Is Open Access abstractive or does it genuinely plug gaps?

[35B]

I would personally put this down to cultural and institutional attitudes rather than the state having a monopoly. Britain and the Anglosphere in general (from my point of view) seem to think of railways as costly relics of the 19th century, partly evident by the DfT's desire to reduce subsidy and shift the cost onto the user rather than the taxpayer. It's not helped by the fact we're trying to run a 21st century operation on 19th century infrastructure without the political will to build new railways.

I think your response is a fair position, and we'd need to agree to disagree. However, I will pick up on this paragraph. While I think it's got a lot of truth in it, I think the role of monopoly is valid - and has a bad history going back into the 19th Century. The railways have a long and ignoble history, at least to Captain Mark Huish, of treating their paying customers as an afterthought, and using their monopoly power entirely selfishly (and, no, they are not unique in that!).

This trait has remained throughout railway history, to varying degrees. We are seeing a resurgence of this at present, wrapped in the sheen of public control and accountability. This relies for its effectiveness on the lack of a comparison point - which is one reason why I am with @Snow1964 in regarding the continued existence of OA operators as essential - and the hostility to them from DfT as a sign to fear

 

[Sorcerer]

I think your response is a fair position, and we'd need to agree to disagree. However, I will pick up on this paragraph. While I think it's got a lot of truth in it, I think the role of monopoly is valid - and has a bad history going back into the 19th Century. The railways have a long and ignoble history, at least to Captain Mark Huish, of treating their paying customers as an afterthought, and using their monopoly power entirely selfishly (and, no, they are not unique in that!).

This trait has remained throughout railway history, to varying degrees. We are seeing a resurgence of this at present, wrapped in the sheen of public control and accountability. This relies for its effectiveness on the lack of a comparison point - which is one reason why I am with @Snow1964 in regarding the continued existence of OA operators as essential - and the hostility to them from DfT as a sign to fear

Perhaps the role of a monopoly is valid then. After all Italy's high-speed rail network has increased it's market share with the arrival of Italo, and the Madrid-Barcelona corridor has never been so competitive with four operators. It certainly gives enough of a kick up the backside for national operators to lower prices and get their services in order. But I would still put it down to some institutional attitudes as well because I think a monopoly is more likely to be a bad thing if the railways are viewed in the way we view them in Britain compared to the way they might be viewed in Switzerland.

 

[35B]

Perhaps the role of a monopoly is valid then. After all Italy's high-speed rail network has increased it's market share with the arrival of Italo, and the Madrid-Barcelona corridor has never been so competitive with four operators. It certainly gives enough of a kick up the backside for national operators to lower prices and get their services in order. But I would still put it down to some institutional attitudes as well because I think a monopoly is more likely to be a bad thing if the railways are viewed in the way we view them in Britain compared to the way they might be viewed in Switzerland.

A monopoly is never better than a necessary evil. The example of Switzerland should be seen as an exception rather than a rule. While I've never used the Spanish rail system, all comment I've ever heard of RENFE suggests that it's possession of monopoly power works is unhelpful.

 

[KHCT]

To be fair, some of the current nationalised operators do cherry picking too, putting better, or newer, or faster rolling stock on some routes, or giving better catering on selected routes, even beating those of longer duration than some others they operate.

As an example, there is no logical reason (apart from selective cherry picking) why a London Lincoln service, gets First class with free food, but Bournemouth (whose population is almost double) gets no food, similar duration (about 100 minutes) both DfT Operator administered. It's blatant selective cherry picking by route.

I completely agree with this. Take Transpennine Express as an example; full catering service in both first and standard on their 'core' and Scottish routes, but good luck away from that. Not even a trolley is provided between Sheffield and Cleethorpes, Leeds and Hull or York and Scarborough/Redcar. The reason is simple - there's no money in it. Even British Rail managed to provide a catering offer to the good people of Hull.

Sadly, if service provision is to be levelled out it will only go one way. The government is very clear that it wants subsidy to fall which mean there's zero chance of anything extra being provided that doesn't pay it's way.

I've said before that is Government/DfT want to complain that open access is 'abstractive' they need to fight them for the business they claim is being pinched. Once again this weekend Hull Trains is providing an extra service to cater for football fans travelling to London from Hull on Saturday. I don't see LNER going after commercial opportunities like that, certainly away from it's core route.

I just lean towards state ownership because if railways are a public good, there comes a fundamental tension between that reality and the fact a private company's top priority is delivering a return on investments to it's shareholders.

If it wasn't for private companies chasing a return on investment you wouldn't have had the network we had/have in the first place. Can you imagine if developing the rail network from scratch had been left to the dead hand of government.

 

[Sorcerer]

If it wasn't for private companies chasing a return on investment you wouldn't have had the network we had/have in the first place. Can you imagine if developing the rail network from scratch had been left to the dead hand of government.

It was also a different world back then where private companies were capitalising on a new revolutionary form of mass transport where there was no competing motorway or airline market. Today though railways are just one of several forms of transport infrastructure, and because they are capital-intensive and take a long time to generate a return on the investments, you would be very unlikely to get a rural branch line constructed by private companies today even if they provided a social good, and in fact these are often the first ones to go during cuts because they aren't profitable on paper. Even Thatcher understood this risk.

We see it happening in Japan with rural lines being closed despite the JR Group also having investments in property to offset some costs (and indeed it's often said JR Group are real estate companies with some train operations). Even Brightline, once seen as the model example of private rail development, is now at risk of bankruptcy because railways do not generate fast enough returns to pay off it's debts and a return to it's shareholders. Government by contrast can borrow cheaper and over longer terms.

It's not to say railways can't be privately operated, but there is definitely a fundamental tension between railways being a public good and trying to operate them on a profit-driven basis with the primary goal of financial returns. But that's a subject for another thread entirely.