Rail agency proposal to 'cure chaos'

[AndrewE]

Albert Einstein also said -re 43096's footer - "If I had my time again I would have been a plumber!" (I believe, but maybe an urban myth)

 

[tbtc]

BR did have most of these things, but as internal departments. Standard pay rates, section heads and one Board. The City must have been pig-sick!
I don't think there is any argument that PFI is bankrupting the public services it has been applied to, If you had the choice would you live in a house that someone else controlled when it could have been yours (or was originally)?
Why must the current way be the only way? Are you afraid of publicly-financed infrastructure, or afraid of missing the gravy-train? It would only be a penny or two on income tax (and cracking down on evasion.)
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed"... to repeat the pre-Victorian errors!

What people remember of The Good Old Days isn't much use as a template for what a publicly owned a twenty first century railway could be like, since the game has changed significantly since then.

Look at the NHS or the BBC or other (quasi) public sector organisations. Look at not-for-profit housing associations or the Co-op even.

I'm certainly not defending PFI, just explaining that any Government that forced schools/ hospitals/ prisons etc to use it would insist on a publicly owned railway doing the same (and having the same wage caps/ recruitment freezes/ pension reforms etc).

Government can use Austerity to hit things it controls. It can't use Austerity to hit Stagecoach/ DB/ First/ Abellio because they have lawyers and will fight back (in a way that redundant librarians won't).

Am I "afraid of publicly-financed infrastructure"? I'll be honest, I thought the move from Railtrack to Network Rail was a great one and would solve most of the railway's problems. After the reality of fifteen years of afraid of publicly-financed infrastructure, I'm less convinced that being "public" has solved things. Look at the delays, the overspends, the malaise... now tell me that you want our TOCs to be more like Network Rail?

Not convinced.

 

[HH]

Less than zero.
Almost all the money returned as premia is only returned because the operators pay far less than economic rates for track maintenance.

Its a lie to decieve the public into thinking that the privatised railway is not a money pit.

Do you actually expect the railway, in its current specification by DfT, to actually make money?

 

[NSEFAN]

Am I "afraid of publicly-financed infrastructure"? I'll be honest, I thought the move from Railtrack to Network Rail was a great one and would solve most of the railway's problems. After the reality of fifteen years of afraid of publicly-financed infrastructure, I'm less convinced that being "public" has solved things. Look at the delays, the overspends, the malaise... now tell me that you want our TOCs to be more like Network Rail?

Not convinced.

"Publicly-financed" needn't be synonymous with "disorganised", and yet it somehow is. The private sector generally only seeks efficiency because of economic forces, but when a private company is paid by the state to do a job (and isn't allowed to fail for political reasons), economic forces don't really apply. Hence Railtrack being able to basically do what it wanted, knowing the government had no alternative (until people started being killed in preventable train crashes...). If we left the railways to fend for themselves entirely with no state support, they might actually become much more efficient, although people in rural areas would have something to say about the decline/loss of their services.

I suppose the magic question is how do we attract people to the managerial roles of NR who really care about fixing it and know how to fix it? Does it just need someone stronger and able to say "no" when the government comes up with yet another unworkable 10-year plan for infrastructure?

 

[Olaf]

looking forward to when the robots take-over so that we can be kept of these interminable arguments over dogma.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

"Publicly-financed" needn't be synonymous with "disorganised", and yet it somehow is. The private sector generally only seeks efficiency because of economic forces, but when a private company is paid by the state to do a job (and isn't allowed to fail for political reasons), economic forces don't really apply. Hence Railtrack being able to basically do what it wanted, knowing the government had no alternative (until people started being killed in preventable train crashes...). If we left the railways to fend for themselves entirely with no state support, they might actually become much more efficient, although people in rural areas would have something to say about the decline/loss of their services.

ISTM that problems will always arise due to the need to maintain a reasonable degree of transparency and accountability. This inevitably creates additional layers of bureaucracy which will tend to slow things down particularly in areas of project management as every decision gets second guessed by the auditors. Throw in a few politicians with little grasp of the bigger picture and it's no surprise that so many longer-term projects get tripped up. The private sector response would be to eliminate some of the management tiers but the public sector tends to do the opposite. I do not see how a new rail agency will make any difference to all this.

I suppose the magic question is how do we attract people to the managerial roles of NR who really care about fixing it and know how to fix it? Does it just need someone stronger and able to say "no" when the government comes up with yet another unworkable 10-year plan for infrastructure?

As long as politicians expect to have their cake and eat it decent managers are going to need a lot of persuading to get involved. Even then the politicians will still feel the need to meddle. Remember Beeching?!

looking forward to when the robots take-over so that we can be kept of these interminable arguments over dogma.

If you're not enjoying the discussion you are of course perfectly free to not bother reading it. But please don't be telling the rest of us we should not have the discussion in the first place; this is a discussion forum after all!

 

[Olaf]

If you're not enjoying the discussion you are of course perfectly free to not bother reading it. But please don't be telling the rest of us we should not have the discussion in the first place; this is a discussion forum after all!

Your welcome to it, but why not save the bother and just copy-paste from all the previous discussions? Without any practical real-world experience or knowledge of how organisations work, there is nothing going to come from it.