East Coast train line under public control

[Gigabit]

Nobody is discussing the railways being run publicly under the Tories, who would underfund them as usual. Under Labour they would be funded and run properly.

Privatisation has FAILED! Subsidies up, satisfaction down.

And then people tell me "well in the BR days, your train might never have arrived at all, they were always on strike" - and I reply, that's exactly what is happening now...

[jra]

Nobody is discussing the railways being run publicly under the Tories, who would underfund them as usual. Under Labour they would be funded and run properly.

Privatisation has FAILED! Subsidies up, satisfaction down.

And then people tell me "well in the BR days, your train might never have arrived at all, they were always on strike" - and I reply, that's exactly what is happening now...

Only a brave person would bet on that one IMO, bearing in mind the past, i.e. both Conservative and Labour underfunded the railways.

[Cannydc]

Humming and Haaing about what happened 60 or 70 years ago won't fix problems with the UK's infrastructure NOW, will it ?

Time to look seriously at the country owning its own public utilities, proper, honest pricing, proper investment.

Why the French, Dutch, Germans and even Canadian Teachers Unions are allowed to own them is beyond me. If there's profit to be made it should be ploughed back into roads, rail, water, gas, electricity here in the UK - not paying foreign pensions.

We tried selling it all off for a pittance, look where it got us.

[jra]

Humming and Haaing about what happened 60 or 70 years ago won't fix problems with the UK's infrastructure NOW, will it ?

Time to look seriously at the country owning its own public utilities, proper, honest pricing, proper investment.

Why the French, Dutch, Germans and even Canadian Teachers Unions are allowed to own them is beyond me. If there's profit to be made it should be ploughed back into roads, rail, water, gas, electricity here in the UK - not paying foreign pensions.

We tried selling it all off for a pittance, look where it got us.

This is something you need to take up with your local MP or government.

BIB. Mostly not, but some closed railway lines have been reopened, particularly in south Wales and Scotland and numerous heritage railways exist using portions of former closed lines.

[jra]

I am referring to the laughable inefficiencies of many of the current rail franchises.

Parliament’s Transport Committee recently warned this system was “no longer fit for purpose” and was leading to increased ticket fares and poor performance. “It has not yielded all the competitive benefits initially envisaged by the Government in the early 1990s,” it said.

Profit-making companies place shareholder interests above customer interests, and it’s manifestly unfair for private investors to profit from the unavoidable costs of commuting. I believe that a nationalised system would have more incentive to drive down fares and improve the service.

Last year 17 of the main train companies that run normal passenger services together made an annual operating profit of £343m – an average of £20m per company.

They also paid themselves very handsomely. The top director for each company was paid an average of nearly £300,000, including pension and perks. One of them earned £478,000 – almost 17 times the UK median wage.

Eight of the companies also paid out £185m in dividends to shareholders.

I have little doubt that an integrated service without shareholder payouts would save money,

Take East Coast rail. The service was rescued by a government-controlled company in 2009, after National Express fell into financial trouble and the franchise collapsed.

It was handed back to the private sector in 2015, but the experiment had undoubtedly been a success. Under public ownership, satisfaction rates climbed to 91 per cent – the joint top score for a franchised long distance operator. In its final year of service, it provided £225m to the Department for Transport, saw ticket sales rise, and made a pre-tax profit of £8.4m.

No amount of private sector inefficiencies and mismanagement are ever going to usurp the four biggest disasters that have happened when our railways were totally under public ownership, i.e. British Rail.

1. The slow adoption from steam to diesel and particularly electric traction.
2. The slow adoption of electrification of railway lines in the UK. For example, the GWML electrification would have been done decades ago in most European countries.
3. The Beeching Axe. Mainly because the transport minister had a vested interest in road transport. Ernest Marples. This was simply industrial vandalism on a nationwide scale.
4. The abandonment of the APT (tilting train) project, due to lack of government funding. We invented the tilting train and should have seen the project through, rather than embarrassingly having to buy back some of the technology from the Italians. Pendolinos.

