YouGov poll suggests most want British Rail back.

[Geezertronic]

Are you sure the railway's safer. In 2013 over 300 died on the rail network.

I presume that figure takes persons hit by train (whether suicide or accident) into consideration rather than just train accidents?

 

[Tetchytyke]

that wasn't luck, that was design

The fact only one person died was a credit to the design. They were lucky that it wasn't worse, even with the design, or that a different type of train wasn't involved- I doubt a 185 would survive so well.

This is just sounding like somebody who doesn't like Brian Souter, and is letting that bias cloud his wider views.

Not really, I could have chosen any of the Bus Barons.

 

[Clip]

The cost was £40m to the original bidders. This didn't include the costs incurred by DafT through the original competition, the legal dispute and the inquiry into what went wrong.

There was also the cost of running the competititon again- for convenience we'll decide this was £40m for the TOCs- and suddenly you're at £100m.

To be charitable we'll take £50m, in that case. Factored across 21 franchises, that's still 25% of the cost of the IEP. We're not talking about spare change down the back of the sofa.

Good god have you heard yourself?

Ok, well the legal stuff came to around 9 million so overall the shambles cost the DfT £50 million. There is no cost to the Govt for running the bidding again as they already have the people on the payroll to do so and the bidders will more than likely be the same 4.

You cant just factor it across all franchises like that because I have already tol.d you that the losing bidders do not get their money back

The cost of losing is factored into all bids. The winner will recoup the cost of failed bids through their successful ones.

So first are going to recoup their money back from losing Scotrail, the Cally Sleeper and the East Coast bid through just running Great western? or maybe winning the WCML again? God you talk out of your arse.

Unless you think the money for losing bids comes from the Magic Money Tree, it is clear that the costs of franchising are borne by the industry, regardless of whether a company wins or loses.

No I don't think it comes from there but you seemingly think that the losing bids will somehow get their bid money back even if they have no other franchises in the country which is quite frankly the most preposterous thing you may have ever said. And you say a lot of them.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

The fact only one person died was a credit to the design. They were lucky that it wasn't worse, even with the design, or that a different type of train wasn't involved- I doubt a 185 would survive so well.

Well I doubt a 185 would've been going as fast so therefore you are just speaking hypothetically because accidents at different speeds will have different outcomes the same as trains/cards that are designed differently will.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Yes Geezertronic it includes all deaths. But the Rail magazine I read last year said it was some sort of tragic record since these figures were collected or something. Safety can always be improved, but only level crossings have been looked at.
I think a noise making device should be installed at pedrestrian only crossings like at pelican crossings to alert of an oncoming train.

 

[67018]

There have been fewer accidents in the last ten years, but trying to claim that the privatised industry is "safer" is ludicrous. Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar were all big accidents, primarily caused by the fragmentation of the railway industry and a culture of profit ahead of safety. Southall was probably the best example of it, with Great Western Trains cutting driving crew because of AWS and then deciding to not bother maintaining the equipment because it cost money.

More recently, they were very lucky at Grayrigg that the Pendolino was such a strong train.

I don't hark back to a utopia that never was. BR had its faults, many of them were the same as what we have now. But the fact is that the railways we have now are far more expensive than they ever were under BR, and we don't get anything else for our money. We're paying fat cats like Brian Souter (no doubt he's a "poor wee pensioner" who just wants "value for his retirement" too :roll: ) a fortune to run something we could do just as well for free.

A nationalised railway would be no "better", but it would be cheaper.

And how many of those accidents happened in the last 10 years? And I well remember Cowden, Purley and Clapham Junction from the BR era.

I believe that the railway is safer in 2015 than it was 25 years ago - not that it was safer in 1999 or 2000. The elimination of slam-door stock being an example. In fact I suspect that higher standards of safety are one of the reasons for costs being higher - after that series of accidents in the late 90s/early 2000s the public demanded higher safety, and got it. At a cost.

The assertion that a nationalised railway would be cheaper is just that - an assertion. Comparisons with 20 years ago are virtually meaningless given that the number of journeys has doubled in that period, on a network much the same size.

