Rail mayhem?

Question

Do you think that the railways should be re-nationalised. The government is now paying more in subsidies than it paid to British Rail and everything is complete chaos. The fares are forever rising and the trains are always late. How can this continue

Answer 1

Firstly trains are not always late. The national average for punctuality is 90%. A number of operators consistantly score more highly such as Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Trains (formerly Midland Mainline), Arriva Trains Wales, and London Midland (formerly Silverlink County). Only First Great Western and National Express East Coast are significantly

less punctual than the corresponding sections under British Rail. The rail operating companies are responsible for only a

small percentage of delays; the vast majority are caused by infrastructure breakdowns and over running engineering work

which has been well documented lately. These are the responsibility of Network Rail which is called a 'not for profit company' but is effectively nationalised anyway. Arguably the rail network is more closely controlled by the government now than it was under British Rail as frequencies, orders for new trains etc are primarily controlled by civil servants at the Department for Transport rather than by the train companies.

Fares are rising above the rate of inflation, again because of government policy, to finance investment through the farebox

and of course the rail companies must make profits, but their profit margins are in fact very small. Don't forget too that practically everyone qualifies for some sort of rail card - Senior Citizens, Family, Young Persons, Network (any age for Southern England); these give one third most off peak fares; the advance purchase fare system gives tremendous

discounts too for Inter City travel for those able to book in advance. Since privatisation passengers carried on the national rail system have risen by 50% and frequencies on many lines have doubled; many more trains operating means that if there is a train or infrastructure breakdown or an all too often incidence of vandalism, more trains are affected than under British Rail and this in turn affects punctuality figures.

The system and structure of the rail system is far from perfect, but the public and the media seems all too ready to shoot from the hip with aggressive often unfounded criticism.

Answer 2

i think this is a statement that a lot of people have said since the privitisation of the railways, and they seem to hark back to a day when every train ran on time,and everyone smiled and knew your name, and it was hot every summer and snowed every winter.

Basically everyone moaned about British Rail it was a long standing joke, look back to some TV programmes of the 70's and early 80's everytime British Rail is mentioned it is never complimentary or to say how good it was.

Personally speaking i dont think that the railways will ever be Re-nationalised for the simple fact is that the railways have so many different franchises, with different companies it would take many years to take all of these back, also bear in mind that at the moment part of the majority of major franchise agreements is to pay the government so many million as part of their franchise agreement, so if the government had to take these back they would loose all of that plus the cost of running the railways as well.

Also safety has improved since British Rail although stupid accidents like the one at hatfield overall the safety record has improved.

Another plus has been wages, i have spoken to a lot of ex British Rail employees who have stayed on with privitisation and they have all said that the wages have improved, the perks have gone, but wages have improved.

Another thing you said was that all journeys were straight through and there was no chopping and changing, this is again im, afraid not the case, there were still as many changes with travelling to diffferent places as there are now, it may seem more because you are travelling under different train companies and use a more varity of trains.

I do however agree that the rise in train fares has become bloody ridiculous, its getting to be that only well off will be able to afford to travel at anytime and the less fortunate will all have to be stuck with booking in advance, this is actually more benfical to the railway company, as when you purchase an "ANY PERMITTED" ticket a percentage of this has to be split with other train companies as part of ATOC, but when companies have their own tickets they take 100% of the money

Answer 3

To Re-Nationalise the Railways is now a pipe dream, the only way it could happen would be if a major chunk of the Private Companies went bust at the same time. The Goverment had a great opportunity to start the process with the first set of Franchise changes, if this had happened then firstly most of the South East (South Eastern, Southern, South West Trains, First Capital Connect, One, Gatwick Express, Heathrow Express, Wessex and Chiltern) would all be Nationalised Services, along with some of the Midland and Northern franchises from last year joining them this month and June of this year when the hand overs to new owners officially takes place. Unfortunatley however this did not happen, because some of the companies have made a going concern of the bigger franchises and enough companies can see the quick profits in the smaller franchises.