Privatization of the railways hasn't come anywhere close to any of the above in terms of losses and chances missed.

So canny, take those rose-tinted spectacles off. British Rail were anything but the be all and end all.

The one big major thing that BR put onto the table as plan B after the APT failure was the Intercity 125/HST/Class 43 which at the time was a masterpiece of engineering and groundbreaking technology. The results speak for themselves. This train has even been described as 'the train that saved British railways' and I agree.

You need to understand the difference with British Rail policies and national Government transport policies. For example, one cannot possibly, rationally blame British Rail for various Conservative Party policies such as removal of funding for electricification, Beeching, removal of funding for West Coast upgrade, failure for communications upgrades so drivers can talk to each other to stop another Cowden, etc etc. Where I live the Conservatives shut the Crystal Palace High Level line AFTER the Labour GLC had bought a huge plot of land for a huge estate housing 1,000 plus people. The Upper Sydenham station was yards from the estate. It is this lack of forward planning that has ruined the country.

Perhaps I should have said 'running under British Rail (management). As you said that doesn't necessarily mean all the decisions were made by them. However, Joe Public is not particularly interested in who has made the decision (other than for voting purposes) but more concerned the decision was made. Just like the average person is not bothered about the technical details of a train, but whether it is comfortable, clean and gets you where you want to go on time.

Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did.

I wish I had an easy solution to all this, but it essentially boils down to lack of investment over the years, by whoever that was in a position to do so, whether it was by the Conservatives, Labour, Department of Transport, Strategic Rail Authority, Railtrack, Network Rail, TOCs etc. This has been very noticeable in certain areas.

Recently the government are using bi-modal trains as a get out clause for making cutbacks in electrification, which should have been done decades ago anyway. Again the UK seems reluctant to fit in cab signalling on cost grounds (so no trains over 125 mph on conventional routes) and tilting trains which could increase speeds significantly on the MML and the line from London Paddington to Penzance via Newbury and Plymouth.

Electrification from Plymouth to Birmingham via Bristol is not even on the table at the moment.

Everything regarding railways takes too long or is shelved in the UK. Thameslink Programme (delivered 19 years late), HS1 (delivered 13 years late and the French had already completed their high speed link before the Channel Tunnel had even opened), WCML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running), ECML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running, GWML (electrification downgraded, no tilting trains and I predict no 140 mph running ever with the new rolling stock), diversionary route for Dawlish Sea Wall (taking forever), Welwyn Viaduct doubling (put on hold), London Euston rebuild (bogged down in red tape).

[jra]

This why DS is circling the drain.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussio ... t_90506842

This never happened in other words.

185 episodes where they used a double for Michael.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bri ... y_Journeys

[Cannydc]

"Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did. "

No, sorry but they didn't.

There were priorities such as putting the NHS back together which always trumped re-nationalisations.

[Punk]

"Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did. "

No, sorry but they didn't.

There were priorities such as putting the NHS back together which always trumped re-nationalisations.

Labour haven't been in power since 1979.

[Punk]

I am referring to the laughable inefficiencies of many of the current rail franchises.

Parliament’s Transport Committee recently warned this system was “no longer fit for purpose” and was leading to increased ticket fares and poor performance. “It has not yielded all the competitive benefits initially envisaged by the Government in the early 1990s,” it said.

Profit-making companies place shareholder interests above customer interests, and it’s manifestly unfair for private investors to profit from the unavoidable costs of commuting. I believe that a nationalised system would have more incentive to drive down fares and improve the service.

Last year 17 of the main train companies that run normal passenger services together made an annual operating profit of £343m – an average of £20m per company.

They also paid themselves very handsomely. The top director for each company was paid an average of nearly £300,000, including pension and perks. One of them earned £478,000 – almost 17 times the UK median wage.

