State monopolies are generally poor at delivering services. Nothing in particular about rail should make it a monopoly. If anything, introducing competition by splitting services on the same lines between two or more companies could do a lot to sharpen the incentives for those TOCs to pay attention to delivery.
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State monopolies are generally poor at delivering services
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Bletchleyite
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There is no competition in the water industry, nor is there in the bus industry in most of the country.
If you've got two buses going from A to B by different routes, you'd want to go for the faster and possibly more comfortable bus route. Most comparable journeys on rails have to follow the same route and take comparable times. Competition for the sake of competition isn't always healthy either.
matt_world2004
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Even if there is a "nationalisation" recommended by the Williams review . It sounds like a lot of operations will be devolved to PTEs and regional administrations. This should preserve the competition offered by private companies while at the same time offering the benefits of a integrated network.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
ITYM "cheaper". Except where the likes of Trent and Lothian are involved, bus competition is a pure race to the bottom.
Elecman
Established Member
There is competition in the water industry since a couple of years ago when it became open market ( deregulated)
It's reduced prices hugely for those who make the effort to shop around.
But if TOC A's trains are regularly cancelled or late and TOC B's aren't, guess which business will be more successful?
Not where I live there isn't
And that's because the bus industry operates essentially as a private monopoly, which is far far worse than a state monopoly
Bletchleyite
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Where's that?
HSTEd
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So do you proposing breaking up Network Rail and building a second set of lines to every destination?
There is nothing inherent with state monopolies that makes them bad at delivering services.
The Electricity Industry in the UK, as an example, was built by a state monopoly and the recent private operators have merely been coasting off the infrastructure the state built whilst running it into the ground.
And anyone who has had to get a new gas meter, electricity meter or telephone line installed will know that they are no faster than the electricity board, gas board or GPO/BT were at it.
Just that since people already have these things they appear to do things faster because the private operators just have to press a button.
And still sometimes take days to do it.
At the very least monopolies should be regionally broken up so that better benchmarking can be done than trying to compare to foreign railways.
One reason I am quite happy for the Scots to take on their bit of Network Rail.
The problem with state monopolies is political interference and that the only way to motivate them to be efficient is to cut their budget!
One reason I am quite happy for the Scots to take on their bit of Network Rail.
The problem with state monopolies is political interference and that the only way to motivate them to be efficient is to cut their budget!
HSTEd
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but that causes other inefficiencies as all the regions have to separately maintain specialist plant equipment even if there is only enough work for a single set.
Sharing agreements never work because without someone in authority to order release of the equipment, they get into fights over who gets it when.
Not really, you just have to make the workforce believe in what they are doing.
cactustwirly
Established Member
But let's face it, you don't get the bus because it's a high quality service (which it really isn't) you get it because it's relatively cheap (not always the case either)
First you check that having a single set is really efficient and not holding things up, and if necessary it goes in a contracting organisation or a central DfT organisation.
I don’t want to be rude but the bit about making the workforce believe is just fantasy as a way of being really efficient.
HSTEd
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And this is how we end up the madness that is the current rail structure.
You just create more and more adversarial interfaces.
With endless contracts and huge numbers of hilariously expensive lawyers to litigate them.
Is it?
British business (in both public and private sectors)'s primary problem has always been rock bottom staff morale.
When staff believe the job they are doing is important they will go out of the way to save the organisation money and keep whatever it is going.
Which is also why the CEGB's staff fell of the year's of it's existance, despite the amount of electricity generated exploding.
Or the NHS bumps along costing far less than comparator health services for similar outcomes. (It's outcomes in various indicators might be wosre than international comparators but it also costs less than those comparators in PPP terms).
British Management always defaults to the Darth Vader school and then wonders why they don't get results.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
That's the case with many existing users who use the bus as they can't afford a car, no doubt, but several bus companies, most notably those who have had Alex Hornby in their employ at some point though not only those as we also have the likes of Stagecoach Gold, think that you will only get people out of cars if you do the quality thing right as well.
But that sort of quality competition is rare. Most on-road competition is occasional spats where a disreputable, low-cost small competitor comes in and drags fares down to unsustainable levels by cherry-picking. That sort of competition helps nobody, and doesn't really occur in other areas of business (e.g. shops) because you can't wheel your Aldi store around to the car park of several Tesco branches. Whereas you can, if you own some buses, employ a few drivers and have an O licence, register to run those buses anywhere you like.
