What went wrong?

[yorksrob]

An ironic mirror of 1947, which started with an unshakeable ideological conviction that the public sector was superior and only then tried to find a method of actually nationalising the railways (with fit-for-purpose corporate structure, objectives, financing basis, investment plans, choice of leadership talent, fit with other transport modes such as the Special Roads Act and so on).

True maybe.

But for those of us using trains in the 1990's, the unshakable conviction that the private sector was superior, seemed like a load of old flannel, and so it proved to be.

 

[yorkie]

Fares regulation wasn't strong enough and was eroded.

These days the DfT appears to act in a manner that is rather anti-passenger; they aim for prices to increase, flexibility to be reduced, penalties to be more severe and wider ranging in nature (including applying ever more hefty penalities to an ever growing proportion of people who make mistakes)

Train companies found innovative ways to push the boundaries of what they could get away with; some (such as Virgin, FirstGroup etc) even broke the rules in the hope that no-one would notice. I suspect rules are being broken now, but there is little evidence that such breaches would be detected, let alone punished.

Now fares regulation is effectively being disbanded by LNER at the request of the DfT; it's not entirely clear if the changes which happened (regarding single leg pricing) and the changes proposed (to abolish walk-up ex-Saver fares entirely) are actually legal or not; either way, the situation isn't acceptable.

All sorts of protections are being eroded or removed; passengers are increasingly being pushed towards Advance fares which are no longer immune from being charged a Penalty Fare if you make a mistake by taking the wrong train, for example.

The DfT want to deter custom, because if fares were reasonable, this would require more carriages, more depots, longer platforms, increased line capacity and, well the list goes on; all these costs are intended to be avoided as much as possible by encouraging people to use cars or, in the case of longer distance journeys, planes.

Some people think that such criticisms of the DfT are unfair and make all sorts of obtuse arguments to support their claims, but this appears to be a minority view, thankfully.

 

[Sonic1234]

The DfT want to deter custom, because if fares were reasonable, this would require more carriages, more depots, longer platforms, increased line capacity and, well the list goes on; all these costs are intended to be avoided as much as possible by encouraging people to use cars or, in the case of longer distance journeys, planes.

Indeed. I've always questioned how much the Government actually wants modal shift. Central and local Government make a fortune out of motoring.

There are a lot of people who aren't against using the train but feel priced out of rail. Talk to non- or infrequent rail users and a common story is "I once thought about getting the train to x, but was quoted £££silly money so I took the car/plane/didn't go". Even if it can be argued that (some) trains and fares aren't expensive, rail has a price perception problem with the public.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Indeed. I've always questioned how much the Government actually wants modal shift. Central and local Government make a fortune out of motoring.

There are a lot of people who aren't against using the train but feel priced out of rail. Talk to non- or infrequent rail users and a common story is "I once thought about getting the train to x, but was quoted £££silly money so I took the car/plane/didn't go". Even if it can be argued that (some) trains and fares aren't expensive, rail has a price perception problem with the public.

It's a problem you get bill shock because you see it all at once compared with a car, but the other issue is, if there was a shift to rail can the infrastructure cope? Example is the east coast to Cambridge/ Stansted airport, can't run any more trains through Ely north until upgrade. Even with the upgrade it's not going to produce lots of spare capacity

 

[unslet]

Fundamentally the problem with privatisation was that it started with an unshakeable ideological conviction that the private sector was superior and only then tried to find a method of actually privatising the railways.

By jove,you've got it in one.

 

[Irascible]

It wasn't even that - they'd just have privatised it as one entity like BT in that case ( and if there was any sense retained a large share in the result ). There was an opportunity to leech public money by throwing a bomb into the industry & selling the fragments as individual parts, and they took it with all hands.

 

[mike57]

A few thoughts:

The structure selected was far to complex for passenger services. We seem to hear less about freight so may be that is working better

The idea of ROSCOs taking over assets that had already been paid for was a bad one.

Apart from the ECML open access operators are notably few, I suspect that those in power at the time hoped that open access would become a much greater proportion of overall services.

Getting the railways out of the day to day political squabbles is a good idea but privatisation failed miserably in achieving this.

I dont think privatisation was ever going to work in the form that it happened.

The current mess with OLR running large chunks of the network and reliability poor on many routes shows just how badly privatisation has failed.

I think all governments see the railways as a 'banana skin' and try their best to dodge the issues and hide behind 'its not our fault'

The mess of ticketing has got significantly worse

I think the biggest problem is that every operator is looking to defend their company, rather than everyone working together to get people from A to B

 

[yorksrob]

Indeed. The franchise concept seemed to broadly worked while the sun shon, however as soon as the clouds gather it falls down. Perhaps that's the same with any ownership model.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I think privatisation had it's merits in terms of innovation, but the cynical nature of the measure was revealed by the lengths of the franchises offered which offered no scope for genuine long term planning and subsequent improvement - Virgin Cross Country for example won a seven year (?) franchise to start in 1997 (it was extended to ten years on a rolling basis I think).
This is such a strategically important operation for the country, and yet what can you actually do in seven years?
New trains take 3-5 years typically to spec, procure, build and test - proven by Virgin not being introduce the Voyager into passenger service til 2002 (they were built 2000-2001, and I'm using Wiki as my source).

That's not my recollection.
Virgin won the initial XC franchise on a 15-year basis to change all rolling stock and double frequencies.
They subsequently won ICWC on a similar basis, and to an extent ran the two franchises as a joint operation.
Both franchises then collapsed financially, largely due to Railtrack being unable to offer 140mph on the WCML (or even 125mph in places).
The franchises were renegotiated under a management contract, with ICWC recovering to the original 15-year timescale but with reduced premiums.
Virgin could not agree terms for XC and so this was retendered on a 7-year basis and Arriva won the franchise in 2007 with a lower-cost bid.
In the process the Birmingham-WCML-Scotland leg was transferred from XC to WC.
There was always a battle between the Treasury and DfT about franchise length, and as always the Treasury view prevailed.
Virgin had its 15-year ICWC franchise term in its pocket, but only Chiltern got away with a long franchise deal in the second franchise round.

Post 2012, ICWC had rolling 2-year "do minimum" management contracts until FirstGroup won a retender in 2019, and the XC can was repeatedly kicked down the road until Covid changed everything.
Both Pendolino and Voyager fleets had long leases agreed by DfT to match the franchise terms.
Pendolinos are now leased until 2027 I think, but Voyagers are essentially up for release now, pending new TOC contracts.

South Eastern and LTS/c2c also had 15-year initial terms, for major route upgrades and stock replacement.