 

[Bald Rick]

And how many of those accidents happened in the last 10 years? And I well remember Cowden, Purley and Clapham Junction from the BR era.

I believe that the railway is safer in 2015 than it was 25 years ago - not that it was safer in 1999 or 2000. The elimination of slam-door stock being an example. In fact I suspect that higher standards of safety are one of the reasons for costs being higher - after that series of accidents in the late 90s/early 2000s the public demanded higher safety, and got it. At a cost.

The assertion that a nationalised railway would be cheaper is just that - an assertion. Comparisons with 20 years ago are virtually meaningless given that the number of journeys has doubled in that period, on a network much the same size.

Spot on.

Look at any decent analysis of accident stats - and by that I mean accidents that were in the control of the railway system, ie not suicides and tresspass - and you see a steady improvement over the last 40 years. In the mid 70s there were typically 2-3 train accidents each year involving on board passenger or staff fatalities. By the late 80s that was down to 1-2. The trend improved after the turn of the millennium. Now we are at the point where there has been 1 in the last decade, and every railway employee hopes that this trend continues. A sizeable proportion of this has been down to the roll out of much improved signalling including AWS and TPWS, plus much improved rolling stock construction.

What no one knows, and we can all only surmise, is whether that trend would also have improved as it did with a nationalised system.

One historical note. After Clapham, the then SoS Transport said that money would not stand in the way of implementing ATP across the network. And then quietly told BR that it would have to find the money internally, ie cancel other projects to fund it. It would be very, very difficult for a minister to do that in the funding and regulatory environment we have today.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well I doubt a 185 would've been going as fast so therefore you are just speaking hypothetically because accidents at different speeds will have different outcomes the same as trains/cards that are designed differently will.

And in any case the 185 is a solidly-built steel-bodied coach with quite a small cross-section. I can see no reason why, other than the possibility of fire from the diesel, it wouldn't survive so well.

Bolted aluminium units like Turbostars OTOH...

Neil

 

[Railsigns]

Perhaps it's time for a reminder of some truths which defenders of rail privatisation don't want us to know:

In the years immediately preceding privatisation, British Rail had become one of the most efficient railways in the world. It took an annual subsidy of around £1 billion from the taxpayer and, thanks to Treasury rules which prevented it from borrowing, it had no debt. The service was coherent, the fares were reasonable and passenger numbers were rising, reversing decades of gradual decline in the face of government policy which had actively encouraged the growth of private car use. Renewed confidence in rail's future prospects led to much investment in new trains, modern signalling, electrification and re-opening previously closed stations and lines.

This describes BR's position when, in the mid-1990s, the Tory government under John Major implemented their policy of breaking it up and selling off the pieces. This was done with the promise that 'private sector efficiency' would lead to lower fares and reduced public subsidy - claims repeated often by the Prime Minister, the Transport Secretary, as well as various other prominent Tories (it's all recorded in the Hansard archives - take a look). We can speculate as to whether they honestly believed those claims at the time or what their true motives might have been.

Twenty years (and four serious fatal rail accidents) later on, are the fares lower? No; rail fares have risen significantly, far beyond the rate of inflation. British passengers now pay the highest rail fares in Europe. Has the £1 billion annual burden on the taxpayer been reduced? No; since privatisation, the rail industry requires around £6 billion in public subsidies. The situation can't possibly be any worse than that though, can it? Oh, yes it can! Despite the higher fares (and passenger numbers which continue to rise) and despite the massively increased contribution from the taxpayer, since privatisation the rail industry has added a whopping £30 billion to the national debt and this figure is rising all the time.

Contrary to all evidence, the government, DfT and ATOC all declare that rail privatisation has been a resounding success. A "resounding success" when fares haven't gone down as was promised but have risen, and when taxpayers contribute several times more than before, not less as was promised? And contrary to claims that Britain's rail industry has been "liberalised" by privatisation, direct government interference in its running has increased markedly, not decreased.

I fully support renationalisation of our railway and, yes, I spent many years in which I actually experienced BR's services, and not just as a child. I don't wear rose-tinted spectacles.

