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Railways. Anybody here from the UK?
- Thread starter romanof
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Scepticalscribe
macrumors Haswell
Personally, I would argue that the privatisation of the railways in the UK contributed (enormously) to the current, ah.......mess, a system that is not co-ordinated, and is both expensive and lacking in reliability or quality.
Apple fanboy
macrumors Ivy Bridge
I tend to agree. More choice hasn’t worked in this instance.
They remained nationalised from 1948 until the mid-1990s.
Nobody ever had any complaints (HA HA!!! it's the way I tell em 🙂 - whingeing about British Rail was one of the great national pastimes! )
The re-privatisation wasn't a simple case of re-creating the original pre-war companies, but a complicated system of franchises for train operators and separate management for the infrastructure.
There's an extensive entry on the history of British Rail on Wikipedia.
Re-nationalisation has already started, as the franchises expire or, in some cases, because operators have failed to meet the contractual requirements obliging the government to step in (which is probably what got the re-nationalisation moving).
The problem is that while there is some choice of operator, it's often very limited. YMMV depending on where you are traveling to or from - you may have a choice, for many trips there's only one viable operator for at least one leg.
Ticketing is shared - but (as I mentioned earlier) shopping around for the best price involves a firm grasp of relativistic quantum mechanics (although some sites now do it for you and can work out the virtual train changes - that's fairly new).
...ultimately, though, they're all using the same rails, points, signals, bridges, stations etc. and when (not if) something goes wrong with any of those, all the operators get disrupted.
Apple fanboy
macrumors Ivy Bridge
Ransomware? What else could take down the entire rail network? Other than maybe some explosion in their main shared computer array or dispatch center.
A 90 second power outage in one area of Manchester, apparently. On a network running so "efficiently" that there's no resilience and one problem like that causes a cascade of other problems.
This, in spades.
The "privatisation" was done to create as much capital as possible, not to make the railways run better. Immediately after the privatisation the new companies set about removing cost from the businesses and increasing marketing to customers. There was then a string of fatal crashes, mostly caused by costs being removed. Examples such as halving driver training, or doing "Just in time" maintenance, instead of planned replacement. led to many people being killed. Safety dropped lower on the Board agendas.
It is better now, as the industry realised that killing customers was not a good look, even if it meant more money to shareholders.
As for the cost of rail travel - that's a complex one. If you take the business allowance for milage (currently £0.45 per mile - set in 2012, with inflation would now be £0.66) then rail fares aren't too bad. If you look just at the cost of petrol, or if you have more than one person in the car, it's not such a good comparison. Comparing with air travel is 'interesting' as there are significant subsidies for air travel.
We went on a West Coast cities holiday in the US a few years ago, and travelled by train. One difference we found was that you only get on the train if you have a seat - much like plane travel. Unlike the UK, where tickets can be sold in huge numbers and trains therefore overcrowded.
...that's possibly not by accident, and still depends on you being flexible about times and/or being able to book in advance (so one ~200 mile trip I've looked up costs £134 return off-peak, but if you want to get there for a 10am meeting it goes up to £240). Then it's YMMV whether you're paying for car parking at one end vs. maybe needing a taxi to/from the station at either end.
...plus, as you say, as soon as you put two people in a car there's no comparison.
Thing is, once you have a car, depreciation, tax, insurance, service etc. are mostly "sunk costs" (with only a weak dependence on mileage) and petrol is the obvious extra out-of-pocket cost of any long journey. 0.45p a mile can feel like you're making a profit (even if you're not really). If public transport wants to compete on cost it's either got to be cheaper than the petrol cost or so consistently good that people can sell their cars.
Well, yeah, in the past I've paid less to get a flight to the Netherlands or Germany than to get the train to London. Thing is, unless you're a private jet type or have a mate with a Cessna, most internal British journeys are too short to justify having to get to/from an airport and hang around there for an hour. London to Manchester is about borderline. Consequently, there isn't much choice of routes & airlines trying to push internal air travel have come and gone like mayflies. When I have looked into it, the problem has been lack of planes, not price.
Also, however much we complain about the trains, my experience of internal air travel in the US has been at least as unpleasant.
That is an understatement of the first magnitude. I have absolutely no direct knowedge of British railways but WAY too much of US airlines. They are now like going to the dentist - very unpleasant but unfortunately sometimes necessary. Part of my problem is that I am old enough to remember when flying was fun. Drive to the airport, pay your money and walk onto the plane. Hunters used to carry their shotguns and rifles on board and lean them against the internal baggage rack. Mechanics would have their tool boxes, doctors their black bag of sharps. I got on in the Sixties with a huge case of tools that I was carrying to my first school for my newly joined company. Seats were huge and on occasion if the plane was big enough a small piano could be found in the back.
Now, American and believer in the capitalistic system that I am (althought not in the current billionaire we got all the money and you don't, ha ha, setup) I have still found myself growling, "Why doesn't the government step in and do something!"
So, I can symphathise with folks across the pond that are in a like situation.
As long as those costs re considered by the owner for some mileage, then your point is a good one. However this is not often the case - with the driver thinking of the petrol cost as the journey costs, and the sunk costs being selectively forgotten about. Hiding the true cost of private transport has been one of the successes of the motor, oil and finance industries.