Why is there now an obsession with re-nationalisation?

[quantinghome]

Population growth, traffic congestion, embargo on new roads/improvements, other "anti car" policies.

Population has gone up a bit, but no way near as much as rail use.
Road congested has played a part, but I wasn't aware of an 'embargo' on new roads and improvements. Quite the contrary. However, I agree that the experience of using UK roads is not generally a pleasant one.
Fuel duty has been frozen for 8 years, while train fares have... er... not. That's hardly anti-car.

The drivers have been:
- A long term shift in employment location from small towns to cities, particularly in former industrial areas.
- A generally more mobile population - people moving away from their home area for work, large increase in student numbers etc.
- People working in geographically spread-out teams, which then requires more travel for essential face-to-face meetings.

 

[coppercapped]

Reading is the fly in the ointment which distorts what should be an IC service,... SNIPPED.

Amazing, isn't it, when reality crowds in and upsets the theory?

 

[yorksrob]

I can't see the ECML south of Doncaster remaining Intercity post HS2.

Well, that remains to be seen, given that services from York will be taking a detour via Birmingham, so might not be that much faster anyway.

However, I'm primarily commenting on the status quo railway.

 

[yorksrob]

Amazing, isn't it, when reality crowds in and upsets the theory?

It's more than theory. Even if Reading were not there, sucking up capacity, London - Swindon - Bath - Bristol would still be a very good InterCity flow in its own right - unless you want to argue otherwise. Those places are still important and people travelling between them still expect a fast and comfortable InterCity service.

 

[Dr Hoo]

It's more than theory. Even if Reading were not there, sucking up capacity, London - Swindon - Bath - Bristol would still be a very good InterCity flow in its own right - unless you want to argue otherwise. Those places are still important and people travelling between them still expect a fast and comfortable InterCity service.

Let's face it, "InterCity" hasn't really meant anything concrete for over 24 years now. Just as "British Rail" can't be re-created, neither can InterCity (or Network SouthEast or anything else). Even when it existed InterCity was a somewhat uneasy agglomeration of genuinely long distance, high speed services between principal business centres and things like Gatwick Express, Liverpool Street-Norwich, Cross Country Class 158s from Scotland to Manchester, sleepers, Motorail and charter trains. All of these have now gone their separate ways in the face of changing demands, competition, tastes and technology (or in the case of Motorail, gone completely).

 

[yorksrob]

Let's face it, "InterCity" hasn't really meant anything concrete for over 24 years now. Just as "British Rail" can't be re-created, neither can InterCity (or Network SouthEast or anything else). Even when it existed InterCity was a somewhat uneasy agglomeration of genuinely long distance, high speed services between principal business centres and things like Gatwick Express, Liverpool Street-Norwich, Cross Country Class 158s from Scotland to Manchester, sleepers, Motorail and charter trains. All of these have now gone their separate ways in the face of changing demands, competition, tastes and technology (or in the case of Motorail, gone completely).

I don't think there's anything remotely controversial about including London - Norwich expresses as part of IC. It was long distance, had high standard first and second class accommodation and catering. These should be ingredients of all IC services today.

I wasn't aware that the Manc-Scotland 158's were classed as InterCity in BR days. I'd assumed that they were Reggie Rail.

 

[coppercapped]

It's more than theory. Even if Reading were not there, sucking up capacity, London - Swindon - Bath - Bristol would still be a very good InterCity flow in its own right - unless you want to argue otherwise. Those places are still important and people travelling between them still expect a fast and comfortable InterCity service.

To try to make one thing clear again - InterCity (or Inter-City) was a marketing brand name, it never was a specification for on-board services. In the days of the Sectors those longer distance services which showed a profit under the BR method of allocating costs were classified as 'InterCity' and allocated to the eponymous sector.

To your other points. Of course passengers between London and Bristol and stations in between should get a competitive service but whether 'InterCity' has any relevance on the 13minute hop from Swindon to Chippenham or the 29 minute journey to Bath Spa is moot.
Opinions, unless grounded in fact, are worthless. An examination of the usage of each of the main stations between Bristol and London is instructive. The numbers are millions/year:


It is clear that Reading is a significant traffic generator, it has as much use as Bristol Temple Meads and Bath Spa added together. Reading doesn't just soak up capacity, it contributes large numbers of passengers - not all of whom 'commute' to London. If Reading were not there then the flows on any surviving London - Didcot - etc - Bristol trains probably wouldn't support more than one train an hour. In other words Reading is the reason why Chippenham has a one-stop train every thirty minutes to Bristol.

