There’s a separate for “pensions” etc, this one is getting clogged up with off-topic stuff
Certainly agreed here. We either need to get GBR in place now, or we need to issue some 5 year traditional franchises (just with higher subsidy) and let TOC managers have some freedom, and plan for GBR in 5 years.
DaFT managing everything directly is a path to disaster
I’m sure that, I’d see had the five year franchises you suggest, the TOCs would have a financial incentive to resolve the industrial relations situation and get their act together about what level of services they plan to operate
If you are (e.g.) Stagecoach then your profits are based on the expected income you’ve budgeted for, so you have plenty of reason to focus on doing what you need to do to make this happen
If you are HM Government then there are billions of pounds of taxes/ spending to account for, so the revenue from the 10:03 train is a drop in the ocean, ours not as if most Government staff are on much of a “profit related” pay scheme, there’s no reason to break sweat about the relatively small sums of money involved
Meanwhile we should consider going for a "fewer, longer trains" approach
Sounds good in theory, but you know what some people are like about maintaining certain direct links (whether that’s through trains to an airport hundreds of miles away or a direct service between far flung cities on the Cross Country network or… dare I say it… from their hometown to the Castlefield corridor in Manchester…
I’d be fine with “fewer, longer” but I know that others get quite invested in the direct links like Newcastle to Manchester Airport or Manchester to Bristol (there’s probably a Castlefield example to throw into the mix too!), despite the fact that the wide range of destinations requires more of a “more, shorter” approach
the UK simply can't integrate buses properly. Once we've learnt to do the latter like the Swiss do to get real benefit we can revisit. The UK needs a joined-up approach to public transport, both regional and national
Nobody is going to argue against some warmly worded stuff about a “joined up approach”…
…but are we really saying that the Government can set a franchise like TSGN or GWR to last for several years but the complexities of contracting a bus service for a similar period would be being their capabilities?
Councils/ PTEs have been tendering some bus routes for decades (look at the various school services around the UK), bus companies will operate a service if you provide them with a contract - I’m sure the logistics of getting a bus to replace a lightly used branch line can’t be beyond the collective wits of the DfT
Again - it's not a fair comparison to compare 2019 to 2022 and say that because 2019 was better, franchising is therefore superior. You don't know what would have happened to the railways in the alternate timeline where franchising was restored after Covid
There seems a disconnect between the threads where people argue that “passenger numbers are over 100% of the 2019 levels, so we should restore all services and boost frequencies” and the threads where people believe that everything is too fragile to consider putting proper franchises out there again
I believe that if TOCs had contracts today (like the pre-Covid contracts, even if that means a different subsidy level or different baseline frequencies) then we’d have an incentive to resolve the long running industrial relations problems, we’d not have the widespread 21:59 cancellations, we’d have more reason to increase staffing levels…
… but instead we have the government who seem to have little reason to improve anything, and in fact seem to take a perverse pride in antagonising the Unions
But the accountability is to the guarantees and strategy decided by the government.
How, in your view, were franchisees "able to stand up to the Government"?
Franchises had to keep operating the baseline services, rather than cancelling routes like Doncaster to Scunthorpe for months at a time
But franchises also contained promises that the public sector would deliver on their share of things, hence Virgin/ Stagecoach taking legal action when the infrastructure improvements weren’t delivered to enable the TOC to provide the necessary changes
The Government were scared of that kind of response - the Government clearly feel they can act with impunity now that those pesky firms can no longer have a voice (any remaining firms have essentially signed a vow of silence as part of their terms)
Problem is when you leave the bridge from Hull, you either have to turn 'left' towards Grimsby or 'right' towards Scunthorpe, In the Scunthorpe direction you could then carry on to Doncaster, but line speeds are low (compared to via Goole or Selby) until you get near to Doncaster and its further. Really if you are heading towards Grimby, then apart from carrying the couple of miles to Cleethorpes there are no options, so you end up with a captive Grimsby - Hull service not serving any other significant towns. Running into and out of Grimby before making for Scunthorpe would take too long. The fact that there isnt even a through bus tells me there just isnt the demand. Whilst a bridge with a rail track would have been nice I dont think it would have transformed travel in the area. Even in terms of road traffic the Humber Bridge and the A15 linking it to the M180 are not busy.
I agree, I don’t think that the Hull-Grimsby market is that large or that the market south of the river would have been worth diverting the Doncaster trains that currently run via Selby/ Goole
If Beeching had *closed* a link over the river, you know it’d have been high up the priorities some people have for reopening though!
The basic problems are inbuilt costs.
BR was an integrated unit under government control, the system we have now is not. If you want to cut costs for me the big ticket items are as follows.
1) Insurance - Bring the Railways under Government control and self Insure.
2) Network Rail Contractors cost a fortune - Bring this back in House.
3) Re-Nationalise Bombardier and have it as an in house manufacturer getting cutting out the profits of the rolling stock manufacturers and leasing companies.
Franchising is a mess with many duplicated teams developing systems, apps, different delay repay portals, smart cards etc all of this adds unnecessary cost.
Sounds nice on paper but BR were a muddle of separate business units too, BR were leasing trains over fifty years ago, a lot of the things that people complained about TOCs for were just business practices that BR had first which were more “High profile” post-privatisation
Network Rail have been a public sector body in charge of infrastructure for around twenty years now - their policy re contractors could have changed at any time regardless of whether delivering train services was in public/private hands
Nationalise Bombardier? The Canadian aircraft? Or Alstom? Where do you draw the line with multinational companies (who have supply lines that transcend national boundaries)?
BR were happy buying hotels etc as part of a wide portfolio but I don’t know quite what you mean by “re-nationalise Bombardier”
And wasn’t one of the supposedly great things about BR the way that they distantly kept costs low by getting supposedly identical trains built in different factories (hence 158s having a variety of engines… but also importing 56s from Romania rather than building them all in Doncaster or Crewe)
We seemed to have a wide range of production lines in operation or in development, from Kincardine in Fife to Newport in Gwent, with Newton Aycliffe coming from nowhere to turn into one of the UK’s biggest sites.
These aren’t the traditional Doncaster/ Derby/ Crewe locations that some people probably think of as”Proper Railway Towns” though!
