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How privatised railways work
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
How it works is the "Strategic" Rail Authority decrees that trains shouldn't be run, without any regard to how the customers using them feel, and then it blames the franchisee for all the ills of the railways.
SRA cuts train services to Northumberland.
People who think that a nationalised railway would be better- i.e, the SRA running the entire show- are complete morons.
SRA cuts train services to Northumberland.
People who think that a nationalised railway would be better- i.e, the SRA running the entire show- are complete morons.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Its the old BR attitude of "anything that doen't run into or out of London isn't worth the bother". Remember the Settle-Carlisle line being threatened with closure? Well, of course you won't unless you're old, but its the same London-centred thinking coming back.
It couldn't really be any other way. Since private companies' only aim is to make the maximum amount of profits possible, they cannot be relied on to keep the maintenance, repairs and frequency of service passengers deserve- they will simply provide the minimum amount of service they can get away with in order to maximise profits. And since rail companies usually have monopolies in the routes they offer, the 'wonders' of capitalism don't even apply here since the passengers have no option but continue using the only service that is available to them.
This incident you are reporting Kermit might regard to the SRA, but it is an old favourite trick of private companies: axe all the services that are not profitable and keep the profitable ones- and the public be damned.
BR did an infinitely better job at running the railways and the tracks, with far less money, than the private companies or indeed the SRA could ever dream of.
OK. Two random little facts:
British Rail attempted to close teh Settle-Carlisle Railway, citing (fabricated) repair costs to Ribblehead Viaduct.
Arriva Trains Northern spent £2.5million of its own money refurbishing a rake of Mark II InterCity carriages, replacing a two-carriage Sprinter train with them. The displaced Sprinter unit was then sued to run an extra Leeds-Carlisle service, providing Carlisle commuters with a later train home.
ATN have now lost the franchise, and, would you believe it, the SRA has ordered that the extra services be scrapped.
But to make the statement that privatised companies would not do a worse job than a government-owned railway based on this incident is wrong IMO.
There have been countless incidents at the other end, showing the greed of private companies prompting them to axe services and sack drivers and conductors on the very first day of business back in 1995. SouthWest Trains was a great example: they sacked 200 drivers on day 1 with the sole purpose of making more profit. Two weeks later they had to ask a number of them to come back because there weren't many left to run the trains!
There is also the incident of another train company serving the West and Wales (can't remember the name) which axed trains stopping at a small station at weekends "because the platform's curve was too great and alighting was not possible". By some sort of miracle however the station platforms must have been straightening themselves up on Sunday night, because come Monday those trains were able to stop to pick up and let off passengers.
Etc etc etc.
Arriva Trains Northern are crap and deserved to lose the franchise. Late more often than not, poorly signed (mostly unmanned) stations, and twice as expensive as driving.
I have to say that ATN weren't all that bad, really (once they'd replaced the drivers Freightliner had half-inched).
The stations are mostly halt-style stations, but that's the same of most local railways in this country. And a lot of the halts date from BR's time, when they bulldozed stations and sacked station staff to save money. The station at Saltburn is a fantastic example of this. Though you may be interested to note that ATN rebuilt Thornaby station, and it is now staffed.
Aladdin, I think you fall into the trap of seeing BR through rose-tinted spectacles. In terms of infrastructure BR was better, but they weren't any better in terms of service delivery. BR was just as bad at running ghost trains, i.e. trains that stop at a station once a week, the statutory minimum before a public enquiry was needed. And BR didn't have a watchdog, not even one as inept as the SRA.
Thank God for cars.
Middlesbrough - Newcastle £4 return. One hour 15 minutes. That'll do nicely :thumb:
The train fares are steep for a reason. When you see how much subsidy is needed for every passenger mile on the Durham Coast line, it is staggering. For every £1 a passenger pays, the Treasury pays £4.
I could drive for little more than you spend on the coach. And if there's two of us, it's cheaper.
The social benefits are worth the extra funding it costs. It's been shown that if local branches remain open, people will travel by express train rather than by car, but if they have to drive 20 miles to the station they'll just keep driving all the way to their destination instead.
Having said that, public transport in the North East isn't all that expensive, I can go by bus anywhere from Berwick to Scarborough for £6.
Of course the 230+ passenger train that ATN created was used to run an extra peak service on the Leeds-Knaresbrough line. Someone from work used to catch it, and it was a popular service. Today a 153 ran it. You couldn't make it up.
we are paying what in taxes to the shareholders ...two billion pounds a year?
Does anyone have figures on the profit/loss statements of the Train Operating Companies? Because I read a while ago that what is happening with some lines (Virgin West Coast Main Line was the one I think it was about) is that basically Virgin aren't running things at all - they own the trains but they're on this hugely detailed contract with the SRA which basically means that the SRA has employed Virgin in the way that BR would have employed contractors. The implication was that this wasn't really privatisation at all - the SRA was in charge, the SRA provided all the capital, the SRA covered any loses (and there weren't any real profits!), etc etc.
I also read recently that the cost of bus and train travel has gone up by about 5% above inflation in the last 10 years. The cost of car travel has gone *down* by 4%. We need to decide if we want a railway. If we do, it's going to cost money - tax-payers' money. But it'd go a long way to achieving our CO2 emission targets, I should think!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3694900.stm
As ever The Great Leader will end up doing what he wishes instead of what his party wants, but it is good to see that underneath this right wing Tory New Labour scumbags, the real Labour Party still exists.
What the Unions had to say about the issue makes a lot of sense:
"The general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff Association raged against the original Conservative privatisation of the railways.
Gerry Docherty told delegates they had the chance to "start the reversal of one of the most blatant, bare-faced robberies of the British people".
He paid tribute to extra government investment and said Britain's railways would be the envy of the world if it was all spent on the railways instead of some of it reaching private pockets.
"Your trains do not work," he said. "We are paying more money, vast amounts more, for a worse service to the private sector."
The scheme would not cost anything as train franchises would be taken back when current contracts expired, he added."
The passenger gets a simple, integrated organisation that gets him from A to B without using a muddle of different companies.
The freight customer gets a choice of who gets to pull his trains, reducing costs and increasing innovation.
Everyone wins.
That's because the SRA made Arriva pull it, as it is not part of the new Northern franchise.
The SRA are clueless cretins.