Transport in London is shit

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).

this might be my favourite ever ilx post.

Assuming this were true, which it isn't, they wouldn't give you enough to live on.

if everybody in, say, ruislip or st albans looked for work within walking distance of their house... you'd have a lot of unemployed people.

well no they'd be employed but they'd have rubbish jobs.

unfair of you to single out these 7 people.

well there's the Acton Town-Hammersmith section and the Wembley Park-Finchley Road plus Metroland sections but not quite the same thing i know.

On underground trains, after passing a signal at danger, the brakes automatically come on, and the driver has to get out of the cab to reset them. This traditionally was not the case on overground trains, but I think it now is also necessary on a lot of overground stock.

(this also applies to all other trains running on LU lines, such as most of the trains in and out of Marylebone station; I'm not sure if it applies to LU trains running on non-LU routes, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't apply to the other services on those routes)

why is that a joke? i was just about to say the same. apart from the hellhole bit.

had a presentation today which set me thinking. theres a split in this country between buses as a service which is controlled by a public body and provided by service provision companies, simply fulfilling requirements of the contract, and a situation where buses are removed from their status as inherently political products, open to competition, with the hope that the market will improve the product- to drag buses away from the operations-heavy approach of the past - "we tell you when and where the buses run, and we make them run that way" towards a industry that responds to passenger demands and looks to increase business - ie improve patronage more actively. in fact, i think these aims are laudable, but unfortunately the majority of operators, and it would seem the bigger they are, the worse offenders they are, are stuck (quite happily) between the two - they do little more than operate buses below a desirable standard, pay seemingly little attention to customers needs/desires and communicate very poorly with them, and yet focus on profitting from other means eg acquisitions and monopolisation, cost cuttign etc rather than increasing patronage through better service provision.

these two directions diverge quite seriously, and whilst london is allowed to pursue the first model without the stringent competitive requirements imposed on othewr areas, DfT, OFT, bus operators and PTES/local authorities are going to have to do some serious thinking about the fundamental guiding philosophy behind the bus industry structural model that we need for this country.

I was under the impression that on a lot of stock the TPWS reset is outdoors, like the tripcock on LU stock.

in fact i've just looked on National Express website and you can go from Golders Green to Manchester in just over 4 hours, which is nearly twice the journey time of a Pendolino BUT coming back the train and coach would roughly take the same time (both around 4 hours, according to the timetables) which makes no sense to me at all. and the NE return is half the price of the train.

ridiculous. if it had worked out cheaper i would've just got the train up but the coach back.

I agree the coach time seems optimistic - maybe they should introduce a coach lane on some motorways ala bus lanes.

in this point, its again a question of expectations. why do we expect to get reasonable fares on walk-up for railways, but would neevr expect that for a plane? why are we happy to book in advance to get the plane and not the train?
on a wider note, to what extent can we demand public transport on a schedule overall - are we going to have to accept a new model of pre booked, pre determined trips rather than expecting to turn up at any "Public Transport Access Node" and get on some form of transport? how viable or important is it for PTEs to subsidise private companies to ferry around fresh air at a lunchtime round some suburbs of a city?

finally, what is it that makes public transport, "public"? if its mass transport, then why is air travel not considered one of the gang? you can fit many mroe people on a plane than a coach for instance. so if its not a question of sheer numbers, is it more a question of importance in peoples lives - as people move abroad and commute, more frequently go on holiday, or simply commute from one end of the ocuntry to another, is it time to reassess how "vital" air travel is to peoples lives, for example in comparison to train travel?

i think the treatment of air travel as a seperate component, distinct from other forms of maass transport, as one that has no impact other than a handy effect of developing local economy/growth blah blah blah is not a positive thing. it needs to be considered in the light of every other mode of inter city transport, and i get the feeling that there just isnt full strategic thinking devoted to what sort of air transport network the UK needs and how it is goign to be brought aboutm ratehr than just "you want to build an airport? awesome!!!!" type thing that i have a hunch predominates at the mo

(*so called because in order to endure the mind-numbing boredom of it, half the passengers were on Temazepam, which also had the happy side effect that they wouldn't:
a) Talk to you
b) Fight you)