Great Western Coffee Shop

The current structure manages to build in much of the worst features of both public and private sector operation.

The franchises as they are today might not transfer much risk but they don't transfer much reward opportunity either.

Either properly privatise it or properly nationalise it.

Surely EU law makes this debate academic to a certain extent anyway, it couldn't simply be renationalised without allowing private operators access to the tracks under a number of EU directives?

I think the key one is EU directive 91/440?

I am not suggesting for a moment that this might happen, but an opt out from EC91/440 might be something that Cameron could achieve in his renegotiation of our relationship with the EU. 

I am not suggesting for a moment that this might happen, but an opt out from EC91/440 might be something that Cameron could achieve in his renegotiation of our relationship with the EU. 

The EU is a red herring here. It doesn't require privatisation, only separate accounting and access. Several EU countries have a nationalised railway, allowing others to run over their rails and billing them accordingly. In fact, do we have international trains in the UK? Apart from Eurostar, which isn't quite the same.

Regardless of that, what privatisation has not delivered is competition and "customer choice". It's hard to envisage a technically possible way that could even happen, but perhaps advances in signalling will allow trains to run close enough together that in effect you have a choice between the First GW at 09.00 and the Virgin Express at 09.05 to Paddington, for instance?

...........the other (amongst many!) elephant in the room of course - how would it all be paid for?  How would all the businesses, shareholders etc be compensated?

...........the other (amongst many!) elephant in the room of course - how would it all be paid for?  How would all the businesses, shareholders etc be compensated?

Labour would renationalise railways 'line by line,' says Jeremy Corbyn

A Labour government would renationalise the railways by regaining control of franchises as they expire, new leader Jeremy Corbyn is expected to reveal.

The party is to set up a task force that will consider how to implement the plans - expected to be outlined at the party conference next week.

Mr Corbyn told the Independent on Sunday there was "overwhelming support for a People's Railway".

But the Conservatives dismissed the plan as an "ideological joyride".

International Development Secretary Justine Greening warned it would waste millions of pounds of taxpayers' money at a time when the railways were enjoying record levels of investment on schemes like HS2. She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show it was important to "get on with the plan we have in place".

But shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn told the same programme it was the Conservatives that were being "ideological" and the recently re-privatised East Coast line had shown that publicly-owned rail could work. He said Britain needed an "integrated transport system" without passengers having to buy different tickets for different lines.

Mr Corbyn has previously said the railways should be renationalised along with Royal Mail and has opposed the high speed railway line HS2. The Labour leader said: "We know there is overwhelming support from the British people for a People's Railway, better and more efficient services, proper integration and fairer fares. On this issue, it won't work to have a nearly-but-not-quite position. Labour will commit to a clear plan for a fully integrated railway in public ownership."

The incremental renationalisation policy is expected to leave around two thirds of lines privately run after the first term of a future Labour government. Its task force will also consider rail reforms such as simplified ticketing and better integration of services with other modes of transport.

The Independent on Sunday said Mr Corbyn would make rail renationalisation Labour policy at the party's conference in Brighton on Sunday 27 September. Labour argues an incremental approach to renationalisation, advocated by Mr Corbyn's leadership rival Andy Burnham, would be a cost-effective solution.

But Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said Labour's approach was "a backwards-looking policy which would cost billions of pounds and leave less money to spend on improving services".

John Major's government split British Rail up into franchises 20 years ago. Since then the number of passengers travelling on the railways has doubled, but the public subsidy has risen.

Dear rail user groups

I'm getting in touch from We Own It, a campaign for public services for people not profit.

We released some polling this week about rail privatisation and fares (attached FYI) which was covered in the Mirror, Guardian and on Sky News. The key results are:
* 58% think rail privatisation has been a failure
* 28% think it has been a complete failure
* Only 1% think it has been a complete success
* Nearly half (48%) believe fares would be lower under public ownership
* Only 13% think fares would be higher under public ownership

We're planning to put together a response to this polling online from political parties, rail user groups, unions and the public.

It would be fantastic if you could give a quick quote (a couple of sentences) with your response to the findings which we'll add to our website.

If you're interested, could you send me your quote, your name and the name of your group asap? (We're planning to launch this on Friday but can keep adding to it after that.)

