Europe looks ahead...

Austriantrain said:

The only significant difference between the UK and most places on the continent is the amount of taxes voters are willing to pay for public transport or more generally for public services, the willingness to accept state regulation/interference and more generally a different cost/benefit-outlook.*

And I don’t mean to belittle this difference. It is perfectly legitimate in a democracy (even though I might not share this preference). And it also explains everything else in this thread.

Because, on everything else, the UK is not very different from the continent (or vice versa) - the UK is not the American Midwest. With other political preferences, you would have our public transport system, or we would have yours.

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*As an example for a different cost/benefit outlook: RT4038 has argued on this thread that since Modal Split in Germany and the UK is similar, this validates the UK approach. That is an entirely reasonable view. But: Even if the data were accurate I would still want a different policy: having to buy a new ticket everytime I board a different bus is so utterly absurd to me (and guaranteed to put me off using buses at all) that I would willingly pay more taxes to change the system.



And I am not saying who is right or wrong, it’s just that the political outlook - not the facts on the ground though - couldn’t be more different.

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Succinctly put and a relatively rare understanding.

For good or for bad the UK has followed a low tax/low public services model for the last 40 years. However we have not ended really better off than other Western Europeans - by and large the 'excess' money from the low taxes has fuelled much higher housing costs. Generally speaking our low tax money is stored in the value of our houses, but this can only be realised by moving into a lower housing cost ( e.g. in with relatives/friends or another country) or by our heirs. Nobody who would like to see a more European approach has yet come up with a workable idea as to how to address this 'problem' without disadvantaging, inter alia, the large proportion of the population with outstanding house loans/mortgages.

johncrossley said:

It used to be assumed in the 90s and earlier that British people weren't interested in their rail network. The British rail network was one of the worst in Europe. But that has vastly improved after having billions poured into it in the 2000s. Even in more recent years with the constraints of the financial crisis, rail did far better than buses. There has been significant replacement of rolling stock. Arguably there was too much spending on new trains, as new, sometimes inappropriate, homes had to be found for cascaded rolling stock. Branch lines are not being closed and instead there are some new lines being built. The willingness to spend public money on trains is not that different to the rest of western Europe.

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You may well be right, but it is particularly provincial buses (both operationally and infrastructure) that have had virtually no money spent on them.

RT4038 said:

However we have not ended really better off than other Western Europeans - by and large the 'excess' money from the low taxes has fuelled much higher housing costs. Generally speaking our low tax money is stored in the value of our houses, but this can only be realised by moving into a lower housing cost ( e.g. in with relatives/friends or another country) or by our heirs.

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In that respect the UK is not very different from the Netherlands however. We've got a very similar problem here as tax benefits fuelled a very rapid increase in housing costs.
That also drives people into public transport however, as you'll require quite a bit of luck to be able to buy/rent a house at cycling distance from work.

It works vice versa as well: Amsterdam might not be as expensive as London, but the relative short distances combined with excellent public transport connections mean that housing prices even are very high in the provinces bordering Germany. Combine that with a shortage of houses and the conclusion is simple: in the Netherlands almost the entire country has most of their money stored in bricks and mortar.

RT4038 said:

Succinctly put and a relatively rare understanding.

For good or for bad the UK has followed a low tax/low public services model for the last 40 years. However we have not ended really better off than other Western Europeans - by and large the 'excess' money from the low taxes has fuelled much higher housing costs. Generally speaking our low tax money is stored in the value of our houses, but this can only be realised by moving into a lower housing cost ( e.g. in with relatives/friends or another country) or by our heirs. Nobody who would like to see a more European approach has yet come up with a workable idea as to how to address this 'problem' without disadvantaging, inter alia, the large proportion of the population with outstanding house loans/mortgages.



You may well be right, but it is particularly provincial buses (both operationally and infrastructure) that have had virtually no money spent on them.

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Quite so on both counts.

Let's not forget that the successive governments cut rail funding from a high point in the mid 2000s, and that's before you see what happened to bus operators

• Halving of Bus Service Operators Grant
• Increase in emissions legislation
• Reduction in concessionary pass reimbursements
• Reduction in funding to local authorities so that "socially necessary" but not statutory protected services were cut
• Meanwhile, fuel duty has been frozen

Let's not kid ourselves. The UK could do things differently but culturally, we are resistant to it.

