National Rail Shakeup

[Nawdic]

Just heard on BBC Brekfast this morning that National Rail is planning to introduce a "Super Peak" ticket, i.e. twice the price of a standard peak ticket, get rid of guards and close a number of ticket offices.

All for 'trying' to save money.

Discuss.

[orudge]

Do they actually want people to use trains? I find it odd that politicians and so on seem to think that by increasing the cost of getting to work (whether in terms of train tickets, or peak-time road charging, or whatever), people are suddenly going to magically be able to change their hours to travel off-peak. Nope. They're just going to have even less money to spend on other things, depriving other businesses of income.

[JamieLei]

Network Rail don't have any influence over tickets so I don't know where that has come from. Possibly National Rail is what you mean, which is hte branding of ATOC.

Personally I believe and always have that returns should be scrapped and everything become singles. It would drastically help to reduce the confusion over peak restrictions, especially now that evening peaks are widespread. Of course, singles would have to become cheaper, and off peak singles (which barely exist) would have to be half the price of the current Off Peak Return.

[Nawdic]

Network Rail don't have any influence over tickets so I don't know where that has come from. Possibly National Rail is what you mean, which is hte branding of ATOC.

*corrected

[TheGrew]

Personally I believe and always have that returns should be scrapped and everything become singles. It would drastically help to reduce the confusion over peak restrictions, especially now that evening peaks are widespread. Of course, singles would have to become cheaper, and off peak singles (which barely exist) would have to be half the price of the current Off Peak Return.

I actually really like that idea, would be so much simpler for A LOT of people, and not really any more complicated (especially if oyster card style ticketing becomes national)

[Kevo00]

Cut transaction costs on the system rather than increasing fares. Our fares wouldn't be so high except for the government extracting premium payments from franchisees anyway, and the fragmentation of the value chain tends to inflate prices in the system.

[GurraJG]

I heard an interview with a lady who spent 30% of her salary only on train fares. And they're going to increase prices?!? They're bloody insane!

[APDAF]

Can't they go to the pre-1948 model?

[Kevo00]

Well, the actual proposals might not be that bad - but apart from a smart card system do sound rather vague. Also, we have demand based pricing per train for advance fares already, so 'smoothing out the peak' is not really the big advance it appears to be.

According to the BBC her proposals are:

JUSTINE GREENING'S REFORMS

Ending above-inflation fare rises "as soon as possible"
Expanding smart ticketing technology across England and Wales
Reforming rail franchises - including giving longer franchises - so operators can "deliver more value and better levels of service"
Funding thousands more carriages, extending electrification of the network and redeveloping stations
Strengthening the rail regulator's capacity to improve the passenger experience
Providing better punctuality and real-time travel information
Involving rail workers in plans to get the industry on a more sustainable footing, grow jobs and develop skills

A commitment to abolish RPI+k for train fares has to be a good thing, if it materializes. Reforming franchises, more carriages and electrification are just a rehash of old promises. Skills building is a good idea, however.

[teccuk]

Do they actually want people to use trains? I find it odd that politicians and so on seem to think that by increasing the cost of getting to work (whether in terms of train tickets, or peak-time road charging, or whatever), people are suddenly going to magically be able to change their hours to travel off-peak. Nope. They're just going to have even less money to spend on other things, depriving other businesses of income.

No.

The industry can't handle growth anyway. Its too hard and expensive for it. Rail as a whole doesn't make any money, so what's the point in accommodating it? Apart from the odd exception, the private sector won't have the capital to invest and the govt won't see the payback. So why bother? They're stretching the elastic nature of transport charging to its absolute limit and they find it just keeps going and going.

There's a lot of other things in the review, such as removing ticket sales people and guards. They are trying to make us pay for a horrifically beuarocractic, inefficient, privatised railways system. Remind you of the banks?

By the time the lawyers, the ROSCOs, the TOCs, the shareholders, ATOC, the army of people who work out who-owes-who, the marketeers and the consultants get paid, there's naff all left. Add on the infelxible gold plating of NR means and have the most expensive railway in Europe with pretty much the highest subsidy (its hard to measure that though).

Another irony is, privatisation was meant to break the unions, but RMT and ASLEF are the strongest unions in the country, don't get me wrong I'm a union man myself, but they can seem a little ... inflexible at times.

Its a national effing disgrace. Who's responsible? Well no-one. Privatisation was designed to remove responsibility from any one body.

[Kevo00]

Bob Crowe does my nut in with his quasi-Marxist rhetoric. Quite simply, the unions have profited from privatisation as much as other stakeholders apart from commuters have, because its given them the opportunity to play operators off against one another.

