I do hope this post was mainly tongue in cheek. .....
No.
No industry that is not a monopoly or cartel could survive without trying to increase sales - the airline model of pricing passengers off flights sparked the rise of the "no frills" airline that has driven many seemingly impregnable airlines close to the wall. .
Try telling that to BA - who have actually increased both sales and market volume by concentrating on a better level of service.
..The railway industry is not in the business of running trains (which could, possibly, justify such a strategy). It is in the business of moving people and goods from A to B by rail; the market is highly price-sensitive, and is subject to immense competition. Pretending it is not is not the way forward.
Trying to be all things to all men is a recipe for failure. That is what the Railways in the UK are trying to be.
No railway in the World makes money out of both suburban passenger and long distance operations operating on the same network. They are two totally separate things, with completely diametrically opposed needs.
There are no plaudits from the great British public as far as Railways are concerned because the expectations of the great British public are too contradictory. They want cheap fares which in reality can only be obtained by minmising rolling stock usage and making people stand, yet they all want a seat and complain bitterly when they have to stand. The same style of argument can be seen in the Budget Airlines sector where people want to pay pence for their flights yet want a full blown at seat complimentary meals and drinks service. Just listen to the grief that Ryanair get, yet they set up to supply the very market that is most critical of them. EasyJet did similar but are a bridge between Cheap No Frills and Budget national carriers - ie. you pay slightly less than the national budget carrier but get slightly more than Ryanair. Again you only have to look at the criticsm EasyJet gets, watch the TV sometime, from the very market is set up to sell to. The reason is back to passenger expectations which are all based on National Carriers services.
People moan about travelling Monarch for example and the fact that they charge for a meal, but they are only travelling Monarch because they get a cheap deal. If the fare was raised to give them a "free" meal I have no doubt they would moan more.
The National Carriers have in recent years distanced themselves from cheap and cheerful and budget operations. I quoted British Airways. They are awash with money as a result which is why they are happy to go all the way with the cabin staff. BA have moved out of the cheap area, other airlines such as KLM have set up separate operations which are clearly marketted as being separate operations. KLM is a very good example where they operate the KLM CityHopper services as a separate unit away from the main airline.
KLM have gone down the route of providing a service slightly better than the budget airlines in that you get the full KLM support, but there are no in flight meals only snacks. These operations are also primarily in support of the "hub" operation running out of Schiphol, in that they act as feeder services to the main long haul routes.
Railway services in the UK are no longer operated on that basis.
We do not have the infrastructure capability to deliver anywhere near what the "public" want because the UK is overpopulated and where it is not, all Infrastructure improvements work takes ages to achieve because of the NIMBY factor. HS2 is a perfect example.
Extending platforms may help in some situations but double decking of trains is almost a non-starter, as is increasing the number of trains.
Some years back this could have been feasible but paranoid safety management and risk aversion means that we are actively reducing line capacity.
What suburban services that are provided appear to meet no-one's satisfaction, the punters are full of complaints about just about every facet of the operation, Politicians use the Railways as a convenient political football, the media glory in negative stories and spin anything positive into a negative. Those who only use them when the weather has brought all other modes of transport to a stand spend the rest of then year decrying them, and pass their time on the few journeys they do make by insulting and threatening the staff.
Long distance services are ritually criticised for allowing passengers to stand, and when not complaining about ticket prices it seems a small but vocal minority are trying to work out ways around ticket restrictions in order to travel for next to nothing whilst at the same time criticising the Industry for poor services and high fares. The correlation between income and cost appears to be lost in their reasoning. If a standing long distance service had met with a serious accident today how many in the media would be blaing the Railways for allowing people to stand and how many of the passengers would be pushing a similar argument and taling to the the bottom feeders in the various Compensation factories. Yet non-one forces them to stand. The demand would be for all seat service only and everybody would say that is what should happen EXCEPT as far as THEIR service is concerned. See the contradiction ?
So there we have it, in my opinion leastways. We have a Railway system that is neither fish nor fowl and which is in many ways unfit for purpose.
Into this melting pot we then run freight trains, sometimes right in the middle of the peak services simply to suit the whim of a "customer" who in all probability wouldn't care if the train arrived later, but on time.
The result of this needs to be a complete rethink about what we actually WANT our Railways to do. Are they to move freight ? Are they to operate high speed intercity services ? Are they for the purposes of providing suburban and inter urban commuter services ?
Quite simply thye can achieve none of these things combined with massive investment (which we dont have), an increase on land uptake, which is an almost impossible target, or an increase in line capacity, which again either requires a speed reduction through busy corridors, or a move away from the absolute safety culture that is decreasing capacity for the sake of preventing the 1 in 100,000 year accident.
Bearing in mind the expected life capacity of a Railway why do we pander to safety systems that deliver the statistical accident rate of 1 in 100,00 Years ? why not 1 in 10,000 years or even 1 in 1,000 years
jamesr said:
I took the 1000 Penzance - Waterloo yesterday - had been really looking forward to the journey for some time, especially for a chance to ride the diversion route on an HST. I knew it would be busy, but frankly, the journey was best described as an ordeal. Standing room only by the time the train left Camborne. Standing right down the aisles by the time it left Truro. Absolutely no chance of reaching either the buffet or the toilets during the remaining six and a half hours of the journey.
Frankly, having paid a lot of money for the ticket, I don't feel I got decent service for it (through no fault of the Train Managers, who did their best). Had I paid an equivalent amount of money for a product, I would have returned it.
Thank you for the post which viidly supports the points I was making.
James has travelled but does not feel he (a) obtained value for money, and (b) may well not travel again, all simply because the train was probably packed full of people who travel only a few times each year and actually could well only be on the train because of the poor weather leading up to Christmas prevented them going by road. THEY wont be back in any case but could well have put people such as James, who may well have done, off travelling again.
Pretty much lose/lose don't you think ?
Seconded.
As a newbie to rail travel, having enjoyed a company car in my previous employment, I have to say the whole rail commuter thing has been an eye-opener.
My commute by rail from Patchway to Bath costs about £6 a day if I buy a monthly ticket. Now that's competitive given the same round trip by road is about 44 miles.
What do I gain by using my car and ditching the train? Well, I don't have to worry about short-formed trains (major issue with FGW on my route), delayed trains, cancelled trains, having to stand (not really a big deal), getting all manner of germs coughed and spluttered over me (God bless those British commuters, haven't they heard of a handkerchief?) or having to stand around on cold platforms watching that green tv screen telling me my train is on time and then one minute before it's due to arrrive it's suddenly marked as cancelled. Most importantly, I achieve peace of mind knowing my destiny is in my own hands rather than in someone else's.
What do I gain by using the train and ditching my car? Well, I don't have to worry about the car breaking down or the hidden running costs (11,000 miles a year equates to four new tyres every two years, £600 in my case). Other than that, I can't see very many benefits in using rail over road.
As pointed out, with fuel almost £6 a gallon, the rail network has a golden opportunity and doesn't seem interested, doesn't care, can't be bothered, doesn't realise the opportunity is there?
What a depressing and in all probability a very one-sided picture you paint. It musty be SO bad having to mingle with the common working and middle classes, perhaps I should apologise ? Interesting how you view your fellow citizens. Did you drive a four by four pechance ?
I guess the many times that the M4 became its usual car park between 15 and 14 didn't bother you in the least or did you go so early and come back so late that you manged to avoid it ?
The fare quoted probably represents better value than you should be getting but I am sure you would be the first to complain IF the fare rose in order to give you the level of service that you want. I suspect we are back to Rolls Royces for the cost of Minis again.
