Labour had a significant period in power in which they had the opportuinity to reverse that...and they didnt. Its also worth pointing out that the state owned Network Rail are by far the biggest player in the whole industry and have been pumping in record levels of investment.
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Poorly researched piece in the Express ("Europe is profiting from our rail misery")
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Labour had a significant period in power in which they had the opportuinity to reverse that...and they didnt. Its also worth pointing out that the state owned Network Rail are by far the biggest player in the whole industry and have been pumping in record levels of investment.
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mallard
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Considering that National Express's one remaining rail operation is in North-Western Germany, I'd say they're well aware of that.
Also, NS/Abellio has just announced that their British operations are making a loss due to the weak pound, so in that case it looks as though Europe is effectively subsidising UK rail operation.
Two separate but related issues:
1) It's essential infrastructure from which companies make a profit.
2) a lot of that profit happens to go out of the country.
In the case of 2, it happens to be the case that some of the companies involved are state owned by other countries and the UK profits therefore may go towards making their home country's system better, their home country's fares cheaper.
The privatised railways are an expensive mess, and that's the underlying issue which allows companies to profit while commuters struggle to make ends meet. That the profit might end up making other country's fares cheaper is just the bit which happens to particularly take the biscuit and underline what a poor system we have.
Didn't bother to read the article, but the base level is that people have every right to be angry at the way things are run regardless of how poorly they articulate it.
1) It's essential infrastructure from which companies make a profit.
2) a lot of that profit happens to go out of the country.
In the case of 2, it happens to be the case that some of the companies involved are state owned by other countries and the UK profits therefore may go towards making their home country's system better, their home country's fares cheaper.
The privatised railways are an expensive mess, and that's the underlying issue which allows companies to profit while commuters struggle to make ends meet. That the profit might end up making other country's fares cheaper is just the bit which happens to particularly take the biscuit and underline what a poor system we have.
Didn't bother to read the article, but the base level is that people have every right to be angry at the way things are run regardless of how poorly they articulate it.
If they're making a loss due to the "weak Pound" then all that shows is that the money is leaving the UK. Take the profit, take the risk. Not that there is any real risk for companies running the UK's railways. The above were still happy enough to take on the WM franchise fairly recently.
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And yet the passenger numbers just keep on going up.....
How much of infrastucture costs directly improve safety ?
Passenger numbers keep going up because people need to get to work.
The railways are like gas and electricity for most people. If you need it you use it.
It's a nonsense to suggest the myriad of railway companies interacting with each other and different branches of the state is in any way efficient. The end result would seem to bear that out as the point of privatisation was to end "subsidy". Instead it's higher than ever. It's no wonder.
The railways are like gas and electricity for most people. If you need it you use it.
It's a nonsense to suggest the myriad of railway companies interacting with each other and different branches of the state is in any way efficient. The end result would seem to bear that out as the point of privatisation was to end "subsidy". Instead it's higher than ever. It's no wonder.
mallard
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The railways are in better shape than they've been at any time since WW2; they're safer, cleaner, faster, more frequent, etc. Price rises are lower (in real terms) than they were in the last decade of BR.
If it costs 2-3% of the ticket price to have much reduced political interference and consequently better run services, then it's easily worth it.
I wonder how much of the ticket price ended up in profit-making private hands back in BR's day... Plenty of private-sector suppliers and contractors even back then.
The fact is, our fares are slightly more expensive than comparable countries because our government subsidy is far lower. Blaming private companies for their tiny profit margins is just deflection.
Sure, in exchange for goods and services (such as that fleet of shiny new trains they've ordered from Switzerland). Goods and services that the UK revenue isn't paying for.
For the same reason they haven't thrown their toys out of the pram and handed back their existing franchises; they know/expect the situation to be temporary.
What does what Labour did or did not do have to do with what is a simple statement of fact? That the Tories are opposed to state ownership of anything in this country.
BR was broken up as a result of that position, same as lots of other things were sold off through the 1980s and more recently - but somehow foreign state-owned companies are transformed into paragons of dynamic thrusting commercial enterprise when it comes to bidding for UK rail franchises in the system the Tories created, simply by dint of not being a British state-owned train operator.