Maybe one day, the defenders of rail privatisation will tell us their true motives. It is ignorance (in which case please read and digest the above)? (And if anyone disputes anything I've written here, do feel free to put me right.) It is naivety ("ooh, look at all the pretty colours on trains nowadays")? It is vested interests ("my shares are doing just fine and that's all that matters"). Or, is it good old political dogma - "privatisation at any price"?

 

[lordbusiness]

Ok, time for my twopenneth worth:

1. I look back with nostalgia at BR days- Would I want it back? No way!

I travelled a lot in the early to mid eighties, what do I remember?

A railway run for the benefit of the railway not the customer. Missed connection- not my problem mate! 1930 on a Friday evening at BNS- next train to Norwich 0700 on Saturday etc..

2. Do you really think a nationalised railway would be properly funded by Govt? It never was before- what makes you think it would be again. There is more likelihood of budget cuts to shore up the NHS, benefits etc. Not to mention any profit being put into govt coffers. Govt short of money= cut funding.

3. I'm going to be controversial here....This is not an anti union rant but, nationalisation would massively increase the power and influence of the rail unions, something no govt will want in the 21st century. Remember the last national rail strike- 1994 I think? Do we really want to go back?

 

[Hophead]

The government has spent an awful lot of money to prove the superiority of the current franchised system.

In the past, money was routinely withheld from British Rail, which served to prove the inferiority of the nationalised system.

 

[Carlisle]

3. I'm going to be controversial here....This is not an anti union rant but, nationalisation would massively increase the power and influence of the rail unions, something no govt will want in the 21st century. Remember the last national rail strike- 1994 I think? Do we really want to go back?

That's simply not true ,turning the huge 1948 steam age network into the modern cost effective one that BR mostly became in the end was always going to involve massive changes to most things along the way,including some that would significantly upset the unions, whereas many of today's TOCs haven't yet had to undertake anything more challenging than fleet replacement

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Perhaps it's time for a reminder of some truths which defenders of rail privatisation don't want us to know:

In the years immediately preceding privatisation, British Rail had become one of the most efficient railways in the world. It took an annual subsidy of around £1 billion from the taxpayer and, thanks to Treasury rules which prevented it from borrowing, it had no debt. The service was coherent, the fares were reasonable and passenger numbers were rising, reversing decades of gradual decline in the face of government policy which had actively encouraged the growth of private car use. Renewed confidence in rail's future prospects led to much investment in new trains, modern signalling, electrification and re-opening previously closed stations and lines.

This describes BR's position when, in the mid-1990s, the Tory government under John Major implemented their policy of breaking it up and selling off the pieces. This was done with the promise that 'private sector efficiency' would lead to lower fares and reduced public subsidy - claims repeated often by the Prime Minister, the Transport Secretary, as well as various other prominent Tories (it's all recorded in the Hansard archives - take a look). We can speculate as to whether they honestly believed those claims at the time or what their true motives might have been.

Twenty years (and four serious fatal rail accidents) later on, are the fares lower? No; rail fares have risen significantly, far beyond the rate of inflation. British passengers now pay the highest rail fares in Europe. Has the £1 billion annual burden on the taxpayer been reduced? No; since privatisation, the rail industry requires around £6 billion in public subsidies. The situation can't possibly be any worse than that though, can it? Oh, yes it can! Despite the higher fares (and passenger numbers which continue to rise) and despite the massively increased contribution from the taxpayer, since privatisation the rail industry has added a whopping £30 billion to the national debt and this figure is rising all the time.

Contrary to all evidence, the government, DfT and ATOC all declare that rail privatisation has been a resounding success. A "resounding success" when fares haven't gone down as was promised but have risen, and when taxpayers contribute several times more than before, not less as was promised? And contrary to claims that Britain's rail industry has been "liberalised" by privatisation, direct government interference in its running has increased markedly, not decreased.

I fully support renationalisation of our railway and, yes, I spent many years in which I actually experienced BR's services, and not just as a child. I don't wear rose-tinted spectacles.