DanielB said:

It works vice versa as well: Amsterdam might not be as expensive as London, but the relative short distances combined with excellent public transport connections mean that housing prices even are very high in the provinces bordering Germany. Combine that with a shortage of houses and the conclusion is simple: in the Netherlands almost the entire country has most of their money stored in bricks and mortar.

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That must be a relatively new thing. Back in the 90s they used to say that people in the Netherlands liked to rent which is why house prices were not so high. I guess they are copying Britain now in preferring to buy instead of rent. From what I've heard Germany and Austria still don't mind renting.

johncrossley said:

That must be a relatively new thing. Back in the 90s they used to say that people in the Netherlands liked to rent which is why house prices were not so high. I guess they are copying Britain now in preferring to buy instead of rent. From what I've heard Germany and Austria still don't mind renting.

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There are multiple factors at play here: the Dutch tax system already allows for many many years to deduct part of the interest paid on a morbage from your income tax, which results in a tax benefit for home owners. But in the 70s, 80s and 90s there where also the so-called VINEX-areas, which were huge construction projects in designated towns. In those years a small village like Zoetermeer grew into the city it's today, complete with its own fast tram network, for example.
Therefore in those times there were plenty of houses available, limiting the house prices. Those large construction projects are long gone however as there simply isn't as much space available anymore, so the recent boom in house prices has been partially caused by lack of houses combined with the tax benefits.

But those VINEX-projects have certainly also helped to get to the integrated public transport system we've got here today. Cities have been significantly growing, so regional buses through small villages transformed into local bus services within a city. And it also promoted the construction of suburban stations, several of which developed into hubs where bus passengers change to rail transport into the city centres. Simply due to the long distances from the edge of the city to the centre taking a bus all the way is no longer attractive. From Rotterdam till Amsterdam you're hardly leaving builtup areas on the way, that's 40 kilometers as the crow flies.

DanielB said:

In that respect the UK is not very different from the Netherlands however. We've got a very similar problem here as tax benefits fuelled a very rapid increase in housing costs.
That also drives people into public transport however, as you'll require quite a bit of luck to be able to buy/rent a house at cycling distance from work.

It works vice versa as well: Amsterdam might not be as expensive as London, but the relative short distances combined with excellent public transport connections mean that housing prices even are very high in the provinces bordering Germany. Combine that with a shortage of houses and the conclusion is simple: in the Netherlands almost the entire country has most of their money stored in bricks and mortar.

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So it will be a matter of degree then. Whatever, the Netherlands are prepared to spend money on their public transport system (both operational and infrastructure) more than the equivalence in the UK. That is a cultural and political difference which renders meaningful Integration problemmatic at this time .

There are areas of Germamy where integration is woeful, take my area (Allgäu/Swabia) in Bavaria. My town of Buchloe has two overlapping bus only PTE's, one of which (VVM) only has km based fare charts for singles, weekly and monthly tickets can only be bought at start of week/month, these are only valid on a particular route.

Then we have MONA's OVG tarif valid down to Füssen which is better in that day tickets are avaliable. However routes that cross from that area into another PTE e.g. the Kempten zonal system require a seperate ticket even on through routes.

Trains are DB tarif in this area so require a seperate ticket outside of the vadility of the Bavaria Ticket (26 Euros)

There are studies being conducted to integrate transport more in bavaria but results won't be seen for another two years.

It just occurred to me that there are several posters who post a hell of a lot in the Buses & Coaches section but rarely, if ever, post in other parts of this website. I'm curious to know whether that is the case on similar forums in other countries.

johncrossley said:

It just occurred to me that there are several posters who post a hell of a lot in the Buses & Coaches section but rarely, if ever, post in other parts of this website. I'm curious to know whether that is the case on similar forums in other countries.

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Certainly there are users on the Dutch forum (ovinnederland.nl) posting mostly about buses and rarely about trains (and vice versa). However those forums aren't really separated like RailUK and BusUK are: topics are more mixed in general, especially in multimodal franchises, thus you'll notice it less easily.
What intrigues myself are the significant differences in topics discussed in the Buses & Coaches section here and on forums from other countries. Comparing the UK and German forums with the Dutch one, it appears to me that we also have one of the most integrated communities of public transport enthousiasts in the Netherlands (next to one of the most integrated systems in public transport).

Although I must add that there are multiple forums in the Netherlands, most of which about the railways. It just depend how much die hard you are where you'll end up.