Eight of the companies also paid out £185m in dividends to shareholders.

I have little doubt that an integrated service without shareholder payouts would save money,

Take East Coast rail. The service was rescued by a government-controlled company in 2009, after National Express fell into financial trouble and the franchise collapsed.

It was handed back to the private sector in 2015, but the experiment had undoubtedly been a success. Under public ownership, satisfaction rates climbed to 91 per cent – the joint top score for a franchised long distance operator. In its final year of service, it provided £225m to the Department for Transport, saw ticket sales rise, and made a pre-tax profit of £8.4m.

No amount of private sector inefficiencies and mismanagement are ever going to usurp the four biggest disasters that have happened when our railways were totally under public ownership, i.e. British Rail.

1. The slow adoption from steam to diesel and particularly electric traction.
2. The slow adoption of electrification of railway lines in the UK. For example, the GWML electrification would have been done decades ago in most European countries.
3. The Beeching Axe. Mainly because the transport minister had a vested interest in road transport. Ernest Marples. This was simply industrial vandalism on a nationwide scale.
4. The abandonment of the APT (tilting train) project, due to lack of government funding. We invented the tilting train and should have seen the project through, rather than embarrassingly having to buy back some of the technology from the Italians. Pendolinos.

Privatization of the railways hasn't come anywhere close to any of the above in terms of losses and chances missed.

So canny, take those rose-tinted spectacles off. British Rail were anything but the be all and end all.

The one big major thing that BR put onto the table as plan B after the APT failure was the Intercity 125/HST/Class 43 which at the time was a masterpiece of engineering and groundbreaking technology. The results speak for themselves. This train has even been described as 'the train that saved British railways' and I agree.

You need to understand the difference with British Rail policies and national Government transport policies. For example, one cannot possibly, rationally blame British Rail for various Conservative Party policies such as removal of funding for electricification, Beeching, removal of funding for West Coast upgrade, failure for communications upgrades so drivers can talk to each other to stop another Cowden, etc etc. Where I live the Conservatives shut the Crystal Palace High Level line AFTER the Labour GLC had bought a huge plot of land for a huge estate housing 1,000 plus people. The Upper Sydenham station was yards from the estate. It is this lack of forward planning that has ruined the country.

Perhaps I should have said 'running under British Rail (management). As you said that doesn't necessarily mean all the decisions were made by them. However, Joe Public is not particularly interested in who has made the decision (other than for voting purposes) but more concerned the decision was made. Just like the average person is not bothered about the technical details of a train, but whether it is comfortable, clean and gets you where you want to go on time.

Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did.

I wish I had an easy solution to all this, but it essentially boils down to lack of investment over the years, by whoever that was in a position to do so, whether it was by the Conservatives, Labour, Department of Transport, Strategic Rail Authority, Railtrack, Network Rail, TOCs etc. This has been very noticeable in certain areas.

Recently the government are using bi-modal trains as a get out clause for making cutbacks in electrification, which should have been done decades ago anyway. Again the UK seems reluctant to fit in cab signalling on cost grounds (so no trains over 125 mph on conventional routes) and tilting trains which could increase speeds significantly on the MML and the line from London Paddington to Penzance via Newbury and Plymouth.

Electrification from Plymouth to Birmingham via Bristol is not even on the table at the moment.

Everything regarding railways takes too long or is shelved in the UK. Thameslink Programme (delivered 19 years late), HS1 (delivered 13 years late and the French had already completed their high speed link before the Channel Tunnel had even opened), WCML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running), ECML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running, GWML (electrification downgraded, no tilting trains and I predict no 140 mph running ever with the new rolling stock), diversionary route for Dawlish Sea Wall (taking forever), Welwyn Viaduct doubling (put on hold), London Euston rebuild (bogged down in red tape).

