Maybe that's why your train ticket is so expensive…

molgrips – Member

Jam, are you in favour of nationalised rail?

The weird thing is, most people are in favour of nationalised rail- it polls pretty consistently around 60% for, 20% against. Only half of Tory voters supported the reprivatisation of East Coast, let alone other parties.

I think corporatists in government just really didn’t like having an example of a public service being run by the government with great success. It’s not so much about the railways in particular, it’s about the whole ethos of privatisation.

I’m no expert, but there have to be some lessons to learn from the continent here, how do they get it so right while the UK always gets it so wrong?

For an example of how good trains can be how about the excellent arlanda express in Sweden?

Ironically several of our tail operators are state run.

It works really well it means that loads of money from the British taxpayer and rail user goes to government coffers.

Just a shame that they are not Uk government

China, France, Germany, Holland Italy state run companies own over 50,% of our rail franchises

http://www.cityam.com/256824/owns-uks-railways-well-not-british-firms-many-cases

Reinvest profits back into their own networks, so we are subsidising their taxpayers 😯

Doubling up every signal…really?

of course – anything ‘mission critical’ has at least a redundant backup.

Extra cost to install, test, maintain

and how much do the pasengers pay, and how much does it cost them when the trains screw up (not everyone can work at home), and how much does it cost the businesses that rely on those workers when they aren’t in the office because of the trains?

plus the possibility of miss reading by train drivers (some areas are already packed with signals)

hmmm, a system where trains run on tracks yet we have to rely on humans not making mistakes to keep pasengers safe, which they often fail to do. Yet planes can land using autopilot during bad weather…

Overrunning maintenance could be discovering additional or more severe issue, decades of under investment have led us here and it’s being dealt with but people moan when things don’t work and people moan when things are shut to be put right. Can’t win.

Should they not plan with some contingency built in so it is pretty rare for over-running engineering works – sounds feasible but the frequency of overrunning engineering works suggests it doesn’t happen.

It’s strips of metal laying on the ground a fixed distance apart, for chrissake. It’s not rocket surgery.

It’s strips of metal laying on the ground a fixed distance apart, for chrissake. It’s not rocket surgery.

You, sir, are either an idiot or a troll.

Actually, either way you’re an idiot.

It’s strips of metal laying on the ground a fixed distance apart, for chrissake. It’s not rocket surgery.

If only it was that easy. The mate who is working there has told me a few more corkers from the last few days. 15 men pouring 3m3 of concrete one day last week. Shuttering for turning chamber condemned due to inner shutter not being correct material, got to be totally stripped out, stuff to do this has not arrived today so 8 men stood around all day. Cabins placed and set up plumbed in etc then condemned for facing the wrong way. It’s a catalogue of waste after waste after waste. Most companies would be bankrupt within a year!

It’s strips of metal laying on the ground a fixed distance apart, for chrissake. It’s not rocket surgery.

🙄

thats actually the hard bit

its the one part of the rail network that is publicly owned……

because it was horrendously in debt when run privately that the government nationalised it on the quiet
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/28/network-rail-piublic-sector-dont-call-it-nationalisation

nationalise the track, signalling and larger stations as they’re a public good. lease rolling stock. let the operators run services/ set fares in the private sector.

let the operators run services/ set fares

thats a recipe for sky high prices then…….

nationalise the track, signalling and larger stations as they’re a public good. lease rolling stock. let the operators run services/ set fares in the private sector

Err, that’s pretty much as it is now.
Slight variations are – Dft state what services must be run (quiet lines must have X times services a day, busy lines must have Y etc), fares have a standard price that is set by the Dft, Savers, or is it Saver Returns, are only allowed to go up in price by whatever the DfT say. Other prices are set by the Operator, that’s why you hear of the £500 ticket, but the £10 one available 6 weeks previously for the same journey isn’t mentioned too much.

TurnerGuy – Member
“Doubling up every signal…really?”
of course – anything ‘mission critical’ has at least a redundant backup.

“Extra cost to install, test, maintain”
and how much do the pasengers pay, and how much does it cost them when the trains screw up (not everyone can work at home), and how much does it cost the businesses that rely on those workers when they aren’t in the office because of the trains?

How do you suggest paying for all this extra infrastructure and manpower to install and maintain it while current improvements and maintenance still go on?

