Nationalisation vs repatriation

[Dr Hoo]

Surely we established back around post #108 that the British Railways Board was obliged under both the 1947 and 1962 Acts to 'break even'. This would appear to allow for profits in some areas to provide a degree of cross subsidy in others.
The Beeching 'Reshaping' report sought to establish much of freight (such as liner trains and merry-go-round coal) and inter city passenger as viable businesses. Is it not reasonable to assume that had this been successful it would have generated some modest surplus that would have provided 'cover' for some questionable routes that perhaps had longer term potential, such as new towns, or where investment was coming on stream or where costs were still being reduced.
Where in the 1962 Act did it say that no individual loss making service could be tolerated and it 'must' be proposed for closure?

 

[yorksrob]

Where in the 1962 Act did it say that no individual loss making service could be tolerated and it 'must' be proposed for closure?

My point is that the act made no provision for the subsidy of loss making services.

Where in the Beeching report does it say that there was any intention of keeping back some loss making lines with a view to developing them further ? If this was an intention, I would have thought it would have cropped up in one of the worked examples as a marginal case (York - Beverly via Market Weighton) which was found to be almost loss making but retained and rationalised for further development. It wasn't. A case for closure was manufactured.

There's nothing alluded to in the Beeching report about loss making lines being selected and retained for development. I've not seen any evidence of this being a BR policy at the time. Everything I've read suggests that there was a move to cut route mileage at all costs. Without any evidence to suggest otherwise, I fear that your post is wishful thinking.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The trouble with the Beeching cliff-edge and its simplistic cost analysis was that the railway didn't appear to consider any rationalisation other than closure or carry on.
There was also no attack on the costs of the urban core, which was a bottomless pit.
It was a decade later before things like terminal rationalisation, track singling and drastically reducing signalling were attempted.
You could also point to dieselisation and major asset productivity improvements which were also made in the 1970s.
Or even (dare I say) single manning.

The tragedy is that BR was in such a bad way that none of that was tried and rolled out nationally.
Some/many lines would still have closed, but the major strategic links might well have remained.
I don't think any measures would have saved lines like the Limpley Stoke branch (the setting for Titfield Thunderbolt).
Very many branch lines and duplicated urban lines would still have closed.
But how we ended up (eg) closing both the Leicester-Rugby lines and disconnecting the WCML and MML I will never comprehend.
One was taken for the M1, and the other just died with the GCML.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

My point is that the act made no provision for the subsidy of loss making services.

Where in the Beeching report does it say that there was any intention of keeping back some loss making lines with a view to developing them further ? If this was an intention, I would have thought it would have cropped up in one of the worked examples as a marginal case (York - Beverly via Market Weighton) which was found to be almost loss making but retained and rationalised for further development. It wasn't. A case for closure was manufactured.

There's nothing alluded to in the Beeching report about loss making lines being selected and retained for development. I've not seen any evidence of this being a BR policy at the time. Everything I've read suggests that there was a move to cut route mileage at all costs. Without any evidence to suggest otherwise, I fear that your post is wishful thinking.

The 1968 Act brought in the PSO model for retention and direct subsidy of useful / valuable socially necessary routes - but note that the "deeply inefficient" BR had transformed Bletchley - Euston (given a hefty grant in 1968) to a very positive cash earner in the 1988 Monopolies and Mergers Study. Ditto the Watford DC lines.

 

[yorksrob]

The 1968 Act brought in the PSO model for retention and direct subsidy of useful / valuable socially necessary routes - but note that the "deeply inefficient" BR had transformed Bletchley - Euston (given a hefty grant in 1968) to a very positive cash earner in the 1988 Monopolies and Mergers Study. Ditto the Watford DC lines.

I wasn't even aware that Bletchley - Euston had been threatened !

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Today's railways has too many "blockers" - and interfaces / contrractual and regulatory.. think of Track Access Contracts etc - a theme park for bureaucrats and pseudo-lawyers.

Think of the NR GRIP process - 2 years for a study and more time for action. I have a letter from the Divisional Civil Engineer Newport who upgraded the speeds on the Newport - Crewe line for peanuts OK about £80K) for the the new class 158's and promised the work could be done within normal possession arrangements. I hope he got a few pints bought for him off duty. BR used to do this all the time.

