Just been reading this on MSN............
Interesting stuff but please keep any comments within the forum Code of Conduct because sometimes these articles can spark a heated debate!:
http://money.uk.msn.com/features/how-we-could-get-cheaper-rail-fares (http://money.uk.msn.com/features/how-we-could-get-cheaper-rail-fares)
We all know the main cause is the profit-on-profit-on-profit system of Privatisation we have now that just lines the pockets of shareholders, nothing to debate there ;)
Paul
I thought from the topic it was a way of getting code 55 at a discount! :doh: Jon
If we never pumped money into other countries and kept our own country in modernisation there would be no need for fair increases, but we have to prop up other countries and hold hands with people who do not give 2 hoots about us.
Quote from: PostModN66 on August 14, 2013, 12:12:21 PM
I thought from the topic it was a way of getting code 55 at a discount! :doh: Jon
:laughabovepost: :laughabovepost: :laughabovepost: :laughabovepost: :laughabovepost:
Renationalising the network would save enough to bring fares down, improve services and return more money to the tax payer. In truth most of our railways are nationalised anyway - they belong variously to Deutsche Bahn (the German state) and SNCF (The French) plus a few others. Even in the freight market only Freightliner of the big ones is actually truely a private company. DRS is owned by the UK government through nuclear decomissioning, EWS is Deutsche Bahn.
So it's not even "privatised" for the most part it's simply subsidizing French and German railways, which is really really silly.
On the current subsidy levels British Railways would be scratching its head trying to think of enough projects to spend all the extra money on.
Other countries have re-nationalised to get their railways working again. The big ones that didn't have also scuppered the EU attempts to enforce the British disaster model on the entire EU.
Alan
I think experience shows that railways need to be run by a single entity, and that splitting it up, whether privately or publicly owned, is inefficient in day-to-day operations and extremely expensive in the long run.
The capital costs of anything railway connected need to be written off over a minimum of 20 years, which is completely outside the remit of the current franchise model. And leasing just lines the pockets of the finance providers whilst providing sub-optimal resources at best due to compromises that have to made.
Quote from: EtchedPixels on August 14, 2013, 01:50:01 PM
Other countries have re-nationalised to get their railways working again. The big ones that didn't have also scuppered the EU attempts to enforce the British disaster model on the entire EU.
Who'd have thought the Daily Telegraph (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100065250/time-to-nationalise-the-railways-again/) (or at least one its writers) would be arguing for re-nationalisation!
Cheers, NeMo
Depends when you travel. If you have to for work or business then you're stuffed but bargains are there.
Last week my daughter came to visit and she paid £34 single Bromley South to New Milton. Going home we got a first class advance single for £19 - standard single was £2 cheaper. That's nearly £5 (first) or £7 (second) cheaper than my retired TfL staff PTAC will get me.
Today PTAC day return Victoria via Clapham Junction £22 - accompanying child - my grand daughter - £2. Moral of this story - choose your time of travel carefully and/or get a railway job.
Quote from: 1018509 on August 15, 2013, 11:56:31 PM
Moral of this story - choose your time of travel carefully and/or get a railway job.
Moral is : it is way too complicated trying to economically travel by train to anywhere that I want to go, from anywhere that I can get to.
And without the possibility that I am being ripped off !
(It is way beyond my brain power to comprehend the pricing structure )
Result is that I have not been near a (non preserved) train in decades
I just jump in my car when it pleases me, go where I want when I want (but I nolonger live in London :) ) simples.
I am a child of Beeching , (runs for cover >> )
Quote from: PostModN66 on August 14, 2013, 12:12:21 PM
I thought from the topic it was a way of getting code 55 at a discount! :doh: Jon
Yer, me too ! LOL!
or a special offer from Wayne !!
,, goes back to sleep ,,
Quote from: RChook on August 16, 2013, 01:28:19 AM
(It is way beyond my brain power to comprehend the pricing structure )
And you probably don't understand how airline fares work either, but that's the model they're after. Hardly anyone turns up at Heathrow and demands a return flight to New York; they book ahead, possibly months ahead, and will review dozens of flights before picking one that fits their needs and budget.
