Do you think that we would have a better railway system...?

Question

If the uk railways were to be re-nationlised???

Answer 1

Absolutely not, what would be better if there was more competition on the lines instead of the franchise system, where one company has the sole right to run.

The railways should be run by people who know what they are doing, nationalisation is government control and politicians do not have a clue how to run a business.

Answer 2

Yes

Answer 3

Absolutely not.  Public sector services are notoriously inefficient.  That's one of the reasons why they were privatised in the first place (along with the Tories making a cash-grab).

The reason why the railways are falling apart is because of decades of under-investment and lack of maintenance.  I'm afraid there's no quick-fix for this one.  Particularly one that's not going to cost billions.

Answer 4

No. They are improving. OK, fares are going up, but the cost of everything goes up. Northern Rail have improved no end, and I would like to give them the credit that they deserve for this, same with Transpennine Express.

Answer 5

We have suffered with our railways since that Tory Dr Beeching wiped out at a stroke of a pen many of our much needed routes. From the 1960s to the 1980s the Tories under funded rail investment and now we are playing catch up. But I'm not certain about re-nationalised ?

Answer 6

I'm with  Northern Lad on this one. The rail network in this country (and just about everything else!) is run by monkeys. And not particularly bright monkeys at that. All they think of is the money and the money and the money. And until this changes then this once great country is going to continue to slide into a **** pit of its own making.

Answer 7

It would help if Networkrail had more direct labour rather than relying on contractors and sub-contractors.

On jobs where there are no penalty clauses it's not really in the interest of the people Networkrail employs to finish any work on time.

The fact that the railways used to be more integrated when nationalised was the only real benefit.

Though you have to question where the money the government gives to the privatised train operating companies for the social railways(those that do not make a profit and are kept open by subsidy).go'es to.

A privatised company has to return a dividend to it's shareholders..and if theres no profit to be made..guess where it comes from.

The whole idea of privatising BR was to reduce the amount of money the government paid for the operation of the railways...but in real terms more money is being paid now than at any other time..yet we are not seeing the sort of railway that money could have bought if BR had been given the money for renewing and investing in newer trains.

Answer 8

No, that would just be a waste of public money that would make no real difference.

Answer 9

The railways are a public service and need to be managed and funded as such, as they are in the rest of Europe where most rail networks are state-owned - France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, etc.

Part of the problem is the attitude to railways which are seen as the poor cousin of the transport family in many establishment circles. It was this which led to under-investment in the 1950's and 1960's and the 'Beeching Plan' - the cutback of 30% of Britain's rail system. It was done under the Tories but there was little opposition from Labour.

At the same time there was massive investment in the road network with road and rail being forced to compete with each other instead of being integrated.

Railways unfortunately have perennially had a bad press, yet they are an essential part of the economy and infrastructure. The suburban network south of the Thames alone brings 500,000 people to work every day. Can you imagine the effect of that amount of extra traffic on the already congested roads?

More incentives are also needed to attract people to use the trains. Cheaper fares and a frequent and punctual, reliable service are top of the list here yet the government is saying on the one hand they want people to be more green, e.g. use public transport, and on the other that rail passengers must bear more of the cost of providing the service.

It's this kind of backward-looking, short-sighted thinking that is holding the rail system back.

Not only does the rail system need to be renationalised but it also needs to be more accountable to the public it serves. Lack of accountability is another problem which has dogged the railways for many years. Privatisation only increased this - who is a Train Operating Company accountable to? a) The travelling public or b) its shareholders? Answer: b).

Answer 10

No.

The rail system of the UK was originally developed privately and operated as a set of private companies for over 100 years. It was nationalised post-war for no more than ideological reasons by Clement Atlee's  Labour government.

The mistake made by the Conservatives in privatising the rail system was to split the track and train operating companies. The real solution would have been to 'reverse the clock' and return to a system where private companies could bid for a specific section of the system and then operate both passenger and freight trains, as well as maintain the track. There would then have been no room for the 'blame culture' where Railtrack/Network Rail and the train companies blame each other when there's an accident.

For those who support re-nationalisation, they need to explain why the system operated quite successfully from the 1830s to the 1940s (over 100 years) as private companies.

Answer 11

NO!!!!!! i work on the railways if it was better the overtime would disappear.  i know that's not the answer you were looking for.

Answer 12

Re Nationlised Rail would be a benefit for some, but also a loss for others.

On the plus side, all the companies would again become one and the blame culture between each would disappear making the idea of connections, train timings and route controls become a lot easier, it would mean most train crew could be trained to pass over more alternate lines allowing more diverted services, the ticket system would become a lot easier and a lot of the own brand fares could be done away with, rolling stock would become more interchangeable and training for staff easier are just some I can think of at once.

Negative side, fares would rise a lot steeply as the cheaper competition fares would disappear and subsidies cut, plus the pay off for all the private share holders being payed, staff training would fall as the staffing levels would fall off as they are so many members of staff doing the same jobs in many TOC's, the Unions could have bigger power to disrupt services in disputes as all levels of staff concerned within the department affected would be called upon to walk out instead of a single TOC area (not too common these days as the TOC's are fined if they do not negotiate), less pressure on the infrastucture maintenance teams to complete track maintenance as less TOC's mean less payments in compensation to disrupted services, less incentive in creating better services within an area as the TOC can now demand or request major changes to a timetable and services than before.

