Likewise with fares, BR did innovate, introducing discount Saver and Advanced tickets ('Apex'). It's inconceivable that BR would not have introduced demand-management based advanced fares in the late 90s as the technology became available. Today's ticketing system is basically what BR had in the mid-90s, but frozen in aspic because attempting any major change nowadays is like trying to herd cats.
BR had the flexibility to increase fares whenever they wanted to (e.g. more than one rise per year).
BR had the flexibility to increase fares by significantly more than inflation and to target certain areas to pay much more (rather than a simple RPI+1% rise applying to virtually all lines).
Privatisation was responsible for a lot of "freezing in aspic" (e.g. I doubt very much that BR would keep running all the parliamentary services that still exist, they'd have chopped them years ago, but private TOCs have franchise commitments that they must adhere to, so no scope to make the kind of changes that BR used to do without any consultation).
So it seems a bit unfair to criticise private TOCs for not evolving the fare system, when their hands are tied by the Government (in a way that BR didn't suffer).
A lot of the "privatised" railway is actually controlled tighter by the Government than it ever was thirty years ago.
Simply because there's an extra 10 million people in UK than than 25 years ago has to be a big factor. Same reason the roads are a lot busier and doctor surgeries, hospitals etc in urban areas.
There's 2-3 million more people in London alone.
I think that a significant proportion of those "ten million" are pensioners, given increased life expectancy and the "Baby Boomer" generation now retiring.
The number of economically active people (i.e. the commuter base) hasn't had the same significant increase - if anything we need all of these people to pay the increasing burden of pensions and healthcare for the Baby Boomers.
Underfunded GP surgeries are due to Austerity though.
Good question. Can't find any relevant stats, but France have been investing in rail more consistently over decades, so there may be less suppressed demand. Also their push on local transport has tended to be trams so commuter growth outside Paris may be seen on other modes.
I think that, if we want to be fair about rail privatisation, we should be looking at comparable things. Such as:
1. Heavy rail in Northern Ireland (which wasn't privatised)
2. National Express coaches (if the jump in rail use is only down to population growth and people travelling longer distances then you'd expect the same increase in demand for coaches)
3. Comparable foreign railways (France seems a good example, much as some people on here want to compare everything to Switzerland!)
4. Network Rail (has the public sector infrastructure provider seen the same efficiencies/ improvements?)
Only then can we strip out the causality/ correlation
I'm trying to keep an open mind - if nationalisation is better at delivering improvements then I'm all for it - but I'm more focussed on delivering improvements than I am hung up on public/private - if Stagecoach can deliver an efficient service at lower cost to the taxpayer then I'm perfectly relaxed about them getting a share of my ticket revenue.
I mean why would privatisation create more traffic? Do people sit there thinking "Oh, I must travel to work on the train these days because Arriva are so good at putting up the fares"
Well, private TOCs have better incentives to run reliable services, they have better incentives to market their trains more, they have better incentives to attract and retain passengers, they have better incentives to reduce costs, they have better incentive to run the types of services that bring in more revenue (i.e. simple half hourly clock face routes rather than a random assortment of services that provide an esoteric combination of direct journeys but are confusing for intermediate passengers) etc.
We might sniff at all the money they seem to spend regularly repainting trains but if it turns sufficient heads to attract sufficient passengers then presumably it's worth it for them. The same was true of British Rail.
Absolutely. They always are a menace, yet people hang on to every word they mutter and think they must be right. BR was starved of funds something shocking, yet still managed to make people smile with the HST. and ask yourself this. "Did British rail ever cancel every Dalesrail service throughout a whole summer like Arriva have"? Yet they have the nerve to go ask for more money.
In fairness to British Rail, they would never have cancelled every Dalesrail service throughout a whole summer - they've have closed the Settle and Carlisle thirty years ago (and they would have got away with it if it wasn't for that pesky meddling Portillo).