Maybe one day, the defenders of rail privatisation will tell us their true motives. It is ignorance (in which case please read and digest the above)? (And if anyone disputes anything I've written here, do feel free to put me right.) It is naivety ("ooh, look at all the pretty colours on trains nowadays")? It is vested interests ("my shares are doing just fine and that's all that matters"). Or, is it good old political dogma - "privatisation at any price"?

A good post that I agree with. I think the main reasons some think private is good is that useage went up which everyone wants, and are scared of the unknown.

 

[fowler9]

So you can guarantee that centralised management by civil servants is guaranteed to provide substantially improved efficiency? That's a touching faith in the public sector. There are both well and badly run companies in both public and private sectors; it's just as likely that nationalisation would lead to much the same managers in charge but with more meddling from politicians.



Ah yes, that tired old argument with a bit of unwarranted abuse thrown in. Most shareholders are pension and other institutional funds, but of course it's harder to deny pensioners the right to a decent return on their money to pay for their old age than conjure up some mythical and dated stereotype of evil rich people.

As has already been stated, many fares are regulated and the railway as a whole is heavily subsidised i.e. we are paying below cost price for the rail service. If you don't like the fares, complain to the DfT and be honest that you are just demanding greatewr subsidy from the taxpayer.

These are good points but subsidising private sharehoulders with public money?

 

[Flamingo]

3. I'm going to be controversial here....This is not an anti union rant but, nationalisation would massively increase the power and influence of the rail unions, something no govt will want in the 21st century. Remember the last national rail strike- 1994 I think? Do we really want to go back?

What, like the way the unions have such power and influence over the NHS? :roll:

Unless one works for the railways, you would not believe how integral the unions are to the structure and administration of the Railways. Rota's, holidays, Health and Safety, diagrams, the list goes on. I could not believe it when I started. I have known several situations where staff were of the opinion that the company and the union (or at least the reps) have combined to stitch the staff up for their own reasons.

Anyway, I apologise for going off-thread.

To give my tuppence-worth, I have worked in the public sector since I was 18, and never had as good terms, conditions and wages as I have now in the "private" sector. I would say that re-nationalisation of the railway would result in an erosion of these.

Mess-room tales of the BR days are of poor pay, long hours, having to work lots of overtime to make a living wage, and little concern or consideration by management of staff fatigue and welfare.

When I look at friends still in the Civil Service and NHS I would never consider going back to that!

 

[al78]

Spot on.

Look at any decent analysis of accident stats - and by that I mean accidents that were in the control of the railway system, ie not suicides and tresspass - and you see a steady improvement over the last 40 years. In the mid 70s there were typically 2-3 train accidents each year involving on board passenger or staff fatalities. By the late 80s that was down to 1-2. The trend improved after the turn of the millennium. Now we are at the point where there has been 1 in the last decade, and every railway employee hopes that this trend continues. A sizeable proportion of this has been down to the roll out of much improved signalling including AWS and TPWS, plus much improved rolling stock construction.

According to Wikipedia (which may or may not be accurate) there has been more than one such fatality in the last 10 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ited_Kingdom#1995_onwards:_Post-privatisation

The ones in that list where the railway was at least partly at fault are the 22nd October 2011 (1), 16th January 2010 (1) and 23rd February 2007 (1). If you go a little further back than a decade then you have Ladbrook Grove (1999), Hatfield (2000) and Potters Bar (2002), combined total 42 deaths.

This doesn't alter the fact that the railway is a very safe form of transport, especially when compared to road transport.

 

[Taunton]

you have Ladbroke Grove (1999), Hatfield (2000) and Potters Bar (2002), combined total 42 deaths.

It is a curious feature of the British network that so many of the major accidents, over generations, have happened in the London suburbs.

 

[Robertj21a]

What, like the way the unions have such power and influence over the NHS? :roll:

Unless one works for the railways, you would not believe how integral the unions are to the structure and administration of the Railways. Rota's, holidays, Health and Safety, diagrams, the list goes on. I could not believe it when I started. I have known several situations where staff were of the opinion that the company and the union (or at least the reps) have combined to stitch the staff up for their own reasons.

