ECML franchise to be broucht back under Public Ownership

[E3109]

Branson is a extreme good business man and has enabled a lot of companies to prosper ,the new white livery has been forced on Virgin by the DFT so as make rebranding easy .

He got a snifter of how nice 'free' (public) money smells, and he's like a swarm of bluebottles around a freshly-laid dog jobbie right now.

 

No wonder his current target is what they refer to as "Our NHS".

 

Glad I'm outa here shortly. Already priced a 20ft container for all me train tat...

Where I'm going, corruption is rife and in yer face.

But at least the little man gets a slice.

In the UK the filtration ends around the councillor/PC/Freemason level.

[Hobby]

As for one TOC paying extra to get their late trains put in front of other operators' on-time ones, my gut feeling is that it would be illegal.

 

 

Not sure why? Though as said, it shouldn't be allowed.

[russ p]

Let's hope when it comes to liveries they don't go to that idiot that has designed the virgin and others one who is obsessed by swirls!

The LNER coronation livery would be very classy even if the Japanese commuter EMUsvit would be applied to aren't

[mdvle]

Nope. Fact.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britain#/media/File:GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2015.png

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britain#Annual_passenger_numbers

 

 

 

Jason

 

The graph is in some ways problematic.

 

A large part of the decline will be in the rise of the car, both as it became more affordable and as the road system was improved and motorways were built.  This was in a way a double hit because not only did it hurt daily commuting but it make a big decline in the summer saturday phenomena.

 

But if you look at the graph carefully you see that passengers numbers had a significant increase in the 80s as BR became more responsive and the government funded capital improvements.

 

The decline in the early 90s can be attributed to the economic decline that occured then, and while it is no shown clearly you can see that passengers numbers were back to climbing again prior to privatization.

 

And of course privatization has benefited from investments in the railway that BR could only dream of as well as other external factors including the boom of London that has resulted in the massive increase in commuting brought about both by the job increases, property prices dramatically increasing, and the inability to increase the road system to handle the new demand thus to a certain extent forcing people onto the trains.

[Hobby]

The increases are due to anything but the franchises, then...

[Dunsignalling]

Not sure why? Though as said, it shouldn't be allowed.

Breach of contract between NR and other operators. Unless, of course, they agreed to such a practice. Such agreement would undoubtedly come at the cost of hefty discounts to their own access charges.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[Hobby]

Depends on what is said in the franchise wording, they may have the option but don't take it up... 

Edited May 16, 2018 by Hobby

[Clearwater]

The graph is in some ways problematic.

 

A large part of the decline will be in the rise of the car, both as it became more affordable and as the road system was improved and motorways were built.  This was in a way a double hit because not only did it hurt daily commuting but it make a big decline in the summer saturday phenomena.

 

But if you look at the graph carefully you see that passengers numbers had a significant increase in the 80s as BR became more responsive and the government funded capital improvements.

 

The decline in the early 90s can be attributed to the economic decline that occured then, and while it is no shown clearly you can see that passengers numbers were back to climbing again prior to privatization.

 

And of course privatization has benefited from investments in the railway that BR could only dream of as well as other external factors including the boom of London that has resulted in the massive increase in commuting brought about both by the job increases, property prices dramatically increasing, and the inability to increase the road system to handle the new demand thus to a certain extent forcing people onto the trains.

 

In 1920, the previous peak, population was about 40m.  Taking 1500 million journeys that equates to 37.5/UK resident.  Using that same mutliple to today's population (c65m), you imply 2,437 million journeys.  Agree with your analysis of impact of falling costs of road travel and the massive commuter boom in London (there's an interesting fact elsewhere about how much earlier the first trains are into London now compared to the pre City Big Bang era) but rail is still not as densely used as in 1920.

 

Of course, the data hides a lot of detail.  Some people might take 400+ journeys a year if they commute.  Others none.  In the 1910s/20s, there may have been a lot more short distance journeys that don't exist today and the longer distance services may be both more frequent and heavily loaded.  PhDs theses could do all of these factors justice given the number and complexity!

[Dunsignalling]

The increases are due to anything but the franchises, then...

Cynic Mode On

 

The main reason train ridership is increasing is that other forms of transport have become slower/more unpleasant/expensive/inconvenient, especially if commuting into the capital............

 

Cynic Mode Off

Edited May 16, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[mdvle]

The increases are due to anything but the franchises, then...

 

Difficult to say.

 

The franchises bring a lot of problems but it can also be argued validly that the private sector involvement forced the government's hand into paying the increased subsidies and capital expenditures.  It would be one thing to tell BR no money this year, it is another thing entirely to tell the bankers/lawyers/etc particularly when they have an ability to fight back that BR didn't.

