Do open access operators benefit or hinder our railways? (and how could the situation be improved?)

[matt_world2004]

Sacrificing Hanwell and West Ealing was probably the option that impacted fewest passengers overall.

Shoving HEx passengers on Connect would probably left the folk of Hanwell/West Ealing unable to board packed trains in any case.

Peak flows on the Heathrow express are in the opposite direction to normal peak flows. IE there are more people travelling on it going out of London during am peak than going into London . So this wouldn't have been the case.

 

[Starmill]

I agree, in principle, but it needs to be on a level playing field.

The current situation is akin to a new cafe opening right next door to a long established cafe, but the new one selling everything cheaper because the council is letting them off rent and rates whilst the old cafe pays full whack. Hardly fair.

It's probably a bit worse than that too. The new entrant is perfectly permitted to open up a single shop right beside the existing cafe which is the best performer financially. The existing cafe is part of a chain whose rights to operate that cafe is contingent on their operations of three or four other cafes which are obliged to offer the same full menu of services but in central Greenland, near the South Pole and somewhere in the Atacana desert.

 

[Starmill]

It's essential public transport. If rail should be nationalised as it's an essential public transport

This isn't a good justification for nationalisation. Rail does however have a totally different minimum efficient scale to air and road transport. It's much higher. Rail should operate as a monopoly. Bus/coach, air and taxi services generally don't need to.

There are certain situations which are exceptions - where air monopolies are required, such as your Loganair example, and where market competition is viable on rail provided there's at least an infrastructure monopoly.

 

[6Gman]

Then they will have to do that to Virgin et al. Or the Tories will be Tories and allow solvent airlines to operate the routes out of Heathrow. There is nothing about the current BA operation that makes it a national airline anymore than easyJet.

But back to railways, why is it that commercially run businesses are shying away from the railways? Despite services being open for companies to come along and extract a profit, why is it that there appears to be a big retrenchment of the type of operator the conservatives would like to see run the railways?

Because it's become increasingly difficult to "extract a profit" ?