Nationalisation vs repatriation

[glbotu]

I'd just like to see us use DB's model. Have a nationally owned/run company who can bid for franchises, but is on a level playing field with private companies, both at home and abroad. If, like in Germany, the DB offer is the best seen, then it goes to the government run company, but, if like the RRX franchise, someone else (National Express in this case) is seen to be a better offer, then they should run the company and any money made in other countries just adds to the treasury's pockets.

 

[Moonshot]

I'd just like to see us use DB's model. Have a nationally owned/run company who can bid for franchises, but is on a level playing field with private companies, both at home and abroad. If, like in Germany, the DB offer is the best seen, then it goes to the government run company, but, if like the RRX franchise, someone else (National Express in this case) is seen to be a better offer, then they should run the company and any money made in other countries just adds to the treasury's pockets.

Not an altogether bad idea, in effect the state bid becomes a benchmark. A variation of this would be for Rail Unions themselves to bid for franchises as a" not for profit " business.

 

[daikilo]

I'd just like to see us use DB's model. Have a nationally owned/run company who can bid for franchises, but is on a level playing field with private companies, both at home and abroad. If, like in Germany, the DB offer is the best seen, then it goes to the government run company, but, if like the RRX franchise, someone else (National Express in this case) is seen to be a better offer, then they should run the company and any money made in other countries just adds to the treasury's pockets.

As far as I am aware, only selected operations are franchised in Germany, mainly by the Länder, although some are quite large. Certainly, I have never seen mention of franchising the IC services, although there is some timid open access competition.

 

[Bletchleyite]

As far as I am aware, only selected operations are franchised in Germany, mainly by the Länder, although some are quite large. Certainly, I have never seen mention of franchising the IC services, although there is some timid open access competition.

RB/RE/S are franchised/contracted, IC/ICE are not, basically. The latter run, allegedly, without subsidy, though that is complicated.

In a way[1] our entire system does follow the German model (minus the ability for DOR to bid) - it's just that our entire system is by the European concept Regional, we don't have a commercial IC/ICE equivalent.

[1] If you consider England, Wales and Scotland as Bundesland equivalents, which they sort-of are in terms of the power they have.

 

[meridian2]

Roads are classed as an essential. If the road network shut down overnight it would have catastrophic effects. If the rail network shut down overnight it would affect, about 5% of journeys? The impact would not be as great, so maybe there is a feeling that railways are something nice to have rather than a necessity.

Those figures didn't arrive accidentally of course, they were based on government decisions back in the 1960s. The areas that have kept most of their railways, London and the south east principally, are those that would be most effected by their loss. Indeed their permanent removal would be catastrophic for the financial welfare of the nation.

With increasing devolution on the agenda, nationally and regionally, and the inefficiency of the road network in offering the swift personal transport they were designed for, a national rail policy is a pressing issue. I don't see how rail expansion (HS2 is an irrelevance in the bigger picture) to serve that need can happen under private ownership. At best franchises can offer everyone who wants one a seat, and that's probably a pipe dream. Developing the network in the regions would require long term planning only government can offer.

 

[Mikey C]

Can anyone imagine all the roads being privatised? I can't, except for a few toll routes. They're seen as an "investment". Rail on the other hand is subsidised. The inference contained in those two words reveals successive government's attitude to rail travel.

To complaints about pricing and service, one rail spokesmen said before Christmas that people aren't forced to live away from work, they can always move. I believe that's completely unrealistic for a number of reasons. The country as a whole has to get used to the idea that national rail transport infrastructure will cost the tax payer, and does benefit the nation.

Roads aren't "privatised" but road use is easily paid for by the massive taxes on fuel

And the poor maintenance of much of the local road network shows what happens to budgets when times are tight, and local governments have other higher priorities.
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On the other question, if you have a system of tendering then you want as many people as possible to bid, to drive the cost down and encourage innovation.