If one would look at the Transport Select Committee papers on the Government cancelling various policy decisions, one would see it is nothing to do with British Rail or Railtrack. One cannot compare Neo-Liberal New Labour to Socialist Labour with any rationality. One carried on Conservative policies and one was absolutely against them. Any ideas which was which?

[jra]

"Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did. "

No, sorry but they didn't.

There were priorities such as putting the NHS back together which always trumped re-nationalisations.

Labour haven't been in power since 1979.

You two fight it out among yourselves, if you think Tony Blair never existed, you piss takers.

[jra]

I am referring to the laughable inefficiencies of many of the current rail franchises.

Parliament’s Transport Committee recently warned this system was “no longer fit for purpose” and was leading to increased ticket fares and poor performance. “It has not yielded all the competitive benefits initially envisaged by the Government in the early 1990s,” it said.

Profit-making companies place shareholder interests above customer interests, and it’s manifestly unfair for private investors to profit from the unavoidable costs of commuting. I believe that a nationalised system would have more incentive to drive down fares and improve the service.

Last year 17 of the main train companies that run normal passenger services together made an annual operating profit of £343m – an average of £20m per company.

They also paid themselves very handsomely. The top director for each company was paid an average of nearly £300,000, including pension and perks. One of them earned £478,000 – almost 17 times the UK median wage.

Eight of the companies also paid out £185m in dividends to shareholders.

I have little doubt that an integrated service without shareholder payouts would save money,

Take East Coast rail. The service was rescued by a government-controlled company in 2009, after National Express fell into financial trouble and the franchise collapsed.

It was handed back to the private sector in 2015, but the experiment had undoubtedly been a success. Under public ownership, satisfaction rates climbed to 91 per cent – the joint top score for a franchised long distance operator. In its final year of service, it provided £225m to the Department for Transport, saw ticket sales rise, and made a pre-tax profit of £8.4m.

No amount of private sector inefficiencies and mismanagement are ever going to usurp the four biggest disasters that have happened when our railways were totally under public ownership, i.e. British Rail.

1. The slow adoption from steam to diesel and particularly electric traction.
2. The slow adoption of electrification of railway lines in the UK. For example, the GWML electrification would have been done decades ago in most European countries.
3. The Beeching Axe. Mainly because the transport minister had a vested interest in road transport. Ernest Marples. This was simply industrial vandalism on a nationwide scale.
4. The abandonment of the APT (tilting train) project, due to lack of government funding. We invented the tilting train and should have seen the project through, rather than embarrassingly having to buy back some of the technology from the Italians. Pendolinos.

Privatization of the railways hasn't come anywhere close to any of the above in terms of losses and chances missed.

So canny, take those rose-tinted spectacles off. British Rail were anything but the be all and end all.

The one big major thing that BR put onto the table as plan B after the APT failure was the Intercity 125/HST/Class 43 which at the time was a masterpiece of engineering and groundbreaking technology. The results speak for themselves. This train has even been described as 'the train that saved British railways' and I agree.

You need to understand the difference with British Rail policies and national Government transport policies. For example, one cannot possibly, rationally blame British Rail for various Conservative Party policies such as removal of funding for electricification, Beeching, removal of funding for West Coast upgrade, failure for communications upgrades so drivers can talk to each other to stop another Cowden, etc etc. Where I live the Conservatives shut the Crystal Palace High Level line AFTER the Labour GLC had bought a huge plot of land for a huge estate housing 1,000 plus people. The Upper Sydenham station was yards from the estate. It is this lack of forward planning that has ruined the country.

Perhaps I should have said 'running under British Rail (management). As you said that doesn't necessarily mean all the decisions were made by them. However, Joe Public is not particularly interested in who has made the decision (other than for voting purposes) but more concerned the decision was made. Just like the average person is not bothered about the technical details of a train, but whether it is comfortable, clean and gets you where you want to go on time.

Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did.

