Great British Railways: Replaces Network Rail & more changes - updates only (non-speculative)

[XAM2175]

I always thought that the EU policy to separate out the rail infrastructure owner and the train operator was EU policy - which was then jumped on by the Major government as the catalyst for splitting up BR.

The key requirement from the initial EC/EU directives was that infrastructure operations and train operations had to be accounted-for separately. Everything beyond that in the BR break-up was done at the whim of the Tories - as evidenced by the fact that the Northern Ireland set-up was made compliant without any big sell-off, let alone the arrangements in Germany with DB Netze and Switzerland with SBB Infra, etc etc.

Since then the introduction of the various TSIs and the open-access requirement have changed a few things about the way the industry has to operate, but fundamentally there's nothing that I've seen in the review so far that wouldn't be permissible within the EU.

TfL a drain on the rest of the country? You are having a laugh. Until the pandemic it was receiving, unlike other similar regional bodies, no operating subsidies from HMG at all. Tell you what, how about London completely pays for TfL and no taxes from London go to the rest of the country. See how long things last..... Oh, and the current half-assed TfL funding model was agreed by the then-Mayor, despite warnings, one B Johnson.

Adding to this, is it too much to hope that the growing acceptance of the notion of public transport being a valuable social and environmental tool might lead to everybody relaxing on the whole "drain on the taxpayer" front?

 

[Hophead]

It has often been said that other countries looked at Britain's implementation of rail privatisation as an example of how not to do it. To the list of unimpressed nations you can now add, errr, Britain.

 

[och aye]

So no real concrete plans as to what will be happening with the network in the devolved parts of the network. Sadly I have a funny feeling there's going to be a lot of political sabre rattling, rather than the administrations coming to an amicable agreement over what is best for the passengers. I would love to proved wrong though.

Better rail services promised in huge shake-up

Transport Secretary says there is no "hidden agenda" to raise fares but there could be no guarantees.

www.bbc.co.uk

GBR will replace the current track operator, Network Rail, in 2023 and the government says the new system will look more like Transport for London, with multiple operators under one brand.
The systems will differ slightly in Scotland and Wales, where transport is devolved, but GBR will still operate in those nations.

The Department for Transport said in Scotland and Wales will continue to exercise their current powers and be accountable for them, but the government will explore options to ensure all nations benefit from the reforms.
GBR will continue to own the infrastructure in Scotland and Wales (other than some of the South Wales Valley Lines), as Network Rail does now.

 

[hwl]

Yay!



(Although I worry slightly about whether spending money just to make seats more comfortable will pass business case approval, since it's not likely to bring much change in revenue)

Not much wrong with the structural elements of the seats, proper base pad support and profile would help as would better covering choices.

 

[Glenn1969]

So has the Integrated Rail Plan been kicked into the long grass given that GBR won't be implemented until 2023?

 

[Bald Rick]

So has the Integrated Rail Plan been kicked into the long grass given that GBR won't be implemented until 2023?

No.

 

[Glenn1969]

OK. i was expecting it to be published at the same time as the review but am not sure why

 

[dlj83]

So does this mean one National Smartcard rather than one for each operator?

 

[peters]

Is this simplifying things?

How do I travel with my Flexi Season ticket?

Smartcard customers must tap-in and tap-out at the ticket barrier or a platform validator at either end of your journey to activate your Flexi Season ticket. Customers with the Barcode Flexi Season ticket must activate the ticket before each journey using a new National Rail Smartcard Manager app - more information to follow.

Failure to do so could result in a penalty fare. A customer boarding a train without tapping in first is considered to not have a valid ticket.

How do I load/collect the Flexi Season ticket I have just purchased to a Smartcard?

Use the Northern app for rapid collection to your card, available 5 minutes after purchase. Alternatively, please allow up to 2 hours to load the tickets to your card at the ticket gates or Northern ticket machine at your nearest station.

Flexi Season tickets

Northern | Buy Cheap Train Tickets and Check Train Times

www.northernrailway.co.uk

So if the train operator doesn't install touch in and touch out points at your station you need two apps to purchase and use a flexi season ticket!

 

[Wolfie]

If privatisation was the result of ideology, so then was the nationalisation which preceded it.

Sidney Webb wrote what became Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution in 1917.