To me tendering should give a "fair" level of profit to the bidder, but depending on the route, there should be downside risk as well as upside risk. It's not right that firms can overbid for a route, then try and walk away when they find they're making losses

 

[meridian2]

Roads aren't "privatised" but road use is easily paid for by the massive taxes on fuel

And the poor maintenance of much of the local road network shows what happens to budgets when times are tight, and local governments have other higher priorities.
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On the other question, if you have a system of tendering then you want as many people as possible to bid, to drive the cost down and encourage innovation.

To me tendering should give a "fair" level of profit to the bidder, but depending on the route, there should be downside risk as well as upside risk. It's not right that firms can overbid for a route, then try and walk away when they find they're making losses

I thought fuel tax went into a central kitty, like vehicle licences? They're not a fee to use the road and keep it in good repair, they're a tax on car ownership. You can use the roads with a zero emissions vehicle for now't.

Tendering breaks down when it involves expansion, particularly the compulsory purchase of land. Would you want your home bought up by a profit making private company and the benefit redistributed to shareholders?

 

[coppercapped]

As far as I am aware, only selected operations are franchised in Germany, mainly by the Länder, although some are quite large. Certainly, I have never seen mention of franchising the IC services, although there is some timid open access competition.

The background to the German structure is quite involved. In the 'Basic Law', the Grundgesetz, which was written after the War when the Federal Republic was being set up, the requirement was that the provision of rail services was a matter for the Bund, the Federal government. This remained the case for many years and many railway staff, including drivers, were classified as Beamter, essentially senior grade civil servants - although there is no direct comparison here. This meant that they could not strike, could not be laid off (except for serious offences such as having their hand in the till) and were security checked to ensure that they were not communists or sympathisers. The costs of running the system, the loss of traffic to the roads and the need to make changes meant that attempts were made to change the structure. The status of Beamter was removed for many staff in the days of Chancellor Schmidt in the late 1970s in an effort to make the organisation more flexible.

Following the re-union of Germany there was a reform of the now united East and West railway administrations in 1996. This reserved long distance traffic, Fernverkehr, for the Bund and made the Länder responsible for regional traffic. The German Constitution, the modern equivalent of the Grundgesetz, still reserves long distance traffic as a matter for the Bund. This is why there have not been any attempts yet to offer it to third parties to run.

The Länder may buy in transport services in their area, which is why companies do supply some of the trains. However these are operating contracts only - for so many train-kilometers per year - and do not include any revenue risk.

The problem which exists - and it is being debated in Germany now - is that DBAG also charges for track access and there are strong suspicions that it rigs the charges and takes legal action in order to benefit its own train operations. See for example the latest case for the S-Bahn in Nurnberg. There is no independent economic regulator in the German system and as a result the private sector - even the private freight operators of which there are many - claim that they are being discriminated against by DBAG.

This will run and run. But the point is the German structure, legal, political and financial is very different from that pertaining here.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I thought fuel tax went into a central kitty, like vehicle licences? They're not a fee to use the road and keep it in good repair, they're a tax on car ownership. You can use the roads with a zero emissions vehicle for now't.

It is indeed a general tax, but the OP argues that the income from it exceeds road spending (ergo for any practical sense it funds roads). I don't know if that is true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

 

[meridian2]

It is indeed a general tax, but the OP argues that the income from it exceeds road spending (ergo for any practical sense it funds roads). I don't know if that is true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

Yes, petrol tax is one of a number of govt cash cows, like alcohol, cigarettes, VAT, inheritance tax, etc, but the money doesn't go from the exchequer into roads any more than booze goes to liver transplant research or cigarette tax is aligned with cancer units.

The merit/deficit of rail and roads is almost impossible to factor without some ideological element. The conservative government of the 1960s were wedded to road expansion, the fact members were senior shareholders in road building companies was of course completely coincidental to the haste with which rail closure was implemented!
The country can either keep building new roads, all of which fill up in a few years if not months, or increase rail capacity. Sitting on its hands with regard to transport planning is not really an option - though govts of different colours will certainly tr).

