Should the railways be nationalised.

Should the railways be nationalised.

Poll: Should the railways be nationalised.

Total Members Polled: 227

Yes: 62%
No: 38%
Author
Discussion

DJRC

23,563 posts

235 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Caulkhead said:
thinfourth2 said:
AJS- said:
I'd replace them with motorways. Trains seem pretty well redundant in the age of cheap flight and pneumatic tyres. And since we're a clear 100 years into that age, let's just get rid of trains?
Go to a country with decent railways and you may think differently
I've been to several. It's lovely when all the other poor sods on the train are paying 50% tax to maintain the lovely railway for me to use, but not so much fun when you have to pay for the tax and the tickets yourself.
Try Switzerland. I love them here smile

tomw2000

2,508 posts

194 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
tomw2000 said:
I don't really mind who runs/owns the thing, I just want it to work and at least feel like it's good value. And a quality service I don't mind coughing up for.

I choose to live in rural(-ish) Lincolnshire and work in London. Grantham station is on the eastcoast mainline. ~70mins to London King's Cross. Result.

And yet...it's £188.00 a week (excluding tube) and it's getting slower.

I don't expect it'll get better in my working lifetime. So I'll continue to try and grin and bear it.
You're paying £188 per week to commute from Grantham to Kings Cross and you're complaining? confused

On a rough & ready calculation, at an average 30mpg it would cost you around £235 per week in petrol costs alone to drive it, and that's before the maintenance and depreciation costs of driving over 1,000 miles per week. Add to that a tenner a day for the congestion charge plus any parking costs you incurred and surely the train is an absolute bargain in comparison?
Ah, no erm you see. You need to read my post first, understand it and then reply. Instead of replying to what you think you've read.

I'm not complaining. I was very clear about it being my choice to do my commute.

If I were to stick my complaining head on, I'd suggest ~£10k a year is a little pricey for the quality of service I get in return. But it's my choice. So c'est la vie.






MikeGTi

2,497 posts

200 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
alangla said:
Arriva Trains Wales, Cross Country, Chiltern, London Overground, Grand Central and DBSchenker/EWS freight are all operated by them already!

You'll also find the state railways of France & the Netherlands operating trains here...
Maybe we should just give them all the infrastructure and everything that goes with it too, in that case.

Twincam16

27,646 posts

257 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
I voted yes, but my solution would be different in spirit as I don't necessarily think it should be nationalised per se.

However, the main problem with the railways in this country stem from the multitude of companies all attempting to run bits of them, badly-co-ordinated with each other, all attempting to do each bit of the job with minimum outlay for maximum profit.

So what I'd propose is that either a government department or a private company could run the railways, but they'd have to run the whole thing. Track, trains, stations, maintenance, safety, infrastructure, freight - the whole lot. That way, everything should be properly co-ordinated, so you wouldn't get someone else's local slow train holding up another company's fast one because another company didn't get the signalling right, or 'engineering works' that drag on for year after year after year because of having to fit in with ongoing budget constraints and other company cock-ups.

However, I do think the railways are important. I can think of no other way that quite so many people can be transported from point A to point B pretty-much as the crow flies at such sustained speed.

And to those people suggesting we replace them all with roads - yeah, because travelling on our motorways is such a smooth, fast, efficient way of getting about, isn't it? For some reason I don't think it's possible to travel unencumbered from Manchester to London at a near-constant 125mph in a car or a coach, while reading a newspaper and going to the toilet.

And as for the non-rail-travellers complaining about subsidising rail travellers - how do you know whether you need the services of people who are travelling by rail? Because if the service that they provide is dependent on them getting to work for a particular time at a particular speed that only a train can really provide (all it takes is one idiot to have a crash on a motorway in a lorry and that's a whole day written off if you're driving), and you load all the cost onto them, then they'll recoup those costs through pay rises that they'll pass on to you, and then rather than the subsidy being shared spread broadly throughout the population, it gets concentrated on the people who use the train, and the people dependent on them.

And the last thing we need are more buses. Buses practically promote draconian anti-car road policy. They're also very slow and have more accidents. I'd rather more bus passengers went by rail, frankly, to get them off the roads. The more people using the service, the more money involved, the more can be done to improve things - sometimes big infrastructure projects organised nationally work best publically.