Whereas it would be better if the public transport system as a whole worked together against the car.
Geezertronic
Established Member
Travelling from Birmingham to London by train, I will always take the 390 service as it is faster than the 350 service. I did try the 350 service once, but it was just too slow for me. No doubt when HS2 comes along, I will take that instead. However at the moment, since travelling by car is cheaper, I will drive.
Really? How do I go about changing my supplier?
The legal firms acting for TOC A and NR when the inevitable court case ensues from infrastructure issues disproportionately affecting TOC A?
DarloRich
Veteran Member
but ral isnt a state monolpoly. All of the train companies are owned by wonderful private enterprise.
You cant chnage supplier in England. yet. The government keep saying they will make this happen. They havent. Yet.
It is also a bit of a red herring. There aren't, imo, savings to be made like other utilities. I think any saving will only be on back office stuff.
Nothing wrong with interfaces, formalising responsibilities rather than smudging them around the business and making do. The airline industry manages pretty well with even more interfaces.
This is true but irrelevant - they still need objectives other wise how do they know what they are supposed to be doing and what good looks like?
And of course keeping the staff happy is usually the opposite of efficiency, as people generally dislike change, especially redundancy! If managers don’t have objectives they just keep the staff happy at the cost of the customer (and taxpayer in a state industry), and slowly build up flabby empires.
TheGrandWazoo
Veteran Member
The issue is that people are now of an age where they don't actually remember what state controlled providers were actually like.
In terms of electricity, the CEGB was grossly inefficient so you had loads of power stations maintained on the "off chance" - generally to cover the fact that infrastructure investment was not adequately made. The phone network was run by the Post Office (prior to BT) and to get a phone took weeks and months and cost a tidy sum.
A friend's wife works for a water company and they definitely don't want to be privatised. What happened in the past is that the water system needed X spending on it? However, you then had a war, or the NHS needed some money, and so public spending constraints meant that investment was not made. Replace a water valve or a heart valve.... the NHS wins. It's more emotive and we rightly care about it.
Privatisation and/or deregulation may not have brought the service benefits that were sold at the time, but it never was going to. It was about removing the burden from the tax payer to the greatest extent.
In terms of electricity, the CEGB was grossly inefficient so you had loads of power stations maintained on the "off chance" - generally to cover the fact that infrastructure investment was not adequately made. The phone network was run by the Post Office (prior to BT) and to get a phone took weeks and months and cost a tidy sum.
A friend's wife works for a water company and they definitely don't want to be privatised. What happened in the past is that the water system needed X spending on it? However, you then had a war, or the NHS needed some money, and so public spending constraints meant that investment was not made. Replace a water valve or a heart valve.... the NHS wins. It's more emotive and we rightly care about it.
Privatisation and/or deregulation may not have brought the service benefits that were sold at the time, but it never was going to. It was about removing the burden from the tax payer to the greatest extent.
I find your lack of faith in British management disturbing.
That's not an entirely fair example because there has been a lot of technological change in the years since. Back in GPO days installing and activating a line required a lot more manual work than it does now - there would need to be physical jumpering work done both D and E side, nevermind the work required to configure the mechanical switchgear. These days, if the line plant is in good shape, it can all be done from a keyboard on the other side of the country.
Some of us remember when it took more than a decade to get a phone — and then it was only a party-line version. State service was always "take what you're given when we choose to give it to you", and too many of the state staff made clear what a favour they were doing for you just by doing anything at all. There seem to be some survivals of these attitudes in various ex-state businesses and in the Labour sacred cow health service.
HSTEd
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Normalise for real GDP, now make sure you are comparing it to getting a brand new line infrastructure installed.
It takes weeks or months for the private sector operator to do anything if it is more sophisticated than simply pressing a button on a computer.
Also note that the GPO/BT would be much less likely to simply tell you no if you asked for a phone line, rather than put you on a waiting list.
Go ask for a new phone line or fibre link out in the middle of nowhere and they will either just outright refuse or quote such a hilariously large amount that it is effectively saying no.
EDIT:
Oh and remember that the GPO/BT was growing the number of phone lines rather more rapidly than private operators would need to.
Between 1970 and 1975 the number of households with a phone line went from 35 to 52%.
That is an extraordinary growth rate, far higher than anything achieve in the privatised era. Because by the time private BT came along the rollout of telephone lines was functionally complete.
By 1985 it was above 80%.
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