Which Franchises Would You Rearrange?

[ladydsm]

On the London news tonight if the Torys win the election Boris Johnson will get the power as London mayor to pick and choose who gets the london rail franchises and to determine fares to work with The underground and buses.

 

[yorksrob]

On the London news tonight if the Torys win the election Boris Johnson will get the power as London mayor to pick and choose who gets the london rail franchises and to determine fares to work with The underground and buses.

Ah, so he'd basically be the new manager of Network SouthEast then

 

[Pumbaa]

Ah, so he'd basically be the new manager of Network SouthEast then

Oh god

 

[LE Greys]

Unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying, I cannot ever see how that would work in the current system. Take the Coventry-Birmingham-Wolverhampton corridor - if memory serves there are 4 TOCs that call at stations through the route (5 if you include W&S) plus freight passing through. Yes VirginTrains have the current monopoly (which will disappear during renewal time). I too don't know how they work out the timetabling but they must do somehow to accomodate everyone?

That would be a case for 'running powers', as happened in some areas before 1922, or a jointly-owned section. However, the ultimate solution would be to build an alternative route. Taking your example, all WCML and local passenger services would be operated by the LNWR, while the former Midland lines out of New Street and the Worcester line would go to the LMS. Former GWR services out of Moor Street and Snow Hill would go to Chiltern & Cambrian, while the rebuilt line to Wolverhampton Low Level would link this up with Shrewsbury, allowing W&S (if C&C had not absorbed it) to cut some considerable time off the journey by running via Snow Hill. They could also open up a London-Aberystwyth service. Cross-Country would operate using running powers (I propose it as a joint consortium of all the companies that own the lines it uses) as would Railfreight (another joint consortium).

Therefore, we get two different companies operating out of New Street and one out of Snow Hill/Moor Street. You also have two joint consortia working inter-regional services. There would be no trace of the current system, and in fact it would be almost as though the Grouping, Nationalisation and Privatisation had never happened.

Forward to the past.

 

[9K43]

Get rid of them all a bring back BR.

 

[ladydsm]

Bring back network southeast have a training school at waterloo

 

[Aictos]

Bring back network southeast have a training school at waterloo

I would add a point to that which would be to make it easier for staff to complete courses if they wish to do so, so since if I wanted to do a NVQ in both Customer Service and Railway Operations it would be easy for me to apply for such a course and complete it.

I still say the West Anglia and Great Northern routes should have stayed together and merge the Great Eastern and Anglia routes together instead.

 

[ladydsm]

I went to night classes at southside training center in the early 90s which helped a great deal there should be regional centers so if people want to put in the time to get a nvq they can. as for franchises they should have 8 tocs for local routes
south west, south east, midlands west, midlands east, north west, north east and also scotland and one in wales.
then on top off that an inter city toc to cover all inter city routes.

 

[poshbakerloo]

GMR - Greater Manchester Railways. It no longer run by Northern!

 

[Kneedown]

Great idea but then it wouldn't actually be a franchise.

Nope, it'd be a public service! Quite revolutionary eh?

 

[Zoe]

Nope, it'd be a public service! Quite revolutionary eh?

Indeed, so revolutionary that New Labour don't seem to understand it.

 

[mikeg]

Does anyone know what the eight franchises suggested by the Adam Smith Institute were? They were the ones who came up with the franchising idea, the Major government created 20 franchises so they could pay less subsidy and gain more from premiums.

 

[LE Greys]

Does anyone know what the eight franchises suggested by the Adam Smith Institute were? They were the ones who came up with the franchising idea, the Major government created 20 franchises so they could pay less subsidy and gain more from premiums.

No wonder it ended up as such a mess. That business model just does not work in an environment with block signalling, something anyone who knows the railways would have told them. We've spent seventeen years trying to make it work, and it has to some extent, but causes such a massive increase in costs and complexity, coupled to a lack of flexibility, that it can only have been thought up by such a bunch of lunatics. However, it probably goes back further, with the selloff of BREL in 1989. This also worked for a while, but of course it was bought up by a series of foreign companies, run into the ground and ended up with a bunch of closed workshops and no UK trainbuilding industry.