Jump to content
 

Scotrail to be Nationalised


Recommended Posts

Not nationalised.  We need a new word  for this - Scotalised?

 

And if they do it, the Taffies will want to follow suit.  They've already got Great Little Trains, they'll want Great Big Trains.

Northern Ireland already has its own railway system - not connected to the national network for some reason, not even the same gauge as Britain, and that was even before Brexit.

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
Just now, Michael Hodgson said:

Not nationalised.  We need a new word  for this - Scotalised?

 

And if they do it, the Taffies will want to follow suit.  They've already got Great Little Trains, they'll want Great Big Trains.

Northern Ireland already has its own railway system - not connected to the national network for some reason, not even the same gauge as Britain, and that was even before Brexit.

Wales already has!

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
14 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

The words "sensible government" and "England" just don't seem right in the same sentence. but let's not get too political here.

 

 

I'm glad you recognised a touch of irony in my statement.

 

I agree that train design, development and building is a multinational activity, it's just that the home of railways has no "critical mass" and largely assembles a kit of parts.

We closed down our railway engineering "centre of excellence" when we privatised the rail network. This "multinational" approach has also resulted in train maintenance being part of the train procurement package which is loved by franchise operators because it can be factored into the bid and left to the train supplier and forgotten about. If this results in an escalating cost to the taxpayer because train operators eventually loose their ability to evaluate maintenence costs, well too bad.

The issue is a little larger than railways though - it covers so many areas of how the UK's economy is structured. Essentially we have de-industrialised (with all respect to those still engaged in making things) and moved to a service economy underpinned by financial services. This trend can be identified in many developed economies but in contrast to the UK (and perhaps the USA), many of them retain a significant engineering and manufacturing sector that is able to compete worldwide. If they can do so can the UK providing there is a will and the investment funds required.

 

I can recall, some years ago, a very senior BMW executive say that he thought it a pity that the UK, a country that he admired, had embarked on a massive economic experiment where they have stopped making things and decided that everyone should be a banker, an estate agent or a hairdresser.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Richard B

  • Like 2
  • Agree 1
  • Informative/Useful 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Fenman said:


Quite right. It’s why I think it’s essential that the military is privatised as soon as possible...

 

I would suggest NHS management of the current vaccination programme demonstrates that not all public sector management is run by feckless incompetents. 
 

BR certainly didn’t strike me as worse-managed than most other British large-scale private-sector companies of that era, and in some respects it was pretty good (R&D, development and launch of bargain-basement HSTs, etc).
 

Paul

 

 

You're taking small examples where something worked and treating it as though it's a microcosm. You mention the HST as a success, but then neglect to mention the hundreds of standard steam locomotives which were comissioned and then cut up long before they were life-expired. BR then comissioned a whole raft of different diesel types and once again cut them up long before they were life-expired. There's no way any private company would have undertaken such a wasteful approach to developing new locomotives and methods of operation. BR were almost constantly on the back foot, always reacting rather than being proactive.

 

The main reason for poor management in the public sector isn't the people themselves, it's the fact that the stakeholders are mostly nebulous and so there's little accountability, and what accountability there is tends to be in the form of political games. Can you imagine any private company explaining to investors that they took their money and built hundreds of state of the art steam locomotives and then cut them up. Of course not, the company would have gone bust after it cut up all those steam locomotives, rather than being given a budget to do the same again but with diesel locomotives. Let's not forget that BR was run at a loss for almost all of its existence, again, something which would never have happened with a private company, as they would go bust and be replaced with something that would better serve the market. BR were in a position where there were millions of people and millions of tons of freight that were willing to pay to be moved around the country, and despite that demand, and over 50 years of development, BR couldn't find a way to operate in a profitable manner.

 

The free market is the system of supply and demand, it always tends towards equilibrium. Government regulations, ownership and subsidies are ways of manipulating the system of supply and demand; they are tools which should be applied very carefully, selectively, and with great consideration. Nationalising anything should be an absolute last resort (war, natural disaster, etc) and it should be undertaken for as shorter duration as possible. Once the government controls something it will inevitably become a political toy and changes will be driven not by the demand of the market, but by the demands of political point scoring.