Anyway, I apologise for going off-thread.

To give my tuppence-worth, I have worked in the public sector since I was 18, and never had as good terms, conditions and wages as I have now in the "private" sector. I would say that re-nationalisation of the railway would result in an erosion of these.

Mess-room tales of the BR days are of poor pay, long hours, having to work lots of overtime to make a living wage, and little concern or consideration by management of staff fatigue and welfare.

When I look at friends still in the Civil Service and NHS I would never consider going back to that!

For me at least, this post sums up rather well what I guess will be the concerns of many. The creation of some massive organisation, through re-nationalisation of the railways, is an open invitation for Unions to then attack the government off the day if/when they don't like anything.

Good Unions can be very good, helpful for their members and welcomed by management. However, other Unions can also adopt highly aggressive methods of attack where their 'mob rule' approach to everyone else is used to steamroller through their demands. No government is going to welcome any return to a 'Scargill era'.

 

[Carlisle]

One historical note. After Clapham, the then SoS Transport said that money would not stand in the way of implementing ATP across the network. And then quietly told BR that it would have to find the money internally, ie cancel other projects to fund it. It would be very, very difficult for a minister to do that in the funding and regulatory environment we have today.

Maybe (totally wrongly) as it turned out)the government of the day thought they could get away with kicking the funding commitment into the long grass once It became clear to them that ATP whilst very desirable,would not have prevented the Clapham accident itself

 

[Tetchytyke]

I believe that the railway is safer in 2015 than it was 25 years ago - not that it was safer in 1999 or 2000. The elimination of slam-door stock being an example.

I believe the railways are safer too. Construction standards of rolling stock have risen, for one thing. 25-30 years ago Grayrigg would have been a huge disaster, rather than merely a tragedy.

But I do think the fragmentation of the railway made things worse, not better. The three crashes in the late 90s/early 00s would not have happened without the penny-pinching of the TOCs and the profit-driven incompetence of Railtrack. We are still paying through the nose for the failures of Railtrack- Network Rail's debt is £30bn and rising, and that's up from a debt of £0 in 1994- and I genuinely cannot see a single area where "private industry" has made the slightest discernible difference to the railway network.

The assertion that a nationalised railway would be cheaper is just that - an assertion. Comparisons with 20 years ago are virtually meaningless given that the number of journeys has doubled in that period, on a network much the same size.

All the evidence points towards nationalised railways being cheaper.

Exhibit one: Translink in Northern Ireland.

Exhibit two: the failure of Metronet.

For me at least, this post sums up rather well what I guess will be the concerns of many. The creation of some massive organisation, through re-nationalisation of the railways, is an open invitation for Unions to then attack the government off the day if/when they don't like anything.

But there is absolutely no proof anywhere that the "unions" will "attack" anyone. They didn't under British Rail, they don't in the NHS, they don't in the civil service.

Strikes in the NHS are unheard of. They've only recently happened in the NHS because "the Government of the day" asked an independent pay review body to recommend on pay, and then promptly ignored their recommendation when they didn't get the answer they wanted. Before that can you remember the last time nurses went out on strike? I can't.

I know you're the sort of person who thinks union members love nothing more than going out on strike at the drop of the hat, but the truth is strike action generally hurts the union member more than the employer. I lose £150 every day I'm out on strike, for instance, and the pay rise I secured on the back of my strike action last year doesn't even cover the money I lost trying to get it.

There are far more strike actions called in our privatised railway utopia than there ever were under BR. Some of the strikes are obvious, and some (such as work-to-rule and refusing overtime) are not. But they are there, and far more frequent than you seem to think. Fragmented industries encourage strike action, because different employers can be played off against each other. One industry doesn't have the same weakness: if one company employs all the train drivers, suddenly the pay offer becomes "like it or lump it", as my partner (who works in the NHS) is only too happy to point out.

If you don't like trade unions you can always hand back your right to paid sick leave and paid holidays, you know.

