Id suggest that the rail industry has really moved to a "nice to have" rather than an "essential service" probably when the power stations stopped burning coal compounded by the work from home revolution.
The problem for the economy is that people don’t make those journeys in the same volume when trains aren’t available even if there is an alternative. Consumers don’t spend as much when WFH (or entertaining at home) and this is very high on the Treasury’s list of threats.
The difficulty with that line of reasoning is that almost every area of activity run by government, be it national or local, is looked upon as inefficient, bloated and in need of reform, including railways. Looking from outside every one of them it's easy to make those observations. From inside the same observations are made about other sections within.
Last Saturday, I drove to North Woolwich and caught the tube. if the tube was on strike, Id have caught the bus or boat or uber.
The railway is a monopoly in public transport in most of the country, except for the small areas which are served by buses, boats and coaches.
I agree with you here, I don't get why some posters on this site seem to have a strong dislike for railways, and sometimes public transport in general
So no other freight is moved by rail then, except coal?
That's because it's not true, they are at pre-Covid levels of passenger numbers but 90% of revenue.
Assuming that there's very little difference to the NR costs regardless of the number of trains which run along a line, the busier the line the more the NR costs are spread amongst those using it the easier it is to recover the costs.
For example a line with 1tph still has to be inspected just as much as one with 2tph (even if it's more regularly it's unlikely to be twice as registry), or to have a signaler controlling the track (other than first last may be earlier later) 6tph is no more cost than 1tph.
It is course depends on who the risk is applied.
DfT agree a minimum service level it costs them 20 for the TOC to run that service.
DfT agrees a +A service level it costs them 20 plus any losses for that +A costs but doesn't recover.
DfT agree a minimum service level but with TOC permitted to take risks (i.e. TOC is the one who loses money if they run lose making services) with a profit sharing mechanism.
The government would be scared of the second, but would have no issue with the third. As the third means they pay out a maximum of 20 but could get something extra back if the extra services do well.
I'd be interested to see the data for the -30% on income pretty passenger per km, I wonder if it is only looking at the latest quarter or if it's based on the last 12 months of data. As the latter could be much worse than the former, as Q3 of 2021/22 had Covid restrictions (at least Christmas parties being cancelled), so would have been hard to attract passengers.
If you look at the rail use data for November WFH allowed a lot of rail travel to be paused for the strike days, but then saw spikes afterwards. Almost as if people were going to the office when the strikes weren't on.
Domestic Transport Usage by Mode
www.gov.uk
That graph also implies an upwards tend between Q2 (July to September) and Q3 (October to December), even though the strikes are ongoing.
If the strikes were to be resolved it's likely that rail use would see a reasonable increase in use (and quite possibly over what would be expected if you just tallied up the bin strike days usage).
Well if you want something that works, and doesn’t mean abstraction as you may see it from the NHS, then you nationalise it.
That's a good thing, which means customers are smarter and getting less ripped off my extortionate prices.
I'm not sure where the RMT has left to go. They played their ace in December / January, caused huge disruption and some parts of the network to have greatly reduced or zero service for weeks on end and the Government's response was barely a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders.
Does that mean the DfT believes the savings from not having enough drivers to run timetables are worth the negative effects on passenger income (and delay repay expenditure)? or that, where TOCs have filed requests to hire more staff to fill a shortage were, in fact, granted?