Many thanks

Cat

I'd like Cat to be completely transparent & advise us of the whereabouts her funding comes from too

We Own It has received funding from:

The Network for Social Change
The Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust
Betterworld
Lush Charity Pot
The Andrew Wainwright Reform Trust
The Lipman Miliband Trust
Donations from generous individuals who support our cause
 
We are happy for donors to fund specific pieces of work which are in accordance with our mission and our values. However, we don't take money with strings attached and donors don't have a role in our governance structure.

We are trying to start a debate about rail privatisation. We think it has been a failure and we're interested in reflecting the frustrations of passengers on this and pushing for change.

If there are rail user groups that actively support privatisation we can reflect those views in the interests of creating a debate but our position and campaign is for public ownership, so you might not want to support our efforts if you disagree with our mission! It's up to you :)

a) I agree, public polling doesn't prove the wrongness or rightness of a policy. It just gives an idea of public sentiment

....which of course is informed by the media. I would argue that the media is biased against public ownership, not for it.

b) What authority does anyone have to do anything?! :) We are trying to start a debate about rail privatisation. We think it has been a failure and we're interested in reflecting the frustrations of passengers on this and pushing for change.

Hi, many thanks for posting our request Graham!

[snip]

b) What authority does anyone have to do anything?! :)

Tickets which limit the user to a specific ROC just confuse and frustrate passengers.

I don't care whether its privately or publically run, but it should be as a single entity, not discrete groups fighting over market share.

I too welcome Reginald and his interesting comments.  I also congratulate him on gaining 6 stars on his very first post!  ;D

I'm not actually sure what the stars relate to, but would 6 have something to do with the first post being yesterday despite registering on Feb 27th 2011?!

Stars are gained in two ways - by number of posts, and also by volunteer / work / community involvement with rail such that they're added to the TransWilts CRP members board. That 2011 registration will give you a clue (correctly) that Reginald25 isn't in any way a newcomer on rail scene, or to the team behind the counter here.

As an ordinary travelling member of the public, it is clear to me that passengers usually want to travel by a train, not travel by a specific Rail Operating Company. As many, if not most, lines have multiple operators with revenue sharing, the user just wants to get the next train. Tickets which limit the user to a specific ROC just confuse and frustrate passengers.

One usual motivation for privatization is saving of costs (usually manpower), I'm not sure this has been achieved in the rail industry, nor has privatization made any difference to safety, which is largely centrally dictated anyway.

I can't see what has been achieved except some share holders getting some of the profits that should be fed back to improve the services, which in spite of current problems at Southern and a perception (but possibly not a fact) of regular late running, are much in demand.
I don' care whether its privately or publically run, but it should be as a single entity, not discrete groups fighting over market share.

If you just want to get 'the next train' - then buy an appropriate ticket. It's not difficult.

Train passenger numbers, which were broadly stable prior to that point, have doubled.   Co-incidence?   Maybe - who can tell?

On what specific grounds do you regard rail privatisation as a failure?

It can be difficult. When the price of an anytime return is £236 (compared to £89.30 for an off-peak and £70.40 for super-off-peak), it's difficult (and I was buying from a TVM, so couldn't check the validity of each for trains I was likely to use, although I didn't pay any of those prices because I have a railcard).

I seem to recall that one of the 'trouble with our trains' type television programmes asked this question and partly answered it by looking at Northern Ireland railways; a state-owned vertically-integrated operation. Passenger numbers have been on the up there too (perhaps not as fast, but who's to say whether that is down to the difference in the operational model or the differences between the areas concerned). A vertically-integrated structure would probably be more efficient; that could in theory be a single private company running everything, but then what little competition there is in the current system would evaporate and you would have a for-profit monopoly.

I'm not the person/group you were asking, but as I see it privatisation fragmented the network and that (possibly along with the need for the various companies involved with the railways to make profit) has increased the cost of providing what many see as a public service. The fragmentation has also created a blame-go-round, where the TOCs blame NR or the government and they in turn blame one of the other players. Thus you have the current dispute on Southern where the media (and passengers?) blame either Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) or the union; and the government get away with murder (not actually murder, but I don't know what the crime of removing useful staff is called; I assume the government agreed to the de-staffing in the franchise agreement (it may even have been required in the Invitation To Tender for the franchise, I don't know)). On the other hand, I have read fairly convicing arguments from the freight side of the industry (or possibly that was just one article in Modern Railways) that rail privatisation had been a huge success as far as freight was concerned. Perhaps then privatisation has failed passengers, but boosted railfrieght.