The groups lobbying to bring the Railways back into public ownership are to splintered and refuse to organise together. For instance look at the 3 main Rail Unions, Unite / ASLEF, RMT and TSSA all fight amongst themselves to a big degree, each trying to get members from the others, if one has a grievance with the management the other two sit on the fence and are not allowed under the Thatcherite Anti Union policy to assist the other, so making staff look at the other grades as a them and us attitude. The same goes for the many small transport user groups dotted around the country, most are only concerned with there small areas of track and do not look at the bigger picture and often are share holders in one of the companies anyway. Which of course brings us to the biggest problem, the share holders. Railtrack Share Holders caused enough problems when Railtrack went bust and their shares where practically worthless, one of the big reasons why there was so many small holders of shares in the company? The same as most of the Franchises, they encourage the Staff to become share holders within there own companies by special share savings schemes discounting there own share prices. So if the Goverment was to take over a Franchise, it has to pay all the Shareholders the going rate of compensation for purchasing the franchise, which could be quite expensive (this happened with the original Nationisation of many firms in the early 20th Century).

Next Problem. Rolling Stock and Infrastructure.

Rolling Stock is quite often not owned by the Franchises but leased from different central companies to the franchise for a set amount of time, some companies have taken the bold step of buying the stock complete from the manufacturers themselves to try and save costs, what happens there? Does the Goverment then have to pay for the stock or lease at rates that could be priced high as a compensation to the companies? Or does the Goverment take the step to buy brand new rolling stock for the whole country in line with its own safety recomendations from numerous crashes from the 1980's onwards demanding improvements to the railway network that no one wants to comply with due to costs involved? Network Rail is part Nationised and could easily be brought under the goverment banner, but what about the leasing of jobs to specialist firms that operate and repair all the infrastructure now? Will the Goverment start the long process of training staff to do these jobs internally from the confines of Network Rail? That would mean a big influx of employees and the problems of keeping them employed throughout the UK, at the moment the firms like Jarvis, Beatty, etc, can take on seasonal staff throughout the country, employee agency workers etc as required.

Finally with all the changes and money being changed to complete Privitisation, who will suffer the most and have to pay for all this? The Public. And not just the Customers with large fare increases, but everyone, it would all have to come out of the Exchequor in some way and all that comes from Tax.

It would be nice to see the Goverment take the Railway Network back, the same as all Public Transport.

I personally as an employee of the Railway would love to see it happen. But I know that it will take some drastic action to do this.

Answer 4

Unfortantly we in the railway are in a no win situation!

When we get things right, it's taken forgranted, but if things go wrong then everyone screems.

Generally the railway is these days improving. But & this is where the But is! we in the railway depend on other outside companies for the specialist peoples. Now if these people do not turn up for their shift because of what ever reason they give we cannot do anything about it and then Joe Public get the worst of the situation.

Well hopefully the outcome of the enquiries set by both Network Rail & the Goverment should answer your question.

But what I can say is that Network Rail is slowley bringing back in house the engineers, so lets hope that it also includes the specialist people.

Also lets hope that the people contracted to to the job and who did not turn up. Do not get paid or even sacked!!!!! Then that will teach them a lesson!

Answer 5

I believe the fundamental problem with railways in Britain is how they are seen by the establishment, i.e. as a business that has to pay its way, rather than a public service to be funded and maintained as such. This is even evident in the language used, e.g. roads are subject to 'investment' while rails get a 'subsidy'. What's the difference, seeing as it's all government (i.e. taxpayers') money?

In fact roads are very heavily subsidised. Motorists may complain that the government is victimising them but if they were to pay the true cost of motoring to reflect its impact on the environment then road tax, petrol tax etc. would be very much higher.

The railways on the other hand have suffered from chronic underinvestment over the past decades and too many decisions affecting them have been taken for political reasons, from nationalisation through to privatisation to partial renationalisation.

I agree up to a point with those who say the railways should be renationalised and operated entirely on a not-for-profit basis but more than that it is the general consensus and attitude to railways that have got to change. Having a nationalised railway system didn't protect this country from the massive cutbacks that took place in the early 1960's and we are still suffering from the after-effects of losing a third of our total rail mileage.

Road transport eagerly stepped in to fill the gap with widespread construction and extension of the trunk road network and an increase in car numbers from 2 million in 1950 to around 27 million today.

As a result neither our road system nor rail system can cope adequately with the demands placed on them and unless there is a change, in particular a move towards integrated transport and improvements in public transport, reversing the trend towards 'rationalisation' (i.e. cutbacks), it can only get worse.

Answer 6

The railways are nationalised in many areas already, just look at Scotland and Wales in particular. The government has a huge input into the timetables, the rolling stock and the fares.....what else is left?