Edited by Rods_of_Revolution
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

I am afraid that the BR diesel locomotive programme is a very poor example to choose. BR wanted to buy small numbers of locomotives as prototypes to test thoroughly before any large scale purchases but the government forced them to buy in bulk before the prototypes had been delivered because it wanted to see "progress". Hence they were lumbered with locomotives they would never have bought if they had been able to evaluate the prototypes.

And even the steam locomotive programme is not a very good example. At the time it was initiated we did not have the money to buy oil - hence the abandonment of oil conversion programmes for steam locomotives. When the economy improved and oil prices dropped things changed. Maybe BR could have been a bit quicker to change tack but the steam programme was in place before the change in circumstances.

It is easy to look back and rewrite history as we think it ought to have happened.

Jonathan

  • Agree 5
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 17/03/2021 at 16:14, irishmail said:

 

Is the use of the phrase ‘operator of last resort’ meant to suggest that it’s being nationalised more for practical than ideological reasons (so more like the East Coast franchise than the Welsh one)?

Link to post
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Rods_of_Revolution said:

 

You're taking small examples where something worked and treating it as though it's a microcosm. You mention the HST as a success, but then neglect to mention the hundreds of standard steam locomotives which were comissioned and then cut up long before they were life-expired. BR then comissioned a whole raft of different diesel types and once again cut them up long before they were life-expired. There's no way any private company would have undertaken such a wasteful approach to developing new locomotives and methods of operation. BR were almost constantly on the back foot, always reacting rather than being proactive.

 

The main reason for poor management in the public sector isn't the people themselves, it's the fact that the stakeholders are mostly nebulous and so there's little accountability, and what accountability there is tends to be in the form of political games. Can you imagine any private company explaining to investors that they took their money and built hundreds of state of the art steam locomotives and then cut them up. Of course not, the company would have gone bust after it cut up all those steam locomotives, rather than being given a budget to do the same again but with diesel locomotives. Let's not forget that BR was run at a loss for almost all of its existence, again, something which would never have happened with a private company, as they would go bust and be replaced with something that would better serve the market. BR were in a position where there were millions of people and millions of tons of freight that were willing to pay to be moved around the country, and despite that demand, and over 50 years of development, BR couldn't find a way to operate in a profitable manner.

 

The free market is the system of supply and demand, it always tends towards equilibrium. Government regulations, ownership and subsidies are ways of manipulating the system of supply and demand; they are tools which should be applied very carefully, selectively, and with great consideration. Nationalising anything should be an absolute last resort (war, natural disaster, etc) and it should be undertaken for as shorter duration as possible. Once the government controls something it will inevitably become a political toy and changes will be driven not by the demand of the market, but by the demands of political point scoring.

No such thing as a free market. Never has been. Never will be. In an ideal world, perhaps There may 'markets' artificially created or otherwise, but none is completely free, in the sense that there are no biases. The natural result of a free market is either a cartel, or a functional monopoly, with some insignificant competition at the edges.

  • Agree 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

 

The TSSA's General Secretary could not resist making a sarcastic comment on this news: 'Manuel Cortes said “This announcement is long overdue – much like many ScotRail trains were whilst Abellio was in charge'. Does Mr Cortes not realise that his words directly criticise (among others) railway staff, some of whom are members of his union ?!! At least it confirms my decision to leave the TSSA the moment I retired. 

 

I worked for Scotland's railways from 1984 to 2016; 10 years pre- and (it still astonishes me) 22 years post-privatisation. BR was never as bad as some like to allege, but neither was it perfect. As regards my own experience, only once was my job done away with and a notice of redundancy issued to me - by BR. So, while the differences (re)nationalisation will make remain to be seen, perhaps we should be careful what we wish for.....

 

 

  • Like 1
  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, 62613 said:

The natural result of a free market is either a cartel, or a functional monopoly, with some insignificant competition at the edges.

The internet is quite a good example of this. What competitors do Amazon and ebay have? What's the alternative to Facebook? 

  • Agree 3
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium

The essential issue is not any more nationalisation or private ownership.