 

[coppercapped]

I thought fuel tax went into a central kitty, like vehicle licences? They're not a fee to use the road and keep it in good repair, they're a tax on car ownership. You can use the roads with a zero emissions vehicle for now't.

Tendering breaks down when it involves expansion, particularly the compulsory purchase of land. Would you want your home bought up by a profit making private company and the benefit redistributed to shareholders?

It certainly depends on the price that the developers are prepared to pay. Paying over the odds for a property may well be cheaper for the developer than going through the rigmarole of compulsory purchase.
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Yes, petrol tax is one of a number of govt cash cows, like alcohol, cigarettes, VAT, inheritance tax, etc, but the money doesn't go from the exchequer into roads any more than booze goes to liver transplant research or cigarette tax is aligned with cancer units.

The merit/deficit of rail and roads is almost impossible to factor without some ideological element. The conservative government of the 1960s were wedded to road expansion, the fact members were senior shareholders in road building companies was of course completely coincidental to the haste with which rail closure was implemented!
The country can either keep building new roads, all of which fill up in a few years if not months, or increase rail capacity. Sitting on its hands with regard to transport planning is not really an option - though govts of different colours will certainly tr).

The driving force behind the road building at the time was the more than doubling of the number of motor cars on the road between 1950 and 1960, from 1,979,000 to 4,900,000.

Of course it was necessary to build roads to cope with that growth. The fact that Marples was dodgy character - and it was only Marples who had significant interests in a road building company, so don't try to smear all the Government ministers - had nothing to do with the fact that roads were badly needed.

Road building to cope with pre-war traffic increases had started in the 1920s and 1930s when, for example, the Brighton Road was widened and the Great West Road was carved through the suburbs of west London. You can still see where roads were cut in two. Road building was not new and not uniquely aimed by the Conservatives at the nationalised railway. It was a process which had started a lot earlier and had been stopped by the Second World War.

 

[meridian2]

It certainly depends on the price that the developers are prepared to pay. Paying over the odds for a property may well be cheaper for the developer than going through the rigmarole of compulsory purchase.
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The driving force behind the road building at the time was the more than doubling of the number of motor cars on the road between 1950 and 1960, from 1,979,000 to 4,900,000.

Of course it was necessary to build roads to cope with that growth. The fact that Marples was dodgy character - and it was only Marples who had significant interests in a road building company, so don't try to smear all the Government ministers - had nothing to do with the fact that roads were badly needed.

Road building to cope with pre-war traffic increases had started in the 1920s and 1930s when, for example, the Brighton Road was widened and the Great West Road was carved through the suburbs of west London. You can still see where roads were cut in two. Road building was not new and not uniquely aimed by the Conservatives at the nationalised railway. It was a process which had started a lot earlier and had been stopped by the Second World War.

Article from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...like-Dr-Beeching-was-too-hasty-after-all.html

The issue was the way the cuts were implemented, often against all common sense. Surveys taken in Wakes weeks and school holidays, local train drivers told on no account to make connections, timetable rejigging to make the service useless - think of the last days of Broad Street - the whole sordid implementation. Ancient history now of course, but as the article said, it was the beginning of people being forced to buy cars , and new roads became a self fulfilling prophecy. In the modern era this means a company can relocate to a windswept trading estate near a motorway junction, and expect its staff to get there.

I live close to two thriving lines that were under threat into the 1980s. On Saturday I visited another, Ilkley, which was on its last legs and is now in rude good health. I'm sure the pattern would have been repeated in numerous places, but track was ripped up and built on with what seemed like indecent haste.

 

[coppercapped]

Article from The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...like-Dr-Beeching-was-too-hasty-after-all.html

The issue was the way the cuts were implemented, often against all common sense. Surveys taken in Wakes weeks and school holidays, local train drivers told on no account to make connections, timetable rejigging to make the service useless - think of the last days of Broad Street - the whole sordid implementation. Ancient history now of course, but as the article said, it was the beginning of people being forced to buy cars , and new roads became a self fulfilling prophecy. In the modern era this means a company can relocate to a windswept trading estate near a motorway junction, and expect its staff to get there.

