The rail nationalization story is a big deal . For a variety of reasons , Labour have been accused of not having a clear direction , some saying what do they stand for . This is a headline grabbing proposal , the public can relate to this and it polls very well .
Whether it provides a better service only time will tell if Labour do win the GE .
It will certainly not provide a better service.
What it will do is make central government a constraint for funding through the DfT, which essentially means the Treasury.
Such pressure as there is will be to restrict fare rises and increase wages/jobs for rail workers - this will increase trade union bargaining power hugely - and investment will suffer accordingly.
Prepare for a deterioration or contraction of infrastructure, reduced service quality, poorer customer experience and older and more ramshackle rolling stock.
It’s hard to imagine a poorer service than the one we already get from TPE.
The BBC article refencers the TOC’s being moved into public ownership, But says nothing about the rolling stock.
I suspect they will want to keep both Alstom Derby and Hitachi going so will commit to new rolling stock.
It’s easy to imagine a worse service than TPE - try and get a seat on any cross country service from anywhere south of Darlington.
On Tuesday I caught a 5 carriage service to Manchester from here and was able to get a seat.
The train before that was the Edinburgh to Plymouth service, 3 carriages of which 1 was first class and the carriages were standing room only already.
And supposedly Arriva are way worse than cross country
So, what you're describing here is a problem of success - high passenger demand. Which requires more train paths, rolling stock, and infrastructure investment. Exactly the things nationalisation is poorly placed to offer.
Instead, it will deal with it by suppressing demand with a steadily corroding service as the money becomes more limited as is directed elsewhere.
Well everything is at capacity so I love to know where you think the train paths will come from (HS2 bypassing the WCML to at least Crewe was the important bit). The December timetable which added capacity on the ECML by bypassing Darlington / Durham is already scrapped because again it seems it doesn’t work
So the only fix is longer trains or more accurately returning them to the length they used to be because the old cross country trains s were 6/7 carriages long and not 3.
And I don’t think I said nationalization is a solution here - the only thing I care about is long term planning with a plan for rolling improvements so work can be sanely planned and we stop the current start / stop / start again madness
IMV (as stated previously), ownership structure does not matter that much: competence in whatever structure there is matters much more.
But it's good to see two questions I've always asked being answered:
"Labour would still allow privately financed "Open Access operators", such as Hull Trains and Lumo, to continue. Open Access operators currently run a relatively very small proportion of services. It is also not planning to nationalise rail freight companies or rolling stock companies."
So no nationalisation of the trains or freight services, and Open Access still being allowed.
This is a world away from that most renationalisation advocates wanted, and is actually not really a renationalisation.
That is actually what Christian Wolmar was proposing in the aftermath of Hatfield, so is hardly new.
Given every time I checked something in his book he'd made mistakes I can't help wonder therefore if this is a bad idea.
I think structure does matter, to an extent - many of our organisations are just too large and complex to be run efficiently. One of the big problems with rail is that separate countries manage pretty much every aspect so it's hopelessly disorganised and very expensive.
But - getting rid of franchises which are one aspect of the problem would be a start.
Here's a hint: even if the get rid of franchises, the system will pretty much remain with a split structure - for the reasons you give above. It is just too large and unwieldy, with a massive breadth of specific knowledge required. Which was why BR split services up; e.g. NSE, Freightliner, InterCity, etc, etc.
As well as this, it will be handing even more power to the DfT or its replacement - and they're the problem atm.
As for Wolmar: he's a bit of an idiot IMO. He's not a reliable voice about the industry, as he sees what he wants to see, not what's there. Although that's a problem we can all suffer from...
The rail nationalization story is a big deal . For a variety of reasons , Labour have been accused of not having a clear direction , some saying what do they stand for . This is a headline grabbing proposal , the public can relate to this and it polls very well .
Whether it provides a better service only time will tell if Labour do win the GE .
It will certainly not provide a better service.
What it will do is make central government a constraint for funding through the DfT, which essentially means the Treasury.
Such pressure as there is will be to restrict fare rises and increase wages/jobs for rail workers - this will increase trade union bargaining power hugely - and investment will suffer accordingly.
Prepare for a deterioration or contraction of infrastructure, reduced service quality, poorer customer experience and older and more ramshackle rolling stock.
It’s hard to imagine a poorer service than the one we already get from TPE.
The BBC article refencers the TOC’s being moved into public ownership, But says nothing about the rolling stock.
I suspect they will want to keep both Alstom Derby and Hitachi going so will commit to new rolling stock.