It is the extent that governments, and especially their officials, will let railwaymen get on with doing the job they know rather than interfering in things about which they know very little. One may say that the nationalised railway was starved of funding, and times it was, but private companies do not have bottomless pits of money either, and it sometimes shows. But if you want to see how not to manage a privatised railway look at the period when Arriva was running the Welsh network. The only way it could increase train frequency on the Cambrian line was because the Welsh Assembly funded an extra train and Arriva managed to hire in some stock for use on the North Wales line to free up another unit. The franchise had been let on a "no growth" basis and DaFT were not budging on that despite circumstances having changed completely.

Now of course there will be very little money for anything that is not seen as "rebuilding the country" so whether public or private the railways are likely to struggle - though I am sure the various consultants will do very well devising schemes which will never be built.

Jonathan

  • Agree 4
Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't understand the railway unions obsession with renationaliseing the railways. Railway staff have done well in terms of pay rises since privatisation, much better than they would have otherwise. As soon as the railway is renationalised that will be the end of any substantial pay rises. 

 

  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

 

The TSSA's General Secretary could not resist making a sarcastic comment on this news: 'Manuel Cortes said “This announcement is long overdue – much like many ScotRail trains were whilst Abellio was in charge'. 

 

 

 The TSSA along with the other trades unions had an opportunity to put forward a combined employee bid ahead of the previous franchise process but they, collectively, were more interested in playing constitutional and party politics than looking after their members interests. The fact that the ASLEF rep was on the Labour Party national executive and the RMT rep was either still or had just left a similar post and was in with the woodwork at the STUC meant that they simply would not consider working with the SNP. The ultimate democratic solution is to convert Scotrail into an employee owned cooperative.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
On 17/03/2021 at 22:06, Rods_of_Revolution said:

It never was 'privatised' to begin with. Almost anyone who's worked in railway management knows that it's the government that has the final say on almost all aspects of running the 'privatised' railway. Private companies are much better at innovation, raising capital and bringing supply to meet demand, than any part of the public sector. Everytime I suggest that the railways should be properly privatised, people tell me that private companies will do eveything on the cheap, gut the service and tear up railways left, right and centre to maximise profit; despite the fact almost all the railways in this country were built by private companies, and almost all the cutting of services and ripping up of tracks was done by BR. The same goes for almost every sector of infrastructure, private enterprise innovates and builds it, the government takes it over and runs it into the ground, before finally they 'privatise' it again, only with so much regulation that it cripples almost every positive aspect of privatisation.

 

If I was betting, my money would be on rail services in Scotland getting significantly worse, not better.

 

All the best,

 

Jack

 

If Privately operated railways (outside of tourist attractions) are such a success then please show me a list of private passenger* operators!

 

If there is any truth in your tirade against the state then you would expect there to be loads of purely private passenger operators in places like the USA. The fact there are not (all passenger operators receive some form of federal or state subsidy) is rather telling.

 

Its a FACT that ALL passenger railways are LOSS MAKING throughout the developed world since WW2 due to the rise of cheap and affordable motor motor cars.

 

Its got nothing to do with 'innovation' (or the lack of it by state operators) - British Rail in fact had lots of it, they were the first railway organisation to produce a High Speed tilting train for goodness sake!

 

The problem was HM Treasury who refused to fund said innovations properly and as a result that 'innovation' was not able to be developed as it would be in a private enterprise.

 

 

 

*Privately owned freight only railways are different beasts and as we see in the likes of the USA, they still exist because they can make reasonable profits from it. Again quite a few used to opperate passenger trains untill the 1960s when air travel and private motoring made transporting people a loss making exercise - so like all propper private businesses they stopped doing that.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites

I keep reading that people want the English rail system to be nationalised and run by the English government like Scotland and Wales.  

 

Could someone please enlighten me where I can find this English government? Maybe ask Tam Dalyell?! 

  • Funny 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
1 hour ago, darrel said:

I don't understand the railway unions obsession with renationaliseing the railways. Railway staff have done well in terms of pay rises since privatisation, much better than they would have otherwise. As soon as the railway is renationalised that will be the end of any substantial pay rises. 

