Surprising really as Wendover has been living in the UK for the past few years now. But yeah! Good video
watched it this morning, I want NSE backJust watched a good video about rail franchising in the UK thought I would share. Despite the presenter calling our railways "Railroads", its a well-done video.
The Japanese system seems to work on a privatised model.
In 1987, the government of Japan took steps to divide and privatize JNR. While division of operations began in April of that year, privatization was not immediate: initially, the government retained ownership of the companies. Privatization of some of the companies began in the early 1990s. By October 2016, all of the shares of JR East, JR Central, JR West and JR Kyushu had been offered to the market and they are now publicly traded. On the other hand, all of the shares of JR Hokkaido, JR Shikoku and JR Freight are still owned by Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency, an independent administrative institution of the state.
The Japanese system seems to work on a privatised model.
Says member with a Silverlink liveried train as an avatar.watched it this morning, I want NSE back
Surprising really as Wendover has been living in the UK for the past few years now. But yeah! Good video
The issue of the Japanese model is that: It's difficult to allow newcomers or private companies to join in the competitions.The vast difference in % of the population using the railway system makes comparison with Japan a little dfficult.
If you apply the Japanese solution to BR in 1997, you probably would have ended up with something like NSE and IC privatised and Regional Rail kept in the public domain. All still under a common "BR" corporate identity.
Obviously the Japanese solution doesn't split the track and trains.
Very difficult to make a direct comparison but I think the "Japanese" solution would have worked better than what we got.
Sam (or his writers) will primarily have a North American audience in mind I think, and is of course it is his natural home terminology. Worth noting that he did switch to railways after introducing them as railroads, which is quite clever really.Surprising really as Wendover has been living in the UK for the past few years now. But yeah! Good video
Rail service levels under East Coast remained largely the same throughout and the trains remained the same.
East Coast introduced the Eureka timetable in May 2011 which was a significant timetable recast (I've seen it described as being the biggest since electrification) and if East Coast were still with us who do you think would have introduced the IETs? Well it would have been East Coast seeing as that was a decision made by the DfT and had very little to do with whoever was operating the franchise.
Plus I think there may well be a reasonable argument to be made that "well run but nothing spectacular" is far more preferable to most passengers than something that is spectacular but not very well run!
East Coast introduced it, but wasn't the leg work done by NXEC (with the difference being that NXEC had other ambitions that East Coast didn't deliver - e.g. National Express leased the 180s for the Lincoln and Harrogate services that were intended to be part of Eureka, but East Coast just stuck with the basics of the Eureka timetable and shelved the other improvements)?
Absolutely. I would never claim to be an expert on rail operations in the UK so I was surprised to learn how certain trends work and like you, thought it an excellent 20 minutes of UK based rail knowledge for the laymanHaving now watched it I thought that it was actually very good overall. It is by no means exhaustive (as others have picked up on the most obvious 'miss' is Network Rail but there's other things like OAOs, the current safety record, etc etc) but if I had to pick a video that was set in an engaging fashion and provided a good overview of railway privatisation in the UK for a layman to watch and come away with some sort of understanding? I think I'd pick this video. In reality it isn't aimed at the likes of us who have already got a decent working knowledge and therefore are more interested in drilling down into the details. It seems to me it's aimed at people for whom finding out that the DfT specify when the trains must run and where they must serve or that the timetables and posters they must display are also specified by the DfT is a surprise. And I think for that audience it's probably very well pitched.