privatisation is working....sort of

[daccer]

With the demise of NXEC (not yet but inevitable by all accounts) many people are now calling for re nationalistion of the network and they are using NXEC as an example of all that is wrong with the present system. I disagree wholeheartedly. I actually see NXEC as an example of why the system does broadly work and should be kept although it does need refining somewhat. The fact that a weak and unsuitable TOC (for the premium services it operates) has gone to the wall is the essence of privatisation and capitalism as a whole. The strong will survive and prosper and the weak will disappear...Connex anyone? National Express will disappear from the railways soon enough ..Adonis will either take the other franchises from them or they will surely lose them on renewal date. Isnt this the whole ethos....you fail you lose. You do well you prosper and grow.

On a more general note there are obviously many problems with the current system of operations which I believe are being recognised and being sorted gradually. We musnt forget that when the railways were privatised there wasnt a model to follow. Most of it was a thumbsuck and at best an educated guess. With such a massive and complex system there were bound to be mistakes and unfortunately they turned out to be bug ones ...Railtrack for instance. However there seems to be a better understanding and consensus now with a general agreement that franchises need to be longer and that Network Rail need to be more accountable.

I have seen many posts calling for the return of BR. This I believe is mis guided. I worked for BR in the 80's and to me the company was purely a vehicle used to cut costs and run the railways into the ground. Privatisation has worked with regards to investment - this is undeniable. The reason for this is I believe is very simple. All of the agreements in place with the TOC's and FOC's and ROSCO's are contracts signed between two accountable parties. Therefore the Govt (Network Rail usually) is accountable for their side of the agreement and so has to step up to the plate with investment. When they fail they are held accountable not by a few commuters who can be easily ignored (such as in BR days) but by powerful businesses backed up by contracts. How much money was paid out during the WCMl upgrade in compensation?. It is this two way street that drives both sides on to increase economies and to improve standards. Of course much is left to be done and much fine tuning is needed but the principles work and it is only natural that there will be some failures along the way. However for me the curve is generally upward and that is something we havent seen in the UK railways for 50 years. For those who say that BR would have done a better job with the same amount of money you miss one very important point...BR would never have been given the money in the first place. The Govt is having to dig deep in response to the demand from its clients (not us anymore but the TOC's who pay the premiums) for extra capacity and improved service. Is there any doubt that the users of the WCML can scream and shout all they like about service cockups but it is only when Richard Branson start to throw his teddy about that NR find a remedial plan and 50 million quid! New times we are in and BR is gone never to return.

 

[anthony263]

In some respects i dont think privateisastion has worked but there have been soem good parks in that some places such as wrexham & sunderland etc now have direct service to London, operated by open access operators when the franchised operators would run services to those places.

I think that once problems is that the officials keep trying to make it hard for open acess operators to start up and some such as virgin are refusing to allow competition at all on their routes.

I hope that when the west coast mainline comes up for renewal that they change the rules to allow Wrexham & shropshire to call at Birmingham

one final point is that the officials in the DFT need to stop interfering, and a company should be allowed to order new rolling stock without the dft dictating

 

[Oswyntail]

I can see where Daccer is coming from, but he makes the assumption that the model for a "New" BR would be the old one, not something akin to the current NR. Legally enforceable contracts within the NR/ROSCO/BR triangle to keep everyone virtuous, but backed by the ability to raise money at government rather than commercial rates, and with the backing of government to protect the system from national events like the bombings. Benefits of scale in RS orders, but also with the ability to switch stock to where it is needed more efficiently. And more "cash cows" to subsidise "loss leaders".
Dream on, OT

 

[daccer]

my theories about BR are if the old BR had been allowed to continue and privatisation had not occured. I am not saying that a new model couldn't be contructed but there simply will never be the political will to re nationalise the whole system - it is too far gone now and the cost would be prohibitve. I am also not convinced that public ownership will not slip back into the old BR ethos of jobs for life, non accountability and union inflexibility. The trend nowdays is for privatisation at any costs - to buck this trend would need the system to meltdown drastically and it simply isnt failing enough for this to happen. Actually many would point to a growing railway as being proof that the opposite is actually true.