 

 

Because, as any true socialist will tell you, railways are a public service (as is water, energy, telecoms, etc) and thus it should be owned and run by the public not some private cooperation who is only interested in extracting profit and not looking after the interests of society.

 

The RMTs constitution actual lists the creation of a socialist state along the lines of Karl Marx as one of guiding principles of the Union.

 

The other consideration is union power - As things stand, if the RMT are in dispute with Southern, then only people who work directly for Southern can take part in strike action. If on the other hand all staff are employed by British Rail then they can ALL go out on strike, from Inverness to Penzance, not just those working in Sussex.

Edited by phil-b259
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
On 18/03/2021 at 08:02, black and decker boy said:

 Treasury will not throw more / endless subsidy at Rail and will impose cuts.

 

 

Yup

 

This has come through to RMT members working for Network Rail. Regardless of whether you agree with NR or the Union, I think its pretty clear that we are in for a rough ride. Think the DOO disputes were bad - this could easily be much much worse ...

 

(And not just in the obvious ways, cutting back on maintenance is a sure fire way of increasing the chances of nasty train accidents - and thats coming from someone who knows the state of assets on the ground are no way as good as top management seem to assume)

 

 

RATES OF PAY & CONDITIONS OF SERVICE 2021 - NETWORK RAIL

 

I am writing to update you on issues connected to the 2021 pay negotiations and I can first of all advise you that, although there have been discussions, there has still not been any written response or proposal from the company. 

 

However, there have been on-going sessions at the Rail Industry Recovery Group (RIRG) and some informal discussions at Director level as to what the company is envisaging as part of any efficiency measures to fund a pay offer.

 

The company is preparing to table a briefing of these measures at a meeting of the Network Rail Business Council on 24th March. They hope that discussions on these measures will form a part of the industry-wide RIRG discussion and would, from their view, dispose of the 2021 pay negotiations which would be subsumed in to their efficiencies programme.

 

Whether there is an industry-wide agreement via the RIRG or not, it is also clear that Network Rail will press ahead with its proposals which will constitute a major reduction in costs via a pay freeze, attacks on conditions, major jobs cuts and dilution of standards based on risk.

 

It is now clear to your negotiators that what Network Rail is preparing to propose will include at least:

 

  • Wholescale job cuts across the organisation - numbers unknown but likely to be in the thousands.
  • A pay freeze of an unknown duration.
  • Wide-ranging reorganisation affecting:
  • Managed stations staff moving to a “One Team” concept with unknown effects on station staff numbers, duties, terms & conditions in both Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies.
  • Risk-based maintenance being extended so that Network Rail can dilute current maintenance frequencies and cycles with some assets completely un-maintained.
  • A 50% reduction in Maintenance Scheduled Task with a potentially massive effect on maintenance section staffing establishments.
  • Introduction of new technology measures again affecting maintenance and inspection regimes and staffing numbers.
  • Joint working across maintenance disciplines which would end the current distinctions between established departmental disciplines such as S&T, OLE, P-WAY, P&D etc.
  • Pooling of all Operative grades.
  • Overlapping skills between current disciplines.
  • Issuing of a new contract of employment replacing the current Infrastructure Maintenance Company contracts.
  • Individual/personal rostering in Maintenance (elimination of team structures such as 3-person S&T Teams.
  • More unsocial hours and weekend working.
  • Progressing with “21st Century Operations”, “Digital Railway” and “Intelligent Infrastructure”.
  • In tandem with the above, there is an ever-present drive to simply remove, as far as possible, track workers from the Infrastructure during traffic hours along with consideration of the effects of the new Fatigue Standards.

 

As can be seen from the above, this represents an enormous challenge to jobs, working lives and practices, and to work/life balance.

 

In Network Rail's view, all of this is to be accomplished by the company within the context of a pay freeze of unknown duration and will also be undertaken without a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies in place in any part of the company.

 

It has also stated that the only way to generate any money for pay increases is through the agreement and adoption of a package of measures such as outlined above.