It’s easy to imagine a worse service than TPE - try and get a seat on any cross country service from anywhere south of Darlington.
On Tuesday I caught a 5 carriage service to Manchester from here and was able to get a seat.
The train before that was the Edinburgh to Plymouth service, 3 carriages of which 1 was first class and the carriages were standing room only already.
And supposedly Arriva are way worse than cross country
So, what you're describing here is a problem of success - high passenger demand. Which requires more train paths, rolling stock, and infrastructure investment. Exactly the things nationalisation is poorly placed to offer.
Instead, it will deal with it by suppressing demand with a steadily corroding service as the money becomes more limited as is directed elsewhere.
An optimist believes things can’t get worse. A pessimist knows that they can.
First Minister Humza Yousaf will stage a rushed meeting of his Cabinet at 8.30am this morning amid pressure on him to ditch the Greens from Government.
A source declined to comment on the subject matter and refused to say if the SNP/Green deal is on the agenda.
The Greens are to hold an internal party vote on an agreement with the SNP that was signed in 2021.
But a growing number of SNP MSPs and MPs want Yousaf to axe the deal before the Greens walk away.
I hope they've thought this through. The last thing the SNP needs right now is a Scottish election.
Fixed term Parliament. The SNP will continue as a minority government. Arguably the SNP were so successful in the 2011 Scottish election because as a minority in 2007-2011 they couldn't/didn't really do anything controversial.
What on Earth were the Democrats thinking, to run Biden again this year aged 81? The guy should be enjoying what remains of his life with his wife and family, not spending the next six months in a different city every day, while simultaneously doing one of the most stressful jobs in the world. It’s one thing to give him a pile of drugs for a set-piece speech, but they can’t do that several times a day for months on end.
There are plenty of others that they could run, they have a couple of dozen Governors and four dozen Senators to choose from, but they’ve left it too late now. Will we see something happen at the Convention in August, or will Biden’s re-nomination be waved through?
It's an indictment of the system that the two great US PArties could not come up with two better candidates than Biden and Trump.
Are we in a position to criticise though? Our last three PMs were not even chosen by the electorate, and you couldn't easily portray any of them as a great success.
What I want to know,” says an exasperated SNP backbencher, “is how we’ve ended up with a leader being held to ransom by f***ing cranks.” The announcement by the Scottish Greens that there is to be an emergency meeting next month at which members will vote on the party’s continued participation in the power-sharing deal at Holyrood has provoked an already unhappy SNP group.
While Humza Yousaf has made public his hope that the so-called Bute House Agreement will endure, many of his colleagues would like to see the back of the Greens. There’s a growing feeling among SNP backbenchers that the First Minister should, rather than trying to tickle his colleagues’ tummies, call an end to their partnership.
The rail nationalization story is a big deal . For a variety of reasons , Labour have been accused of not having a clear direction , some saying what do they stand for . This is a headline grabbing proposal , the public can relate to this and it polls very well .
Whether it provides a better service only time will tell if Labour do win the GE .
It will certainly not provide a better service.
What it will do is make central government a constraint for funding through the DfT, which essentially means the Treasury.
Such pressure as there is will be to restrict fare rises and increase wages/jobs for rail workers - this will increase trade union bargaining power hugely - and investment will suffer accordingly.
Prepare for a deterioration or contraction of infrastructure, reduced service quality, poorer customer experience and older and more ramshackle rolling stock.
It’s hard to imagine a poorer service than the one we already get from TPE.
The BBC article refencers the TOC’s being moved into public ownership, But says nothing about the rolling stock.
I suspect they will want to keep both Alstom Derby and Hitachi going so will commit to new rolling stock.
Yes, such arguments are often responded to with "it couldn't be worse that what we have now" or "it couldn't be much worse than so and so" but that's just a failure of imagination and not an answer.
Oh yes it could. And it would be.
Several years back there was a YouGov which showed a significant age skew in attitude towards nationalisation. In brief, those who'd never experienced it jolly keen, those who had, much less so.
The issue is that railways are long term projects and need long term planning which is something neither central Government or term limited franchises seem interested in.
How you shift to a longer term focus is the billion dollar station.
Maintenance (maintaining existing infrastructure) Renewals (renewing life-expired infrastructure, which generally offer only small incremental performance gains) Enhancements (work that enhances the network, improves line speeds, or capacity, or electrification, etc).
Big-ticket items such as Crossrail and/or HS2 are often split away from this, even if the funding counts as rail investment.