I don't follow your argument. I take 'the next train' (train B) to mean the one leaving after the one which is either at the platform or has just left (train A). Generally later trains (B) are more likely to be the off-peak ones, so they will be less expensive than train A - or are in my neck of the woods anyway. If one has a very cheap TOC specific ticket for train A and miss it and train B is run by another TOC then - tough.

So how does 'tough' correspond to 'not difficult'?

And I still fail to understand why people think the current system is intended to offer competition. It never was. The franchise system was set up as a transparent way for public funds to be handed to private organisations in exchange for running unremunerative trains - the equivalent of the Public Service Obligation grants paid to BR. It was hoped that private operators would be able to offer the equivalent service to that offered by BR at a lower cost. The franchisees were given, in return, a time limited monopoly to run trains in a geographically defined area. The only exceptions are the Open Access operators - whose number has remained strictly limited.

As I stated before any competition in fares is a bonus. Can anyone imagine any two service groups in BR days intentionally competing in this fashion?

While undeniably the cost of supplying a railway service increased dramatically after the time of the Hatfield crash, the situation has now been brought under control. Over the past four years the train running side of the railway has returned more money to the DfT than the DfT has paid out in subsidies. At the moment, taking all the TOCs together, they return some £600 million to the DfT per year. Included in the TOCs costs - before these payments are made - are the access fees paid to Network Rail. These fees now cover practically all the cost of operating, maintaining and renewing the railway.

The Network Grant payable to Network Rail directly by the DfT now covers - almost exclusively - the enhancements being made to the network. That part of the Network Grant which serviced the interest on NR's debt has fallen away as this debt is now classified as Government debt. In other words the rebuilding of London Bridge station, the Thameslink works, the GW electrification all come out of the Network Grant.

The point is that one buys a ticket with very restricted availability with open eyes, if you can't use it - caveat emptor.
It is entirely possible (= not difficult) to buy a ticket, possibly at an increased price, to permit travel on the train after the one one has missed.

Regardless of that, how big is the network grant compared to BR's subsidy, how much did BR spend on enhancements and how much have fares risen above inflation?

You obviously don't fly very often.

Otherwise you'd notice that zero flexibility is the aay they work and no obe seems particularly phased by it. Yes, its nice to have added fkexibility, but there are many out there that are coping very well on Advance fares, just as everyone manages when flying

You obviously don't fly very often.

Otherwise you'd notice that zero flexibility is the aay they work and no obe seems particularly phased by it. Yes, its nice to have added fkexibility, but there are many out there that are coping very well on Advance fares, just as everyone manages when flying

But why would a private operator in a monoploy position be cheaper than BR? Surely the argument generally used by advocates of privatisation is that competition drives costs down. In an environment with no competition, there is no incentive to reduce costs since if the customer has no choice they have to pay whatever the sole provider whats to charge. State-owned monopolies have no competition hence the claim that privatised operators would reduce costs, but fragmenting the railways increased costs and cancelled out that effect (if it exists at all).

Really? I thought the network grant was also used to reduce the TOC's track access charges. Regardless of that, how big is the network grant compared to BR's subsidy, how much did BR spend on enhancements and how much have fares risen above inflation?

It is possible to buy a ticket to permit travel on a different train, yes; but the point I am trying to make is this:
where the price differential between a time-restricted ticket and an any-train one is huge, purchasing the anytime is a difficult decision to make (esspecially if, as in my example, the exact details of the restrictions are not known to the purchaser).

A passenger might be intending to start their return journey sometime between 15:30 and 16:30, does 'peak' start at 16:00, 17:00 or 17:30? And if it is not a short journey, does the fact they started their return journey at 15:30 matter if they are still on the train at 17:40, probably the bussiest time of the evening peak? Without knowing this, it is difficult to decide whether I need to buy the more-expensive fully-flexible fare (of course, if I was booking online, I could check validity, but at a TVM you can't).

It annoys me that billions of public money (or NR debt which one day will amount to the same thing) was spent on upgrading the WCML to give Manchester a fantastic schedule to London with a train every 20 minutes.  That is a true turn up and go, don't bother to check the timetable railway and as such ought to have attracted legions of new passengers due to its flexibility.  But the flexible fares are very high which means that most people buy advance fares.  For those passengers the effective frequency of trains London to Manchester is 1 train per day.   