 

Network Rail is not intending to consult RMT on the dilution of maintenance standards and schedules which would enable the 50% reduction in Maintenance Scheduled Tasks. This will hamper our ability to challenge the dilution of safety standards and the cuts to jobs.

 

Most of these measures have been resisted by RMT for years and the union cannot now be cowed into a position where it foregoes its principles and we must be prepared to defend your jobs, terms & conditions, pay, working practices and your work/life balance.

 

While your union can discuss and negotiate, to defend our members, on items that the company brings forward, we must be able to fight against unreasonable measures and against the possible imposition of compulsory redundancies, pay freezes or un-agreed changes to conditions, working practices and standards.

 

You and your colleagues in Network Rail must be prepared for that fight.

 

On that basis, your union's National Executive Committee has therefore declared that your union is on a “dispute-footing” with Network Rail in order to campaign and fight for our members in the company.

 

Your NEC has instructed me to:

 

  • Seek professional/legal advice on the company's intention to drastically dilute maintenance standards and schedules which would provide the scope for job cuts.
  • Inform our Network Rail members that we are on a “dispute-footing” and that the matters are so serious that we must ready ourselves for any coming dispute and organise on that basis.
  • Instigate a recruitment and organisation drive within Network Rail using our Representatives, activists and branches to recruit any non members and to ensure that members' personal data is accurate in preparation for any ballot that we may need.
  • Organise a mass meeting of Network Rail Representatives as soon as is feasible following the NR Business Council on 24th March.

 

I do not apologise for the length of this email to you as I want you and your colleagues to have a full picture of the attacks Network Rail is lining up against your pay, working arrangements and safety at work.

 

The success we have in fighting off management's plans lie with everyone playing their part and, as a first step, I ask you to encourage any of your colleagues who are not yet in RMT to join up as soon as possible as we cannot defend their jobs and conditions if they are not in this union.

 

I will of course write to you again as further developments arise in this matter.

 

UNITY IS STRENGTH!

Edited by phil-b259
  • Informative/Useful 1
  • Interesting/Thought-provoking 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
1 minute ago, Hobby said:

What's the membership level like in NR Phil? 

 

Pretty high - though the 'silent majority' are not nearly as militant as the leadership

 

One thing is for sure though, these proposals are only likely to boost membership!

  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, 62613 said:

No such thing as a free market. Never has been. Never will be. In an ideal world, perhaps There may 'markets' artificially created or otherwise, but none is completely free, in the sense that there are no biases. The natural result of a free market is either a cartel, or a functional monopoly, with some insignificant competition at the edges.

 

I'm not talking in absolutes. Just as if I was to say that the water that comes out the tap is clean, it is clean for almost all purposes, but it's never truely 'clean,' if clean means 100% of the impurities have been removed. The market can never by 100% free, but it can be free for most intents and purposes.

 

I've seen instances where a company will come up with a solid business plan, apply for paths to run trains, only to be told that they'd be too competitive with an existing franchise holder. That's a functional monopoly, but it's not an inevitable consequence of the free market, it's driven by government mandates. If the railway market was free, companies would be free to bid on whichever paths they wanted and the highest bidder would recieve them. The same applies to rolling stock procurement. The companies operating the trains can't chose what rolling stock they want, the government sets the requirements and procures it on behalf of the franchisee. It even extends to new projects, like HS2; the market probably doesn't want to save 25mins on their journey, the market probably wants a seat and train that runs on time, and so an additional conventional railway route would be cheaper and better satisfy the market, yet for political reasons the government wants a highspeed route.

 

47 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

If Privately operated railways (outside of tourist attractions) are such a success then please show me a list of private passenger* operators!

 

If there is any truth in your tirade against the state then you would expect there to be loads of purely private passenger operators in places like the USA. The fact there are not (all passenger operators receive some form of federal or state subsidy) is rather telling.

 

Its a FACT that ALL passenger railways are LOSS MAKING throughout the developed world since WW2 due to the rise of cheap and affordable motor motor cars.

 

Its got nothing to do with 'innovation' (or the lack of it by state operators) - British Rail in fact had lots of it, they were the first railway organisation to produce a High Speed tilting train for goodness sake!

