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Train nationalisation or not ?

hifinutt

hifinutt

hifinutt
The decision means that there will be no rail services on Sunday or on Thursday next week and the daily disruption of commuter and some inter-city services will continue.

Whilst British Rail are ready to continue negotiations with all three railway unions on a new annual settlement for implementation on 1st May and to continue discussions on the restructuring of drivers' pay with ASLEF and the NUR, these two unions do not agree about the relevant priority of the two issues. The NUR is already represented on the working party on drivers' pay. It believes that progress should be made in the national negotiations before there are further discussions on restructuring in the working party. ASLEF is demanding an improvement in the proposals already made on restructuring. The General Secretary of the TUC has talked to both unions but seemingly without success.

The industrial action being taken is in breach of the industry's own agreed negotiating procedures. Its effect has been that many thousands of commuters, particularly to London, have for three weeks had to put up with uncertainty and long, frustrating and uncomfortable journeys to and from work.

This is a quote from 1973 when there were rail strikes in British Rail . https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1973/mar/14/british-rail-industrial-dispute

Wondering if people think nationalising the railways is a good thing or not ? given we had years of strikes then and years now , is it the answer to nationalise the railways ?
 
hifinutt said:
Wondering if people think nationalising the railways is a good thing or not ? given we had years of strikes then and years now , is it the answer to nationalise the railways ?
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It much depends who is put in to manage and what the remit might be. Edwardes at BL and MacGregor in steel and coal showed that it isn't only nationalisation per se that matters! Investment is key!
 
Privatisation doesn't seem to have fixed anything - all that's happened is we pay shareholders their cut.

Our local SouthEastern line had their franchise removed after they were found to have embezzled millions of pounds of taxpayer cash.

The first thing the DfT did after taking over was cut services.

I don't think we're going to see a significant improvement in public transport until there's the political will to do it.
 
Really, if the average age of rolling stock higher or lower than before privitasion, ( based on a grading curve that accounts for expected lifespan).
 
Dunno. The rolling stock on our local line is 20-25 years old. They seem perfectly serviceable.. I'm more concerned with the cost and unreliability of services.

Stations seem fine. But largely absent of staff now.
 
About half of it is already in public ownership and there has been no improvement whatsoever.

The pricing structure and service on my bit is absolutely crazy. If you want the cheapest ticket you're tied to a particular train yet they pound up and down from London virtually empty outside peak hours so it makes no difference to them which one you go on.

We have the most expensive public transport anywhere in the world which is why nobody wants to use it - its cheaper by car for even just one passenger (even my 2L petrol gas guzzler).

If it was a proper company the obvious solution would be to let the whole bloody lot go bust, have it taken over by utterly unsympathetic foreign owners who'll halve the wages or just sell it off for the land.

The trouble is that won't work either because its still going to be bound by the clearly failed Tory privatisation model where they sell off a former public company and then regulate it out of business by capping prices and starving it of investment.

It needs another good Beeching!
 
gavreid said:
It much depends who put in to manage and what the remit might be. Edwardes at BL and MacGregor in steel and coal showed that it isn't only nationalisation per se that matters! Investment is key!
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Absolutely this.

Good management, good planning and adequate investment is the key. A willingness to implement and see it through is vital. An end to privatising profit/nationalising loss has to be good for all no matter political persuasion.
Just a shame that ROSCOs haven’t been mentioned in any plans (Although I accept this is another can of worms).
 
What does Nationalisation of the railways look like - ownership and operations are complex. Will it bring us anything new?

infrastructure is in public ownership (Network Rail), rolling stock is leased by Railway Operators from Rolling Stock Companies. I think 6 Railway Operators through the franchise system are now run by the government. What about Open Access operators like Grand Central (which is actually a subsidiary of Arriva, and Lumo (a subsidiary of FirstGroup).

What about freight companies?
 
Privatisations have been introduced in order to reduce end user prices due to the introduction of competition that allows the end user to play one operator against the other.

There is no competition in Water, Royal Mail or Rail services and as a consequence we have substituted a state owned monopoly into a private one which is pointless.

So yes, re nationalise water and the above two to ensure it does not happen again, offer zero compensation to the share holders. They all knew that re nationalisation was a distinct possibility in non comp privatisation, so let them squawk.

The three aforementioned privatisations have given the concept a bad name. Some work but these 3 never stood a chance of working.
 
gintonic said:
What does Nationalisation of the railways look like - ownership and operations are complex. Will it bring us anything new?

infrastructure is in public ownership (Network Rail), rolling stock is leased by Railway Operators from Rolling Stock Companies. I think 6 Railway Operators through the franchise system are now run by the government. What about Open Access operators like Grand Central (which is actually a subsidiary of Arriva, and Lumo (a subsidiary of FirstGroup).

What about freight companies?
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Network Rail was created after many deaths proved what many had been warning - the hunt for profit at the expense of safety should never have been allowed or encoraged.

OA and freight have not been mentioned.
Its electioneering - not many votes to be had from steel and biomass or passengers travelling on services/operators targeting the leisure market (in the case of Lumo).
 
Nationalisation? Yes, of all our key infrastructure including energy and water. Trouble is, some of us remember how cr4p that was and I expect we couldn’t afford to buy it back as the UK probably owns little of it now.
 
It always amazes me that the UK, which gave the world the railways, has made such a howling mess of them. It was the British who laid out the basis for the Swiss railway system in the min-19th century, and this has developed into one of the world's best systems, in fact, as one commentator described it, Switzerland in reality is one giant train set, in which succeeding generations of fathers and sons have added new rolling stock and track.

The Swiss recognise the railway as a valuable public service and are prepared to spend serious money to make sure that they all work well and have the latest equipment. Something like 50% of Switzerland's railway mileage is in private hands, but the federal and cantonal governments are prepared to put their hands in their pockets and help out with major projects. One recent example is the second Albula Tunnel. The Rhätische Bahn in canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland is the second biggest railway network after the federal SBB and its century-old Albula Tunnel en route to St. Moritz was becoming dangerous. The solution? Bore another one alongside it and once that is in operation repair the old one. The technical problems were immense - it including freezing the strata through which water was coming but it is nearly complete:

Aktuelles

Die aktuellsten Informationen rund um den Neubau des Albulatunnels für Sie zusammengefasst.
www.rhb.ch www.rhb.ch

The Swiss can make this mixed public/private system work very well, so why not the UK? It always seems to come down to penny-pinching. I remember when high-speed railways became an issue. The UK tried to do it with the APT, running on normal track, and we all know what happened to that. On the other side of La Manche, the SNCF jumped in, boots and all, and built a custom track for exclusively high-speed trains. We know whose approach worked.
 
sq225917 said:
Really, if the average age of rolling stock higher or lower than before privitasion, ( based on a grading curve that accounts for expected lifespan).
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en.wikipedia.org

Impact of the privatisation of British Rail - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

"The average age of trains in the UK has decreased from that under the last years of BR"

The average age when handed over was 18 yrs (https://www.bringbackbritishrail.org/reports/fourbigmyths.pdf) and it did go over that from 2012-19 but has since gone back to below that.

average-age-of-all-trains-united-kingdom-uk.jpg
 
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