I live close to two thriving lines that were under threat into the 1980s. On Saturday I visited another, Ilkley, which was on its last legs and is now in rude good health. I'm sure the pattern would have been repeated in numerous places, but track was ripped up and built on with what seemed like indecent haste.

Oh God! Beeching again...[contd. p94

 

[meridian2]

Oh God! Beeching again...[contd. p94

Was there another BR chairman who got rid of stations that have since reopened? That's what happens when you put physicists in charge of a social utility.

 

[daikilo]

Was there another BR chairman who got rid of stations that have since reopened? That's what happens when you put physicists in charge of a social utility.

Dr. Beeching was appointed to do the job he did. If you want to blame anyone, look no further than those who appointed him, and then validated what he recommended.

As to closed stations subsequently reopened, I doubt it, at least by numbers.

 

[meridian2]

Dr. Beeching was appointed to do the job he did. If you want to blame anyone, look no further than those who appointed him, and then validated what he recommended.

As to closed stations subsequently reopened, I doubt it, at least by numbers.

I agree. The point is one doesn't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see the agenda informed the report, not the other way round. With regard to the title of this thread I believe we need more rail capacity, and that capacity should not be delivered in a piecemeal or short-termist way, but planned over the next 10 to 50 years in the same timeframe the railways were originally constructed.

Beeching's closures may induce yawns, but what is HS2 if not Watkin's dream updated 150 years at infinitely greater cost?

 

[coppercapped]

I agree. The point is one doesn't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see the agenda informed the report, not the other way round. With regard to the title of this thread I believe we need more rail capacity, and that capacity should not be delivered in a piecemeal or short-termist way, but planned over the next 10 to 50 years in the same timeframe the railways were originally constructed.

Beeching's closures may induce yawns, but what is HS2 if not Watkin's dream updated 150 years at infinitely greater cost?

It's not that Beeching's closures - which were mainly Barbara Castle's closures by the way - induce yawns, but the way that posters on RUK keep on and on about them. There is now, fifty years after the events, little or nothing new to say.

I notice you ignore the growth of the number of cars as being in any way connected.

Do you really have such a trust in your crystal ball that you can predict what will be needed in 50 years time? Has it been proven to be accurate? If so, where can I obtain one?

 

[Mikey C]

It certainly depends on the price that the developers are prepared to pay. Paying over the odds for a property may well be cheaper for the developer than going through the rigmarole of compulsory purchase.
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The driving force behind the road building at the time was the more than doubling of the number of motor cars on the road between 1950 and 1960, from 1,979,000 to 4,900,000.

Of course it was necessary to build roads to cope with that growth. The fact that Marples was dodgy character - and it was only Marples who had significant interests in a road building company, so don't try to smear all the Government ministers - had nothing to do with the fact that roads were badly needed.

Road building to cope with pre-war traffic increases had started in the 1920s and 1930s when, for example, the Brighton Road was widened and the Great West Road was carved through the suburbs of west London. You can still see where roads were cut in two. Road building was not new and not uniquely aimed by the Conservatives at the nationalised railway. It was a process which had started a lot earlier and had been stopped by the Second World War.

Germany was decades ahead of us when it came to building a modern high speed road network, and they're rail network isn't too bad!

As for the rail network, a percentage of it was in the wrong location, and probably should never have been built in the first place. Keeping it open would have diverted needed elsewhere to modernise (and widen) the main routes

 

[yorksrob]

It's not that Beeching's closures - which were mainly Barbara Castle's closures by the way - induce yawns, but the way that posters on RUK keep on and on about them. There is now, fifty years after the events, little or nothing new to say.

I notice you ignore the growth of the number of cars as being in any way connected.

Do you really have such a trust in your crystal ball that you can predict what will be needed in 50 years time? Has it been proven to be accurate? If so, where can I obtain one?

