The benefits of other countries Railways...

[Clip]

possibly, but that seems like a corner case. i would imagine for most regular commuters that don't buy the annual ticket, they would find a "valid in the month of" ticket easier than keeping track of the date of the month the ticket expires.

I know a few who are like hounds with getting their dates exactly right so they never pay more then they should do.

A 'valid in the month of' ticket which starts on the saturday of a bank holiday in may and ends on the monday bank holiday of may isnt going to give good value for money is it

 

[Gordon]

More thoughts on Britain versus the ‘Swiss model’

One of the most irritating things about Britain’s history was the dogmatic application of deregulation which was imposed under a Conservative government. This destroyed some very Swiss-like integrated networks such as in Tyne and Wear as has already been mentioned. The joke is that Switzerland is an incredibly ‘conservative’ country, but they still see integrated public transport as a necessity. For some cultural reason that maybe cannot be explained public transport has always been seen in this way somewhat differently to in the British culture.

One of my pet hates about Britain is the roads littered with unnecessary buses and long distance coaches due to the British ‘system’, perhaps why I will have been abroad (Switzerland 3 times, a Baltic cruise, and – still to come - France (Longueville steam mega-event) and Germany (Thuringia plandampf) for all my annual leave this year…)

There is actually at least one similarity between the Swiss system and the British ‘system’ (something that many observers miss) ie that many of the (particularly bus) operators are franchisees, its just that they agree to the ‘rules’ about integrating with other modes and are duty bound to serve the railway station for example.

And whilst on the subject of Switzerland, do remember that the system is far from perfect underneath the ‘perfect’ façade. There are dubious financial aspects to the railway (eg large public debt) and connections are not always perfect and or maintained.

One other down side to the Swiss taktfahrplan is that some connections are actually too 'perfect' (ie too short). Two members of my family are not as mobile as they once were and making the trek down long flights of stairs or ramps to move from platform to platform at large stations sometimes makes tight connection too tight for comfort. This happened on our trip to Zermatt this year with an official connection at Lausanne.

 

[Zoe]

There is actually at least one similarity between the Swiss system and the British ‘system’ (something that many observers miss) ie that many of the (particularly bus) operators are franchisees, its just that they agree to the ‘rules’ about integrating with other modes and are duty bound to serve the railway station for example.

That's the difference with Britain though, most buses are not run on a franchise basis but are fully commercial so they can do what they like.

 

[Greenback]

Indeed, if buses were franchised there might be mor eof an opportunity to integrate them with other forms of transport.

Oops, sorry, that would not allow for competition, which has clearly imrpoved bus services enormously over the last 25 years.

 

[Deerfold]

Indeed, if buses were franchised there might be mor eof an opportunity to integrate them with other forms of transport.

Oops, sorry, that would not allow for competition, which has clearly imrpoved bus services enormously over the last 25 years.

That still allows for competition - as in London. However the competition is at the bidding stage for the route.

And if a company underbids and performs badly they are further penalised financially.

 

[Zoe]

Oops, sorry, that would not allow for competition, which has clearly imrpoved bus services enormously over the last 25 years.

If it had gone as some people thought it would then as I said before we'd have lots of smaller companies competing and there would undoubtedly be an incentive for some to connect with trains. That is how at least some expected deregulation to benefit the passenger as the market would provide the service and not that the likes of First and Stagecoach to go around swallowing up the opposition and leaving people with little choice for a bus service.

 

[Greenback]

That still allows for competition - as in London. However the competition is at the bidding stage for the route.

And if a company underbids and performs badly they are further penalised financially.

That's not proper competition like the architects of deregulation evisaged!

If it had gone as some people thought it would then as I said before we'd have lots of smaller companies competing and there would undoubtedly be an incentive for some to connect with trains. That is how at least some expected deregulation to benefit the passenger as the market would provide the service and not that the likes of First and Stagecoach to go around swallowing up the opposition and leaving people with little choice for a bus service.

The irony is that what happened is exactly how capitalist markets operate - each company seeks to establish as near to a monopoly as they can achieve.

I can only assume that those who devised this plan were either dull, or that they knew what would happen and chose to present in a more positive way to make it acceptable!

 

[Deerfold]

That's not proper competition like the architects of deregulation evisaged!

It may not be what they envisaged but it's still "proper" competition
And allows all parties to plan a bit more.
Although it's taken a while to get working reasonably well.

 

[Greenback]

It may not be what they envisaged but it's still "proper" competition
And allows all parties to plan a bit more.
Although it's taken a while to get working reasonably well.

Do you mean it's working reasonably well in London? If so, I agree! I don;t think bus deregulation is working well anywhere else though!

 

[Deerfold]

Do you mean it's working reasonably well in London? If so, I agree! I don;t think bus deregulation is working well anywhere else though!

