Actually I live within sight (back bedroom can see the platforms) of a major junction station, 20 minutes walk away. I have a wide range of people that I interact with in the town, and really I do not think the railway is seen as 'essential'. A nice to have, an inconvenience at some times if it is not there, but nothing like the Health service or the Fire Brigade or the Supermarket. Not that I am suggesting that the railway at this location should be closed, but I certainly do not believe it is providing value for money for the subsidy it is getting. I accept that there is a corner of the country where the railway is more entwined in the life of lots of people and would cause much more inconvenience if it wasn't there. Even in that area, once the dense suburbs have been passed through, there is plenty of reliance on private transport for most journeys.
Again, you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s not clear what you’re using as the basis for your oft stated view that the railway isn’t providing value for money (to whom, tax payer or fare payer, and by what measure?)
No surprise there’s a heavy reliance on private transport when swathes of the country outside of London and the South East have poor public transport options, due to politicians historically tending to close railway lines and withdrawing subsidy for buses. Hence it’s a little disingenuous to use that as a reason to suggest that it must too expensive or unimportant where it is provided.
As in 1963, the railways are desperately in need of modernisation. There are difficult decisions to be made for the sunlit uplands of the future. There are new lines required. There is electrification and other modernisation required to reduce costs, carbon footprint, improve productivity and reliability.
Modernisation can be achieved, but I suspect, like the last government, you really just mean cost cutting with no long term strategy or interest in growing the railway, and attacking Ts and Cs of a unionised workforce for ideological reasons (which incidentally - based on direct experience of myself and friends elsewhere - are by no means conspicuously out of step with those in other industries such as airlines)
Where modernisation is required that can and will be achieved on the railway by a process of negotiation, but I seem to recall you favoured the last government’s belligerent approach which modernised precisely nothing, despite costing the wider economy and taxpayer dearly. As a taxpayer that doesn’t seem remotely sensible to me. The new government have at least begun that process of moving the industry forward, partly with the reset of industrial relations, and then continuing with this budget.
Cutting off peak services is such a common fallacy though. Once you have a working passenger railway, the actual cost savings of not running those off peak trains are actually pretty small in the grand scheme of things. And paying to run buses is going to eat into that tiny amount of savings pretty quickly, and will potentially push people away from railways too (given the likely slower less comfortable journeys), leading to the same death spiral we often see for bus routes when their off peak services start to get cut.
It sounds suspiciously like running the service down to make it less usable, and then using that as an excuse to dispense with it altogether.
If someone wanted to do something about costs, they would stop it costing stupid amounts of money to lease out clapped out rolling stock. The ROSCO system should be dismantled.
Yes, when that side of things is conspicuously ignored, it’s revealing of the ideology behind an opinion. Probably also true that it’s difficult to reverse the current arrangements other than a great expense, or by passing legislation to force the ROSCOs to take a huge haircut on their investments. Neither is likely to be viewed as acceptable for various reasons - the great pity is how the system was arranged in the first place, which of course was a deliberate choice by the politicians running the show.
Whereas others would say - before you sort out leasing costs, look at all these trains running with less than a bus load of passengers, with two members of staff plus others on railway terms and conditions...... etc etc. All trying to preserve nostalgia/ employment etc
“Railway Ts and Cs” again, and the vision painted above is well out of step with the reality. You’ll find trains running with less than a bus load of passengers are relatively few and far between on the network today, and the same crew and unit will then invariably undertake other journeys with several bus loads. The far bigger issue is crowding!
. But possible nonetheless, and not entirely without precedent.