As I wrote, reality has a habit of intruding.

 

[yorksrob]

To try to make one thing clear again - InterCity (or Inter-City) was a marketing brand name, it never was a specification for on-board services. In the days of the Sectors those longer distance services which showed a profit under the BR method of allocating costs were classified as 'InterCity' and allocated to the eponymous sector.

To your other points. Of course passengers between London and Bristol and stations in between should get a competitive service but whether 'InterCity' has any relevance on the 13minute hop from Swindon to Chippenham or the 29 minute journey to Bath Spa is moot.
Opinions, unless grounded in fact, are worthless. An examination of the usage of each of the main stations between Bristol and London is instructive. The numbers are millions/year:

View attachment 53670
It is clear that Reading is a significant traffic generator, it has as much use as Bristol Temple Meads and Bath Spa added together. Reading doesn't just soak up capacity, it contributes large numbers of passengers - not all of whom 'commute' to London. If Reading were not there then the flows on any surviving London - Didcot - etc - Bristol trains probably wouldn't support more than one train an hour. In other words Reading is the reason why Chippenham has a one-stop train every thirty minutes to Bristol.

As I wrote, reality has a habit of intruding.

Thank you for those figures.

As it happens, they support my view that the Bristol/Bath end of the line is a substantial traffic generator.

It's true that IC was never a strict service specification, but then again, I have never been a BR procurement officer.

I am merely a rail passenger of thirty years plus who has learnt through advertising and experience, to expect a different level of comfort, speed and catering on routes between the major cities, than I would expect on the express from Ashford to London, for example.

That said, for all its passengers, I don't accept Reading as a major City and never will.

 

[The Ham]

That said, for all its passengers, I don't accept Reading as a major City and never will.

Currently anyone who accepts Reading as a city is wrong.

 

[B&I]

I can't see the ECML south of Doncaster remaining Intercity post HS2.

Maybe a combination of semi-fasts to York and perhaps Lincoln / Grimsby, and the remaining expresses to Hull

 

[B&I]

Population growth, traffic congestion, embargo on new roads/improvements, other "anti car" policies.

Anti-car policies ? If only. We need more of them, and quickly, starting with any future urban development being planned around human beings, rather than motor vehicles

 

[B&I]

Chiltern could do it because they had a largely isolated network where the capacity improvements were pretty obvious and relatively easy to undertake, on an underutilised route that was ripe for generating large volumes of commuter traffic. They were also building on the work already started during BR days. I doubt this model would have worked elsewhere on the network. In fact it was the attempt to undertake this on a larger scale with the WCML upgrade that killed Railtrack.

The basic fact is that passenger railways do not present viable commercial investments - it will always be the taxpayer who pays, one way or the other.

Exactly. Yet a lot of posters on here seem to have an alnost religious belief in the abilities and dynamism of the private sector, despite the wider state of the British economy calling that into question

 

[B&I]

A bit like Grenfell Tower with various people the same day blaming privatisation or austerity, or both, before they had any knowledge of the actual facts.

They haven't been proved wrong yet, though, have they ?

I know that it's uncomfortable having to face up to how much damage your preferred method of running the economy, the public services and the country as a whole has done to all 3, but your discomfort doesn't change the realities.

 

[B&I]

Innovation needs freedom and creativity. When the TOCS are hog-tied by their short term franchise agreement, i.e. restricted in their fares, restricted in timetables, restricted as to routes, restricted as to which stations to stop at, restricted as to the model of income generation (fare apportionment rules), and restrictions even as to which trains to run, there's no freedom to innovate. The whole system is wrong simply because it's not proper privatisation - it's pseudo privatised but remains mostly state controlled.

Compare with heritage lines, many of whom do special events, combined tickets with other attractions & public transport - that's what freedom can achieve to facilitate innovation and creative thinking.

Heritage railways prove the superiority of privatisation ? Are you being serious ?

Innovation could occur in the private sector. It does in other countries, it just tends not to in this one. It can also exist in the public sector. BR were in many respects extremely innovative in what they could achieve with very limited resources.

 

[coppercapped]

Thank you for those figures.

My pleasure. I always find that real data are a great aid to understanding the world.

As it happens, they support my view that the Bristol/Bath end of the line is a substantial traffic generator.