 

The problem was HM Treasury who refused to fund said innovations properly and as a result that 'innovation' was not able to be developed as it would be in a private enterprise.

 

 

 

*Privately owned freight only railways are different beasts and as we see in the likes of the USA, they still exist because they can make reasonable profits from it. Again quite a few used to opperate passenger trains untill the 1960s when air travel and private motoring made transporting people a loss making exercise - so like all propper private businesses they stopped doing that.

 

 

 

Passenger services frequently turn a profit, but that profit is lost because the unprofitable parts are subsidised instead of being cut. Why are empty trains running between Bristol and Paddington in the middle of the afternoon? It's not to make money, it just takes money away from the peak hours services which turn a profit; they're run because the government insists there have to be trains all day. You have observed how the freight railways turn a profit, and that's because they only run trains when there is demand, not for the sake of having a train running. You don't get an empty stone train running across the country on the off chance there may be some stone that needs moving. The demand for lots of passenger services have been lost to the car, so why are they still running? It's not practical for millions of people to drive into London at the same time, the parking is bad, there is traffic congestion, etc, so that's why people commute by train and it's what makes peak time services profitable. However if you're going into London in the middle of the afternoon, it's probably easier to drive, so people use the car not the train, and so the train doesn't need to run.

 

People see the removal of services as though they're losing something which is needed, rather than than losing something which is no longer required. From the point of view of enthusiasts like us, the more trains the better! But in truth the railways are practical pieces of infrastructure and the market driven approach by private companies is far more efficient.

 

The government have almost always been meddling in our railways. If you look at the Railway Regulation Act 1844, you'll see that even back then the government was insisting certain trains must be run, regardless of whether they were profitable or useful. This was followed by the Cheap Trains Act 1883. The government have been interfering since the beginning.

 

Edited by Rods_of_Revolution
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
2 minutes ago, Rods_of_Revolution said:

 

I'm not talking in absolutes. Just as if I was to say that the water that comes out the tap is clean, it is clean for almost all purposes, but it's never truely 'clean,' if clean means 100% of the impurities have been removed. The market can never by 100% free, but it can be free for most intents and purposes.

 

I've seen instances where a company will come up with a solid business plan, apply for paths to run trains, only to be told that they'd be too competitive with an existing franchise holder. That's a functional monopoly, but it's not an inevitable consequence of the free market, it's driven by government mandates. If the railway market was free, companies would be free to bid on whichever paths they wanted and the highest bidder would recieve them. The same applies to rolling stock procurement. The companies operating the trains can't chose what rolling stock they want, the government sets the requirements and procures it on behalf of the franchisee. It even extends to new projects, like HS2; the market probably doesn't want to save 25mins on their journey, the market probably wants a seat and train that runs on time, and so an additional conventional railway route would be cheaper and better satisfy the market, yet for political reasons the government wants a highspeed route.

 

 

Passenger services frequently turn a profit, but that profit is lost because the unprofitable parts are subsidised instead of being cut. Why are empty trains running between Bristol and Paddington in the middle of the afternoon? It's not to make money, it just takes money away from the peak hours services which turn a profit; they're run because the government insists there have to be trains all day. You have observed how the freight railways turn a profit, and that's because they only run trains when there is demand, not for the sake of having a train running. You don't get an empty stone train running across the country on the off chance there may be some stone that needs moving. The demand for lots of passenger services have been lost to the car, so why are they still running? It's not practical for millions of people to drive into London at the same time, the parking is bad, there is traffic congestion, etc, so that's why people commute by train and it's what makes peak time services profitable. However if you're going into London in the middle of the afternoon, it's probably easier to drive, so people use the car not the train, and so the train doesn't need to run.

 

People see the removal of services as though they're losing something which is needed, rather than than losing something which is no longer required. From the point of view of enthusiasts like us, the more trains the better! But in truth the railways are practical pieces of infratructure and the market driven approach by private companies is far more efficient.