No, but the vast majority of those journeys will be relatively short journeys for which advance fares are not available.  I wonder what the relative proportions are on the inter-city flows, which is more relevant to the example given of Manchester to London.

The committee said while there could be no "single template" for franchises, there was "merit" in obtaining longer agreements covering smaller areas.
The opportunity of smaller franchises with less financial risk could lead to new companies appearing on the market, the MPs said.

Nationalisation was no panacea in 1940s. It was driven more by circumstances and political ideology rather than any great strategic vision for a modern railway. The investment errors of the 1950s look like a classic example of the ills of public sector management: poorly defined objectives, loss of focus, little sense of realities at senior management level and wasteful extravagance.


Tickets please!  Yoonki Jeong, CC BY-SA
The current model, on the other hand, exposes the private sector to excessive business risk and builds instability into the system. It also still depends heavily on state infrastructure investment or guarantees.

The best way forward is probably to optimise what we have: re-evaluate the rail franchising process and look at different ways to share business risk between the public and private sectors. That might include directly awarding some franchises without a tendering process, whether to a private or public operator, for example. It would be a step towards full nationalisation without throwing out the baby and the bathwater.

There's an article here (https://theconversation.com/britains-railways-were-nationalised-70-years-ago-lets-not-do-it-again-89545) from a lecturer in transport economics at Edinburgh Napier university arguing that because both full nationalisation and privatisation have flaws, the best thing is to carry on with the status quo, more or less.

As an aside, with all the discussion on the Coffee Shop of the IET/Class 800, I was initially suprised that I hadn't heard it referred to as the Hitachi Azuma before. But it seems this is Japanese for "east" so the name is only being used on the ECML.

The Japanese for West is "Nishi" which I think would go nicely with the IET.

How about "Cattle" class ;-)

More seriously, here's what we could have had - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/885_series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/885_series) - White Sonic using on Kyushu Railways in the south west of Japan. Leather seats, even in standard class, something forbidden by UK fire regs apparently.

They're the equivalent stats to those being bandied about at the moment re annual price rises across the board. I've not seen you query this stat (3.4%)? so why those?

We know that the 3.4% rise for January 2018 refers to regulated fares. The full statistical breakdown of what that means will be available in April 2018.

A very interesting chart...  :o

The continent’s approach to rail liberalisation holds lessons for Britain
By Nick Kingsley

An NTV train crosses the Tiburtina station in central Rome. Image: Getty.
As universal truths go, it’s not far off “death and taxes”: Britain’s rail network is privatised, the service is abysmal, fares are stratospheric. To restore our railway as a network we can be proud of, it must be renationalised. And we know that will work, because continental European railways are cheap, punctual, pleasurable and nationalised. Right?

Wrong. The binary debate over the future of UK rail is now so entrenched that we have increasingly ceased to question its fundamental tenets. This retreat to dogmatic positions risks doing a grave disservice to the travelling public – and we urgently need to consider both our own railway and those in Europe in a much more nuanced light.

John Band has already knocked down a few shibboleths in his 2015 article on rail fares, so I won’t cover the same ground again. Suffice to say, looking at our own railway’s structure, government control is so pervasive that it is not really credible to claim it is private at all. As in Europe, the railway’s fixed assets (track, stations, signalling etc.) are in public hands, following the reclassification in 2014 of Network Rail as a government entity.

Franchises, meanwhile, are so tightly specified by the Department for Transport (DfT) that any room for entrepreneurial activity has been all but squeezed out. Yes, DfT really does tell operators how many of their trains can have a catering trolley.

Yet arguably even more pressing for UK rail policy is the need to understand the profound changes happening to Europe’s railways as market reforms take root. It is still perfectly possible to jump on a train in Paris, Rome or Munich and find that train is run by a public sector operator, which is often part of a state holding group which also includes the infrastructure manager: train operator Trenitalia and infrastructure manager RFI in the case of Italy, for example.

However, over the past 20 years, EU policymakers have been looking for ways to make the European rail network more competitive. Policy measures have mostly focused on technical harmonisation between disparate national rail networks, but opening up of rail services to competition has also been a key strand.

This liberalisation has been resisted for years in many member states – but we are now reaching a point where the tide is turning, and the widely held perception in Britain of ‘nationalised’ continental railways is increasingly inaccurate. Perhaps most pernicious of all is the misleading suggestion that somehow Deutsche Bahn, SNCF or NS, the Dutch parent of Abellio, are sitting at home chuckling as filthy lucre from the fares of hardworking British commuters trickles into the coffers.

