Great Western Coffee Shop

So ... a general election has been called, and a new government (if it goes full term) will run from 2017 to 2022.

During that time, electrification should reach Cardiff, Thingley and Newbury from Paddington, and the GW franchise will be re-specified, bid, awarded, and started.

"Brexit" is the top topic on the agenda for this election, but what will it mean for public transport policy?

Will the Bus Services Bill now make it to law before parliament is dissolved?

Will the current problems on Southern have any noticeable effect on how people vote in Brighton commuter land?

What effect the significant overruns and cutbacks on electrification in our own area?

What policies will parties with a significant change of winning seats in our area be promoting?

If the conservatives win the election as seems probable then I expect little change in transport policy.

The ongoing southern rail fiasco might possibly influence a few results but I doubt even that. Some southern victims hold the trades unions responsible and want them "dealt with" by firm government action, whilst that points towards more conservative votes, remember that they would probably have voted conservative anyway.
Other southern victims have sympathies with the strikers but that does not point to more labour votes since they were probably labour voters anyway.

Or put another way, the southern fiasco is more likely to CONFIRM peoples existing political views, rather than to ALTER such views.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (amended by the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013) sets the dissolution at the 25th working day before the date of the election.  This is on 3 May which is the day before the Mayoral elections which the Government were committed to getting the legislation through parliament by so it should still clear parliament before dissolution.

The workload prior to May 3 should May get her vote will be decided by the Leader of the Commons & his Shadow counterparts. Most likely to include everything that can be voted through with support from all parties. Anything contensious msy not find time available.

Although in the case of the Bus Services Bill, if the Lords accept the amendments on Wednesday 26 April then it won't even need any more time in the Commons.  The only part that is likely to still be controversial is the ban on local authorities setting up new municipals but the Lords won't gain much by sending it back since the government have made their position quite clear.

Closure of the Channel Tunnel.

To UK-bound trains for sure. Demand for single tickets in the other direction may surge....

I'm assuming that suggestion has a missing 'tongue-in-cheek' emoticon.

Not necessarily.

it's totally over the top....

My local MP seems to be pulling quite few tricks out of her handbag .................. brexitcuted Gove, curtailed Bojo, and now overturned the fixed term Parliament Act

Wonder if she can hold onto her 35,000 majority or will the people of Maidenhead go down in history of unseating the Prime Minister  :o

Unfortunately I think the Conservative's instinctive position is to support roads so that their suburban and rural voters can drive their cars to work and the shops, and regards public transport as something they'd rather other people dealt with and paid for. Certainly the Conservative WoE Mayoral candidate does not inspire much confidence on this issue.

For all his faults, Osborne realised that he could wrong-foot Labour by supporting rail, particularly in the north of England where he could build a "commuting class" of (mainly) Conservative voters, and Boris realised that high-quality public transport would shore up his support as Mayor and annoy Ken Livingstone. With them gone and Grayling in the hot-seat, the party rather seems to be reverting to type, which is a shame, although of course by the end of this CP we will be left with a lot of shiny new infrastructure and trains, MML electrification will be (slowly) progressing, HS2 should be gathering pace and with a bit of luck CR2 will be working its way through Parliament.

There are a few rays of sunshine though, in that if Osborne's strategy to win seats in northern England does work, then there might be a lot of younger new Conservative MPs from metropolitan areas who understand the need for high-quality public transport. Furthermore devolution is pushing transport policy towards the regions, so whilst we might see fewer large projects like GWML electrification, there's perhaps more chance that we'll see more smaller projects such as reopenings, electrification etc. 

Looking at all the WoE Mayoral leaflets sent out this week, only two highlighted transport as their top issue,

• Stephen Williams
• John Savage

So, that kind of limits my choices

Taking into account the colossal overspend/overrun on GWR electrification and ongoing serious reliability problems on the rails, favouring roads is a pretty easy sell for Westcountry Conservative MPs.

I don't know. I think most people now get the idea that roads clog up as soon as they are built. You've got lots of people who regularly travel to London by train, you've got plenty of people who take the train to work and shop in places like Bristol and Bath. There's plenty of "low hanging fruit" in terms of station re-openings and enhancements to service levels which would be relatively inexpensive compared with building new roads and feasible now that stock is starting to be cascaded. Rebuilding the Severn Beach line as double-track would also be very well received by the folks of Bristol and transformational.

However, rail travel is almost insignificant when compared to the number of road journeys undertaken in any given year.

The existing road system is crumbling and desperately needs funding for improvements (mostly basic maintenance such as resurfacing) which will have a positive impact on fuel economy, safety, traffic flow and reduce mechanical failures. Road investment does not necessarily mean building new roads.

This election is purely about a government cementing its position (probably for the next decade if the predicted landslide occurs) and seeking a mandate to continue negotiations to leave the EU, nothing of note will change, exiting the EU will still happen.

Sure, both rail and road have to be maintained to a reasonable standard. That should be built-in to budgets. In recent decades both the railways and local authorities have put-off all but essential maintenance of roads and railways to meet budgets, but in the long-term it ends up costing much more. It has been suggested that part of the reason the GWML upgrade has cost so much is that NR have found what a poor state the infrastructure was in, and have chosen to do things properly - reconstructing trackbeds so they will last for 20 years rather than bodging them for 5.