I'd actually be in favour of high-rise monorail systems replacing some bus routes. Less impact on the roads below, easier to install in a built-up city than an underground rail system. The Paris Metro alternates between underground and high-rise overground routes and works better than anything we've got in the UK.

bitchstewie

50,781 posts

209 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Fittster said:
Your forgetting that there is now competition on the Rail Network. Use Chiltern Trains and the cost is £110 as opposed to the £130 that Virgin charge.
I'm not sure I'm grateful for having the choice between being mildly fked over vs. totally fked over but regardless, I don't want to have to even think which train I need to get on or which offers best value for money, I just know the time I want to get to and from somewhere.

crankedup

25,764 posts

242 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
colonel c said:
OK so I thought I'd get in before AJS- smile


Following on from the recent West coast rail debacle and with more franchise coming up for renewal. Is it time to renationalise the whole network?
Yes, and then when we have completed that we need to Unionise it too, with Bob Crow heading up the Union.
I'm joking, no honestly I AM JOKING! B.C. will be retired before rail nationalisation is complete. wink

jshell

11,006 posts

204 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
£100 and 4 hours 23 mins for a 1st class ticket from London to Edinburgh. Comfy seats, can wander about, admire the countryside, get fed tea, biccies, sarnies and beer for free. Compare to the Heathrow pantomime of gettign there early, check-in, security, general s, delayed take-off, weather delays, fecking about to get to Edinburgh town centre, I always take the train now...

powerstroke

10,283 posts

159 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
crankedup said:
Yes, and then when we have completed that we need to Unionise it too, with Bob Crow heading up the Union.
I'm joking, no honestly I AM JOKING! B.C. will be retired before rail nationalisation is complete. wink
Yes and call it British rail .. then we could reuse the adverts made
by the late jimmy savill jester

Pothole

34,367 posts

281 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Podie said:
Fittster said:
Does anyone think that BR provide an efficient service?
Who?
I think he meant provideD.

Podie

46,630 posts

274 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Pothole said:
Podie said:
Fittster said:
Does anyone think that BR provide an efficient service?
Who?
I think he meant provideD.
I wasn't being as facetious as it may appear.

Sometimes it can be a simple typo "provided") whislt in other cases people really do not actually understand the structure of the railways.

Blue62

8,746 posts

151 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
What is clear is that the current system is not fir for purpose, the DfT is incapable of managing the network; the DfT has had 7 secretaries of state in the last 6 years, the recent problems are systemic and the whole lot needs throwing out and starting again. To suggest, as MacLoughlin has, that the problems are mechanical is simply to ignore the real issue here, the current system does not work.

crankedup

25,764 posts

242 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Pothole said:
Podie said:
Fittster said:
Does anyone think that BR provide an efficient service?
Who?
I think he meant provideD.
Don't know if B.R. provided an efficient service or not, commensurate with expectations of the era. Without wanting to re-open another debate regarding privatisation, did the rail network remain/become starved of cash which in turn ran down the service? Or did the service do it all by itself by becoming inefficient through Unions and Government interference?
Steam always evokes romanticist mutterings from young and old alike at 'steam-ups' of an age gone by.

edit to add, I vote no to re-nationalisation.


Edited by crankedup on Thursday 4th October 15:15

hidetheelephants

23,758 posts

192 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
crankedup said:
Don't know if B.R. provided an efficient service or not, commensurate with expectations of the era. Without wanting to re-open another debate regarding privatisation, did the rail network remain/become starved of cash which in turn ran down the service? Or did the service do it all by itself by becoming inefficient through Unions and Government interference?
Bit of both; there was union intransigence, but equally BR were labouring with a creaky rail network that had seen piecemeal modernisation but was still suffering from the combined effects of german bombing, 4 decades of under investment, Beeching's overactive axe arm, and the after-effects of BREL being pulled in 4 different directions simultaneously. Once privatisation was on the agenda, BR were given sensible amounts of money for capital investment and it showed.

Best rail advert ever; it was deservedly parodied by Smith and Jones because of very public reliability failures, but as a rail manifesto it deserves revisiting. If rail travel was like this everyone would want to use it.

crankedup

25,764 posts

242 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
A very familiar story then. G.B. resting on its laurels for far too long accompanied by our sense of entitlement exercised through Unions defeating weak Management.

Kermit power

28,634 posts

212 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
tomw2000 said:
Kermit power said:
tomw2000 said:
I don't really mind who runs/owns the thing, I just want it to work and at least feel like it's good value. And a quality service I don't mind coughing up for.