I would think the main gains will be the buisness as an infrastructure, the Customers would be the loosers as there would be less choice.

Answer 13

Yes/no/maybe*

* delete as applicable

Answer 14

As someone who worked for British Rail for 18 years, and for 5 years in the privatised industry, I have to say that while it would make a great deal of sense to return to a renationalised system, unfortunately most of the people who knew how to run such a system left the industry very soon after privatisation, leaving it to a bunch of bus company managers who didn't know what they were doing. In the early 1990s BR was the most efficient railway in the whole of Europe, but the knowledge and experience was thrown away by an incredibly cack-handed reorganisation which even the Conservative Party now admits was misconceived.

To those who extol the virtues of the privatised railway because of the increase in number of passengers, or new trains, I would point out that these changes would be likely to have happened anyway, even if BR had not been privatised - rail passenger numbers follow the state of the economy quite closely, and the UK has until recently had a long period of general economic prosperity. New trains would have been needed anyway - the IC125's are just over 30 years old now, and at round about their designed lifespan, and replacements would have been ordered. Don't forget that during the privatisation process there was a 1,049 day period when not a single new carriage, train, or locomotive was ordered in the UK - this was a bodyblow which killed off the British railway manufacturing industry, and is why new trains  which are being ordered now come from Belgium or Germany or Japan or even China.

The pre-BR private railways were not some capitalist free-market wonderland. The railways were effectively nationalised and run by the government during both the First and Second World Wars, and WW2 left them in a wrecked state - the private rail companies were in no position to carry on, which is why they were nationalised in the first place. In its entire existence from 1923 to 1947, the London and North Eastern Railway never made a profit. Margaret Thatcher's deputy William Whitelaw, whose father was Chairman of the London Midland and Scottish Railway remarked on how poor the railways' finances were, especially following the rise of road freight transport.

Answer 15

It'd be better than what we've got now, so yes.

When they were nationalised the first time, they got worse than pre-nationalisation days, but things were different then. The old railway companies were run properly, by proper railway people.

The modern railway companies are not run by railway people, they're run by bean-counters.

Answer 16

me too

Answer 17

No, not really.  The UK needs to have a look at continental Europe and modernize it's tracks and rolling stock.  It also needs a North South connection through London.

The London Underground needs to be completely re - vamped with a parallel tram - train service running beside it in order to take the weight off the tube system.

This may be part of the London 2012 Olympic plans, so I'm crossing my fingers that maybe an express line through East London might see the light of day.

Answer 18

No. There is a lot of nostalgia for 'British Rail' induced by the empty headed idiots who write stupid articles for newspapers. Under British Rail we had much later, much dirtier trains and far less of them. Since privatisation there has been a 50% increase in passengers, vast increases in the number of services operating and a large number of new trains.  Providing people book ahead fares for longer journeys have become very cheap too. Having said this I should point out that only the train operators are privatised and the government's Department of Transport regulates them very tightly right down to controlling train frequencies and the number of trains in their fleets. Network Rail which owns the infrastructure is called a 'not for profit company'  but is to all intensive purposes   nationalised. How to improve the service: Give the rail companies longer franchises which will encourage them to invest more; stop the government charging them premium payments for the privilege of running their franchise; this is a supplementary payment on top of the normal corporation tax paid by companies on their profits ,and is one of the reasons for high fare rises. Give the rail companies more freedom to exercise their entreprenurial skills while at the same time those that fail to provide an efficient punctual service such as First Great Western, should be swiftly replaced. After specifying

a minimum service requirement for each rail company, the government should stop interfering with them operationally unless they are failing and concentrate instead on building a new network of fast Inter City Lines similar to the French TGV system, improving the existing infrastructure and ensuring

even more people switch to rail travel.

Answer 19

Yes - there has been nothing but cancellations, delays, and complete ******* for excuses. "Engineering Delays"..."Train Problems"..i'm not saying these happened when nationalised, but certainly a lot less.

Answer 20

I agree, by and large, with what David S says. The trouble we have at present is that the system is neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Either the Government should run the railways as a nationalised concern - which didn't work for most of the rime from 1948 until the 1990s, or it should stop all interference, other than the right to veto closures.  David is perfectly correct when he points out the enormous increase there has been in passenger numbers since privatisation - the railways are now carrying more people per annum than at any time since 1947. With a greatly reduced infrastructure to that existing then. I wonder how many of the beefs we hear are from people who have only just started to travel by train - bajet for example. The there is the answer which refers to travel between Plymouth and Newcastle. I bet in the days he was travelling there was one, or at best two trains a day, taking 10 or 11 hours. Now there is almost a train an hour (some with changes) with the journey taking only 5 or 6. What needs to happen is that 'steel and wheel' need re-uniting - so the operator of the trains is also responsible for the track etc. We also need to get away from the daft system of leasing companies owning the rolling stock so train companies don't suddenly have to put perfectly good trains in sidings.

Answer 21

We do have a good railway system. Problem is, it is run by people who can`t think for themselves and don`t know the first thing about running a rail transport company.

In the 70`s it was very good, always on time and clean.

I used the trains many a time from Plymouth to Newcastle and back when on leave, and had nothing but admiration for them.

Now, I would rather travel by bus or car.