Blair-era Labour wasn't overly bothered about the railways in general and acted for much of the time as though the railways were something they just wished would go away - e.g. 'no growth' franchises - so they could spend their time on other things they thought were more important.
The Express article wasn't about Network Rail, so it's not relevant to any discussion about the article - as I and others have said, it's really just about the Express finding any excuse to knock anything and everything to do with 'Europe' yet again.
I don't vote Labour and don't think reversing privatisation is some kind of universal cure-all for the railways, but would be perfectly comfortable if a German-type scenario applied here, with a state rail operator able to bid against other operators for contracts.
Sorry, I worded that badly, I am going to blame it being late whe I posted, ha ha. What I mean is it isn't European legislation that means a British state owned company couldn't do the same, we did that to ourselves (Or rather the government did). The Express puts the focus, yet again, on how bad the EU is rather than tell the truth. What are they going to say when we leave the EU and the same thing is happening?
Exactly. The Express is constantly blaming the EU for stuff we didn't have to do, and it isn't just the railways. We didn't have to join the Schengen agreement, so we didn't. We didn't have to join the Euro, so we didn't. We could have been stricter on EU immigration, and we weren't. We could have had a state owned company operating rail services on the continent, and we didn't.
New Labour/Tory Light.
StephenHunter
Established Member
I personally wonder if the Freedom Pass has something to do with it as well in London.
goblinuser
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I would also highlight an even more concrete reason why rail passengers are increasing. The growing stigma of motoring due to wasteful pollution, and the rising costs are leading to people to choosing the trains. So in effect it is not because the railway is getting better due to the wonderful great leaders in the TOCs and the DfTs wonderful franchise masterplan, but because keeping a car is becoming less attractive and costlier than it once was. I haven't even mentioned the cut backs on parking, more restrictions, incredibly low speed limits, etc.
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Wivenswold
Established Member
The only thing worth reading in The Daily Express is the date. The rest is usually utter nonsense.
Anyone who thinks more people are using the train because the trains have got better is deluded. It is because people have to commute further from where the cheap housing is to where the cheap office space is. Anyone in the north west who reckons people have suddenly started liking the same trains we have had for 20 years needs Derek Acora to read their mind.
What is the relevance of any newspaper? It is merely a blog that happens to be also printed on paper.
In addition, there has been significant growth in city centre office based employment and a decline in suburban/small town blue collar jobs, which means there is more demand for rail commuting. Young professionals now prefer to work in major city centres and even consider major suburban centres like Altrincham and Croydon as undesirable. Car ownership among the young is much lower than it used to be.
In addition, there has been significant growth in city centre office based employment and a decline in suburban/small town blue collar jobs, which means there is more demand for rail commuting. Young professionals now prefer to work in major city centres and even consider major suburban centres like Altrincham and Croydon as undesirable. Car ownership among the young is much lower than it used to be.
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And that doesn't make the headline inaccurate - there is profit extraction as a said. Although the 'misery' flows from the UK's own political decisions.
Interesting research came out earlier this week.
It's a long standing view that delivery via the private sector is better than via the public sector for efficiency/competition reasons.
This research looked at the difference between UK and foreign owned organisations. http://www.cityam.com/270450/bank-england-blog-reveals-disparity-productivity-between (It's not clear whether this necessarily holds true for a single sector)
There is still significant political involvement of course though. Taking GTR, it's the DfT that specified the train build, that takes the fare income, that required removal of guards, that specifies the compensation model to be used, etc.
Do you have figures to back that up? If you do can you link me to some city centre jobs in Liverpool?
Shaw S Hunter
Established Member
Do you have figures to back that up? If you do can you link me to some city centre jobs in Liverpool?
Perhaps, at least in the context of this point, Liverpool has become a suburban centre of Manchester. When I worked trains between the two it was noticeable that commuting into Manchester was strong from stations quite close to Liverpool but commuting the other way was very limited beyond the Merseyside or City Region boundary.
And they do.
This would be correct, if in fact profits from the UK were winging their way back to Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc. But actually they are not. The profits are being re-invested in this country, e.g. in bidding to win new franchises or run buses.