 

Given the other issues the only real question is how much of the increase is due to the franchises and how much is the external factors and that would take a lot of research and even then would likely only be a guess.

[Dunsignalling]

Difficult to say.

 

The franchises bring a lot of problems but it can also be argued validly that the private sector involvement forced the government's hand into paying the increased subsidies and capital expenditures.  It would be one thing to tell BR no money this year, it is another thing entirely to tell the bankers/lawyers/etc particularly when they have an ability to fight back that BR didn't.

 

Given the other issues the only real question is how much of the increase is due to the franchises and how much is the external factors and that would take a lot of research and even then would likely only be a guess.

Agreed, but another factor is that the graph is raw journey data, taking no account of financial downturns which put a huge dent into all commuting figures, not just rail.

 

Overlay that, and I would expect to see some quite substantial correlation with the sharper declines/dips.

 

John

Edited May 16, 2018 by Dunsignalling

[E3109]

Given that Beardie was referring to "Bad Old British Rail" within weeks of receiving the WCML concession, it was always an odds-on that he'd claim credit for increased ridership.

1. Pax numbers have risen because of factors mentioned above

2. Does that fella not realise how many railway(wo)men he p1ssed off by slating their former employer? An employer who acknowledged that for most people 'the railway' wasn't just a job but a vocation?

[locoholic]

As Einstein didn't say, repeating something (i.e. the franchising process) and expecting a different result is one definition of insanity.

 

The ECML under privatisation shows that we definitely don't have evidence-based government, and you probably have to be mad to work for D(a)fT, too.

[Butler Henderson]

Let's hope when it comes to liveries they don't go to that idiot that has designed the virgin and others one who is obsessed by swirls!

The LNER coronation livery would be very classy even if the Japanese commuter EMUsvit would be applied to aren't

Obviously red based it would seem http://www.lnerailway.co.uk/ and no doubt a simple adaptation of the current

[Coryton]

The graph is in some ways problematic.

 

A large part of the decline will be in the rise of the car, both as it became more affordable and as the road system was improved and motorways were built.  This was in a way a double hit because not only did it hurt daily commuting but it make a big decline in the summer saturday phenomena.

 

But if you look at the graph carefully you see that passengers numbers had a significant increase in the 80s as BR became more responsive and the government funded capital improvements.

 

The decline in the early 90s can be attributed to the economic decline that occured then, and while it is no shown clearly you can see that passengers numbers were back to climbing again prior to privatization.

 

And of course privatization has benefited from investments in the railway that BR could only dream of as well as other external factors including the boom of London that has resulted in the massive increase in commuting brought about both by the job increases, property prices dramatically increasing, and the inability to increase the road system to handle the new demand thus to a certain extent forcing people onto the trains.

 

Something that occurred to me after I wrote my post is that you might not expect any increase in ridership due to privatisation to be evident immediately. There was no sudden change (and indeed the franchises didn't start at the same time). It took time for new trains to come in (not that BR wouldn't have had new trains either), for example.

 

So a sudden change on day 1 is perhaps not what you want to see as evidence of cause and effect.

 

On the other hand, if you put a line to signify when BR started to become more commercially minded (perhaps taking the point at which we all became "customers"), you might see the graph as evidence of an increase in ridership as people began to respond to improvements.

 

It is very easy to see things that aren't there on a noisy graph, and in this case we can't re-run the experiment and see which features stay the same and which get washed out as the signal to noise increases.

 

As for the loss of commuting and summer saturday journeys, while they will of course reduce the numbers on the graph, they are both in some ways things the railways can do without, requiring lots of stock for a relatively short fraction of time.

[luckymucklebackit]

Sky's online reporting up to the usual standard..

 

[Peter Crawford]

Well, I don't see how HM Gov. will get it right. To start off with, its website is almost impossible to find with a google search of LNER. Not even on the second page of Google's results. Even small cottage industries selling loco lamps are higher up the list. And LNER is basically VTEC with Virgin replaced by LNER. None of that lovely Apple Green and Garter Blue...

[Coryton]

Well, I don't see how HM Gov. will get it right. To start off with, its website is almost impossible to find with a google search of LNER. Not even on the second page of Google's results. Even small cottage industries selling loco lamps are higher up the list. And LNER is basically VTEC with Virgin replaced by LNER. None of that lovely Apple Green and Garter Blue...