Train operating companies want you to do the same thing, and to some degree so do London bus and tube train operators too: look at the price differences between regular fares and Oyster card fares (Oyster cards being, in effect, collections of pre-paid advance fares). I suppose the advantage is that the operating companies can distribute their resources better (i.e., trains, buses and staff) if they know precisely when most of their passengers are travelling. They can also encourage travellers who want cheaper fares to travel on less busy trains, which offsets the expense of running them (and is perhaps one way to ensure trains run through all the day instead of just at peak times).
The problem is of course that train travel is different to air travel. We don't take spur of the moment flights to go shopping or visit friends and we're often obliged to take train travel for work. By contrast we expect air travel to be expensive, a hassle, and generally unpleasant, but because it's only occasional, we put up with that as necessary to the outcome of international travel.
Ironically one of the train operating companies has made a £800 million profit (http://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/06/east-coast-rail-services-show-another-model-can-work/) and delivered a good service, East Coast, and it's owned by the government (albeit through a holding company). So the taxpayer gets that £800 million. Of course the government is anxious to sell this franchise off once more, which seems crazy to me given how the government surely could use all the money it can lay its hands on, but there you go. If you want to voice your opinions on this, write to the Secretary of State for Transport, Patrick MacLoughlin (http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/mr-patrick-mcloughlin/333), ideally via Department for Transport, Great Minster House, 33 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 4DR.
Writing to your MP can be surprisingly influential. They get very little snail mail these days but take letters very seriously because they show effort and passion about an issue (something e-mails don't necessarily, given how cheap they are how easily they can be sent out). At the very least you get the satisfaction of knowing you've contributed to the discussion rather than just whinged about the outcome.
Cheers, NeMo
What boggles my mind is why we are privatised. A model that really is not working or should I say benefitting the UK tax payer/public?
All this nonsense about EU rules telling us to do so.........
If I remember correctly both SNCF, NS , DB, SNCB are still state owned and running a better and cheaper service compared to the majority of UK rail companies.
Quote from: OwL on August 16, 2013, 09:11:31 AM
All this nonsense about EU rules telling us to do so.........
If I remember correctly both SNCF, NS , DB, SNCB are still state owned and running a better and cheaper service compared to the majority of UK rail companies.
It's actually a bit more nuanced than this. There certainly was an EU Directive (91/440 if you're interested) that basically meant there should be open access to railway infrastructure. In other words, a French railway company should be able to run trains across German tracks, and vice versa. Or put another way, if someone wanted to run their trains in Italy, they should have the right to do so, alongside the national Italian railway company.
Like a lot of EU legislation, the intent was reasonable: to get rid of the virtual monopolies on train travel within each country by allowing more than one train operating company to exist in each country, making competition easier. Prior to this EU directive, it would be impossible for a company to create its own trains running from, say, France to Greece, carrying freight or passengers and passing through multiple national rail networks.
But privatisation in the UK was driven by ideology; Conservatives fundamentally believe that
by default the private sector does a better job at running things than the private sector unless there's an overriding reason (like national security) to believe otherwise. The need to reduce the amount of money the government was giving to the railways was another issue, and an important one. At the time it seemed like a huge amount of taxpayer's money being spent on something only a fraction of the country actually used on a regular basis. (In hindsight, given the size of subsidies now, it was arguably a bargain!)
Rail privatisation met the needs of the EU directive, and there probably is real competition in the freight sector; but I think it's debatable whether it created real competition so far as the traveller goes. Yes, there are two three operating companies on my stretch of the WCML, but Virgin, London Midland and Southern don't really offer comparable services, so choosing between them is Hobson's choice.
It is inexplicable to me why German and other state-owned but technically privately-owned railways can work extremely well, and profitably, yet the UK government can't come up with a comparable system here. It also annoys me greatly when the UK government of the day blames the EU for things the UK government gets wrong, but readily takes the credit for anything that the EU has helped it to do properly!
Cheers, NeMo
Thanks NeMo,
A very informative post and has answered my question.
I personally think that we should put passenger travel back in public hands, but encourage open access and privatization in the freight sectors.
The state owned railway should then look at operating to at least break even it's operation costs but at the same time collect payment from private rail companies and plough this back into railways.....
I think BR sectorisation proved how well was working before privatisation.
However what do I know?! The suits in Whitehall obviously know better :confused1:
Hello all,
Unlike most, I'm a fan of rail privatisation though I do think the model adopted in the UK (one entity operates the track, then leases out paths to other companies) is flawed.