Because it's absolute hokum. The price increase is determined by the government, not the TOCs, to a formula that they bid on. Most of the TOC cost base is also governed by RPI (any Premium paid, Network Rail Charges, Staff Wages). They might expect to get 3% of the 3.6% (i.e. equivalent to 0.1%) - but then they would have bid on something like that basis anyway, and based their bid premium on it.
It is a slight benefit to them if RPI is high, if they are premium paying, but very slight. For those who receive a subsidy, it might actually indicate lower profits...
Some truth? Maybe a little. I know they're out of the UK rail market now, but the largest National Express Shareholder was Spanish, last I knew. Also I know that some of the foreign state-owned companies have never sent a penny in dividends to their overseas parent.
Moreover, TOCs are SPVs, registered in this country and AFAIK paying UK taxes. Indeed the Franchise Agreement stops the sort of shenanigans, used by the likes of Amazon, to siphon off most of the profits to other countries through dodgy management fees.
Allegedly the biggest difference was that UK-owned firms display significant nepotism. Not sure if that really does apply to the railway. Possibly the biggest handicap in the railways is that it tends to be a "job for life", which makes it hard for new ideas to get a look in.
Have you ever heard of putting things in context?
The article is entirely devoid of context, such as bothering to explain why European state railway companies are able to generate revenue here - by taking advantage of a situation that is entirely the result of the actions of British politicians.
No one has a job for life. Non traincrew come and go in reorganisations/mergers etc all the time. Train crew tend to keep their jobs as long as they are fit and follow the rules and professional driving policy. There are limits to "fresh ideas" in the form of safety i.e. Can't do things quicker, cheaper, easier without negative consequences. You will hear plenty of people on the railway bemoaning its sluggish innovation rate in terms of admin, diagramming, timetabling, response to delay and incidents etc. What holds us back is the way the franchise system freezes the status quo for years, as long as the TOC ticks the right boxes, the DFT is happy and nothing alters. I can experience the same delay every time i work a train as a result of signalling priority, lack of time allowed to dispatch or a schedule that works on paper but not in the real world, and there's zero chance of me being able to alter that. My perceived level of job security is nothing to do with it.
Andrewlong
Member
Still a Labour government which brought in minimum wage which you will no doubt take credit for but you won't accept they didn't re-nationalise the railways.
This business of profit owned state ownership of railways has been drip fed as propaganda over the years by the right (who don't like the EU) and the left (in particularly Momentum - who don't like companies making profits). Plus the railway unions don't like it either because they want a nationalised railway again.
What the propaganda merchants never mention is the amount NR spends on contractors brought into do infrastructure projects which themselves and those companies also make profits. We live in an international economy and we have to compete against other countries.
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
There's an added ingredient for DB (Arriva), where the profits/losses are parked/consumed/offset by Arriva HQ in Sunderland before heading off to Berlin.
DB has many overseas interests through Arriva and Schenker, and it's more likely UK profits are used to develop those businesses than subsidise the domestic German railway.
There also doesn't seem to be any outcry over German government ownership (not franchised) of Arriva buses, which this year are more profitable than the trains.
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Actually I wasn't talking about staff so much, as managers. There are benefits to so many managers having come through the ranks, but it also definitely leads to an acceptance of the status quo.
I disagree that it is the TOCs holding things back on things like timetabling. DfT have had the habit of setting existing arrangements in stone at the bid stage, when they ought to be encouraging change. I certainly know of TOCs that successfully changed TTs under the SRA. DfT are a lot more inclined to worry about the possible political hurdles.
Other Operational issues, such as those you mention, are caused primarily by a lack of communication. The industry is split into silos that lack knowledge about what happens elsewhere and the effect the actions that one group takes have on other groups. This is also an effect of the way that managers come through the ranks - they stay within their comfort areas.
I doubt that anything much from Rail heads off to Berlin. Firstly there are all the costs of the HQ themselves; then there are bidding costs; finally Arriva have spent a small fortune on (unsuccessfully) trying to run new Open Access Operations.
If Bus is making more than Rail at the moment, it really shows how little they get from Rail, because even Stagecoach (traditionally the most profitable bus operator) is struggling to make money from Bus these days.
The only thing that makes any sense there is the last sentence. The rest of it may as well be random words. I honestly do not have a clue what you are trying to say.
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