Any person who thinks the present situation can be improved by "partnership working" could do with a time machine trip back to late 1980's BR when things could genuinely be changed without the present day b**cks.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I wasn't even aware that Bletchley - Euston had been threatened !

It clearly was not - but it was deemed "necessary" for substantial funding a few years down the line.

The NLL certainly was , and most of Merseyrail as we know it now.

 

[Dr Hoo]

The whole point is that development of policy was far more nuanced and dynamic than is commonly portrayed. For example, in "The development of the major railway trunk routes" of February 1965 (still in the Beeching era) it was noted clearly on the first page that the Reshaping report described the railway system in three parts:
1. Sound now and in the future;
2. A part where judgement must be suspended because future usefulness is questionable; and
3. Unsound now and never likely to be in the future.
Within the 1965 document there were considerations of changes in car ownership but also growing population and business travel, developments of oil traffic, ports and the Channel Tunnel, etc.

Once the Transport Act 1968 came into effect it was very obvious that many of the services proposed for and given "grants" (as subsidy was commonly called then) were not ones that had been proposed for closure in the Reshaping report. This surely implies that they were modestly loss making but were being 'carried' by BR in the short term.

The 1968 act also introduced the concept of "surplus track capacity grants" that were basically short term payments to encourage the singling and general rationalisation of some routes. These were surely intended to help bring loss making services at least towards a more remunerative position but stopping short of closure.

No specific political party or transport minister or chair of the BRB got it 'all right' or 'all wrong' against a very rapidly changing country (in terms of car ownership, industrial changes, growing economic pressures, etc.)

 

[HowardGWR]

Can you provide examples of how bid competition has improved things on the railway?

Just see all the improvements that were contractually implemented, whether in customer service, facilities, or anything else in the contracts, especially those that were not in the other bidder's bids at the time.

I am astonished at the question.

 

[daikilo]

Just see all the improvements that were contractually implemented, whether in customer service, facilities, or anything else in the contracts, especially those that were not in the other bidder's bids at the time.

I am astonished at the question.

Well, if the competition is supposed to occur at the time of TOC allocation, then the question is a good one, as is your answer. The question must be whether the TOC bids go as far as they could and whether, once successful, they then follow-up on them.

 

[yorksrob]

The whole point is that development of policy was far more nuanced and dynamic than is commonly portrayed. For example, in "The development of the major railway trunk routes" of February 1965 (still in the Beeching era) it was noted clearly on the first page that the Reshaping report described the railway system in three parts:
1. Sound now and in the future;
2. A part where judgement must be suspended because future usefulness is questionable; and
3. Unsound now and never likely to be in the future.
Within the 1965 document there were considerations of changes in car ownership but also growing population and business travel, developments of oil traffic, ports and the Channel Tunnel, etc.

Once the Transport Act 1968 came into effect it was very obvious that many of the services proposed for and given "grants" (as subsidy was commonly called then) were not ones that had been proposed for closure in the Reshaping report. This surely implies that they were modestly loss making but were being 'carried' by BR in the short term.

The 1968 act also introduced the concept of "surplus track capacity grants" that were basically short term payments to encourage the singling and general rationalisation of some routes. These were surely intended to help bring loss making services at least towards a more remunerative position but stopping short of closure.

No specific political party or transport minister or chair of the BRB got it 'all right' or 'all wrong' against a very rapidly changing country (in terms of car ownership, industrial changes, growing economic pressures, etc.)

To be honest, "The development of the major trunk routes" is also a pretty peculiar document. It contains a lot of fairly pointless hot air about whether to develop the Standedge or the Calder Valley route between Leeds and Manchester, when even in 1965 it must have been clear that both routes would be needed to serve local settlements anyway. Bearing in mind it ended up picking the wrong route as the trunk route as it turned out, its hard to see what this sort of navel gazing actually achieved. A bit more care and attention over how York - Beverley could have been rationalised and saved for example, would have been better value for money, I would suggest.