I never claimed Bristol and Bath didn't generate any traffic, just that Reading's traffic is equivalent to the sum of both of these. If you are looking for a significant traffic generator about the same distance from London as Bristol I suggest that you look at Birmingham (which, by the way, is a city). New Street, at the other end of a direct connection to Bristol, has some 39 million journeys per year and 6 million interchanges. It supports three trains per hour to London - so a very simple back of an envelope calculation shows that, pro rata, Bristol would be expected to support a quarter of that number, that is one train every 80 minutes. It's obviously not quite that simple - but the result is probably not too far out.

It's true that IC was never a strict service specification, but then again, I have never been a BR procurement officer.

What has procurement got to do with a train service specification? (Except possibly when buying stuff to meet a marketing specification).

I am merely a rail passenger of thirty years plus who has learnt through advertising and experience, to expect a different level of comfort, speed and catering on routes between the major cities, than I would expect on the express from Ashford to London, for example.

Hah! A mere youngster! Prior to the advent of Inter-City or InterCity the trains making fewer stops were simply 'expresses'. You got four-aside seating in Third Class on the Southern and Western and three-aside seating on the Eastern, London Midland and the Scottish regions. Consistent, it wasn't.
There is no longer such a great difference in speed between train types and services as there was thirty or fifty years ago. Most trains built over the last quarter century can reach 100mph and some 'outer suburban' stock can reach 110mph - or even 125mph as on the Ashford run. I expect any train, regardless of service type, to run as fast as possible between stops, the difference in journey times mostly being set by the number of stops the train makes.
Nobody makes a decision about the train they want to use based on it being 'InterCity' or not. They look up the start and end points on a journey planner and are offered a selection of suitable trains. The journey planner has replaced the marketing name of the service type as a decision tool for the passenger.

That said, for all its passengers, I don't accept Reading as a major City and never will.

Is that incipient snobbery? If 'InterCity' only stopped at 'Cities' then 'InterCity' trains to the southwest from Paddington would call only at Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. Tough if one lives in Swindon, Taunton, Paignton or Penzance - just be happy with your slow trains.

 

[underbank]

Anti-car policies ? If only. We need more of them, and quickly, starting with any future urban development being planned around human beings, rather than motor vehicles

I fully agree, but before we go gung-ho anti car, how about improving alternatives, such as better public transport (or any public transport in some places!). Until there are realistic alternatives, the private car is here to stay.

 

[yorksrob]

My pleasure. I always find that real data are a great aid to understanding the world.

I never claimed Bristol and Bath didn't generate any traffic, just that Reading's traffic is equivalent to the sum of both of these. If you are looking for a significant traffic generator about the same distance from London as Bristol I suggest that you look at Birmingham (which, by the way, is a city). New Street, at the other end of a direct connection to Bristol, has some 39 million journeys per year and 6 million interchanges. It supports three trains per hour to London - so a very simple back of an envelope calculation shows that, pro rata, Bristol would be expected to support a quarter of that number, that is one train every 80 minutes. It's obviously not quite that simple - but the result is probably not too far out.

What has procurement got to do with a train service specification? (Except possibly when buying stuff to meet a marketing specification).
Hah! A mere youngster! Prior to the advent of Inter-City or InterCity the trains making fewer stops were simply 'expresses'. You got four-aside seating in Third Class on the Southern and Western and three-aside seating on the Eastern, London Midland and the Scottish regions. Consistent, it wasn't.
There is no longer such a great difference in speed between train types and services as there was thirty or fifty years ago. Most trains built over the last quarter century can reach 100mph and some 'outer suburban' stock can reach 110mph - or even 125mph as on the Ashford run. I expect any train, regardless of service type, to run as fast as possible between stops, the difference in journey times mostly being set by the number of stops the train makes.
Nobody makes a decision about the train they want to use based on it being 'InterCity' or not. They look up the start and end points on a journey planner and are offered a selection of suitable trains. The journey planner has replaced the marketing name of the service type as a decision tool for the passenger.

Is that incipient snobbery? If 'InterCity' only stopped at 'Cities' then 'InterCity' trains to the southwest from Paddington would call only at Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. Tough if one lives in Swindon, Taunton, Paignton or Penzance - just be happy with your slow trains.

Well, I'm probably guiltier than most of choosing trains by any other criteria than what designation the service is (price, scenery, lack of overcrowding etc).

Nevertheless, I do have a very distinct picture of what I think as an IC service.

If I were to book on such a service, I would be dissappointed not to find the following:

-lots of carriages.
-decent first class with comfort noticably better than standard (i.e 1+2 seating)
-consistent catering provision so that I can at least get a cuppa or a sandwich.

This is noticably different from a short DMU.