“plus the possibility of miss reading by train drivers (some areas are already packed with signals)”
hmmm, a system where trains run on tracks yet we have to rely on humans not making mistakes to keep pasengers safe, which they often fail to do. Yet planes can land using autopilot during bad weather…

Of course there are safety systems which stop a train if a driver misreads and passes a signal at danger, but they have a timeout so cause delays when activated.

“Overrunning maintenance could be discovering additional or more severe issue, decades of under investment have led us here and it’s being dealt with but people moan when things don’t work and people moan when things are shut to be put right. Can’t win.”
Should they not plan with some contingency built in so it is pretty rare for over-running engineering works – sounds feasible but the frequency of overrunning engineering works suggests it doesn’t happen.

What’s the frequency of overrunning works?

It’s strips of metal laying on the ground a fixed distance apart, for chrissake. It’s not rocket surgery.

I can see you’re an expert.

I can see you’re an expert.

Basically I’m saying that there are a lot more complicated systems around which function ok. The rails have been like that for how long, you would think that the would be enough expertise around now that things like the materials error described above wouldn’t happen. But i know some civil engineers and their industry seems to be as full of the same type of cock-ups.

Just strips of metal[/url]

How do you suggest paying for all this extra infrastructure and manpower to install and maintain it while current improvements and maintenance still go on?

Let’s let it fail then and see how the business that rely on their workers commuting cope. There’s quite a lot of people now that have jacked in their higher paying jobs in London because of the southern rail mess, so that’s less tax income to the government for one thing.

They are just lucky the rail has such a monopoly that these companies can exploit it.

The fact that the extra train announced at Woking this morning didn’t stop after all is typical of the incompetence of the system, this sort of thing had been happening ever since British rail days.

It’s pathetic. In fact it’s a very good example of why brexit is a mistake.

Just strips of metal

Precisely.

Strips of metal that:

Have to be a fairly precise distance apart (no matter what the weather from -25 to + 70 rail temperature),
Electrically insulated/have sensitive equipment mounted on it that measures passing trains (counting wheels, listening to the wheels & bearings, signalling to the train)
Free from defects so that they can carry 1000’s of tons on the passage of each train, despite being welded into place on site.
Withstand the vibration of 100,000’s of passing wheels every day (some of which can be ‘not especially round’) travelling at speeds up to 140mph
Not covered in the teflon-like residue you get from leaves being compressed into it at 1000tons+ (And if they are, have to be jet-washed with machinery that if it stopped would slice through the rail with the water jet)

And that’s just the ‘plain line’, then you have junctions, overhead wires, signalling systems. And we haven’t mentioned the trains yet.

It’s a joy in a way, ‘it’s just strips of metal’ is so naive it smacks of a wide-eyed innocence that I didn’t think existed in the world anymore. 😯

There’s quite a lot of people now that have jacked in their higher paying jobs in London because of the southern rail mess, so that’s less tax income to the government for one thing.

I doubt 100 people have quit their “high paid jobs” because of the Southern debacle. That’s why it’s newsworthy when one individual does. There’s no mass exodus.

It’s pathetic. In fact it’s a very good example of why brexit is a mistake.

HOUSE!

There’s so much retardardness on this thread. It’s painful.

I doubt 100 people have quit their “high paid jobs” because of the Southern debacle.

others have been sacked, lots of people tolerating ridiculous commute times and not spending that time with their kids :

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/21/southern-rail-strike-crisis-jobs-lost-relationships-broken

nice quote :

Mark is an IT company director in Sussex. “We are recruiting right now and I won’t be giving contracts to anyone who would be using Southern to get to work. I’ve more than enough people having to work from home. My business can’t take it.

“Words fail me that so many businesses should be so undone by a company that can’t run a stretch of 40 miles of train track.”

It’s a joy in a way, ‘it’s just strips of metal’ is so naive it smacks of a wide-eyed innocence that I didn’t think existed in the world anymore.

Why can other countries run their rail systems without these problems, like high speed trains in Japan and in much more extreme conditions in Europe.

Rails have been around for a long time now, but you’re talking like it is new, bleeding-edge, technology, full of constant surprises.

Why can other countries run their rail systems without these problems, like high speed trains in Japan and in much more extreme conditions in Europe.