 

[67018]

Maybe one day, the defenders of rail privatisation will tell us their true motives. It is ignorance (in which case please read and digest the above)? (And if anyone disputes anything I've written here, do feel free to put me right.) It is naivety ("ooh, look at all the pretty colours on trains nowadays")? It is vested interests ("my shares are doing just fine and that's all that matters"). Or, is it good old political dogma - "privatisation at any price"?

Maybe I can explain something about 'true motives'.

My main argument is that so much has changed in 25 years that it's very difficult to make a direct comparison and naive to assume that there's an easy alternative structure that will magically make things better. It's just as likely to consume the railway in years of expensive restructuring, diverting attention from actually delivering the current investment programme.

The 'facts' you quote are also arguable. Take subsidy for example - the gross figure is one number , but what about per passenger, or passenger mile, or any other measure?

And what about fares? Ask someone travelling on a refurbished Mark 3 from Birmingham to Marylebone on a £6 advance whether they are getting value for money, and you will get a different answer than if you ask the same person going the other way on an £84 SOS. Fares are going up because of a government decision to shift the balance between subsidy and fares - by all means argue for the reversal of that policy, but that's a different debate.

I was going to mention staff conditions too - which, by all accounts, have improved in the last 20 years. I would much rather travel on a railway staffed by highly trained professionals who are appropriately compensated for working unsociable shifts in a safety-critical role. However I think I'm breaking the forum rule that prohibits 'civilians' from saying anything nice about rail staff, particularly over pay...

 

[Tetchytyke]

Ok, well the legal stuff came to around 9 million so overall the shambles cost the DfT £50 million. There is no cost to the Govt for running the bidding again as they already have the people on the payroll to do so and the bidders will more than likely be the same 4.

So people on the payroll at DafT, employed specifically to work on franchises, have no cost to DafT?

I'm assuming this is the same sort of logic that sees the Rail Delivery Group telling us they deliver "excellent value for money".

You cant just factor it across all franchises like that because I have already tol.d you that the losing bidders do not get their money back

It costs Loser PLC £10-15m to lose a franchise bid. Do you think this money comes from:

1. The magic money tree;
2. The expert legal staff working on "no win no fee"; or
3. From elsewhere within their business?

If you've answered (3) then you're agreeing that the costs of franchising are borne by the industry as a whole. Even if it's £50m per franchise, it still adds up to 25% of the costs of the IEP for each and every franchise round. Most franchises have had 3-4 rounds since 1994. That's the equivalent of the entire IEP project (and that's overpriced and under-specified). Instead it went to the lawyers to argue about how much profit should be privatised and how much risk should be nationalised.

As I've said before, I don't think BR was some wonderful utopia and nationalisation would see my train double in size and my fares halve. Nothing much would change. But I deeply resent paying a fortune out to the fat cats, who do absolutely nothing except skim all the cream off for themselves. The current industry is designed by and for the fat cats, not for the passenger. Even BR had better customer service than this.

--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

One historical note. After Clapham, the then SoS Transport said that money would not stand in the way of implementing ATP across the network. And then quietly told BR that it would have to find the money internally, ie cancel other projects to fund it. It would be very, very difficult for a minister to do that in the funding and regulatory environment we have today.

I think it would be just as easy to do it in the environment we have today, if not easier. There is no line of responsibility anymore, there is nobody in the industry you can point at and pin the blame to. Everyone can blame everyone else and nothing can get done.

The "regulatory framework" we have now allowed Great Western Trains to have trains out in service with defective AWS, with barely a shrug of the shoulders from anyone. The Minister can say just how terribly terribly terribly sorry he is that it happened, but Great Western Trains can get the blame and the fine and the Minister can get his highly-paid consultancy when he retires.

There is no accountability within the railway industry now. The boss of Network Rail can screw up three major engineering projects and shrug his shoulders- "of course I'm going to keep my bonus!"- and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

 

[sonorguy]

Spot on.