Then there's the contradiction of looking forward to a future in which high speed trains would travel much faster than other traffic, whilst rationalising away the multiple routes that might have the capacity to carry traffics at differing speeds.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

To be honest, "The development of the major trunk routes" is also a pretty peculiar document. It contains a lot of fairly pointless hot air about whether to develop the Standedge or the Calder Valley route between Leeds and Manchester, when even in 1965 it must have been clear that both routes would be needed to serve local settlements anyway. Bearing in mind it ended up picking the wrong route as the trunk route as it turned out, its hard to see what this sort of navel gazing actually achieved.

Yes, of the 3 case studies, 2 were spectacularly wrong.
This selected Calder Valley/Woodhead over Diggle/Hope Valley for transpennine, and St Helens/CLC over Chat Moss/Atherton/Lymm for Manchester-Liverpool.
Only Birmingham-South Wales/South West was spot on (Bromsgrove over Hereford/Stratford).

They overestimated freight traffic by a large factor.
The St Helens route was preferred because of all the collieries with long lives on the line; the CLC because of the good connections to Woodhead which carried the most freight traffic; and the Calder Valley because of its lower gradients.

Within a decade, BR had taken quite different decisions (though mostly it didn't really develop any of the routes other than the Bromsgrove one.
The rest were left to soldier on with old equipment, or ripped up.
All 3 remaining transpennine routes still have semaphore signalling and have limited capacity.

 

[yorksrob]

All 3 remaining transpennine routes still have semaphore signalling and have limited capacity.

True, although we are undoubtedly immeasurably better off for that, than we would have been, had they decided to concentrate all traffic on just two routes. In this respect procrastination really was the better policy.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Just to point out that my referencing of the 'Trunk Routes' document, along with other documents such as the Reshaping report and the 1962 and 1968 Acts was to demonstrate that policy was developing across multiple governments, ministers and chairman.

I was not intending to take this 'vote' off thread by debating the merits of specific proposals within any particular document.

 

[yorksrob]

The BBC are reporting that the Transport select committee are not happy with franchising as it is at present.

However they are considering smaller franchises over longer periods to reduce risk and encourage more companies in. Personally, I can't see it being any more efficient.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38867199

I was not intending to take this 'vote' off thread by debating the merits of specific proposals within any particular documentThe UK's rail franchising model is "no longer fit for purpose" and is failing passengers, MPs have warned.
The Transport Committee said operators were restricted in how much they could improve services and efficiency, and the relationship with Network Rail was "not as co-ordinated as it should be".
The MPs urged ministers to launch an independent review of rail franchising.
The Department for Transport said new ways of working and more investment were needed to tackle challenges ahead.
'Continued underperformance'
The MPs' report said that while there could be no "single template" for franchises, there was "merit" in obtaining longer agreements covering smaller areas.
The opportunity of smaller franchises with less financial risk could lead to new companies appearing on the market, the MPs said.
The report comes after the Association of British Commuters applied for a judicial review into the government's handling of the Southern rail crisis.
The group says ministers have acted unlawfully by failing to determine whether managers have breached franchise obligations.
Transport Committee chairman Louise Ellman said: "While franchising enabled passenger growth and service improvements when it was first rolled out, passenger satisfaction with the railways is falling.
"Its core objectives are no longer being met, potential benefits are being lost and the passenger is suffering through higher fares and continued underperformance."
In January the cost of a rail ticket rose on average by 2.3%, prompting protests at railway stations across the UK.
Ms Ellman told BBC Breakfast the DfT was too soft on train companies that broke promises on performance.
"And if the department can't do that, perhaps somebody else should be looking at it to enforce the promises that the train companies make when they take over running the service," she said.
'Better collaboration'
The MPs suggested that a complete restructuring of the system would be "prohibitively impractical", but it recommended that as contracts expired the DfT might consider whether they be modified to "align better with the specific market they serve".
The DfT said £40bn was being invested to upgrade the railways and that the franchising system had helped to create one of the safest and fastest growing networks in Europe.
A spokesman said: "We can make improvements and the transport secretary has been clear that it will take new ways of working, more investment and better collaboration across the industry to tackle the challenges ahead.".