Virgin Trains v Network Rail?

Question

Virgin Trains (UK) have placed a large ad in today's papers berating Network Rail for its decision to close, at very short notice, the West Coast Main Line on New Years Eve. To my mind this is symptomatic of the nonsense of privatisation separating infrastructure from the operation of trains. Am I alone in thinking this? Are there any advantages in this kind of structure when, historically, railways have always been organised as a vertically integrated business?

Answer 1

It's the same ole' story, out with the old and in with the new, cheers.

Answer 2

Well it illustrates perfectly why the UK style of rail privatisation doesn't work. Virgin West Coast may well be cross about the line closing (and it is indeed very stupid for such a last-minute closure to be announced), but publicly berating Network Rail doesn't really achieve anything and makes Virgin look like poor losers, to say the least - though I can understand why they would wish to do so, and I'm sure the staff are grateful!

I'm sure anyway that it's a publicity stunt partly, as New Year has got to be a better time for engineering work (for a TOC) than later on when all those first class ticketed business commuters start travelling again - think of all the money Virgin would lose if those had to go by road instead....

But to answer the question, I can't see any advantage whatsoever in having a separate company managing infrastructure. The US way of having railroads owned by the principal operator is a much fairer and robust system, and everyone knows with whom the blame lies if and when problems occur. As it is in the UK, the compensation and counter-compensation claims between NR and various TOCs is completely barmy and gets nothing done.

Answer 3

Mistakes in the planning of Engineering Work possessions occured when the railways were nationalised too. There are many problems with

the present structure of the rail industry, but it has delivered 50% more passengers in the past 10 years, cleaner and more frequent trains, award winning operating companies such as Chiltern, as well as pitifully inefficient franchises like First Great Western. Network Rail the maintenance provider has clearly made some serious planning errors re the row with Virgin but over all they are delivering a much improved system. I make hundreds of journeys throughout the system each year and serious delays caused by infrastructure breakdowns are very rare now. Despite the notional privatisation of the railways - train operation franchised to private transport companies, the basically anti rail, pro car, pro aviation policies of the Department of Transport still pervade the rail industry. Short franchises, normally 7 to 8 years inhibit major investment by the franchisees; premium payments on top of normal taxes on their profits that they must pay to the Treasury lead to steep rises in rail fares each year. In one sense there is over control by the D.O.T. - rail franchises must bargain and beg

with civil servants even to order a few additional trains or alter timetables slightly, but when a franchise falters such as First Great Western, the Department is largely silent and inactive.

Take the heavy hand of government and civil servants away from the day to day operation of the railways; offer long franchises 20 to 30 years minimum, abolish premium payments, and conversely act swiftly against franchisees when they don't operate a full service properly, and you'll have an even better system.