In 1942 the annual Labour Party Conference, with an eye on its constitution and Clause IV, passed a resolution urging the Government to coordinate road, rail and canal transport under national ownership - with the aim of aiding the war effort. This idea of national ownership remained and was adopted by Labour in December 1944 and appeared in the 1945 election manifesto as “There are basic industries ripe and over-ripe for public ownership and management in the direct service of the nation.” These industries were the railways, coal, road transport, docks, harbours and canals, the Bank of England, civil aviation, external telecommunications, health, electricity, gas and steel - about a third of the British economy at the time.

So - just drop this ‘ideology’ thing. Two can play at that game.

Let's not mention that the big 4 were financially in a deep hole at the end of WW2 huh....

 

[red star]

It has often been said that other countries looked at Britain's implementation of rail privatisation as an example of how not to do it. To the list of unimpressed nations you can now add, errr, Britain.

Quite

 

[Wolfie]

Speaking of, Potential further 3rd Rail Infill schemes may be on the cards - at long last!

https://twitter.com/Captain_Deltic

Now that is sensible.

So does this mean one National Smartcard rather than one for each operator?

I would certainly hope so. Again sensible.

 

[mwmbwls]

Over 100 pages of bed time reading:
Great British Railways: The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail (web version) (publishing.service.gov.uk)

For some reason the BBC has not got the speech and questions on their BBC parliament channel yet. Did anybody catch it live - if so what was the opposition's response?

 

[TRAX]

Speaking of, Potential further 3rd Rail Infill schemes may be on the cards - at long last!

https://twitter.com/Captain_Deltic

That's great news.

 

[Devonian]

Note a review into ‘ironing board seating’

That could of course mean removing actual ironing boards and replacing them with Fainsa Sophias!

It says "Great British Railways will bring forward the normal replacement cycles on existing trains equipped with "ironing-board"-like seats, beginning with long- distance trains": given that almost all new trains intended to be long-distance - as opposed to commuter trains that happen to cross London - have been assigned Sophias in recent years, to me that suggests that the Sophias may be in the firing line themselves. I wonder if the intention might be to replace the Sophias on intercity services, and cascade them down to replace the dreaded Fainsa Comrails in the 700s now that commuter numbers are forecast to reduce slightly. But maybe that is just wishful thinking.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It says "Great British Railways will bring forward the normal replacement cycles on existing trains equipped with "ironing-board"-like seats, beginning with long- distance trains": given that almost all new trains intended to be long-distance - as opposed to commuter trains that happen to cross London - have been assigned Sophias in recent years, to me that suggests that the Sophias may be in the firing line themselves. I wonder if the intention might be to replace the Sophias on intercity services, and cascade them down to replace the dreaded Fainsa Comrails in the 700s now that commuter numbers are forecast to reduce slightly. But maybe that is just wishful thinking.

Replied here: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/great-british-railways-ironing-board-seats.217627/

 

[LowLevel]

I'll try and put a positive spin on it as a member of front line staff. I work as a train guard and I pride myself on my passenger interactions as well as my safety focus.

Without opening the DOO/DCO debate up, whatever will be will be there (you can have a readily available guard quite easily, and if they mostly serve unmanned stations there are benefits to a platform presence), there is a focus on delay minutes that is unhealthy. Consequently a platform bod who hides in the office between trains or a guard who hides in the back cab will rarely get pulled up for these poor behaviours as they are rarely highlighted by incidents - they sail under the radar. If you don't "cause" delays you're left alone.

A proper focus on customer service as a performance metric would hopefully see the total failure to interact with the public being penalised more than getting into the odd scrape with someone, as happens to everyone in a public role from time to time.

The same with ticket offices - why waste money on providing a station with say 50k passengers per year with a manned booking office for 2-4 hours a day in the morning peak which would have served a function 30 years ago but now will largely involve a lone worker feeling bored. Keep the staffing resource but use it on something more efficient.

At least in frontline services job changes and efficiencies doesn't have to mean redundancies.

 

[Purple Orange]

So has the Integrated Rail Plan been kicked into the long grass given that GBR won't be implemented until 2023?

Lol - always looking for a reason for it to be binned off Glenn

 

[Glenn1969]

No. Just want actual proof of what they are going to fund not just more words

 

[Bletchleyite]

The same with ticket offices - why waste money on providing a station with say 50k passengers per year with a manned booking office for 2-4 hours a day in the morning peak which would have served a function 30 years ago but now will largely involve a lone worker feeling bored. Keep the staffing resource but use it on something more efficient.

