BBC News: Rail nationalisation not a silver bullet, says Labour

[Nicholas Lewis]

I must have been dreaming about all those close packed 3+2 seats with racks above them (that I invariably bashed my head on) with doors adjacent (that invariably required pushing past other passengers’ knees to get off/on) with no easy places to stand, sometimes no corridor let alone a gangway to other coaches, and seats that bounced like a bucking bronco. All decidedly uncomfortable.

Thing is a compartment EPBs did offer unrivalled sleeping opportunity! although don't bash the seat and look at what came out of them!

 

[whoosh]

The privatisation process forced the government to commit to West Coast Route Modernisation, Thameslink 2000 and things like the LTS total route upgrade.
You can argue that most of that cost fell on the government in the end (after Railtrack's collapse), but it's arguable how much of that investment would have gone in under BR or a later GBR.
Each subsequent franchise then got 7-10 year investment (TOC+NR), with NR borrowing on the market.
BR was very poor at distributing its limited investment round the country, with its one-project-at-a-time funding model.
We have yet to see how GBR will manage its public sector funding with fewer "franchises", under likely Treasury constraints.
Private sector profits are a rounding error in the wider scheme of rail financing.

One could argue that West Coast Route Modernisation (with Intercity 250s), and Thameslink 2000 (which was a deliverable deadline in the early to mid 90's), were kicked down the road by the industry having to ready itself for privatisation.

 

[Stossgebet]

I must have been dreaming about all those close packed 3+2 seats with racks above them (that I invariably bashed my head on) with doors adjacent (that invariably required pushing past other passengers’ knees to get off/on) with no easy places to stand, sometimes no corridor let alone a gangway to other coaches, and seats that bounced like a bucking bronco. All decidedly uncomfortable.

In fairness, no one is suggesting that renationalisation, is all about going back to 4VEPs, 2EPBs and AM4's.

And plenty have commented about banging heads on overhead racks of modern flirt units.

 

[Pigeon]

Somehow or other renationalisation has spread from being something desired by a group of more-or-less informed (whether by involvement or experience) who had a reasonable idea of what it was expected to do, to being something popular with the general public who have managed to pick up the enthusiasm but not the corresponding appropriate informedness.

People at large don't know what it's supposed to do, and moreover don't know what aspects of the railways it actually could have an effect on and which it couldn't. They just think that it will "make things better", in some nebulous sense of which the only definable aspects are related to things about the railway that get on their own personal tits. It is overwhelmingly likely that they will be disappointed.

I favour renationalisation as a concept because I see it as a necessary precondition for other more specific desirable outcomes, but my expectations of actually seeing any of them happen are mediocre at best. (All the more so because even the Government doesn't seem to know what it's for, they just said they'd do it because it was popular when Corbyn said he'd do it and they wanted the votes.)

A more or less universal characteristic of big political solutions is they do somewhere between a small and a negative amount to deal with whatever they're supposed to be dealing with, while also creating several new difficulties many of which couldn't have existed in the previous setup. The original nationalisation was like this, the privatisation was like this, and I see no reason to expect the renationalisation to be any different.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The Commons Transport Select Committee had a session last week which questioned Peter Hendy (rail minister) and Laura Shoaf (chair Shadow GBR).

It was the first time I think that Laura has appeared in public in her new job.

It's clear Shadow GBR is just an enabler before the full GBR legislation is enacted.
It has influence over the three organizations which will form GBR (NR, DfTO and DfT Rail), but isn't an executive body with resources and budget.

All very positive, but so far with little to say about policy and implementation except in very generic terms.

SGBR is working on a plan to meet the five objectives set by the SoS, to be made public "soon".

Laura said safety was one of her priorities. The exemplar she used was the cancellation of last trains leaving vulnerable passengers stranded.

That's a quite different safety priority than, say, reducing the number of SPADs.
Hendy also said he was the person that decided to introduce the new ECML timetable, as an example of a decision that should be taken by the railway (ie GBR).
Hendy said GBR would be "regionalised", with the context being the devolved authorities - so no sectorisation apparently.

He said ORR would be restructured to adapt to the new setup, but would still regulate access for freight and open access "fairly" alongside the domnant GBR operation.

They mean well, and have lots of urgency to fix the railway's problems.

But it's all going at a glacial pace when viewed from the outside.

Peter Hendy said the proposals for the full GBR would be published "in the near future", and the intention was to legislate "by the end of this calendar year".

It will start with a consultation period before the Bill is introduced.
Laura Shoaf is an impressive and eloquent speaker, I imagine she is an ideal enabler.
Peter Hendy clearly knows a lot more about GBR than the governmental strictures will allow hm to say.

The video of the TSC session (2h10m) is here:

Parliamentlive.tv

Transport Committee

parliamentlive.tv

Moderator note: until more information becomes available, this matter is speculative in nature.

Speculation regarding how it may be implemented can be discussed at the following thread:

What could a regionalised rail nationalisation look like?

Moderator note: Split from https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/bbc-news-rail-nationalisation-not-a-silver-bullet-says-labour.280502/ The Commons Transport Select Committee had a session last week which questioned Peter Hendy (rail minister) and Laura Shoaf (chair Shadow GBR). It was the first...

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