Rails have been around for a long time now, but you’re talking like it is new, bleeding-edge, technology, full of constant surprises.

And thats part of the problem. We created the railway, ours is the oldest in the world. A lot of the tunnels and bridges etc. were built in victorian times and are not compatible with modern freight gauges (clearance) or electrification (can’t fit the wires in above the train).

And despite that efficiency on the network overall is improving even as passenger numbers and traffic density increase, and major improvement works are undertaken.

Why can other countries run their rail systems without these problems, like high speed trains in Japan and in much more extreme conditions in Europe.

I suspect government investment has something to do with it…

And despite that efficiency on the network overall is improving even as passenger numbers and traffic density increase, and major improvement works are undertaken.

Wow – those people travelling on southern rail don’t know how lucky they are, obviously.

Not many other walks of life where a company with a 21% customer approval rating can keep going.

The main point is that when it screws up it is total chaos – miscommunication in the extreme.

Trains full and standing and platforms full but they can’t manage to stop trains that are passing through the station and are pretty empty so they can absorb the extra load. That is exactly the same as in the BR days, yet we now have a vastly better communications infrastructure.

It’s pathetic.

And despite that efficiency on the network overall

Southern/GTR are definitely an outlier some would say much of that is due to the strikes (their fault) but their performance was way down before that.

The main point is that when it screws up it is total chaos – miscommunication in the extreme.

Trains full and standing and platforms full but they can’t manage to stop trains that are passing through the station and are pretty empty so they can absorb the extra load. That is exactly the same as in the BR days, yet we now have a vastly better communications infrastructure.

As I said above traffic density is increasing so recovery is getting more difficult.

Issues with trains not stopping/contingency is all in their court.

Why can other countries run their rail systems without these problems, like high speed trains in Japan and in much more extreme conditions in Europe.

Because these countries are not saddled with an NHS, benefits system and public pensions that absorb well over 50% of our GDP. If we want to maintain these things then other things have to be lower on there priority list and make do with the scraps that remain. The government can’t pay for everything.

Seems to me the rail network runs ok outside of London. On the odd occasion I use it here oop north it is perfectly punctual and runs fine.
I commute by car mostly and that costs me over a grand a year so people complaint of rail season tickets costing a grand or more don’t win much sympathy from me, that’s the cost of travel.

The catch-up of 6 or more recades of under investment under public ownership is going to take some time and a hell of a lot of cash to complete. Where people thing the ‘investment’ is going to come from if it was nationalised I really don’t know. We’re a nation that is a trillion pounds in there red and growing and will continue to grow unless we can get ourselves out of a budget deficit to a surplus and start earning some money we can invest.

Because these countries are not saddled with an NHS, benefits system and public pensions that absorb well over 50% of our GDP. If we want to maintain these things then other things have to be lower on there priority list and make do with the scraps that remain. The government can’t pay for everything.

Or it could increase taxation? Or reduce benefit cost by making employers pay a living wage?

We’re a nation that is a trillion pounds in there red and growing and will continue to grow unless we can get ourselves out of a budget deficit to a surplus and start earning some money we can invest.

Yep. And to do that we need to grow the economy not cut spending. And a growing economy needs.. infrastructure…!

Where people thing the ‘investment’ is going to come from if it was nationalised I really don’t know.

Where do you think it comes from now? How do you think other countries fund it?

TurnerGuy – Member

Why can other countries run their rail systems without these problems, like high speed trains in Japan and in much more extreme conditions in Europe.

Well, Japan specifically has an entirely modern high speed railway- they were late to the party and then had a good chunk of it blown up in ww2. So, while they retained the old network and some of that still exists, they built the first modern, high speed passenger service in the world in the 60s. Don’t think I need to tell you what we were doing to railways in the 1960s.

It’s not just about vision, or the understanding that critical infrastructure isn’t just about making a profit for itself. (the shinkansen was constantly criticised for being too expensive but the wider economic benefits are absolutey outrageous, they basically make the megapolises work) It’s ironic but firing the starting gun on the industrial revolution, and not having our railways and cities largely destroyed worked out to our disadvantage in some ways- we were able to carry on using the same infrastructure., So we arrived in the late 20th century with a late 19th century rail network that we spent a decent chunk of the mid 20th century wrecking.