Switch seasons to e-tickets via an online account and you'd get rid of 90% of the need for booking offices in the South East at mostly-commuter stations, for one. Need a new one as it's worn out? Print one out. Or just have it on your phone.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Over 100 pages of bed time reading:
Great British Railways: The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail (web version) (publishing.service.gov.uk)

For some reason the BBC has not got the speech and questions on their BBC parliament channel yet. Did anybody catch it live - if so what was the opposition's response?

Now available to view...
BBC iPlayer - House of Commons - Live Future of the Railways Statement

 

[ashkeba]

The EU Directive 91/440 which required that separate accounts be held for infrastructure and operations was made in 1991 and so pre-dates the Railways Act 1993 by a couple of years.

Introduced when UK Conservative Leon Brittan was competition commissioner?

 

[Morgsie]

The devil will be in the details and how it will be implicated. Reading this thread has a raised a number of questions/issues that are answered at the moment: Devolution how Wales and Scotland would be affected, staff pay and so on.

 

[Morgsie]

The concept of the single market if I recall was a Biritsh Idea uploaded to EC/U level under Lord Crockford and Jacque Delors after the Casis de Dijion European Court of Juctice (ECJ) case. My understanding was that Directive 91/440 the seperation of Infrasture and Operations Directive was used as an argument for Rail Privatisation under the 1993 Railways Act. Since then I thought EU Policy was about opening up Markets as part of the Fourth Rail Package? It has been a while since I looked at all of this as I did a Rail Policy Analysis in light of the ICWC 2012 mess where I argued that the system of Franchising as it was would be tweaked but would remain. I used the Brown and Laidlow Reviews as part of that assignment. Since then there has been the Shaw Review into Network Rail etc including the Network Rail's Accounts being on the Nation's Accounts as it beacme a Public Sector Body. I am unsure whether these reforms proposals are an evolution of policy or a massive departure from previous policy.

Not my area but the financial aspects would be interesting given the high profile dsiaster of GWML Electrification.

 

[cjmillsnun]

They also own the double arrow logo and the Rail Settlement Plan.

DfT hold the trade mark to the double arrow logo and it is licensed to RDG.

Trade mark number

UK00901733575​

Owner(s) name​

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRANSPORT, Great Minister House, 76 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DR, United Kingdom

Search for a trade mark - Intellectual Property Office

trademarks.ipo.gov.uk

 

[BayPaul]

Something else that looks hopeful (my bold):



(They definitely need a better proof-reader though )

I wonder if they said exactly what they meant to say - that they will be making an announcement about a future announcement (repeat as required) about electrification. Talk is cheap after all!

How does the tendering process work? If a company decides to bid for running a service that then becomes unsustainable (e.g. they low-ball so government payments no longer meet their costs) what difference is this to the franchise model where this was the cause of most failures? Surely this solves nothing?

Fully owned government operators seems to be the ideal that solves this.

The risk of this is a lot lower though. Costs are generally much easier and more reliable to forecast than income. In general the previous TOC failures have over-forecast passenger numbers, rather than under-forecasting costs. In the new system, as I understand it, the government takes on revenue risk.
Also, TOCs failing is not necessarily bad for the government... They get more income than they would otherwise!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

So has the Integrated Rail Plan been kicked into the long grass given that GBR won't be implemented until 2023?

Grant Shapps rather evaded a question about this in the debate after his speech, but he did say the HS2/NPR minister will be making a statement on this "soon".
It sounded positive.

 

[TUC]

You mean "Look how much taxation flows out of London to support the rest of the UK" surely.... TfL, ante bellum, was self-sufficient in day-to-day running, so not sure what you have in mind?

The point is, unlike quite a few private sector businesses which ended up voluntarily returning furlough money to the Treasury because they had enough funds to not need it, TfL ran to the government for bailout funding very quickly. It had no alternative funding routes to get them through bad times. The same would likely be the case with GBR.

 

[physics34]

Yay!



(Although I worry slightly about whether spending money just to make seats more comfortable will pass business case approval, since it's not likely to bring much change in revenue)

Not totally sure on that. Some people on a 5 hour LNER trip may never want to travel with them again because of the seats!

 

[Purple Orange]

Grant Shapps rather evaded a question about this in the debate after his speech, but he did say the HS2/NPR minister will be making a statement on this "soon".
It sounded positive.

And in the Williams-Shapps review, the Integrated Rail Plan is referenced as being: “This is just the beginning: the government will shortly be announcing further major projects in the Midlands and North, including in our Integrated Rail Plan, electrifcation schemes and further Beeching reopening projects.”