I choose to live in rural(-ish) Lincolnshire and work in London. Grantham station is on the eastcoast mainline. ~70mins to London King's Cross. Result.

And yet...it's £188.00 a week (excluding tube) and it's getting slower.

I don't expect it'll get better in my working lifetime. So I'll continue to try and grin and bear it.
You're paying £188 per week to commute from Grantham to Kings Cross and you're complaining? confused

On a rough & ready calculation, at an average 30mpg it would cost you around £235 per week in petrol costs alone to drive it, and that's before the maintenance and depreciation costs of driving over 1,000 miles per week. Add to that a tenner a day for the congestion charge plus any parking costs you incurred and surely the train is an absolute bargain in comparison?
Ah, no erm you see. You need to read my post first, understand it and then reply. Instead of replying to what you think you've read.

I'm not complaining. I was very clear about it being my choice to do my commute.

If I were to stick my complaining head on, I'd suggest ~£10k a year is a little pricey for the quality of service I get in return. But it's my choice. So c'est la vie.
It's the "understanding" part that caused the challenge then, as it certainly sounded like a complaint - albeit a mild English complaint rather than the typical PH sweary special.

I'd take that £10k and compare it to any other way of doing the journey (never mind do it in 70 minutes each way) before deciding whether I was getting value for money.

Johnnytheboy

24,498 posts

185 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
V8mate said:
VoziKaoFangio said:
98elise said:
Pave over them and run coaches.
This is it. The new coachaways could also be used for all heavy goods vehicles, freeing up the motorway network for private cars. All existing rail freight could be put on to this network also. Handily, railways tend to go right through city centres, meaning that all goods will get to where they need to go.

The one drawback is safety - the railways are far, far safer than this coach/lorry proposal. We'd probably have to put up with hundreds more deaths per annum than we currently get on the trains.
Safety isn't an issue.

Eleven years ago I suggested to relevant ears that the 'Metro' area in south-east London (the three lines from Dartford to various London terminals) should be torn up and that coaches should run along tarmac'd rail routes. Keep the dedicated routes and the station stops; bin the tracks, signals, trains etc.

They laughed.

hehe
I've always thought that if you were going to design a mass transit system from scratch now it wouldn't look anything like the railways.

Something like a guided bus network on the original alignment would in most cases be far more efficient.

Or tarmac the lines over, make them lorry only, and free the existing roads up for cars.

Fittster

20,120 posts

212 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
bhstewie said:
Fittster said:
Your forgetting that there is now competition on the Rail Network. Use Chiltern Trains and the cost is £110 as opposed to the £130 that Virgin charge.
I'm not sure I'm grateful for having the choice between being mildly fked over vs. totally fked over but regardless, I don't want to have to even think which train I need to get on or which offers best value for money, I just know the time I want to get to and from somewhere.
So what do you calculate the costs of getting to central London are via car? Remember to add congestion charges and parking.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a passenger to compare to possible routes (leave from New St. or Moor St. which are about 5 minutes apart).

You're able to decide between the M6 and M40 when you take the car.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
I would build some new stations at motorway junctions with extensive car parking. The idea of driving into one town or city centre to park up and get the train to another one is just stupid. The idea that everyone will use public transport into the station is just a denial of reality.

Pothole

34,367 posts

281 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
Podie said:
Pothole said:
Podie said:
Fittster said:
Does anyone think that BR provide an efficient service?
Who?
I think he meant provideD.
I wasn't being as facetious as it may appear.

Sometimes it can be a simple typo "provided") whislt in other cases people really do not actually understand the structure of the railways.
Oh, I know. Until last Friday I worked for British Gas, which has been the private company British Gas since 1986. Lots of people still refer to it as 'The Gas Board'!!

hidetheelephants

23,758 posts

192 months

Thursday 4th October 2012
quotequote all
otolith said:
I would build some new stations at motorway junctions with extensive car parking. The idea of driving into one town or city centre to park up and get the train to another one is just stupid. The idea that everyone will use public transport into the station is just a denial of reality.
That was certainly a failure of BR; not bad at serving existing traffic and organic traffic growth, there seems to have been an institutional inability to understand that traffic can be created from nothing(as in the park and ride case you outline) compounded by a chronic lack of money for capital investment.