Look at any decent analysis of accident stats - and by that I mean accidents that were in the control of the railway system, ie not suicides and tresspass - and you see a steady improvement over the last 40 years. In the mid 70s there were typically 2-3 train accidents each year involving on board passenger or staff fatalities. By the late 80s that was down to 1-2. The trend improved after the turn of the millennium. Now we are at the point where there has been 1 in the last decade, and every railway employee hopes that this trend continues. A sizeable proportion of this has been down to the roll out of much improved signalling including AWS and TPWS, plus much improved rolling stock construction.

What no one knows, and we can all only surmise, is whether that trend would also have improved as it did with a nationalised system.

One historical note. After Clapham, the then SoS Transport said that money would not stand in the way of implementing ATP across the network. And then quietly told BR that it would have to find the money internally, ie cancel other projects to fund it. It would be very, very difficult for a minister to do that in the funding and regulatory environment we have today.

It's difficult to find any up to date and sensible analysis, but the important figure in this is actually fatalities per passenger mile, ie what are your chances of dying if you get on a train, not just a bald number of deaths.

Most sensible figures show that this is so low that it needs to be presented as deaths per BILLION passenger miles. That figure has significantly, from 0.8 death per bn passenger miles in 1993 to 0.5 deaths per bn passenger miles in the most recent year's figures I could see, although it was as low as 0.14 per bn pass miles in 1994. This period also takes in Great Heck, Ladbroke Grove, Potters Bar and Hatfield, the last four rail crashes involving significant loss of life.

So it is possible to state that rail travel in the UK has got significantly safer since privatisation. As you correctly state it isn't possible to tell whether this is a causal relationship or not.

 

[WelshBluebird]

It is a curious feature of the British network that so many of the major accidents, over generations, have happened in the London suburbs.

I think that is to be expected really. London has such a high concentration of railway lines and routes into it that the approaches to many of its major stations are a lot more complicated than approaches to stations elsewhere in the country. A more complicated set up means more can go wrong (and it bomces "easier" for a driver to be distracted etc etc).

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think that is to be expected really. London has such a high concentration of railway lines and routes into it that the approaches to many of its major stations are a lot more complicated than approaches to stations elsewhere in the country. A more complicated set up means more can go wrong (and it bomces "easier" for a driver to be distracted etc etc).

Indeed. And in the regions if you consider a 2-track local line with an hourly service, unless you're very unlucky even if it does go badly wrong there simply won't be anything around to hit.

Neil

 

[SamYeager]

Strikes in the NHS are unheard of. They've only recently happened in the NHS because "the Government of the day" asked an independent pay review body to recommend on pay, and then promptly ignored their recommendation when they didn't get the answer they wanted.

*cough* Winter of discontent *cough*

Maybe not nurses but various other NHS staff took sundry forms of industrial action. Try removing your own rose-tinted glasses.

 

[Tetchytyke]

*cough* Winter of discontent *cough*

Which was 36 years ago- most people working then will be coming on retirement age now (even the youngest workers then will now be 52).

If that's the most recent example you can come up with, you're really proving my point.

 

[Robertj21a]

But there is absolutely no proof anywhere that the "unions" will "attack" anyone. They didn't under British Rail, they don't in the NHS, they don't in the civil service.

Strikes in the NHS are unheard of. They've only recently happened in the NHS because "the Government of the day" asked an independent pay review body to recommend on pay, and then promptly ignored their recommendation when they didn't get the answer they wanted. Before that can you remember the last time nurses went out on strike? I can't.

I know you're the sort of person who thinks union members love nothing more than going out on strike at the drop of the hat, but the truth is strike action generally hurts the union member more than the employer. I lose £150 every day I'm out on strike, for instance, and the pay rise I secured on the back of my strike action last year doesn't even cover the money I lost trying to get it.

There are far more strike actions called in our privatised railway utopia than there ever were under BR. Some of the strikes are obvious, and some (such as work-to-rule and refusing overtime) are not. But they are there, and far more frequent than you seem to think. Fragmented industries encourage strike action, because different employers can be played off against each other. One industry doesn't have the same weakness: if one company employs all the train drivers, suddenly the pay offer becomes "like it or lump it", as my partner (who works in the NHS) is only too happy to point out.

If you don't like trade unions you can always hand back your right to paid sick leave and paid holidays, you know.