The government hasn't actually said that station staff and guards should be got rid of, surely; thats RMT scaremongering. Even if they did, it should be left up to franchisees whether they want station staff and guards or not. On the most expensive routes per passenger head like the West Highland and so on you'd need a guard because surely installing oyster barriers wouldn't give you a sufficent return on capital.

[Geo Ghost]

Bring back British Rail. Re-nationalise the railways.
That is all.

[Kevo00]

But, of course, everyone loves to forget that BR wasn't very good either. BR used to manage demand off the railways, and if Geo doesn't like First's customer service now, he would have hated BR's then. People actually forget how much reliability actually has improved since privatisation. Sure it's not perfect, but then BR was worse.

[Chris]

But the last 15 to 20 years of BR were under Thatcher, and so I imagine that there was no funding for the railways - the improvements in theast 10 years are a result of increased investment (from the taxpayer, not the TOCs, except Chiltern). The railways today are basically nationalized, but with companies paying to have their logos on the trains.

[teccuk]

What this report does not menison is the first thing that is needed, renationlize the railways sooner rather than later. Then we do not have to waste taxpayers money on the dividend of TOCs.

Bring back British Rail. Re-nationalise the railways.
That is all.

Not going to happen. The three major parties are ideologically wedded to neo-liberalism, the belief that the private sector can always do a better job than a public owned company. They are wedded to privatisation regardless of the cost.

But Geo Ghost, that is effectively the press release you have there are you are right to be cynical.

But, of course, everyone loves to forget that BR wasn't very good either. BR used to manage demand off the railways, and if Geo doesn't like First's customer service now, he would have hated BR's then. People actually forget how much reliability actually has improved since privatisation. Sure it's not perfect, but then BR was worse.

It's a very different world. I don't know whether like-fo-like comparisons will do anymore. Perhaps comparisons with SNCF, CFFs, DB etc may be more relevent. One thing you coudl say for BR, at least it was cheap, both for tax payers and passengers.

The railways today are basically nationalized, but with companies paying to have their logos on the trains.

That's the problem. Public risk, private profit. Like any other 'PPP' of PFI. Disgusting.

[GurraJG]

It's all very well talking about a private railway sector providing competition and cheaper pricer and better service to lure customers to their service, but where I live I've got all of one railway operator to choose from. Hardly a lot of competition, is it?

[Ameecher]

But the last 15 to 20 years of BR were under Thatcher, and so I imagine that there was no funding for the railways

Well you imagined wrong.

[Geo Ghost]

Not going to happen.

A man can dream though

Oh I'm cynical about anything I see around me these days. I really have precious little entertainment in my life so ripping into any little detail I can find brings some sort of amusement to an otherwise dull atmosphere that hovers around me

FGW, I don't think I'd dare either. It's still First group so I kind of expect the same rubbish.

[Kevo00]

and if he doesn't like First's customer service now, he would have hated BR's then.

I never found (sectorised) BR to be much of a problem from memories. Although I wasn't nearly as knowledgeable then compared to now, I still remember things being much more comfortable and such. Even people, both young adult to older generations, I've spoke to over years who have experience of BR in the past pretty much all say BR, though not perfect, wasn't bad and could have been improved further over the years. From what I've always been able to tell, the united thoughts and views are that they needed better funding, a stronger infrastructure and generally more support. Some old rail doc's even prove and show that - some as late as the 90's, some much earlier.



My main memories of BR are largely of going out places for the day, then finding that you were stranded through signalling system, train or electrification failures. I remember once spending more than an hour on a class 303 stuck outside Glasgow Central, with no explanation of what was going on, and no explanation or apology given. This sort of thing used to happen a lot, and was simply accepted. I agree that more recent times have seen serious disruptions such as the cable thefts, but generally the system operates more smoothly today than under state ownership.

More generally, the managerial ethos of BR was simply to manage decline. Railfreight was made deliberately noncompetitive so as to reduce the need for investment, and track designs simplified to save money (next time you are on a train that is held up and can't be re-routed because of a failure, blame Bob Reid). Passenger services were also generally cut back to the socially acceptable minimum, a trend which started long before Thatcher, and can probably be traced back to Barbara Castle's 1968 Transport Act. Its all very well saying that things were 'more comfortable' under BR, but then today's railways have managed to attract substantially more passengers than BR did. True, there is not much competition within the rail system, but rail always has to compete with other forms of transport.

I agree that we don't have a fully privatised rail system, but would totally disagree that full nationalization would be the panacea so many commentators seem to think it would be. Who owns the system does not matter as much as how it is operated and what the overall strategy is. Better to get rail completely away from political interference, because politicians do not understand the long term nature of the industry, which requires a long investment and payment cycle based on accrual and amortisation.

[Chris]

But the last 15 to 20 years of BR were under Thatcher, and so I imagine that there was no funding for the railways

Well you imagined wrong.

What you mean I can't blame Thatcher!?