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The state of our Railways
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
As yet another train crash emerges- three dead, many wounded at the last count- one has to wonder how the British rail network got so incredibly bad. In 40 years we have managed to transform our network from the world's best to one of the world's worst, and certainly the shittiest in Europe. Regardless of what might have caused today's accident, we now have a fifth-world network that makes the Indian railways look state of the art.
Successive governments have denied the cash needed to finance a decent service. But it was privatisation that finally killed off the network. If you're ever tempted to vote Tory think about the 'wonders' they've done for our transport system <IMG SRC="mad.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
Successive governments have denied the cash needed to finance a decent service. But it was privatisation that finally killed off the network. If you're ever tempted to vote Tory think about the 'wonders' they've done for our transport system <IMG SRC="mad.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Yet another train crash in my county...Just down the road from Hatfield.
I dont use the trains any more..I cant afford to. The timetables are based more in fantasy than reality..THe whole system is just totally fucked.
They need to renationalise the whole lot and get it working again. Unfortunately they wont do that because labour are more tory than the tories.
But it was the Tories who sold off the network in the first place. Not even they could possibly believe that bringing private businesses into the railways was going to improve the situation.
The bottom line is this. You CAN'T have a private company running a public service. A private company's only goal is to create the maximum amount of profit possible for its shareholders. The train companies couldn't give a flying f**k about their customers. It should have been clear to everyone concerned that a private company will not invest in safety devices, new carriages or extra staff (let alone installing air conditioning or replacing rails) since this will erode into their profits. They know they have a captive customer base, and abuse this fact all the way.
In the rest of Europe you have high speed (and by that I mean 200 miles per hour trains) services everywhere, ATP protection (as opposed to our piss-poor TWPS) new, fully equipped rolling stock, clean premises and second drivers in cabins. In all cases it is financed by the State and nobody, not even the richest fat cats, complain about paying extra tax for it. Why can't it be like that in here? <IMG SRC="confused.gif" border="0" ALT="icon"> <IMG SRC="mad.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
As for the rest of your tirade..Did you read my post?
Did you miss that part?
BTW this is the 6th fatal train accident since 1997
[ 10-05-2002: Message edited by: Balddog ]
Did I miss one?
And Selby was the idiot driver's fault.
Renationalising the infrastructure is certainly the way forward. But the train companies should have a degree of competition to encourage efficiency.
At the end of the day the only way out would be to buy back the lot (by force if necessary) and finance it properly. But that would mean raising income tax by at least 2 pence and give the railways an extra 20bn a year for the next 20 years or so. What chance is there of that? I can already see the Daily Mail/Telegraph front pages <IMG SRC="frown.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
from waterloo to southampton, i could read a book and relax...it was on time too...
trains would be good (no traffic jams etc.) but they're not.
i know lots of people die in traffic accidents, but if you are driving you feel more in control, and can *try* to avoid other vehicles.
i presume it's too expensive for the trains to have automatic safety devices <IMG SRC="mad.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
Here's a radical idea. Re-nationalise the district lines, that inevitably run at a loss. Go half and half on inter-regional lines, and leave the profit-making inter-city lines to the businesses. Give the firms time to put in proper safety systems, invest on a smaller scale with a larger profit. Assuming some level of competence, the firms should be able to turn around the major lines a lot sooner than trying to do the whole thing.
If the firms are showing competence and running at a profit, give them the rest of the inter-regional lines and see if they can turn them around. Leave the government to deal with district lines, like I said, they don't run at a profit.
All the while, impose stringent safety standards, similar to airlines, where if you don't meet the standards, it costs you big time.
Something like this could work, no?
Here is an example: when the very first franchises were handed out to companies a few years back, South West Trains took over a very busy commuter line linking London with the south coast. The very first thing they did, literally on day 1, was to sack 200 drivers in order to save themselves money. By the following week they realised they had sacked so many drivers they didn't have enough left to run the trains, and many services had to be cancelled until more drivers were recruited. That's the kind of mentality this people apply to running a service.
I'll just go back to calling for renationalisation.
The demise of Railtrack was the first step in the realisation of this.
I've been to Switzerland once and the trains were new and efficient (at least those linking the airport with Geneva). Are the railways public or private there, Turtle?
Some of the companies have really got their act together, however others, such as ARRIVA are a piece of shit.
Virgin, and Central trains are very good IMHO
As pointed out by Wee-man we shouldn't stereotype the whole system, some lines are decent enough but I think there is little doubt that improvements need to be made and the best way to do this is through govt investment and control.....
Almost impossible, its a natural monopoly....
While I agree that underinvestment is the main cause of the railways demise, reinvesting in it at this point is not going to make a huge difference, because we have lost the people with the skills to do anything about the problems on the tracks. They were laid off because of lack of funds 40 years ago, and no-one's going into it, because until all this culminated in 5 train crashes, there weren't the jobs for them. Now we need them, and (hopefully) will have the money to do something about it, there's no one with the skills to take the jobs.
It wasn't taken over by the government, it was put into administration. The major difference being that the government is paying several million poounds a day (don't have figure to hand right now, I'll give it to you tomorrow) to Ernst & Young to keep it afloat. Meanwhile we get... nothing! Railtrack was put into administration in October last year and we are no near to restructuring it than we were then.
The political parties keep blaming each other for under investment in the railways but the truth is they are both as guilty as the other. Ever since the Beeching cuts in the '60s British Railways have suffered from huge cuts and criminal underinvestment. Personally I think the railways should never have been nationalised in the first place. During the era of the "big four" Britain's railways were at the height of their development. But thanks the Labour government who came in immediately after World War 2, the railways were nationalised. This did help in the reconstruction of the country after the war, but long-term investment in the railways suffered considerably. The Conservative's bungled re-privatisation and New Labour's subsequent mis-handling of the railways have just aggravated the situation.