Is everyone tired of franchising?

[Deepgreen]

You don't appear to understand the difference between capital and revenue expenditure, nor to that between committed and non-committed. Nor to the fact that it is ROSCOs that have largely invested in Rolling Stock.

Really, given your complete lack of understanding it's not too surprising that you reach a rather dubious conclusion.

I understand all that, but to put it as simply as possible - the railways are loss-making as a whole, and are there as a social service in the widest terms. Given the lack of true profit to be had, there has to be a subsidy somewhere. That subsidy just moves around according to the model used. Some models encourage the joined-up network approach, while others (including the current one) don't.

My overall point remains - it is not comparing like with like to look at the current system and early 1990s BR.

 

[HH]

That subsidy just moves around according to the model used.

Absolutely.

Some models encourage the joined-up network approach, while others (including the current one) don't.

There are upsides and downsides to any approach and BR showed why "one size fits all" doesn't work for every customer. In fact if you look at the best and worst TOCs today, you'll generally find that size is a factor...

My overall point remains - it is not comparing like with like to look at the current system and early 1990s BR.

Indeed it isn't. And comparing to a BR that never existed, doesn't exist, and never will exist except in someone's imagination is even more pointless...

 

[Philip Phlopp]

I understand all that, but to put it as simply as possible - the railways are loss-making as a whole, and are there as a social service in the widest terms. Given the lack of true profit to be had, there has to be a subsidy somewhere. That subsidy just moves around according to the model used. Some models encourage the joined-up network approach, while others (including the current one) don't.

My overall point remains - it is not comparing like with like to look at the current system and early 1990s BR.

The subsidy should be flowing to my vinyl sticker business. If only I had that level of foresight 20 years ago, eh ?

It's also worth remembering that British Railways did leasing too - they didn't actually buy the Class 50 stock originally - they were owned by English Electric and leased to British Railways before being bought outright.

 

[yorksrob]

Informed Sources claim that the first of these deals at least is costing the railway much more than if similar stock had been purchased by a ROSCO and leased to the TOC.

Although this will of course, depend on when the arrangement is paid off in comparison to the longevity of the stock.
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Good points.

Whilst it's obviously tempting to cherry pick the best/ worst bits of BR, to compared against the worst/best of the 21st century railway (e.g. BR singled lots of track to save maintenance, BR introduced Pacers, BR bought ten new DMUs to replace fifteen old DMUs, BR chopped two coach 155s into single 153s... versus BR had a clear long term plan for modernising its multiple unit fleet, BR had rolling stock standards and standardisation, BR avoided the famine and feast of the modern railway, BR had rolling programmes on things like electrification which would have avoided many of the problems we have today etc)...

...I think that a modern BR would be as hidebound by Government as the Civil Service/ NHS/ Prison Service/ Schools etc are. We may not have had ROSCOs, but we may well have had everything wrapped up in PFI deals, as you suggest.

From my OH's involvement in organisations weighed down by PFI, it really looks like a nightmare (short term fudge to make the balance sheet look good, long term consequences) - I don't know whether it's any better or any worse than ROCSOs - interesting comparison - but I think that the railway would have ended up mired in such schemes, had it not been privatised.

Certainly not black and white.

Indeed. The only things I can be relatively confident about had privatisation not taken place in respect of rolling stock provision are:

• Private finance of some sort would have probably been available to the railway for rolling stock construction

• BR wouldn't have been lumbered with re-financing its legacy stock

Interestingly such mechanisms probably lend themselves a bit more to constructing a train, which could at least in some cases be said to generate a revenue stream to repay the finance, rather than "free at the point of delivery" services such as schools and hospitals where the cost will always end up as a direct burden on taxpayer funding.
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Indeed it isn't. And comparing to a BR that never existed, doesn't exist, and never will exist except in someone's imagination is even more pointless...

If we don't speculate on such things, there's a danger that we might come to assume that just because history happened in a certain way, it's inevitable that it had to happen that way. This in turn makes us more likely to accept the status quo as the only way of doing things.

 

[coppercapped]

Although this will of course, depend on when the arrangement is paid off in comparison to the longevity of the stock.

Why?

The IEP deal is for 27 1/2 years. During that period it has been calculated that the payments made by the TOCs (and guaranteed by the Government) to Agility Trains will be considerably more than the TOC would have paid for leasing using a ROSCO for finance and maintaining rolling stock to provide the same service.
A figure of £20,000 per vehicle mile per month over and above the 'ROSCO' cost has been calculated - apart from the DfT saying it doesn't recognise that number, it has not been corrected.

So there is no 'this will of course depend' in it at all. Do the maths yourself, on the GW alone that is £20k per month, for 27 1/2 years for some 350 vehicles. No wonder the supplier was so keen to get the contract.

