Transport in London is shit

Can you imagine what BRB would have done with the amount of money poured into franchises?

Seriously, you don't need to tell me that.

im not sure what you are referring to in terms of public sector running public transport. where is this done at a local level? maybe the rail franchise that runs down in Sotuh London?

admittedly i barely remember BR in a way, but i remember it being the butt of jokes about service quality etc. i wonder if it isnt tempting to becoming dangerously nostalgic though. let me change that to:

"b) public transport wholly in the hands of the public sector historically has not been as completely successful as is often imagined in this country"

btw, this would be all a lot easier if we called it mass transit rather than public transport, like the americans. then we might stop expecting it to be a public service.

Tsk, they'll want the vote next!

I suspected that most of the people involved in this thread would barely remember BR. Ed's got it right, I think with the amount of money and subsidies lavished on the private companies, BR would have produced a far better service. And if you really want to talk about "dangerous nostalgia", how about dickheads who have barely started shaving are still going on about the Winter of Discontent a hundred years after it happened?

Yes there were failing, Cross country Intercity services and the WCML were in need of a refresh and managed decline out side of the London Inter-City and London Commuter was in the mindset (but has that really changed).

Scotland is the only place where privatisation has really improved matters but that is only because devolution gave the scottish executive control over funding and deliverables and there is a single operator for all bar cross border services. So it can be argued that devolution had more of an effect on Scottish Railways than privatisations did.

two possibilities spring to mind:
a) a belief that private sector involvement would bring about improved service

b) to reduce the burden on the public purse

maybe a) was misguided, and b) time will tell whether public spending on railways overall has increased or decreased overall since privatisation. but presumably there must have been sonme truth in the above, to bring about the desire change. were the tories going against the wishes of the electorate as a whole in 1994? these are questions not smart alec rhetoric, i think i might come over a bit know it all when writing on here, but the opposite is true, i know very little, but am interested in the sort of assumptions that transport debates throw up.

i dont love, "i'm colin, im your customer service manager for your journey today"

i hate britains replacement of 'the' with 'your', its an americanization i cant stand.

why should we lower our expectations?

indeed! i dont know, really. how do we exercise our demand for higher and higher quality in eg clothes shopping? generally by going to a different shop if one doesnt meet our expectations. as this sort of competition a) i dont think can really exist b) hasnt materialised (it seems to be easier to buy up small bus operators and create monopolies rather than trying to meet customers expectations) we are in a strange position when it comes to what we can expect from transport. the captive nature of the market skews things a great deal. i think high expectations are positive in a way but i think that unrealistic expectations can lead to a sort of detached hectoring (im thinking of groups other than ILX btw) that divorced from many of the facts or realities of the situation means that a solution isnt going to be reached.

the distinction between "passengers" and "customers" is quite interesting. what is a "passenger"? why is someone getting on a First bus., buying a ticket to the city centre on an unsubsidised route anything less than someone buying a pint of milk in Tescos?

You forgot by far the most important factor:

c) IDEOLOGY

Also, Thatcherite Liberal Ideaology.

-- Ed (dal...), February 14th, 2006 2:07 PM. (later) (link)

So privatisation of the railways has been on a par with other privatisations, really.

I don't remember if it was part of the 1992 manifesto, probably yes, it was deeply unpopular though, however everything the Tories did was deeply unpopular by about 1993, the tories could have given every voter solid gold bricks in 1997 and still not got re-elected.

If there was a way to open up rail franchises to proper competition I'd be interested - no one whinges about airlines being privately-owned and air travel is cheaper than it's ever been.

Is South East Trains currently in public hands? I know its got immeasurably better since they stripped Connex of the franchise.

The problem is is that privatisation has turned the railways into a political football, government meddling has increased by several orders of magnitude. We are on our 4 th regulatory regime since privatisation. Privatisation has made the railways something for which every government now must find a quick fix for rather than actually thinking long term, as they should do, the only way the railways can get better.

