit. The private sector has no more monopoly on good management than the state sector has on bad management.
Surely the cost per passenger mile is the best way to measure it in terms of comparison, as it is the actual cost of the railways for doing the job?The ease with which the DOR caretaker on the ECML has exceeded the performance of the TOC which abandoned its obligations, or the previous incumbent that went bust might be dismissed as a one off, but South Eastern Trains, the DOR which replaced the impressively shonky Connex South Eastern, managed to run a better service at a modest profit. The private sector has no more monopoly on good management than the state sector has on bad management.
By the time the railways were privatised in 1994 the £1.1bn was clearly too little as the infrastructure was left in a very poor state and that underspend is still being rectified today. Publicly owned infrastructure always has massive underspend (I see millions of ££'s of backlog maintenance on hospitals etc), so I dont see that using the 1994 figure is a fair comparison.
I agree about private sector not having a monopoly on bad management but public sector they have no real profit incentive so will rarely be efficient with spending and govermnment control always means that it would be a very was place to cut costs for political expediaency.
I work with the public sector and see the above traits everywhere, I also work with the private sector and those issues are much less pronounced.
Nationalisation would bring back all of the old habits and old problems and by 2050 we will have infrastructure that has seen no material improvement over the present infrastructure
V8mate said:
You guys do realise that it's still the same old managers, right?
I'm very close to some of the most senior people in Britain's railways: in TOCs, NR and the various railway 'bodies'. The people running and providing the leadership teams in these organisations are almost all ex-BR.
The thing is, IMO its not individuals, its culture that affects the way things are done. The difference is culture between the various train companies is very evident. Generally in my experience Virgin = friendly and helpful (excpet customers services), FGW = friendly train staff, surly station staff, Cross Country = Couldn't give a damn.I'm very close to some of the most senior people in Britain's railways: in TOCs, NR and the various railway 'bodies'. The people running and providing the leadership teams in these organisations are almost all ex-BR.
blueg33 said:
By the time the railways were privatised in 1994 the £1.1bn was clearly too little as the infrastructure was left in a very poor state and that underspend is still being rectified today. Publicly owned infrastructure always has massive underspend (I see millions of ££'s of backlog maintenance on hospitals etc), so I dont see that using the 1994 figure is a fair comparison.
That is an increased figure; the spend 89-94 was averaging £1.1bn(1989 £800m rising to 1993 £1.6bn), for the period 80-89 the average is £650m. Given this pitiful figure I find it very impressive that the management kept the system running at all, never mind not killing the passengers on a daily basis and maintaining a programme of planned rolling stock replacement. It's no surprise at all that the basic infrastructure was wearing out and the non-critical assets ignored entirely.Running a railway (amongst other things) properly requires excellent people. Excellent people demand excellent salaries. On a nationalised, non-profit basis, things will be run on a shoestring, so can't afford excellent people.
This is the thing that has to be addressed before we can (re)nationalise anything.
This is the thing that has to be addressed before we can (re)nationalise anything.
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