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Problem with both road and rail capacity is our (the public and our employers) daft requirement to stick to a pretty rigid 9-5, 5 day a week culture. To have a collective infrastruct capable of handling these self generated peaks and troughs is daft.
Rail companies don't help themselves with spreading the load mind - part week season tickets and off peak season tickets would get the commuters thinking more flexibly. Imagine an off peak season ticket that you could pay an auto top up for on occasional days (with perhaps an annual limit) if you needed to be in early for a meeting. Or a reimbursment if you made a certain percentage of your commutes in before rush hour to encourage you to travel in early.
People move houses very rarely, perhaps once per decade, but now move jobs much more frequently.
it would be stupidly inefficient to expect people to move house when they move jobs
I've had 16 addresses in 25 years. I see a house as a key tool for the work I do, in the sense that it has to be in the right place. It has never cost me more than a few hundred pounds to move house.
That said, I'm only playing devils advocate here. But for a number of factors people are living further and further away from where they work.
Some of those factors are to do with the continuity of employment in the 'job for life' sense that you could once expect to spend the arc of your career with one employer or work with in a town where comparable industries were clustered - but another is that households now more often have two bread winners, but rarely have two breadwinners who can both maintain a career in the same town, so at least one needs to commute.
Cheaper travel means people can rent or buy larger or nicer homes by moving to less central location. But the notion that people can or can't afford to live close to where they work needs to be taken with a pinch of salt - it can often really mean 'can afford something bigger or prettier of they're prepared to travel' or can't afford to live in the house they'd like. People, collectively, have made that rod for their own back. If travel was more difficult that bigger, nicer house they feel they deserve wouldn't be on the menu.
People only made these decisions because it was possible. If the result is those cheap transport options are now oversubscribed you can either address that by investing to meet that demand or by shaping the demand - make it impossible. Demand shaping happens all the time - more often than not we're unaware of it.
Job mobility. If you change your job should you have to uproot your whole family and spent thousands to move?
Would you clarify what you mean by that? What do you mean by ‘should’?
It has never cost me more than a few hundred pounds to move house.
I take it you rent rather than buy? I've bought three houses in the last 15 years, all modest by national average standards and each has cost significantly more than a few hundred pounds to sort.
flange - Member
I'm paying £168 a week plus another £43 parking to ride to work on a cramped POS that first came into service in 1952. How they have the audacity to charge what they do and provide the service that they do is beyond me
Whats a POS and what trains are operating that date back 1952, class 507 and 508 along with the caledonian sleepers are the oldest dating back to late 70,s
My last house move didn't give me much change out of 15k. The lion's share of that was stamp duty, which is effectively a tax on moving house. The government, in their infinite wisdom/incompetence has encouraged a mobile job market, whilst under-investing in the transport infrastructure to support that mobility, and then taxes home owners who have to move because of the previous two policies.
Imagine an off peak season ticket that you could pay an auto top up for on occasional days (with perhaps an annual limit) if you needed to be in early for a meeting.
National roll out of Oyster, and the associated capped fare benefits, has been a parliamentary recommendation since 2010 and government policy since 2012. Yet somehow seems hard to deliver.
Brunel managed to deliver the Great Western in less time (2 years for parliament approval then 3 years to run London to Maidenhead. He'd made an entire railway to Reading in the five years we've so far taken to fail to install an Oyster card reader at Reading station).
How they have the audacity to charge what they do and provide the service that they do is beyond me
They haven't got a choice, have they? They are a private company so they have to make a profit. Another disadvantage of using private companies for essential services.
Would you clarify what you mean by that? What do you mean by ‘should’?
I'm pointing out that people sometimes have pressure to change job, but also have pressure to keep living in the same house for various reasons. So if you face these two pressures then commuting is the obvious solution. But if you then make that harder, then these people will be unable to achieve a positive outcome whatever they do. So people will be miserable, and that is not a good thing.
Personally as an infrequent rail user if more funds are needed I would prefer rail users pay rather than taxpayers.
I like this thread. You can work out all the people who secretly vote Tory.
Yet somehow seems hard to deliver.
Hard to deliver because giving passengers - sorry, customers - the means to always pay the lowest fare possible is much more difficult than allowing them to overpay or incur losses due to changes in their travel plans. In this great country there is no concept of providing value for money to consumers/service users. The market decrees that it is the responsibility of the consumer, not the provider, to seek the best value. Yet with rail there is no 'market', only a weakly regulated protection racket which provides a take it or leave it offer for a shit service. It's hardly a surprise that people support nationalisation.
I'm paying £168 a week plus another £43 parking to ride to work on a cramped POS that first came into service in 1952. How they have the audacity to charge what they do and provide the service that they do is beyond me.