Not much point in debating things at all if you honestly believe that a big, powerful, union wouldn't use its 'clout' to attack the government whenever it sees fit.

No idea why you brought the NHS into it when I clearly referred to the renationalisation of the railways. In any event, I would suggest that nurses and doctors might reasonably be assumed to have a generally more caring approach to their fellow citizens.

 

[Gareth Marston]

The complexity of the industry's structure and the "hidden" nature of Government specification which itself is another complexity means Joe Public have a foggy picture of how mainland rail operates in the UK. They know something's wrong and the left have been able to ram home an over simplistic version of why.

It's an argument the Neo liberalists lost with the general public some time ago. No amount of huffing and puffing from anti nationalisation supporters on this forum is going to change that.

Back in the 1970's Enoch Powell seriously investigated whether TV sets could be fitted with voting buttons for big issues. As my university lecturers said "beware deomacracy". The railways would be nationalised and we'd have left the EU if these proposals had come to fruition.

I'd be more concerned about the potential coalition partners for Ed Milliband and what they might be looking for than the power of the unions.

 

[Chris Wallis]

Isn't the pro-privatisation argument completely undermined by the level of subsidy?

Is the purchase of new Rolling Stock included in the subsidy, or is that a separate investment?

I note that re-nationalising the railway nearly always comes down to 'a return to BR' pitch, even though there are other options staring us in the face!

But, as I've said before, it doesn't really matter, because this particular gravy train will never be derailed!

 

[Bald Rick]

According to Wikipedia (which may or may not be accurate) there has been more than one such fatality in the last 10 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ited_Kingdom#1995_onwards:_Post-privatisation

The ones in that list where the railway was at least partly at fault are the 22nd October 2011 (1), 16th January 2010 (1) and 23rd February 2007 (1). If you go a little further back than a decade then you have Ladbrook Grove (1999), Hatfield (2000) and Potters Bar (2002), combined total 42 deaths.

This doesn't alter the fact that the railway is a very safe form of transport, especially when compared to road transport.

Pedantic point (from me), but I think you missed the bit about on board passenger / staff fatalities.
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The change in subsidy levels is an interesting one, and one that I very nearly wrote a Masters dissertation on. But life got in the way.

There is no doubt that some of the increase in the running cost of the railway has been down to the fragmentation - ie the cost of the contractual boundaries, and privatisation, which put bluntly is profit.

However there is also a strong case that some - indeed most - of the increase has been down to us now having a much better railway. To take four examples:

1) rolling stock. The cost of buiying and maintaining the average multiple unit now, in real terms, is significantly more than the cost of the units that BR bought and operated in its latter days. Aircon, power doors, CIS, wi-fi, much more power, it all costs money.

2) safety. The improved safety record didn't happen by accident if you pardon the pun. Broken rails are at about a third of BR levels with much more traffic. This costs a lot of cash in track renewals and rail grinding - far more annually than BR did in it's last decade. TPWS cost about half a billion just for the infrastructure (which now needs maintenance). GSM-R is well over a billion plus maintenance. Staff safety has been transformed - anyone on the railway over 30 years will know a story of someone who was killed - or nearly so - in their early career. But that has cost, and continues to cost, money to make it happen.

3) salaries. When I started in 1992, my salary was £7,250. Someone starting at the same level now will earn well over twice that. RPI has increased 70% in that time. Most railway jobs pay considerably better in real terms on a like for like basis than they did in 1994.

4) we run a lot more trains. And, as we know, all but the highest volume / highest value services lose money. Ergo, we run more trains that lose money. Hence more subsidy.

Now it is quite likely that all these improvements would have happened without privatisation - given the right political will of course. But they would still have cost money.

Finally, fares. We may have the most expensive fares in Eurooe, and I believe we did under BR too. The Real increase in fares can be measured several ways depending what point you want to prove. But in my view the most accurate is £farebox income per passenger km as that reflects what was actually paid, as opposed to any given ticket price. There are stats on that out there, why I can't find right now. However I do know that in the last few years of BR, average fares rose by 2-6 % above RPI every year for about 7 years.