What would stop the "British Rail" brand being resurrected?

[plymothian]

But isn't that supposed to be the point if privatisation? 2/3/4 different companies competing on the same route. Rather like buses.

It's been so long now that people should be able to work out how the trains work, if they can work out that a First bus is not a Stagecoach bus, then why not FGW is not SWT?

BR returning is comes down to public v private. Both of which have faults and you won't get agreement. But if it comes down to someone cannot work out that a XC train is not a LM one, because a train is a train, it is not the trains that need changing.

 

[Tom B]

I wonder if anybody has done a survey of "brand recognition" or whatever they call it? I suspect that many people above the age of 25 would still recognise "British Rail" equally as they do their local TOC, and probably before the others they don't use. I know many (non 'railway') people who use it to describe the railways in general terms or, in London, to differentiate from the underground ("The tube was suspended, so I walked down to the British Rail station instead").

 

[reb0118]

But isn't that supposed to be the point if[sic] privatisation? 2/3/4 different companies competing on the same route. Rather like buses

No, I fear you have missed the point. No two trains can occupy the same path at the same time so in the main competition is a non starter. Most parallel routes, originally opened by private companies in true (comparatively speaking) competition with others, were removed during the rationalisation of the 1960's as surplus to requirements.

The only sensible solution, if privatisation was the only option, was to privatise as a single monopoly but we got lots of smaller monopolies instead,......

.......why, to limit the chance of industrial action affecting the whole network at once. This has been the one success story of privatisation - how many national rail strikes have we had since 1996?

 

[plymothian]

No, I fear you have missed the point. No two trains can occupy the same path at the same time so in the main competition is a non starter. Most parallel routes, originally opened by private companies in true (comparatively speaking) competition with others, were removed during the rationalisation of the 1960's as surplus to requirements.

The only sensible solution, if privatisation was the only option, was to privatise as a single monopoly but we got lots of smaller monopolies instead,......

.......why, to limit the chance of industrial action affecting the whole network at once. This has been the one success story of privatisation - how many national rail strikes have we had since 1996?

No, I fear you and the Tories missed the point.
The whole premise of Conservative privatisation was/is to either to get it off the government books or to promote competition. At the time the railways were seen as useless so their privatisation would have been to get them off the books (like water companies where they do hold a private monopoly), but the way it was done and promoted was for competition purposes (like deregulation).

 

[BestWestern]

But isn't that supposed to be the point if privatisation? 2/3/4 different companies competing on the same route. Rather like buses.

It's been so long now that people should be able to work out how the trains work, if they can work out that a First bus is not a Stagecoach bus, then why not FGW is not SWT?

BR returning is comes down to public v private. Both of which have faults and you won't get agreement. But if it comes down to someone cannot work out that a XC train is not a LM one, because a train is a train, it is not the trains that need changing.

But does the averge bus passenger decide which bus to catch based on the livery it carries?! Buses have route numbers for the purposes of user identification; trains do not. Stations and rail journeys are massively more complicated and challenging than the vast majority of their bus equivalents, and the 'penalty' for getting on the wrong bus is likely to be the driver pointing out your mistake before you get anywhere near a seat.

 

[plymothian]

Well, yes they do. There are only so many roads different routes can go down regardless of their destination. And in many cases there are competitors on the same route. Because that's business.
If you read feedback on buses you will see people stating they'd never get x's buses because y's are cheaper/smarter/cleaner/have wi-fi/more reliable.

But what I'm saying it's not the livery that matters. If the problem is that people cannot distinguish between a VT only ticket and a LM train, it's the ticket and information that needs changing. The idea of TOC specific tickets is like bus company x's day ticket being cheaper than y's. Cheaper but less flexible to promote travel on their network; this is the 'competition' privatisation brought.

 

[alexl92]

Well, yes they do. There are only so many roads different routes can go down regardless of their destination. And in many cases there are competitors on the same route. Because that's business.
If you read feedback on buses you will see people stating they'd never get x's buses because y's are cheaper/smarter/cleaner/have wi-fi/more reliable.

But what I'm saying it's not the livery that matters. If the problem is that people cannot distinguish between a VT only ticket and a LM train, it's the ticket and information that needs changing. The idea of TOC specific tickets is like bus company x's day ticket being cheaper than y's. Cheaper but less flexible to promote travel on their network; this is the 'competition' privatisation brought.