Where is this then?
I was under the impression that the oldest UK rail stock (other then the Island Lne, which is a basket case), is stuff from 1976.
Even then, it has all been refurbished a number of times - the HST 125's are still top class performers as one example from 1976.
Travellers using the Caledonian Sleeper service between London and Scotland have to put up with Britain’s oldest trains, at 42 years old.Merseyrail, which runs trains in Merseyside, has the second oldest fleet at 38 years old.
In terms of capacity Blackfriars will soon be dealing with 24 trains an hour
Northern run some sheds too, old converted bus shells no less.
Very comfy train this morning and this evening and smack on time. Pleasant way to work and the nice Chinese owners have even sorted out the WiFi
Lot cheaper and pleasanter than driving
Cannot say what I want to say courtesy of the “thought police”
sorted out the WiFi
you be careful. I'm told it's bad for you.
😀
Northern run some sheds too, old converted bus shells no less.
Actually some of the Pacers and class 155 are based on Leyland National bus body parts, the sides and seats along with the Leyland TL11 engine, the chassis is a purpose built frame, and there is no bogie, just 4 wheels fixed to the underfame.
So not actually old converted bus shells but purpose built vehicles , constructed by LEYALND
Northern run some sheds too, old converted bus shells no less.
From the 80’s though.
A pos, watch men in black ford pos piece of s***
If only us northerners got our fairs invested in local infrastructure. When I catch the train with a pennines muddy mountain bike it appears cleaner than the majority of the carriage.
My line has been promised new trains for the last 25-30 years
So not actually old converted bus shells but purpose built vehicles , constructed by LEYALND
Lol, does this look like a purpose built vehicle to you?
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The private ownership thing is all wrong, imo. Don't get me worry there is a need for it, same as there is a need of public ownership, again it's the problem that socialism and capitalism as viewed as independent systems.
IMO they shouldn't be. Each system on it's own leads to inefficiencies, one gets hamstrung by the workers, the other gets hamstrung by the owners. There should be a strategic to a fro in and out of the public and private systems. When one stagnates and seems incapable of delivering improvements, change it up, and around and round we go. Public ownership to influence general strategy(aimed towards the public good), private ownership to streamline those ideas.
So not actually old converted bus shells but purpose built vehicles , constructed by LEYALND
TBF the original prototype that did see service for a while was basically the bus body strapped to the rail chassis. So much so it was too narrow and the gap to be he platform was huge. Later models, like the ones still running, were widened.
Shoddily modified is the phrase you're looking for..
If there was a magazine for crap trains, they could call it 'max train'.
THM> I was bought up
Freudian slip classic!!
For those that believe because they drive their cars, then public money shouldn't be invested in railways also think the only families with children should pay for schools / education and the unwell for hospitals? The reason we've reached this situation is a succession of short-term, mis-applied free-market thinking.
In scotland most rail users seem to be people travelling from City Centre Edinburgh to work in City Centre Glasgow passing trains full of people from City Centre Glasgow travelling to City Centre Edinburgh.
My Edinburgh city centre office has 50-60 staff in it, none of whom live In Glasgow. Plenty come in from in between though!
For those that believe because they drive their cars, then public money shouldn't be invested in railways also think the only families with children should pay for schools / education and the unwell for hospitals? The reason we've reached this situation is a succession of short-term, mis-applied free-market thinking.
Yep, without efficient railways the investment on roads that would be needed just to get the level of usability we have now would be equally scary monitarily. Anyone in the South of England who attempted to drive on the trunk roads on Boxing day when there were no trains running when even without commercial traffic on the roads the system could not cope will attest to how much we need the railways to do their bit.
We moan and groan about it (like many do about the NHS) because the user experience is not perfect but it still manages something just short of 2 billion passenger journeys a year which is pretty awesome never the less. And as anyone who has travelled on an Indian railway will acknowledge our concept of crowded is very 'western'. Quite a bit cheaper there mind! Not saying there is not room for improvment but everything needs to be considered in context.
Indeed
Yeah. That's how I like to consider conditions too. If it's not as bad as India I should not complain.
I've travelled on Indian railways general class. Yes it's standing room only but that's substantially better than Southern rail at Shepherd's Bush where you can't get on the train at all.
irc - MemberI think the question is how much should general taxpayers subsidise rail [s]owners, shareholders, and foreign governments[/s]
FTFY. Right now, we subsidise profitmaking businesses. Weirdly we have no opposition to nationally owned railways as long as it's not us that owns them. And 90% of all investment in the network these subsidised trains run on comes from the public purse.