 

[Metroland]

Privatisation has worked - apart from the costs. More opinions here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lff2d/You_and_Yours_Call_You_and_Yours/

 

[O L Leigh]

I've recently gone on-record in this forum explaining where I feel the current model of privatisation fails, so I'm not going to go into great depth here in order to save the repetition. Where I feel that the system doesn't work is precisely where Daccer feels it does.

While competitive private enterprise will always work to knock out the weaker contenders I do not feel that this is to the benefit of the customer or the industry as a whole. I recently discovered through the process of phoning around for motorcycle insurance quotes that there are probably actually only about three specialist insurers in addition to all the big name companies. If left unchecked, the rail industry will very soon end up in a similar situation with just a very small number of bidders for each franchise. This means a poorer choice for the customer as a natural consequence of reduced competition.

However, I would generally agree with Daccer's initial assertion that privatisation is working (sort of). Things could be better yet with just a few little tweaks, but we're not far off things being right.

That said, the general public needs to have more realistic expectations relating to the funding of the rail industry. Rail is expensive, but it needs to be understood that the benefits it brings to the economy as a whole cannot be solely judged in terms of direct rail revenues. Only when rail investment and subsidy is seen in the wider context of the economic benefits that it brings will the general public be reconciled to the sums required to make the industry as a whole a success.

O L Leigh

 

[ungreat]

Its not worked

From a railwayman,who hoped it would.

 

[OMGitsDAVE]

What always annoys me is the fact that when one company suffers, everyone suddenly turns their opinions to one side, and says we want BR back! Yet, BR got taken out of place FOR Privatisation, so something must have went wrong there. Sorry if you don't understand, I'm in a rush!

 

[scandal]

What always annoys me is the fact that when one company suffers, everyone suddenly turns their opinions to one side, and says we want BR back! Yet, BR got taken out of place FOR Privatisation, so something must have went wrong there. Sorry if you don't understand, I'm in a rush!

People get anoyed because of the complexity of the current privatised system. Far from increasing competition, customers are subject to a one operator monopoly on their route, certainly locally. I agree with many of them who are anoyed by this as fares go up, shareholders dividends increase, yet services remain static despite passenger growth. The whole idea behind privatisation was that private industry is better then a nationalised one (same goes for the whole Thatcherite policy from 1979) as they believed that it would be self innovating and unable to fail. The problem is however, that the railways are a public service that is needed daily, we all saw the problems of rail strikes and the problems they cause by crippling the country to see that. The recent promise to renationalise NXEC shows how important the railways are and unlike the perfect competition market thinking they can not been simply allowed to fail, no matter what Adam Smith would of told you.

It is often easy to forget, that the railways now cost up to 3 times that of BR did prior to privatisation in the early 90s, weve seen plenty of investment with the £9bn WCML (costed at about £1bn by BR), and of course HST2 (about £6bn). It is no wonder to see that the privatised railway is a wash with improvements with that kind of funding increase, what anoys people is what we could of had with that kind of money under BR. I am not therefore saying nationalisation is the answer to the railways problems, the danger is that funding is often bottom of the que behind health and education and it tends to suffer from political interference as well. Theres also the danger of the unions being far too powerful over a nationalised system but that is open to debate. A potential solution would be to run the railways less nationally but regionally by people who understand the needs of the local people rather then the (as was) British Railways Board who were cosntantly looking at efficiency savings to reduce subsidy....of course what the market forgets is efficiency can only go so far in reality before things collapse....Beeching anyone?

Its hard to argue the best way to run the railways, but everyone would agree the current system is far too expensive and complicated. Transports biggest problem is everyone wants a high class system, but no-one is prepared to pay for it. What is for certain though, with the current issues of Global Warming, increasing congestion and price of motoring the railways are going to become far more important and perhaps it is best that we run them for their social benefit rather then allow the market to make all the decisions.