lambrini wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 3:09 pm
The Tick wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 2:53 pm
lambrini wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 2:21 pm
If other countries provide stellar railway services, why can't we? And don’t blame privatisation. Conditions were shite during the nationalisation era.
Rail services in many European countries (where quality of service and value for money is better than the UK) enjoy the patronage and finance of government departments, so the British model of worshipping private investment can be scrutinised as a failure.
If public ownership works, why did ours fail? British Rail controlled the services for decades. Now, unbelievably, the British Rail industry's expenditure is currently over twenty-five billion pounds. And for what? I can't see any improvements or decent service, can you?
Our railways were grossly under-invested from WW2 onwards. While other countries were electrifying main routes and suburban services, we were going for the cheaper diesel and diesel-electric solutions.
In fact on some services the infamous "Pacer" trains were used which were converted from lorry and bus products.
Rather than bite the bullet and invest we diverted attention by trotting out the old line that private industry would do so.
And essentially, it hasn't. To be fair, the length of franchises deterred operators from investing in rolling stock. So they simply repainted old stuff and kept it going. The most profitable operator is Porterbrook/Angel Trains which spotted that operators wouldn't buy new kit, so they snapped up a lot of stuff and lease it to them now.
The idea was , as ever, that competition would drive innovation and keen pricing. But in fact there is true competition on under 10% of services in this country. They were given, in many cases, monopolies.
Where I used to live, near Oxford, the Chiltern line provides effectively the only way for commuters into London. It was the last line BR spent any money on, getting new stock and signalling. Its management team was funded to buy it at such a low price they were able to sell it again in a few years and each become millionaires. I understand it is now calculated that you'd have to earn just over £6k pretax to afford a season ticket.
The other consequence was fragmentation. Under BR you could buy cross-country tickets without having to wade through different train operators. Now, at least, organisations like Trainline have got a grip of that .
It's interesting that none of our European peer countries privatised their systems, and by and large have far better systems offering much better value to customers.
I think Labour would like to renationalise but it's wary of the cost.