Either bite the bullet and renationalise or remove the regulatory bodies and allow the railways to operate within the commercial realms of supply and demand.

Answer 7

You only think that NOW? to be honest, who wanted it privatised? LABOUR. It was all a money pinching scheme...

Answer 8

I broadly agree with the two answers above.  Although you've had a bad experience with a 9 hour journey, the recent problems over the Christmas period are exceptional.

I drive trains for a living, in the Midlands.  Often I complete 6 or more journeys per day, the vast majority of these being on time.  The notion of most trains being late is a music-hall myth, and easy headlines for lazy journalists.

Regarding overcrowding, the problem here is that during rush hour it is pretty bad, but off-peak, a lot of trains are virtually empty.  If train operating companies (TOCs) leased enough rolling stock to give everyone a seat during rush hour, then for the rest of the day, this extra capacity would be wasted, just lying idle.  That makes no commercial sense whatsoever, so a compromise must be reached.

How many good or uneventful journeys have you made, compared to the awful ones?  Unfortunately, only the bad ones seem to be remembered.

As for nationalisation, I rather remember that in the era of British Rail, passengers complained at least as much as they did now.  A case of rose-tinted spectacles?

Answer 9

I agree 100% with everything said by the first answer. I would add only this - the 50% increase in travel he mentions means that more people are being carried on the railways  now than at any time since 1947.  But the system was far larger then with much more 'slack'. For example, in 1947/48 there was serious flooding on the main East Coast line north of Berwick. Trains were diverted around this, via Coldstream and Kelso to Edinburgh. Now, any blockage on that line north of Newcastle - for whatever reason - requires a diversion via Carlisle and the West Coast line. Lines that were quadruple were reduced to double track - or example that south of Birmingham to Banbury - which meant little chance of diversions along that now busy line during the recent closure at Rugby.  Lines that were double have been singled - for example west of Salisbury to Exeter, so that is not available for diversions should there be blockages on the Exeter to Paddington line. Many loops where slower or broken down trains could be sidelined have gone, as have many cross overs allowing movement around a blockage of one line.  Much, much more money needs to be spent in upgrading and in places replacing this infrastructure, but at present there isn't the political will despite the lip service paid by Government to the need to get cars and goods off the roads because of pollution etc.

Later. With regard to your further points. Network Rail was part of BR? What does that mean? It wasn't When the railways were privatised the infrastructure became the responsibility of a totally privatised company, Railtrack. That company got into financial difficulties (or didn't, depending on who you believe). NR brought the assets for £500 million. It is a not for profit company, limited by guarantee.

Too many cooks. Yes,possibly. If the railways had to be privatised, then, IMO, it should have been done on the basis of vertical integration - i.e. the privatised company owning everything, including the track. The present system of leasing companies owning the trains and the regulatory bodies saying which companies can have what is just plain barmy. Centralised ordering? Yes, for a while. But go back to the 1960s and each region ordered what it wanted - hence the Western ending up with German designed and engined diesel-hydraulic locos, when everyone else was buying diesel-electrics. All British built? No. The first class of the, centrally ordered, Class 56 diesels were made in Rumania. No, we no longer have a home industry for building locos and rolling stock. That is another fault of privatisation which enabled Alsthom, Siemens Bombardier,etc. to buy up British Rail Engineering.  But we no longer have any British owned car companies and all our brown and white home electrical goods come from the Far East. So Railways are just one facet of the general economic set-up.

Straight through journeys? I'm sorry, but you really don't appear to know what you are talking about. There are now far more cross country trains than in BR days linking major centres.  I know that some extremities of the cross country network have disappeared - Brighton, Swansea etc - and that West Country to Glasgow trains have ceased. However, the provision now of such services is now far greater than it ever was in BR days. In early BR days you would be lucky if there was one cross country train a day, carrying carriages for multitudes of destinations, all of which would have had to be uncoupled and recoupled along the route adding to the time. Now, for example, there is an hourly service from Bournemouth to the north. There are some major conurbations without direct London links - but free access companies are trying to fill in these gaps such as Central Trains with its Sunderland to King's Cross service and proposals for one from Wrexham and Shrewsbury.

Drivers. There have always been 'lodging turns' which meant drivers and other crew didn't get home, but had to have an overnight stay. The railways used to maintain special lodging quarters, but since the need for these is now far less they have gone and a hote lis the cheaper option.

Finally, I have no shares in any railway company.