Far from it: most, but not all, European countries have seen some degree of liberalisation.

Take Italy, for starters. On 7 February, Global Infrastructure Partners (owner of London’s Gatwick Airport) made a successful offer of €1·9bn to acquire a company called Nuovo Trasporti Viaggiatori.

Who is that, you ask? Well, NTV runs pointy red high speed trains up, down and across the country, mostly on the dedicated high speed rail network that Italy has been building since the 1960s. Serving destinations including Turin, Venice and Naples, the company runs 50 trains per day on the key business route between Milan and Rome. Using the Italo brand, NTV competes head to head with the public sector operator Trenitalia, and between them they have gained a large majority of the rail/air market between the two hubs.

Unlike most British train companies however, NTV has no franchise or contract with government. It uses the EU’s ‘open access’ rules, paying access charges to use the national network. Its services are genuinely entrepreneurial as a result: if they are not viable, they would not survive.

NTV was established in 2011 by a consortium of high profile investors led by Luca di Montezemolo, whom Formula 1 motor racing fans will know as a former Team Principal at the Ferrari team. (The Italo trains’ scarlet livery is not a coincidence.)

For a few years, the state incumbent sought to frustrate NTV’s ambition amid a lack of strong independent regulation. But NTV has expanded from a niche operator to a significant player, at least on the core inter-city axes. As a consequence, private competition has compelled Trenitalia to up its game.

NTV’s state of the art Alstom trains were soon matched by a rival fleet procured by Trenitalia from Bombardier and Hitachi. Both have a whopping four classes of seating and, naturally, top quality espresso in the buffet car. More importantly, the number of services available between major cities has grown, but the rivalry has kept prices down.

There are lessons for here for Britain. We also have open access players in the shape of Grand Central and Hull Trains, operating out of London King’s Cross. Yet neither has the scale of NTV in Italy, and the government is lukewarm at best about operators who exist outside the contractual headlock of a franchise. For advocates of renationalisation however, there is a major quandary: Hull Trains and Grand Central regularly top passenger satisfaction tables, which suggests that more entrepreneurial zeal, not less, could lead to better services, at least in the long-distance segment.

In Italy, the inter-city network has been opened up to competition, while regional trains are, for now, still run by the state. In Germany, the opposite is true. Almost 40 per cent of German regional trains are now run by companies other than Deutsche Bahn, while DB retains a near monopoly on long-distance routes. Regional rail operating contracts are typically let by regional authorities (usually the Bundesländer), rather than by central government – but just as in Britain, the trains themselves are increasingly leased from the private sector rather than owned by the state.

Trenitalia is the second largest operator in Germany, while many of the companies holding UK franchises are also active. Indeed, British companies like National Express have made major inroads: its chief executive said last year that German contracts were now more attractive to private operators than UK franchising.

Where British and German ‘franchising’ really diverge is in costs. Typically, when DB loses a contract to a competitor, the cost of operation goes down, with a positive impact on subsidy and therefore fares. In an extreme example, Go-Ahead (yes, parent of loathed Southern Rail) has agreed to run several routes around Stuttgart for a period of 13 years from 2019. That contract is costing the regional authority in Baden-Württemberg approximately half the amount per train-kilometre it was giving to DB under the previous agreement. A raft of improvements is planned, including new trains across the network. Yet with such a dramatic reduction in the cost base, the authority also has the option to hold down fares.

Once again, the implications for British rail policy are clear. We should be asking why German rail liberalisation is driving down operating costs while quality of service is broadly improving. Instead, we get increasingly simplistic assertions about the benefits of renationalisation, which hark back to an increasingly hazy recollection of British Rail.

The opening up of Europe’s networks to competition has polarised opinion across the sector, and debate will continue for years to come as to the pros and cons. Indeed, there are areas where the British system has a clear advantage over, say, Germany – for example, a unified ticketing system which allows booking between any two stations, irrespective of operator.

But please let us not labour anymore under romanticised ideas of ‘nationalised’ European rail based on experience from the odd long weekend away. The debate over the future of Britain’s railways deserves a better level of understanding – and there is much to learn from the European experience.

Nick Kingsley is managing editor of Railway Gazette International, the business magazine for the global rail industry. He tweets as @njak_100.