 

On the other hand the web site has only just gone up and I'm not sure you'd expect Google to rank it highly from the beginning. Google methodically works its way through the web and even if you were to seed the web with links to your new web page (which is how Google traditionally worked out how highly to rank a page, though no doubt now it's more sophisticated), it would take a while to work through.

 

Quite likely by the time LNER takes over it will be somewhat higher up, besides which by then the Virgin East Coast web site will presumably redirect to it so it doesn't really matter.

[caradoc]

Someone else may correct me but my understanding is that both VTEC and VWC both pay premiums to NR to ensure they are given priority over other services, even when running late. 

 

Regulating of trains when running out of course is controlled by Traffic Management Statements (TMS) issued to signalboxes. For example, at Edinburgh Signalling Centre, Scotrail services from North Berwick conflict with Down ECML trains from Drem Junction onwards; The TMS for this location state how long the Scotrail service should be held for a late Down ECML train; This is varied during the peak hours when the North Berwick trains do not get held, due to their importance to Scotrail's business. Every Operator is aware of these arrangements.

 

Of course, if a train is late and either it or another service is delayed as a result, somebody will be unhappy; It truly is a no-win situation for Network Rail. Also, while delaying a late express for an on-time stopper seems wrong, there may be good reasons for this; For example, a Motherwell-Dalmuir train held for a delayed Down WCML service will, later in its journey, have to pass through the congested Partick-Hyndland area, with a train every 2 minutes at peak times; One train presented late to that area can cause havoc, out off all proportion to the original delay.

[009 micro modeller]

Well, you could do something like that but splitting the franchises by type of service rather than region, e.g. one for intercity services, one for other passenger services (maybe split into one company for the southeast and another for the rest of the country) and one for freight.

 

Vertical integration would require you to identify a prime user for each section of track in the country who would then have overall responsibility but would have to let the other companies use it as required. This would probably end up being fairly fine-grained so at a large station different companies would be responsible for different bits of track, and the freight company would have goods loops while the intercity company had the main line

I wasn't really suggesting that they should do this, more imagining what could happen if the idea of ICEC managing the track as well was taken to its ultimate conclusion. After the accidents caused by Railtrack's lack of maintenance privatising the infrastructure is not something I would like to see.

[jjb1970]

I don't really see why a private company or franchise failing should be such a big event. The concomitant of allowing business freedom to succeed is that they are also free to fail. In this case Virgin (SC) bid too high, not helped by DafT and their general mismanagement of certain aspects of the ECML but overall the public sector didn't do badly out of them. In a way I shudder to think what DafT will make of things now, but on the other hand given that the important decisions of the "private" passenger railway are taken by DafT who micro-manage things maybe it couldn't get much worse.

[Coryton]

I wasn't really suggesting that they should do this, more imagining what could happen if the idea of ICEC managing the track as well was taken to its ultimate conclusion. After the accidents caused by Railtrack's lack of maintenance privatising the infrastructure is not something I would like to see.

 

No indeed, but I was hinting at the fact that something like this sort of vertical integration was tried under sectorisation. where so far as I know every bit of track was allocated to one sector or another.

 

A reduction in safety shouldn't be an inevitability of privatising infrastructure though. We don't see many calls to nationalise airlines to reduce the number of accidents.

[Coryton]

I don't really see why a private company or franchise failing should be such a big event. The concomitant of allowing business freedom to succeed is that they are also free to fail. In this case Virgin (SC) bid too high, not helped by DafT and their general mismanagement of certain aspects of the ECML but overall the public sector didn't do badly out of them. In a way I shudder to think what DafT will make of things now, but on the other hand given that the important decisions of the "private" passenger railway are taken by DafT who micro-manage things maybe it couldn't get much worse.

 

Perhaps not, given that the system is deliberately set up to minimise disruption when this occurs. (Unlike, say, when a bus company goes under which can lead to routes suddenly being dropped temporarily or permanently).

 

On the other hand, the fact that it keeps happening suggests that perhaps the system is flawed, and there is also the danger of an asymmetry if the gains when a franchise succeeds are much higher than the losses up to the point where they are allowed to walk away when they fail. In this case, though, I'm not sure that is a concern because it seems that VTEC have already made a considerable loss to the taxpayers' benefit.

[Coryton]

Given that Beardie was referring to "Bad Old British Rail" within weeks of receiving the WCML concession, it was always an odds-on that he'd claim credit for increased ridership.

 

And complaining that trains he inherited should have been scrapped 10 years ago, despite the class 90's being around that age.

[Robin2]

I have often wondered when there is a change of franchisee how many people actually lose their jobs?

 

...R