It’s now very, very hard to deal with that- cities are crowded and hard to work in (another historic impact; it was more realistic to destroy a post-war building in Tokyo to built the shinkansen than it is to demolish a victorian building in London), rail networks at capacity are harder and more expensive to maintain and develop because of the huge cost of downtime…

You can never go back though, we’re stuck with the infrastructure we have, in large part. What we can do though is run it better.

Where people thing the ‘investment’ is going to come from if it was nationalised I really don’t know.

From the same magic government money faeries. They have an endless supply of it, don’t you know.

Or is it from the money we save by Brexiting.

Or maybe we could have another private pension raiding.

Or maybe we should have got it from the money being used for HS2. Oh, wait, isn’t that a rail investment…

Re Japan Northwind is right of course. Key part of our infrastructure is the Severn Tunnel, built in 1886.

You can never go back though, we’re stuck with the infrastructure we have, in large part.

And the first chance we get to actually invest in some proper new infrastructure, what does everyone do? Bitterly complain.

wobbliscott – Member

Where people thing the ‘investment’ is going to come from if it was nationalised I really don’t know

Same place it comes from now. 90% of investment in the railways is via Network Rail. Practically all of the rail companies receive more in subsidies than they pay for their franchise. Genuine external private investment is small- when we talk about “private investment” what that actually means is rail companies spending ticket money and subsidies. And of course some of that goes to shareholders- when east coast rail was nationalised it paid back to the public purse rather than out as dividends.

So don’t ask where investment will come from, we know. Don’t ask how we could afford it, we’re already spending it. Maybe ask how we can afford to keep doing it the way we do.

Oh but privatisation is more efficient, right?

Question to Northwind in a non-confrontational way – how do you know all these things?

Oh certainly. Private enterprise is vastly superior in getting value for money. I have no doubt about it.

I have witnessed BILLIONS of wasted money directly at the hands of the DfT in the past 17 years in the industry.

… on the other hand, I do think the OP has a point.

NR have standards for all sorts of things – rather than specify that a piece of kit has some performance criteria and place the delivery of that kit and the performance of it into the hands of an expert supplier, they will practically design the piece of kit and then go to a supplier and ask them to make it. Kit that works perfectly well on other railways always has to be modified for some reason and that modification means that a supplier has to re-run their learning curve over again, and because the supplier has changed their design, there is no contractual come-back on them because it was changed at NR’s request.

NR are overly bureaucratic and stuck in the nationalised railway days – possibly even as far back as when they were the world leaders in railway technology.

Sauce ? The stats I can find show the opposite.

http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/displayreport/report/html/95218cca-408d-4047-83ce-a542c53b59e6

And

http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/22982/rail-finance-statistical-release-2015-16.pdf

During 2015-16 the majority of franchised passenger train companies made premium
payments to government, with the highest amount, £388 million paid by South West Trains
(SWT). SWT operated 6.4 billion passenger kilometres during 2015-16, which equated to a
premium payment of 6.1p per passenger kilometre.

I have witnessed BILLIONS of wasted money directly at the hands of the DfT in the past 17 years in the industry.

And I’ve seen huge amounts of money wasted by private companies too!

^^ True, but they didn’t pretend to be doing it in the public interest.

They do, if they are providing a public service.

Point is that inefficency (and efficency) exist everywhere. Given that, it’s better for profits to be re-invested into the service than skimmed off the top.

One problem that public sector has is that government pressure forces wages down. With low wages, the good people end up getting better offers, so they cannot hold onto skills. Imagine if government services were a centre of excellence?

An example of how the drive to save money (e.g. austerity) ends up costing much more when it all gets cocked up.

ah. true dat.

It’s just I guess I’ve seen it first hand with the DfT more so than anywhere else, including the defence industry.

If you took all of the decisions the various parts of the industry take on a daily basis and placed that under a nationalised industry with a similar strike rate for decision making then the potential for waste is colossal!

As a consultant I get to work in both public and private. There’s not much in it!

The only trend I can see with efficiency is correlating it to the size of the company but perhaps more significantly the equality of the team. More equal teams communicate more freely, problems are solved, they are therefore happier and more committed. In an inefficent working environment everyone can SEE the inefficiency, and it frustrates people so they stop caring, which makes it worse.

In other words we, as a nation, don’t really know what we’re doing!