In terms of Reading, I lived there for six months and never got on with the place. It's only saving grace was that it still had VEP's and CIG's to Waterloo (when they didn't put 455's on the route for reasons known only unto themselves) and of course 125's to Paddington.

 

[coppercapped]

It matters not one iota whether you like or dislike Reading as a place to live - although that does seem to have coloured your perception of the sort of train service it should have.

Luckily people planning timetables don’t make decisions based on personal prejudices but on actual footfall and origin and destination figures - that is, as far as the Department for Transport lets them.

I notice though that you haven’t shown any reason why my contention that the reason that Chippenham gets two one-stop trains every hour to Bristol is due to the baseload traffic generated by Reading covering many of the costs. If Reading were not there Chippenham would, at best, get an hourly service.

I don’t think many people would argue with you about the facilities that should be offered on longer distance trains - or, rather, trains which make journeys of long duration. Times change - when trains took four hours or more to reach Plymouth there was probably a good argument for including a restaurant car on the trains travelling at meal times. Now the journey is around three hours, possibly a buffet or trolley is sufficient. And when HS2 arrives with a 45 minute journey to Birmingham - indisputably an inter city service - is any sort of catering necessary?

It’s horses for courses - and railway enthusiasts do the business they proclaim to support a great disservice by trying to classify and pigeon hole everything. Life is too mucky to be able to do that.

 

[Robertj21a]

Well, I'm probably guiltier than most of choosing trains by any other criteria than what designation the service is (price, scenery, lack of overcrowding etc).

Nevertheless, I do have a very distinct picture of what I think as an IC service.

If I were to book on such a service, I would be dissappointed not to find the following:

-lots of carriages.
-decent first class with comfort noticably better than standard (i.e 1+2 seating)
-consistent catering provision so that I can at least get a cuppa or a sandwich.

This is noticably different from a short DMU.

In terms of Reading, I lived there for six months and never got on with the place. It's only saving grace was that it still had VEP's and CIG's to Waterloo (when they didn't put 455's on the route for reasons known only unto themselves) and of course 125's to Paddington.

I think you may need to revisit Reading, it's a significantly different place to when it ran VEP's and CIG's.

I've never even thought about whether a train is categorised as 'Inter City' or not. It's just a means of travelling from A to B and may, or may not, have some facilities on board. I may choose one train over another if I want to use any of those facilities, but it certainly won't make any difference at all to me if some are referred to as IC.

 

[Hetlana]

Hah! A mere youngster! Prior to the advent of Inter-City or InterCity the trains making fewer stops were simply 'expresses'. You got four-aside seating in Third Class on the Southern and Western and three-aside seating on the Eastern, London Midland and the Scottish regions. Consistent, it wasn't.
There is no longer such a great difference in speed between train types and services as there was thirty or fifty years ago. Most trains built over the last quarter century can reach 100mph and some 'outer suburban' stock can reach 110mph - or even 125mph as on the Ashford run. I expect any train, regardless of service type, to run as fast as possible between stops, the difference in journey times mostly being set by the number of stops the train makes.
Nobody makes a decision about the train they want to use based on it being 'InterCity' or not. They look up the start and end points on a journey planner and are offered a selection of suitable trains. The journey planner has replaced the marketing name of the service type as a decision tool for the passenger.

Is that incipient snobbery? If 'InterCity' only stopped at 'Cities' then 'InterCity' trains to the southwest from Paddington would call only at Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth and Truro. Tough if one lives in Swindon, Taunton, Paignton or Penzance - just be happy with your slow trains.

I agree most certainly that in Britain there is much less of a real distinction between different kinds of services. This is because we are a relatively small country over which single commuter belts are a much bigger proportion of the country’s area than in a much larger county, which means that services previously considered ‘intercity’ are much more likely to become ‘commuterised’ than in a country like China.

Here in China, due to how vast the country is, services really are segregated, and there are essentially just three completely separate ‘levels’ of trains in China:

1. High Speed (New build lines)
2. Slow Long Distance (Conventional lines)
3. Metro/Subway

The former two are almost completely intercity, and the latter exclusively commuter.

There is also no distinction between suburban and metro lines, since both are so new, as is the country’s mass urbanization and suburbanization, which is essentially tower-block based unlike western style urban sprawl.

Although shorter distance ‘regional’ high-Speed lines are being developed for long-distance commuting, the general rule is that Main Line railways (whether slow or High-Speed) are almost exclusively intercity in nature, which is one reason why Main Line stations are run pretty much like airports with their travellers-only departure lounges and so forth.