But when it comes to capital expenditure, I think that most of us agree that rail offers much greater value for money than expanding roads. Taking Portishead for example. The A369 between Portishead and the M5 could be turned into a dual carriageway, and the junction with the M5 beefed up, arguably a reasonable thing to do, it would be appreciated and would help at rush hour. But it would be massively expensive, dump extra traffic on the M5 and fill up in the long-term. But rail would be far cheaper, even at the current £100m+ cost and with an initial subsidy, and take a large number of cars off the road, leaving the existing roads much clearer and reducing wear and tear.

The other point about rail is its ability to be economically and socially transformational. Time and time again it has been shown that people will move house to take advantage of new rail links, companies will build offices to be next to railway stations, tourists will travel on trains more readily than the bus etc. New roads rarely have so great an impact. The Severn Beach line is already heavily used with minimal subsidy, but if it were redoubled, had a 15 minute frequency, and went through to Bedminster and beyond, then arguably it would transform much of Bristol and help considerably with reducing the traffic. 

The election will inevitably make a difference to Government policy, as faces will change in Parliament, the Cabinet will be reshuffled, priorities will change.

On a lighter note, if the Northern Powerhouse rail strategy does appears to have won the Conservatives a few new seats in the north of England, then I'd argue that Westminster should pay for electrification of the Welsh Valley Lines itself. What better way to reduce Labour's majorities than to flood them with commuters from Cardiff ;-)

I'm afraid that little will change until the next control period, unless the Consevitives commit to increased funding of Network Rail. This seems unlikely given the GWML electrification fiasco. Also the prospect of TOC's sending nearly new rolling stock and BR era EMU's off lease will do little to ease overcrowding.

Regretfully, I agree.
Money spent on roads is generally called investment, not subsidy, and also has the political merit of producing prompt and demonstrable benefit.
 "look I promised to widen the road between ABC and XYZ, I have now done this , observe the reduction in delays. Vote me in again, and I will push to widen the next section and further cut delays"

In contrast, spending on railways is invariably called subsidy, takes much longer to produce tangible benefits, and sometimes produces no tangible benefit at all.
The ongoing works in the GWR area are not exactly a vote winner at present despite the promises of jam tomorrow.

Indeed: we seem to have lost sight of the previously universally acclaimed public transport benefits of reopening the Portishead Line to railway passengers, for example.  ::)

If Mr Corbyn is successful in election, I find myself wondering just how in his renationalisation programme does he propose gaining ownership of the predominantly ROSCO owned rolling stock.  It is all well and good comandeering a franchise as it expires, but that can't include guaranteed use of the stock. Surely the ROSCO s have  an effective monopoly on trains and could name their price?

AFAIK, all that is proposed initially is take over franchises as they expire and to nationalise rolling stock companies at least to begin with.
A lot of new rolling stock is on its way which should help a bit. A labour government could of course purchase or build some rolling stock independently of the ROSCOs. It might not take a great deal of new stock to reduce the near monopoly that exists at present.

I think there is something in the legislation or the leasing contracts that protects what are termed 'franchise assets' - Others may be able to give more information.

Even if there are no restrictions there is a limited market elsewhere in the world for UK specific stock.

If they conspired together to raise prices that would be anti-competitive behaviour and be illegal.

If they independently decided to raise their prices excessively they would probably find the CMA come in break them up into smaller competing entities.  

As indeed they did, so noticeably, last time they were in power.  :-X

I suppose the wider point is that while a headline grabbing policy of renationalisation may be appealing to an idealistic section of the electorate, I also suspect that the majority of the public may not be aware of the intricacies of privatisation and assume that come the revolution the state will simply take control of all aspects of the country's 'train set'.  It is more than posible that the owners of rolling stock could simply refuse to play ball and withdraw access to the trains until a suitable and mutually acceptably agreement had been reached - potentially months - and that they could again name their price.

Bear in mind that it is effectively the City that owns these assets,and that they might not just roll over while a significant source of their revenue is commandeered in the name of some misguided socialist ideal.

"Edited for punctuation"

While the trains are on lease the rolling stock leasing companies (ROSCOS) have very little control either in law or in practice - after all "possession is nine points of the law".


Technically since there are several of them it is an Oligopoly.  The sort of markets that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) already have power to investigate and where necessary apply a remedy. 

And why would they.  Is there any evidence that they are charging unreasonable prices?

Holding out like that also would not stack up commercially as it is like property rental where the biggest loss is void property - where you get no rent at all.  No its worse than that because the ROSCOs would have to pay someone to store them somewhere and to do some minimum maintenance to ensure that the value of the asset did not plummet. Just finding the facilities would be quite a challenge for a large quantity of rolling stock.

As oft quoted at the moment in another instance  - no deal would be the worst possible deal.

......and of course the minute renationalisation is announced, any motivation for the franchisees to undertake any investment or service improvement disappears, so expect the bare minimum until the franchise expires.

Thatt'll be from next Friday then, if a certain Party wins

All I can say is things are going to be interesting for the next few days.

The labour chap who's gained Plymouth Sutton promised £2.5bn to improve rail links to Plymouth.

Indeed they will be interesting.    Does the labour chap actually have that £2.5bn to spend, though?

Labour have a herd of rainbow coloured unicorns who will poop out a gold bar on the doorstep on a daily basis for each and every one of us, didn't you know?  :D

Early on in the history of railways, there were excursion trains arranged to view public hangings._{[Citation needed]}

Will this tradition be restarted now that we've a hung parliament?

To reply to the original question, yes, by all accounts the Southern shambles did affect voting in constituencies along the line.

Didn't see anyone in Bristol use the railways as a reason to vote Labour.

Putting various expenditure and costs into perspective - an update, from the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41258026):

that's democracy at work

Worth every single penny, I'd say. Haven't enjoyed myself so much in years.