The problem with the railways is that they are and artificial and imperfect market and they never can be anything other than that. You need look only at the ORCATS systems of apportioning rail revenues to operators n the same route and observe how this has distorted the market. Incentives have to be manufactured, and they cost the taxpayer dear, when that money could be going into improtant infrastructure improvement.s There can only be a role for private sector firms as service delivery companies, doing a fixed job for a fixed contract. Nothing else will really work for the railways, except maybe open access operators filling in gaps that the state operator does not think will be viable.

JimD, being able to work is a necessity

Yep, or at least an income is. And if you're truly unable to find work, then the state will give you money. But you're not actually talking about not being able to work, you're talking about not being able to get a specific job which you want to get without first getting experience in a low-paid environment in a location which costs you money to get to. All I'm saying is, if you don't like that, you can get another job. But what, are you claiming there are either NO JOBS AT ALL close to where you live, or that you CAN'T POSSIBLY MOVE to a place where there are jobs nearby? If that's the case, fair enough, the state should maybe subsidise you. But I don't believe it is.

(And also, living within london and having a low salary is perfectly possible anyway, I lived in London on a retail salary (9.5-10.5k) for a good few years, and I know plenty of other people who've done the same...in fact a couple of them worked in bookshops and eventually made enough contacts that way to get jobs in publishing, so the low-paid internship isn't the only way in there either).

The murder by privatisation of the British transport network was one of the great crimes against humanity of the Thatcher years.

im talking about the theory of opening up railway networks to private sector involvement. there is a difference between whether one should private, or partially deregulate, and how one should do so.

the man who devised the scheme to privatise the railways in britain is possibly even angrier than you lot about the way in which it was done.

(this is from Understanding Systems Failures by Bignell and Fortune, which has a chapter on South Yorkshire's bus fares policy in the 1970s, and coincidentally sits on the bookcase next to my computer)

If you want to know much about the history of British Rail in the 70s and 80s, your best bet is to find a library that has a good set of back-issues of Modern Railways magazine - that's where *I* learned most of it from, at least.

In the 70s the primary BR policy was "management for decline" - the concept that rail traffic was declining continuously and would never recover, and therefore replacement and modernisation should be done on the basis that capacity could and should be decreased. Over the long term this has been shown to be completely wrong, but a large part of the network is running as redesigned during the "management for decline" period. In particular, a large number of main lines and major stations still are operated using signalling and track layouts designed during this period, and this is now causing serious capacity problems.

(off the top of my head: Kings Cross and the ECML as far as Doncaster; most of the Great Western main line, apart from Paddington and Didcot; most of the lines around Birmingham; the WCML north of Crewe; pretty much all of central Scotland; pretty much all of the South London suburban network)

It is very hard to judge privatisation. It cant be done over the ten years of privatisation as there have been at least 4 major re-organisations of the structure of the privatised railway system since privatisation. It is not a private enterprise either. Government money and interference are present at all levels of the industry (apart from, possibly, in the ROSCOs although HST2 will change that). Now, at least we are getting a structure that may work. The TOCs are now effectively service delivery companies running on the state owned infrastructure and Open Access operators are starting, in a small way, to be permitted to provide the innnovation needed to replace 80s service patterns. May be this will work. It's not so much the privatisation itself (although I am opposed to it in principle) it's the fact that it has been one long experiment to find a structure that works.

In Europe privatisations have happened in a very different way. Germany is a good contrasting example. There regional goverenments were given control of regional rail services and These were 'Franchised' (ineffect contracted) out to private operators or to the State run rail company. National services reamined in the public sector although the State owned operator was instructed to take a more commercial approach, to prepare itself for privatisation. It has done this, with mixed results; The frieght arm is now the biggest and most wide reaching railfreight business in Europe and after a number of losses it has started to win contracts to operate local rail services. It's ha s even bid, as part of consortia, for franchises in other european countries including britain. The state operato will be privatised in the next few years but as one large comapny, it may work it may not, we shall see.

It is at least acknowledged in Germany that the primary competetive pressure on rail are not from other Rail companies but from Road and Air and trying to stimulate Rail on Rail competition does not fit with the passenger mindset (freight is a different matter, there are significant open access operators in Germany).