I mean it's working reasonably well in London. However it took a while to improve. For some time bus companies had little incentive to perform well once they'd won a contract - originally they were only penalised for not running all of the mileage on a route but they could have (in extremis) run all the buses in pairs with double the expected gaps with little comeback. Now they're measured and penalied or rewarded by how large theirEWT (excess waiting time) is - this a measure of how long on average someone will wait at a stop compared with a perfect, evenly spaced service.

Certainly in most of the UK it's a mess.

 

[Zoe]

I mean it's working reasonably well in London. However it took a while to improve. For some time bus companies had little incentive to perform well once they'd won a contract - originally they were only penalised for not running all of the mileage on a route but they could have (in extremis) run all the buses in pairs with double the expected gaps with little comeback. Now they're measured and penalied or rewarded by how large theirEWT (excess waiting time) is - this a measure of how long on average someone will wait at a stop compared with a perfect, evenly spaced service.

As far as I know LT (later TfL) set the timetable and frequencies so how late were the buses allowed to be?

 

[Greenback]

I mean it's working reasonably well in London. However it took a while to improve. For some time bus companies had little incentive to perform well once they'd won a contract - originally they were only penalised for not running all of the mileage on a route but they could have (in extremis) run all the buses in pairs with double the expected gaps with little comeback. Now they're measured and penalied or rewarded by how large theirEWT (excess waiting time) is - this a measure of how long on average someone will wait at a stop compared with a perfect, evenly spaced service.

Certainly in most of the UK it's a mess.

Yes, I think the London model is pretty good, and I'd like to see it followed everywhere else, well, at least in the PTE areas!

 

[Zoe]

Is there any reason why London wasn't fully deregulated? Thatcher had abolished the GLC by that time and the Tories had a majority so they could have forced it through. It would have likely been a very lucrative area.

 

[radamfi]

Is there any reason why London wasn't fully deregulated? Thatcher had abolished the GLC by that time and the Tories had a majority so they could have forced it through. It would have likely been a very lucrative area.

I've been thinking about this question since at least the late 80s! I recently gave a talk at work about bus regulation and someone asked the question of why London isn't deregulated and I couldn't give a good answer.

Certainly, there was a high expectation that John Major was going to introduce bus deregulation in London in the early 90s and Buses magazine discussed that at length. I think a major sticking point was deciding how Travelcard revenue would be split across the operators. Of course, the Travelcard could have been abolished but everyone seemed to be agreed that the Travelcard had to be preserved.

That doesn't explain why London wasn't deregulated at the same time as buses outside London in 1986. It may have been because London had already experimented with tendering by then and wanted to see how that would pan out before embarking on deregulation at a later date.

 

[Deerfold]

As far as I know LT (later TfL) set the timetable and frequencies so how late were the buses allowed to be?

LT set the frequencies and approved timetables from the operator. Originally there were few effective measures against late running (or large gaps on frequent services). This has been much improved over time.

 

[junglejames]

And there it is... the entire UK rail system suffers badly due to Marsham street micro managing everything. You might as well just get rid of the entire franchise system and place everything under a Marsham street TOC...
lets call it Directly Operated Railways....

Not bad. Polar opposites in one paragraph.
The micro managing and not letting Northern order substandard chinese trains is a very very good thing. So we dont suffer badly in that exact example. It would be hypocritical to ram home about safety, and then go and allow an order for chinese trains. Private companies unfortunately do it, but when the government has a say, it shouldnt. Well done DFT in this respect.

However your idea of getting rid of the franchising system. Fantastic idea. Bring back BR. As long as a good railway manager is in charge (not Elaine Holt), then it'll be brilliant. Railways working together.

 

[WestCoast]

Not bad. Polar opposites in one paragraph.
The micro managing and not letting Northern order substandard chinese trains is a very very good thing. So we dont suffer badly in that exact example. It would be hypocritical to ram home about safety, and then go and allow an order for chinese trains. Private companies unfortunately do it, but when the government has a say, it shouldnt. Well done DFT in this respect.

Well, the Chinese CSRE Polaris trains can't be worse than the Pacers they would replace. I believe the Director is a forum member, perhaps you could take up these supposed safety issues with him or her? I hope it's not just because it's China, since many of the (perhaps safety critical) electronics are made in that country.

I feel the DfT weren't interested in Northern's problems back then and the only hope at the moment is hand-me-downs from other operators. The Pacers are substandard in every way, take it from a Pacer commuter who has to stand up on one each day! They may have saved branchlines, but they don't run on those routes anymore!

Since this thread is about other countries, when I compare my commuter journey in the UK to the one when I am in Germany visiting family, there is no contest. About the same duration of journey, yet one is a smart loco-hauled double decker, the other is a class 142 Pacer!

 

[Schnellzug]

Not bad. Polar opposites in one paragraph.
The micro managing and not letting Northern order substandard chinese trains is a very very good thing. So we dont suffer badly in that exact example. It would be hypocritical to ram home about safety, and then go and allow an order for chinese trains. Private companies unfortunately do it, but when the government has a say, it shouldnt. Well done DFT in this respect.