Certainly Britain is certainly a big contrast to that, where you now have a continuous ‘spectrum’ of services ranging from fully intercity to fully inner-suburban commuter, or at least very blurred distinctions in between.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

I went to Portugal for a couple of days and they had a really poorly invested system. Absolutely packed, graffiti, little facilities and outdated trains. It put me off the idea of nationalisation due to the fact they may end up seriously under invested and neglected. At least Britains Railways have good facilities in many places and are constantly invested in compared to most of the other state railways.

 

[underbank]

At least Britains Railways have good facilities in many places and are constantly invested in compared to most of the other state railways.

Have you travelled on Northern Rail recently?

 

[ChiefPlanner]

I went to Portugal for a couple of days and they had a really poorly invested system. Absolutely packed, graffiti, little facilities and outdated trains. It put me off the idea of nationalisation due to the fact they may end up seriously under invested and neglected. At least Britains Railways have good facilities in many places and are constantly invested in compared to most of the other state railways.

Been on DB / SNCB / NS lately ? (not to mention a few others)

No offence to Portugal , but rail has been a low priority for many years , and the country has had just a few fiscal challenges (which it is , I understand working hard to remedy)

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Have you travelled on Northern Rail recently?

Okay until recently

 

[underbank]

Okay until recently

Seriously? I've been bouncing around on draughty, uncomfortable 2-3 hour journeys in awful Pacers for about 20 years now -often without a working toilet. Yes, the strikes and cancellations are recent, but Northern has been an awful service, especially in more rural areas for a very long time.

 

[quantinghome]

It's worth emphasising that whether the railways are nationalised or privatised, they will always require government funding for passenger services. More government support - better services, less support - worse services. The railways should be structured to ensure it makes the most out of the funding provided; the complexity of the franchising system does not help.

 

[Hetlana]

It's worth emphasising that whether the railways are nationalised or privatised, they will always require government funding for passenger services. More government support - better services, less support - worse services. The railways should be structured to ensure it makes the most out of the funding provided; the complexity of the franchising system does not help.

So you’re saying that they can never make money?

 

[mushroomchow]

The one major reason I cannot support renationalisation is the risk of route cuts in times of economic downturn.

The franchise system is not perfect, but has been a godsend for rural routes which are often bundled in with more lucrative services. Even then, these lines often rely on local council subsidy to make their ticket prices affordable. Through franchise commitments, a lot have also seen improvements to station and frequency provisions, if not necessarily better stock.

There are a number of lines in places like East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Cumbria and the north of England which would be under real threat of service reduction and closure under a nationalised system if you had the wrong mix of incumbent government and economic conditions. It's all well and good when Corbyn and his ilk sweep in, reduce ticket prices and buy shiny new trains for every line at great expense, but what happens the next time the Tories get in, especially if the country is in an economic mess at the time?

The pattern is there from the very start to the very end of British Rail - economically marginal or loss-making routes are always under threat in a nationalised system, but are protected by franchising.

 

[jagardner1984]

Surely the reason for that government support is because its a fundamental piece of national infrastructure which simply cannot fail. Ultimately if even 10% of rail users were to get in cars instead, the economy would grind to a halt. So we need people to take the train. Indeed, we need people to take the train much more than they are doing now.

Ultimately, many of the franchises have ended up being not the great centres of entrepreneurship we were once promised, but effectively arms length government bodies, delivering the services (some of them) the government specify, charging the fares the government specify, to a timetable they specify (via Network Rail), on trains that the government specify or in some cases own. There are some minor ways in which a franchisee can change the course of things. The colour of the paint on the outside, the shape of the new carriages. But broadly speaking, the government is in charge here.

The franchisees deliver (with varying degrees of success) the services they've tendered to deliver, and take a small (comparatively) profit for the privilege of doing so. Thus government has achieved its aim of having a fall guy when it goes wrong and they can point fingers, and the travelling public are left increasingly frustrated as a myriad of organisations tell them its all the other person's fault.

Public ownership wasn't the answer to all problems, and the network today is very different to the one BR left behind. But really the public need to acknowledge that all areas of vital national infrastructure are in public hands (Health, Education, Defence, Social Security), and we should hold our politicians to account for their success or failure. The railways should be no different.

 

[Carlisle]

The pattern is there from the very start to the very end of British Rail - economically marginal or loss-making routes are always under threat in a nationalised system, but are protected by franchising.

Not necessarily, remember around 4 years ago unions etc took it almost for granted that costs of traditional crew operation would be bundled with everything else on all existing non DOO franchises for decades to come .