In theory, yes. I live in Leeds and 90% of the bus services around the north, east and west of the city are operated by First. Transdev have one route from Ripon & Harrogate into Leeds, for which there is only one First bus which directly competes, (and that's only once an hour so it hardly competes) and Arriva have most of the services around South Leeds/Wakefield/Dewsbury. Around South Leeds (Elland Road/The White Rose Centre) there are a few routes which compete but otherwise there's only one bus per route, so in actual fact busses don't always compete either.

Neither will the privatisation model relying on competition be succesful for as long as we have one train per route and one price per journey.

 

[Deerfold]

Neither will the privatisation model relying on competition be succesful for as long as we have one train per route and one price per journey.

One price per journey?

Have you seen the ticketing section on here

 

[Oswyntail]

..... And in many cases there are competitors on the same route. .....

There may be different operators on the same route, but that is not necessarily competition. If I wish to catch a bus to Otley (a route on which, IIRC, there are three operators) I either take the bus that suits my timetable, or the first one that comes along. Not competition, multiple provision.
The real choice, and competition, is between rail and road, which, for me, means trips to Leeds. The competitors are: rail (frequent enough; comfortable; fast; mid-expensive); bus (similar frequency; less comfortable; slowest; cheapest); car (irrelevant frequency; comfortable but with disadvantage of requiring my effort; mid-speed; marginally more expensive than rail). The failure of the privatisation model's apparent view of competition is that it seems to rely on the impossible competition of TOCs providing the same service, rather than inter-modal competition.

 

[BritishRail83]

I think someone's been watching a few too many Two Ronnies sketches.

They always had it in for BR. There's some good ones on youtube.

 

[yorksrob]

They always had it in for BR. There's some good ones on youtube.

Yes, but not as good as the St Botolph Country Dance Team

 

[BritishRail83]

Yes, but not as good as the St Botolph Country Dance Team

I had forgotten about that one.................

 

[reb0118]

They always had it in for BR. There's some good ones on youtube.

Like this one:-

[youtube]UXXwxJdYk-g[/youtube]

 

[ainsworth74]

As quick side bar I've noticed a few people have had a bit of difficulty with YouTube videos on the forum recently. For future referrence if you want to embed a video on the forum you can use the [*youtube] [/youtube*] tags (remove the *) and simply place the letters from the video URL inbetween the two tags. So if the video URL is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Take everything after v= (so dQw4w9WgXcQ) and place it in the tags above.

 

[leytongabriel]

If BR is a step (backwards?) too far then Network SouthEast made a lot of sense for rail users. Perhaps there's a parallel with Scotrail? At least make TOCs show NetworkSE maps. Nothing worse than those wretched line diagrams which only show one TOC's part of a dense commuter network.

 

[BritishRail83]

Like this one:-

[youtube]UXXwxJdYk-g[/youtube]

Just what I had in mind I'd love to have one of those robot porters!

 

[DelayRepay]

It's been so long now that people should be able to work out how the trains work, if they can work out that a First bus is not a Stagecoach bus, then why not FGW is not SWT?

BR returning is comes down to public v private. Both of which have faults and you won't get agreement. But if it comes down to someone cannot work out that a XC train is not a LM one, because a train is a train, it is not the trains that need changing.

I don't think comparing with buses is totally valid. This is based on infrequent travelers rather than regular commuters.

Generally, you buy a bus ticket from the driver not in advance, so it doesn't matter which company's service you catch for a one-off journey. Generally bus stops are not branded for a specific company, and normally you won't buy a ticket from one bus company's ticket office to travel on another company's service. And generally the tickets will be branded rather than all looking the same save for "Route: Chesterfield" or similar.

 

[SS4]

As quick side bar I've noticed a few people have had a bit of difficulty with YouTube videos on the forum recently. For future referrence if you want to embed a video on the forum you can use the [*youtube] [/youtube*] tags (remove the *) and simply place the letters from the video URL inbetween the two tags. So if the video URL is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Take everything after v= (so dQw4w9WgXcQ) and place it in the tags above.

[youtube]dQw4w9WgXcQ[/youtube]

Also I can guess what that video is

 

[ainsworth74]

I was wondering if anyone would notice that