 

The government have almost always been meddling in our railways. If you look at the Railway Regulation Act 1844, you'll see that even back then the government was insisting certain trains must be run, regardless of whether they were profitable or useful. This was followed by the Cheap Trains Act 1883. The government have been interfering since the beginning.

 

 

All very true - BUT as we now know to our cost such a focus on profits has been very destructive to the environment and a major cause of climate change.

 

While the Victorians have the defence of not knowing what problems they were creating for future generations, that excuse doesn't exist now!

 

As such simply saying that we should be axing quiet services in favour of polluting vehicles* is morally wrong. What we need to be doing is encouraging rail use - not giving up and shutting down chunks of the rail network because it doesn't fit the usual profit dominated model of private enterprises.

 

Research has repeatedly shown that the second biggest influence on peoples travel choices after fares is frequency!

 

Why do you think the Cross Country Voyagers were regularly overcrowded in pre Covid days? Enough units were ordered to accommodate all the passenger numbers previously accommodated by the BR loco hauled sets if they spread themselves out over several services.

 

The answer is that having an hourly clockface timetable rather than 3 irregularly spaced trains a day made using the train much more attractive so ridership increased massively and the trains couldn't cope!

 

Similar increases in ridership were seen on the rural branch from top Turo to Falmouth - doubling the service frequency bought a big increase in users as taking the train then became a viable option.

 

Now its true that Covid has taken a wrecking ball to rail travel and with working from home likely to be far grater than before, service levels and routings are going to have to change. Its also true that with the public finances having taking a battering the subsidies given to the rail industry will inevitably have to shrink. However neither of those things mean that the wholesale withdrawal of rail services which cannot be made to turn a profit is remotely sensible given the grater threat climate change poses to human beings and the planet overall. Instead we should be looking at using such subsidies to promote rail travel and encourage grater profitability by increasing ridership.

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Unfortunately that's not the way it works, though. With the increasing use of EVs rail travel will remain at the less used end of the scale. Until cars can be priced off the roads buses and trains will remain the second choice for most people. And taxing the car enough so as to force people onto public transport is a vote loser. 

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Premium
1 hour ago, Hobby said:

Unfortunately that's not the way it works, though. With the increasing use of EVs rail travel will remain at the less used end of the scale. Until cars can be priced off the roads buses and trains will remain the second choice for most people. And taxing the car enough so as to force people onto public transport is a vote loser. 

 

EVs still take up roadspace though - and road building in terms of adding capacity, iniatives (as opposed to adding more traffic generators like housing estates)if you exclude the 'Smart Motorway' is at a record low. Just this week the Transport secretary canned a proposal for a new 'Expressway' (think Smart Motorway but with green signs like the new A14 south of Huntingdon) from Didcot over to Milton Keynes while Highways England said the 50mph speed limit on the A34 west of Oxford would be extended north all the way to the M40 junction and southwards onto the Abbingdon by-pass.

 

Thus if everyone decides to ditch rail travel because of EVs then the road system simply won't be able to cope - which means resuming large scale road construction, particularly in the overcrowded south east and based on what I see locally, that is also going to be a big vote loser politically.

 

So although I agree that EVs will still dominate the travel picture its also impossible for the country to rely on them in place of rail travel going forward even though they will make a big difference with respect to climate change and pollution.

 

 

  • Agree 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

Buses and trains will always have a role in transporting us around, I agree, but only in certain scenarios do people want to use them and that is mainly for commuting and some leisure travel where the alternative of sitting in traffic is worse than sitting or standing on a train or bus. 

 

But unless cars are priced out of most peoples reach then public transport will always be a minor player in transporting us around. 

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/870647/tsgb-2019.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiWn5K9or3vAhVMRBUIHTPTC9gQFjAAegQIBRAC&usg=AOvVaw0NDjFcnhNasjSITt9knTq4

 

If the roads had been better in the early 19thC then its unlikely we would have the rail network we do. Most people will always prefer personal transport that gets them from their front door to where they are going, so the horse, bicycle and now car are the winners. Trains are a poor relation. Although we all like trains on here we have to be realistic and admit that they are not the most ideal form of transport, especially in rural areas. If they need to spend more on roads for those EVs they will. 

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...