Until the country no longer has to live with the damage caused by Beeching, Marples and Serpell and the consequences of their hare brained ideology (which plenty of people opposed at the time by the way) we will continue to point out that damage.

Sorry about that

 

[najaB]

Until the country no longer has to live with the damage caused by Beeching, Marples and Serpell...

To his credit, Serpell didn't do (or wasn't tasked with doing) that much damage to the network as compared to the others in your list.

 

[meridian2]

Until the country no longer has to live with the damage caused by Beeching, Marples and Serpell and the consequences of their hare brained ideology (which plenty of people opposed at the time by the way) we will continue to point out that damage.

Sorry about that

Absolutely. The point with Beeching is not to turn back the clock in dewy eyed nostalgia, but to learn lessons. Especially lessons about the social and financial benefits of public transport in general and railways in particular.

Railway infrastructure was an unrepeatable combination of cheap labour and technological innovation. Things that would take tens or hundreds of millions of pounds to build today, like viaducts across valleys, were removed on a whim. Railways represented a social means of travel in an era defined by the atomised individual exercising his choices. The sixties was the decade that would have happily dynamited St Pancras station if it wasn't for a few idealists. Never underestimate the vision of a few nutters, for better or worse.

 

[HH]

I hear that Network Rail are changing the basis of their cost allocation and that this is likely to mean more cost is allocated to rural routes. The objective is stated as seeing if any routes cost more than their total benefits...

 

[yorksrob]

I hear that Network Rail are changing the basis of their cost allocation and that this is likely to mean more cost is allocated to rural routes. The objective is stated as seeing if any routes cost more than their total benefits...

If true, then this seems like a poor idea. Given that rural routes, unlike those in more populous areas tend to sit there with minimal signalling, investment and track complication, it's hard to see how their costs per mile are anything like the average. As I've said on previous threads, rural railways should have a much lower track access charge per mile to reflect this, not a higher one.

True, you get the odd unexpected landslip or flood etc which will hit the emergency budget, but that's true for any railway or road across the country.

These proposals need to be looked at with utmost scrutiny. Do you have any further information per chance ?

 

[coppercapped]

Until the country no longer has to live with the damage caused by Beeching, Marples and Serpell and the consequences of their hare brained ideology (which plenty of people opposed at the time by the way) we will continue to point out that damage.

Sorry about that

Beeching, or somebody very like him, was made inevitable by the 1947 Transport Act which set up an organisation for the co-ordination of inland transport which was incapable of doing the job it was set up to do.

The structure was chaotic, the funding was non-existent, the legal framework was botched - the result was that the railways were frozen in time - and the time was 1938. In the first 15 years of its existence, BR made little or no attempt to match its business to the changes in the post-war world.

Eventually the economic pressures became irresistible and the dam broke.

Don't waste your vitriol on Beeching and Marples. Although they made many good and excellent changes in other areas, health and safety at work being one of them, the real villains in the railways' story were Clem Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps and the others in that Government. Their ideologically driven centralisation blighted the railways as a provider of transport services for the people for the next fifty years.

 

[yorksrob]

Beeching, or somebody very like him, was made inevitable by the 1947 Transport Act which set up an organisation for the co-ordination of inland transport which was incapable of doing the job it was set up to do.

The structure was chaotic, the funding was non-existent, the legal framework was botched - the result was that the railways were frozen in time - and the time was 1938. In the first 15 years of its existence, BR made little or no attempt to match its business to the changes in the post-war world.

Eventually the economic pressures became irresistible and the dam broke.

Don't waste your vitriol on Beeching and Marples. Although they made many good and excellent changes in other areas, health and safety at work being one of them, the real villains in the railways story were Clem Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton, Stafford Cripps and the others in that Government. Their ideologically driven centralisation blighted the railways as a provider of transport services for the people for the next fifty years.

The real villain was the 1962 transport act which left absolutely no mechanism for supporting socially necessary passenger services.