 

[yorksrob]

Why?

The IEP deal is for 27 1/2 years. During that period it has been calculated that the payments made by the TOCs (and guaranteed by the Government) to Agility Trains will be considerably more than the TOC would have paid for leasing using a ROSCO for finance and maintaining rolling stock to provide the same service.
A figure of £20,000 per vehicle mile per month over and above the 'ROSCO' cost has been calculated - apart from the DfT saying it doesn't recognise that number, it has not been corrected.

So there is no 'this will of course depend' in it at all. Do the maths yourself, on the GW alone that is £20k per month, for 27 1/2 years for some 350 vehicles. No wonder the supplier was so keen to get the contract.

The variable in question is that the rolling stock could end up lasting forty years, rather than 27.5, in which case the railway will get an additional 12.5 years of use out of the stock for maintenance cost only.

Of course, one could imagine that by now BR would be experienced enough to negotiate it's own finance deals, rather than the DfT. Or, it might find it more cost effective to merge with a train builder and bring rolling stock manufacture back in house (as has served the railway well for about 150 years).

 

[HH]

If we don't speculate on such things, there's a danger that we might come to assume that just because history happened in a certain way, it's inevitable that it had to happen that way. This in turn makes us more likely to accept the status quo as the only way of doing things.

I think the danger is purely in your mind. More to the point is that using this speculation to predict what might happen in future is dangerous in that you might come to believe that fantasy is fact.

 

[Deepgreen]

Indeed it isn't. And comparing to a BR that never existed, doesn't exist, and never will exist except in someone's imagination is even more pointless...

Possibly, but I was simply attempting to point out the folly of assuming that a current vs. 1990s BR comparison was invalid. Discussion forums such as this can entertain speculation in certain areas, I think, as anyone is free to ignore such things if they consider them pointless.
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I think the danger is purely in your mind. More to the point is that using this speculation to predict what might happen in future is dangerous in that you might come to believe that fantasy is fact.

Have I missed something here, as I don't recall anyone making such a prediction? I may have missed the relevant post(s), but I thought we had simply been reviewing how things are and might have been if... The thread is about being fed up with franchising - it doesn't include a prediction element.

Does anyone really believe a re-born BR on the lines of 1993 is "fact" through what is very obviously just speculation? I haven't seen one mention to that effect.

 

[coppercapped]

The variable in question is that the rolling stock could end up lasting forty years, rather than 27.5, in which case the railway will get an additional 12.5 years of use out of the stock for maintenance cost only.

I've bolded the word 'will'. There is no 'will' about it, 'may' might be more appropriate but it is also not a given that the only costs to be covered are maintenance costs. The 27 1/2 years is the contract term for the deal made by the DfT with Agility Trains for the supply of train services. What happens after that - and how long the trains will remain in service - is pure speculation.

 

[HH]

Have I missed something here, as I don't recall anyone making such a prediction?

You must have missed something. People are speculating on what BR might be like today and then using that to say how they would behave. Even if these far flung fantasies were correct, they would bear little resemblance to what would exist if the railways were once again put wholly in public ownership, especially with Bojo in charge after we vote Brexit...

 

[yorksrob]

You must have missed something. People are speculating on what BR might be like today and then using that to say how they would behave. Even if these far flung fantasies were correct, they would bear little resemblance to what would exist if the railways were once again put wholly in public ownership, especially with Bojo in charge after we vote Brexit...

Actually, given we know quite a lot about BR as an organisation, and we know an awful lot about the economic and social conditions of the last twenty years, it's quite reasonable to take an educated guess about how that organisation would have responded in those circumstances.

Now conjuring up a type of company that had never existed before and trying to work out how it would respond to economic and social conditions that haven't happened yet - that is the stuff of far flung fantasy. Which, come to think of it, is probably how we came to be leaking revenue on leasing rolling stock that the railway had already purchased (and forgot to insist that this arrangement should pay for the construction of replacements)
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I've bolded the word 'will'. There is no 'will' about it, 'may' might be more appropriate but it is also not a given that the only costs to be covered are maintenance costs. The 27 1/2 years is the contract term for the deal made by the DfT with Agility Trains for the supply of train services. What happens after that - and how long the trains will remain in service - is pure speculation.

The word "will" was conditional on the word "could" earlier on in my sentence, therefore there was no certainty implied.

 

[Deepgreen]

You must have missed something. People are speculating on what BR might be like today and then using that to say how they would behave. Even if these far flung fantasies were correct, they would bear little resemblance to what would exist if the railways were once again put wholly in public ownership, especially with Bojo in charge after we vote Brexit...

The difference between speculation and prediction is that he latter carries an assumption that something along the lines of what is being discussed will occur, whereas the former doesn't and is more vague. I still don't think prediction has occurred here.