However your idea of getting rid of the franchising system. Fantastic idea. Bring back BR. As long as a good railway manager is in charge (not Elaine Holt), then it'll be brilliant. Railways working together.

Why should chinese trains be unsafe? They seem to make some pretty good diesel locos, and that collision on the HSL recently involved trains designed by Bombardier. What private companies here have ordered unsafe trains?

And when was this BR of which you so fondly reminisce, working together for the common good? Certainly not the post-sectorisation BR, when they seemed to go out of their way not to co-operate with each other. And just about every time in its history it seemed to be a catalogue of cuts, decline, closures, singling of lines and industrial strife. In fact, was there ever a time when BR was run for the common good, with no regard for cost?

 

[Zoe]

Certainly not the post-sectorisation BR, when they seemed to go out of their way not to co-operate with each other.

That is when they decided to start running it as a business and not a public service. It's likely that if we ever had BR back it would still be run as a business.

 

[T163R]

Careful about what you say about "frogs" and SNCF here, guys. :grin:

Even though I shall agree with you with the poor quality of SNCF freight although I really think that TER services are quite well organised.

We have plenty of new Bombardier trains. But that shouldn't fascinate you, though.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I'm sure I have read that Britain has more buses than any other country in Europe.

Just a matter of interest, how much buses do TfL have for Greater London ?

 

[Drsatan]

I've noticed that on SBB, whenever a train is announced the announcer usually mentions, if it's an InterCity train, that passengers for coaches 1-4 should wait in Sector A (designated on the platform), passengers for coaches 4-8 should wait in Sector B, and so on, while passengers wanting access to the bike space are told to wait in a certain sector. This means that passengers with reservations know where to wait on the platform to avoid a last minute rush down the platform to the carriage where they have reserved seats. It also means that boarding times are sped up since passengers with bikes, wheelchair passengers and passengers with luggage, since they know where to wait, can get on board more quickly.

This should be adopted in the UK now that more and more passengers now buy advance purchase tickets with compulsory seat reservations. There's nothing more annoying, especially if you have luggage or a bike, to wait on one end of the platform, then as the train pulls in you discover that the carriage you want is at the other end of the platform; something that's happened to me on more than one occasion. It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, since all that needs to be done is for sector markers signs to be installed and for a few announcements to be re-recorded.

 

[Zoe]

It shouldn't be too difficult to implement, since all that needs to be done is for sector markers signs to be installed and for a few announcements to be re-recorded.

GWT/FGW published coloured zones in their timetables in the early days so you could look up your coach and stand at the correct location on the platform.

 

[shinkansen1966]

It is too much to ask for the system wide German platform lettering system ?

There, platforms have zonal lettering so you know where to stand in readiness for the approaching IC or ICE train.

 

[Schnellzug]

It is too much to ask for the system wide German platform lettering system ?

There, platforms have zonal lettering so you know where to stand in readiness for the approaching IC or ICE train.

They used to have "Blue Zones" and "Orange Zones" and "yellow Zones" and all that, but I never really worked out what it was all supposed to represent.

 

[shinkansen1966]

They used to have "Blue Zones" and "Orange Zones" and "yellow Zones" and all that, but I never really worked out what it was all supposed to represent.

So that was another waste of money.

Germans have a system wide lettering of platforms: A-F. Indicator boards have self explanatory signage showing position of approaching train's first class, second class, buffet. So you know where to stand. Money well spent.

 

[radamfi]

Platform lettering and boards on the platform showing where to stand for long distance trains is common throughout Europe, except Britain of course.

 

[Deerfold]

Just a matter of interest, how much buses do TfL have for Greater London ?

There are officially about 8500. Including general spares and buses being changed over to new contracts there's about 8800.

None of these are owned by TfL - they're owned by the companies that run the contracts. Though some of the kit on the bus is owned by TfL (Radio, iBus).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Platform lettering and boards on the platform showing where to stand for long distance trains is common throughout Europe, except Britain of course.

Some stations do have them. I think I last saw them at Peterborough.

Of course it doesn't help when the train comes in backwards...

 

[bILLOO]

Some of the Japanese commuter lines/subways (especially in Tokyo) have half-PEDs. I suppose this wouldn't stop anybody from climbing over if they really wanted, but it would definitely decrease the amounts of one unders. This would only work on lines that have a uniformed fleet of trains.

 

[Drsatan]

There are officially about 8500. Including general spares and buses being changed over to new contracts there's about 8800.

None of these are owned by TfL - they're owned by the companies that run the contracts. Though some of the kit on the bus is owned by TfL (Radio, iBus).
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


Some stations do have them. I think I last saw them at Peterborough.

Of course it doesn't help when the train comes in backwards...

I've noticed that Bath station has stickers on some of the columns supporting the platform canopy showing where each carriage of an HST will arrive on the platform.

 

[Gordon]

Some stations do have them. I think I last saw them at Peterborough.

I thought East Coast used them everywhere on the ECML?

They certainly exist at Darlington, and work well.