 

[HH]

If true, then this seems like a poor idea. Given that rural routes, unlike those in more populous areas tend to sit there with minimal signalling, investment and track complication, it's hard to see how their costs per mile are anything like the average. As I've said on previous threads, rural railways should have a much lower track access charge per mile to reflect this, not a higher one.

True, you get the odd unexpected landslip or flood etc which will hit the emergency budget, but that's true for any railway or road across the country.

These proposals need to be looked at with utmost scrutiny. Do you have any further information per chance ?

They're only looking at it at the moment, so details are nonexistent. ORR are involved I believe.

You may recall that McNulty proposed downgrading local lines to make them cheaper to run; possibly they feel this idea's time has come?

 

[Bletchleyite]

The real villain was the 1962 transport act which left absolutely no mechanism for supporting socially necessary passenger services.

And the railway's conservatism (both the management and the Unions) that didn't see the potential in destaffing, future technologies...and even, dare I say it, rural D....no, I don't dare say it, there's a thread for that

IOW, the choice was a fully-staffed railway with 2 crew on board and staffed ticket offices, or a one-man-operated bus. Nothing in between, such as applying light rail concepts to heavy rail.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The real villain was the 1962 transport act which left absolutely no mechanism for supporting socially necessary passenger services.

By then, BR had lost control of its cost structure and had wasted most of the modernisation plan money on useless things like marshalling yards and a multiplicity of inadequate and incompatible diesel loco/MU types.
Their sole task from government was to "break even, taking one year with another".

 

[Bletchleyite]

You may recall that McNulty proposed downgrading local lines to make them cheaper to run; possibly they feel this idea's time has come?

I think that idea does have potential - but not in the kind of way that might be being considered. My proposal would be initial up-front investment to produce something that is both attractive to passengers *and* cheaper to run. Applying, as I say, light rail concepts[1] to heavy rail services.

A reasonable place to try concepts might be something like the Stourbridge branch (are the PPMs getting worn out yet?), Conwy Valley, Windermere branch[2], St Albans etc?

[1] Both rolling stock (something like a diesel Metrolink tram or a UK Stadler GTW would work well, and if very light would reduce track wear) and operational (e.g. DOO, TVM on board, simplified signalling, open crossings more like tram crossings with the vehicles having track brakes to avoid collisions rather than needing supervised crossings, passengers reaching platforms by crossing the track etc). Edit: Actually, talking of Stadler GTWs, the Swiss pseudo-tram narrow gauge branch lines might actually provide a good concept worthy of looking at.

[2] I know people value through running, but I can see a potential role for a light rail concept that could extend to through running down the hill to Bowness, and possibly later all the way to Ambleside down the road. That would have much more value than is lost by having a change at Oxenholme, particularly if the cost saving could also allow a frequency increase using very simple signalling concepts such as train-staff working on both halves of the line with a low-cost sprung passing loop. If you could add reasonable-cost late evening operation enabling a Friday evening departure from London to a weekend in the Lakes that'd be better still. Basically if you can get the cost base as near to a bus as possible, who'd use a bus?

 

[yorksrob]

They're only looking at it at the moment, so details are nonexistent. ORR are involved I believe.

You may recall that McNulty proposed downgrading local lines to make them cheaper to run; possibly they feel this idea's time has come?

Maybe, but I hope we don't end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. It would be a shame to set out adjusting cost structure and end up destroying the business case for the regional railway for an accounting error.
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By then, BR had lost control of its cost structure and had wasted most of the modernisation plan money on useless things like marshalling yards and a multiplicity of inadequate and incompatible diesel loco/MU types.
Their sole task from government was to "break even, taking one year with another".

Marshalling yards that served an unrenumerative market that the railways were forced to serve by law. The point about mis matched rolling stock is overrated I believe. With the exception of some loco types, most served the railway well for years, and many separate designs served different parts of the railway anyway.

The conservative Gmt had a long time in the 50's when they could have repealed the common carrier obligation.