I wish I had an easy solution to all this, but it essentially boils down to lack of investment over the years, by whoever that was in a position to do so, whether it was by the Conservatives, Labour, Department of Transport, Strategic Rail Authority, Railtrack, Network Rail, TOCs etc. This has been very noticeable in certain areas.

Recently the government are using bi-modal trains as a get out clause for making cutbacks in electrification, which should have been done decades ago anyway. Again the UK seems reluctant to fit in cab signalling on cost grounds (so no trains over 125 mph on conventional routes) and tilting trains which could increase speeds significantly on the MML and the line from London Paddington to Penzance via Newbury and Plymouth.

Electrification from Plymouth to Birmingham via Bristol is not even on the table at the moment.

Everything regarding railways takes too long or is shelved in the UK. Thameslink Programme (delivered 19 years late), HS1 (delivered 13 years late and the French had already completed their high speed link before the Channel Tunnel had even opened), WCML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running), ECML downgraded (no tilting trains, no 140 mph running, GWML (electrification downgraded, no tilting trains and I predict no 140 mph running ever with the new rolling stock), diversionary route for Dawlish Sea Wall (taking forever), Welwyn Viaduct doubling (put on hold), London Euston rebuild (bogged down in red tape).

If one would look at the Transport Select Committee papers on the Government cancelling various policy decisions, one would see it is nothing to do with British Rail or Railtrack. One cannot compare Neo-Liberal New Labour to Socialist Labour with any rationality. One carried on Conservative policies and one was absolutely against them. Any ideas which was which?

Honestly. Do you think the vast majority of people are going to look into that. The average person wants things to get done and are not really bothered about who makes the decision.

[jra]

"Labour had plenty of opportunities to renationalise (put back into full public ownership) our railways, but never did. "

No, sorry but they didn't.

There were priorities such as putting the NHS back together which always trumped re-nationalisations.

Labour haven't been in power since 1979.

You two fight it out among yourselves, if you think Tony Blair never existed, you piss takers.

And you might want to ask Neil Kinnock what he did for the UK while Transport Commissioner for the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Kinn ... mmissioner

Not much I would say. Labour and all.

The Spanish high speed railway system is IMO based mostly of the back of EU subsidies, mostly from the UK and Germany. They have 3100 km and counting. We have a measly 108 km and not counting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1

Oh yes. Gordon Brown had an opportunity to put our railways back into public ownership as well. He did sell a shit load of gold at giveaway prices though.

[jra]

ETA.

And people were saying the Conservatives sold some of our assets to foreign companies at knock down prices. Bottom line is that governments are governments and mostly as bad as each other.

[Cannydc]

As soon as I hear "Brown sold a shitload of our gold" I know exactly what I am dealing with.

Actually Brown sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce, raising approximately US$3.5 billion.

$3.5 billion. Don't miss the decimal point.

To put that in context, HS2 alone is expected to cost thirty times that. May's annual deficit is running at twenty times that. Not only was it the veritable spit in the bucket, but it also gave us Euro assets which quickly rose in value.

And I repeat, Blair and Brown were forced to prioritise spending on an infrastructure devastated from 1979 - 1997.

[jra]

As soon as I hear "Brown sold a shitload of our gold" I know exactly what I am dealing with.

Actually Brown sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce, raising approximately US$3.5 billion.

$3.5 billion. Don't miss the decimal point.

To put that in context, HS2 alone is expected to cost thirty times that. May's annual deficit is running at twenty times that. Not only was it the veritable spit in the bucket, but it also gave us Euro assets which quickly rose in value.

And I repeat, Blair and Brown were forced to prioritise spending on an infrastructure devastated from 1979 - 1997.

Infrastructure devastated. I don't think so. That had already been done under the Conservatives and Labour.

It's not the cost of the gold sale versus HS2. It is about the fact the gold was sold well under market value compared with historical values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_U ... %80%932002

Labour have under-invested in our railways over the last few decades just like the Conservatives.