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Scotrail to be Nationalised


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11 minutes ago, mdvle said:

 

Things would have changed, unless you assume the lack of the two wars would mean somehow the car/bus/lorry and an extensive road system would never have happened.

 

 

After both world wars, there was a huge surplus of trucks/lorries, which were sold cheaply

to the public, who then set up haulage companies (in competition with the railways), and

also accelerated the need for a bigger, better road network.

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1 minute ago, jcm@gwr said:

After both world wars, there was a huge surplus of trucks/lorries, which were sold cheaply

to the public, who then set up haulage companies (in competition with the railways), and

also accelerated the need for a bigger, better road network.

 

No argument that it accelerated it - but it would have happened anyway given the inherent advantages they offer over rail, just as it happened elsewhere in the world without the benefit of surplus trucks/lorries being sold cheap.

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4 hours ago, RJS1977 said:

 

It's not as simple as that, though, for a number of reasons:

 

1) Depreciation/leasing costs. Somewhere I have a book 'A day in the life of BR' which states that BR could no more afford to have an HST sitting idle than BA could a 747.  Depreciation (or on today's railway leasing costs - the bulk of which goes to cover the leasing company's depreciation) is one of the major costs of running a service (much as a large part of the cost of motoring is depreciation of the vehicle) and it's a cost that's paid irrespective of whether the train is running or sat in a siding. I would imagine that in terms of passengers carried, the break-even point on an off-peak service is pretty low. Yes, there's fuel, staffing costs, increased maintenance and (today) track access charges (which are probably lower off-peak) but depreciation's the biggie and the operator has to pay for that anyway. So even a lightly-loaded service can be profitable.

 

What really causes the losses is the requirements for large amounts of extra capacity at peak times (both in terms of rolling stock and track). This requires assets which are only used for a short part of the day but still depreciate and require maintenance. (I can remember reading an article by a former manager of Selhurst depot who discovered that during the morning peak, the last train left the depot three minutes before the first one came back in, and as the evening peak was more spread out fewer units were needed then, so there was effectively one unit in service for three minutes a day!). This is why operators often appear reluctant to obtain extra rolling stock for peak services - most of the time it will be sat in a siding!

 

2) Interconnectivity. One of the failings of Beeching was that when the branch lines closed, if people needed to buy a car to get to the junction, they might as well drive all the way, so closing branch lines caused passenger numbers on the main lines to drop. The same can be true the other way round - when I go to visit my parents in Pembrokeshire, I usually catch the 13:12 from Reading, which for an 8 or 10 car train, is lightly loaded for most of the journey. However, at Swansea it connects into the 16:30 to Pembroke Dock, which is a 2-car DMU and often heavily loaded - mostly from passengers that got off the London train. Cutting the Paddington service would impact the viability of the Pembroke Dock one.

 

3) And of course, from a social perspective there are a significant number of people who for various reasons don't have access to a car.   

 

Depreciation makes no difference to the point I was making. Depreciation is factored into whether a service is worth running. If it's not worth running and it doesn't serve any operational purpose, it shouldn't be running. If a loco depreciates in value £100 per day, the cost to crew the locomotive is £120 per day, and the cost of fuel is £2.5 per mile. If you run the train on a 100mi route and sell £100 worth of tickets, that service has lost £370; if it had just sat in the siding it would have lost only £100. There are lots of trains running each day which are running at a loss and are only running because the franchise requires that they are run.

 

Regarding your second point, at the time the Beeching report was compiled there were good data for where tickets were being purchased from and to, this was factored into the calculations. They were also well aware of the effect of private car ownership. Very few people were of the mind 'there are no trains, I'll buy a car', most people who previously travelled by train, then travelled by bus instead once the local station closed. The closing of the railway stations was less of a factor in deciding to buy a car than the cost of buying a car was. Even if the railways remained open, most people would have bought the cars when they could afford them, regardless of the local train service. The later Beeching report regarding development of trunk routes specifically highlighted that shorter distance intercity traffic would be lost to private cars.

 

On your third point, if people don't have access to a car, they can travel by bus, which is much more suited to low volumes of passenger numbers as it doesn't have the high infrastucture cost of a railway; it also provides more frequent stops, which mitigates having to walk some distance to the local railway station.

Edited by Rods_of_Revolution
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  • 1 year later...

.Governments of any colour have not made a good job of running public services for years ,the NHS has always been in trouble I can remember in the fifties long waiting lists etc. The railways have been badly run from when they were nationalised  and each government has passed the buck onwards but rail has kept going because of a largely   hard working workforce.  This country has always been ill served as far as transport the roads rail are always at the bottom of any spending and I suspect this will be the same for years to come as all we get are fine words no real action. 

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As others have said, the truly relevant discussion is not so much about private vs. state ownership but of good/competent leadership and management vs. bad/incompetent leadership and management (I use leadership and management as two separate things deliberately). 

There are inept private companies, though the market has a way of addressing really bad private companies, there are well run government programs. I honestly don't really care who owns the railways, the important matter is what they deliver. However, my fear is that a BR Mk.2 wouldn't be a return to BR in the case of England but rather a final dropping of the facade and handing what little control DfT doesn't already have to them. And I really can't see that as a positive development. And based on my experience with the Scottish governments interference in ferries and shipping I am not impressed by their skills either.

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