CP8 is already being talked about, between 2029 and 2034.
The rail nationalization story is a big deal . For a variety of reasons , Labour have been accused of not having a clear direction , some saying what do they stand for . This is a headline grabbing proposal , the public can relate to this and it polls very well .
Whether it provides a better service only time will tell if Labour do win the GE .
It will certainly not provide a better service.
What it will do is make central government a constraint for funding through the DfT, which essentially means the Treasury.
Such pressure as there is will be to restrict fare rises and increase wages/jobs for rail workers - this will increase trade union bargaining power hugely - and investment will suffer accordingly.
Prepare for a deterioration or contraction of infrastructure, reduced service quality, poorer customer experience and older and more ramshackle rolling stock.
It’s hard to imagine a poorer service than the one we already get from TPE.
The BBC article refencers the TOC’s being moved into public ownership, But says nothing about the rolling stock.
I suspect they will want to keep both Alstom Derby and Hitachi going so will commit to new rolling stock.
Yes, such arguments are often responded to with "it couldn't be worse that what we have now" or "it couldn't be much worse than so and so" but that's just a failure of imagination and not an answer.
Oh yes it could. And it would be.
Several years back there was a YouGov which showed a significant age skew in attitude towards nationalisation. In brief, those who'd never experienced it jolly keen, those who had, much less so.
The issue is that railways are long term projects and need long term planning which is something neither central Government or term limited franchises seem interested in.
How you shift to a longer term focus is the billion dollar station.
Maintenance (maintaining existing infrastructure) Renewals (renewing life-expired infrastructure, which generally offer only small incremental performance gains) Enhancements (work that enhances the network, improves line speeds, or capacity, or electrification, etc).
Big-ticket items such as Crossrail and/or HS2 are often split away from this, even if the funding counts as rail investment.
CP8 is already being talked about, between 2029 and 2034.
The five year periods are better than in many places, but there is still a strong element of teams being wound down at the end of one control period and then built back up at the start of the next, so there's a loss of continuity and corporate knowledge.
I've heard a few stories about the way things have been done at Network Rail that reflect this lack of institutional knowledge. Creates work for other people to come in later and clean up the mess I guess.
I remember him. Was an irritating, self-important poster who signed off every post with “Bunco, your man on the spot”.
He was a Tory shill as I recall.
He was a Tory agent not a shill. Was upfront about the fact he was getting paid by them!
I recall him as a useful local informant, particularly useful to those of us punting serious money on elections.
Since that is the site's usp, he could be cut a great deal of slack, shill or not.
I’m not sure I see a great different between an agent and an activist in terms of bias. So long as they are transparent that’s fine
There’s plenty of councillors, activists, agents, and even the occasional MP on here. So long as people aren’t deliberately misrepresenting themselves, no problem.
Comments
So the only fix is longer trains or more accurately returning them to the length they used to be because the old cross country trains s were 6/7 carriages long and not 3.
And I don’t think I said nationalization is a solution here - the only thing I care about is long term planning with a plan for rolling improvements so work can be sanely planned and we stop the current start / stop / start again madness
As well as this, it will be handing even more power to the DfT or its replacement - and they're the problem atm.
As for Wolmar: he's a bit of an idiot IMO. He's not a reliable voice about the industry, as he sees what he wants to see, not what's there. Although that's a problem we can all suffer from...
NEW THREAD
Are we in a position to criticise though? Our last three PMs were not even chosen by the electorate, and you couldn't easily portray any of them as a great success.
While Humza Yousaf has made public his hope that the so-called Bute House Agreement will endure, many of his colleagues would like to see the back of the Greens. There’s a growing feeling among SNP backbenchers that the First Minister should, rather than trying to tickle his colleagues’ tummies, call an end to their partnership.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/snp-msps-are-getting-heartily-sick-of-being-tied-to-scottish-green-cranks-euan-mccolm-4601467
There are three main areas:
Maintenance (maintaining existing infrastructure)
Renewals (renewing life-expired infrastructure, which generally offer only small incremental performance gains)
Enhancements (work that enhances the network, improves line speeds, or capacity, or electrification, etc).
Big-ticket items such as Crossrail and/or HS2 are often split away from this, even if the funding counts as rail investment.
CP8 is already being talked about, between 2029 and 2034.
I've heard a few stories about the way things have been done at Network Rail that reflect this lack of institutional knowledge. Creates work for other people to come in later and clean up the mess I guess.