Ideology aside the question really is why doesn't the Government just extend its control to all fares, not just regulated ones, and order that pricing structures are kept simple? It could allow companies to make a fair profit, while allowing enough for reinvestment and to plan for growth.
The problem is profit. In the relatively high-inflation era of the 1980s and 1990s it came to be expected that profits had to keep going up. Now we have low inflation, but that high-profit mindset remains, and even a successful business can be considered a failure if it is not constantly growing and increasing its dividends. And those dividends are paid to shareholders, many of whom are corporate institutions such as pension funds. And who would begrudge pensioners maximum return for their investments?
My personal view is that we need to have some kind of re-alignment of economic thinking, such that social impact, strategic importance to UKPLC and long-term environmental effects are given as much weight as raw profits in certain areas of public/private decision making. But with Governments elected for 5 years at a time I am struggling to see how this can happen.
cheers
Ben A.
Quote from: OwL on August 16, 2013, 09:11:31 AM
What boggles my mind is why we are privatised. A model that really is not working or should I say benefitting the UK tax payer/public?
If I remember correctly both SNCF, NS , DB, SNCB are still state owned and running a better and cheaper service compared to the majority of UK rail companies.
On the first point - I am not sure that is correct. Despite the myriad mess that privatisation has caused there is little doubt that the railways are better and more people use them than ever (or at least for a long time). So it becomes difficult to tell is that in part because of privatisation or in spite of privatisation! There has been substantial investment in infrastructure and stock - though again could BR have done better with the same funds, we just don't know.
On other rail systems - I think it is convenient sometimes to think the grass is greener, but close scrutiny may not bear up. Of the two systems I have most experience of: SNCB a lot of the stock is pretty jaded and nowhere near as nice as much of ours, furthermore they must have massive costs in unused stock which sits around during the day and is only used for peak services. SNCF - go outside the TGV network (which is excellent and cheap) and things aren't very rosy at all with large parts of the country unserved or poorly served.
My feeling is that the desperation of the Tories to get the railways privatised has left us with lots of disconnected thinking eg TOCs v ROSCOs v infrastructure instead of joined up thinking. For a lot of lines the only competition is the franchising process and the rest of the time genuine competition is actually prohibited by the franchise agreements. I completely agree with NeMo that the mantra that privatisation must be good was what seemed to drive all this.
I don't feel strongly one way or another about public/private ownership of the railways provided we (the public) are getting "value" for money...which of course means different things to different people!
Cheers, Mike
This thread is like reading the Daily Telegraph! If you are in favour of privately owned rail operations
then the user should pay , if that means £20 for a 20 minute journey so be it. However the present
situation is extremely complicated with public money and foreign ownership being involved, and the track
owned by a different organisation. In general I think most people would agree that train travel is better
than it was in the past, I can remember commuting on stinking DMUs with slam doors that broke down
3 times a week. Also nowadays there are fewer of the national rail strikes that used to plague the country,
although that may be due to trade union legislation. It is always difficult to compare with European rail
systems as in the UK much of the rail operation involves the spider's web of the SE with huge numbers
of commuters complaining about fare increases. In Europe the big cities like Munich, Paris, Rome etc are
nowhere near the size of London and the long distance commuter is less common (eg the Suffolk - London
types) . The situation will roll on and on, there'll be men walking on Mars before HS2 reaches Watford.
But that's the way we like it !
PS best value rail fare is the Scotrail Club 55, anywhere in Jockshire for about £19 return.
Quote from: Agrippa on August 16, 2013, 11:59:54 AM
The situation will roll on and on, there'll be men walking on Mars before HS2 reaches Watford.
But that's the way we like it !
PS best value rail fare is the Scotrail Club 55, anywhere in Jockshire for about £19 return.
:laughabovepost: :laughabovepost: :laughabovepost:
Well said :thumbsup:
Whatever the pros and cons of are private vs public ownership, it has pretty much been proven that the current franchising model does not provide value for money and is being propped up by a discredited Transport Department for ideological reasons.
If the government wantd to make a "quick win", I would suggest going down the London Overground route and operate all routes on a concession basis, which seems to be working.
I'm also in favour of a national identity for trains and stations - a good two-pack paintjob can last for 15 years on a train, longer than any franchise! A quality corporate image, such as Scotrail have adopted should be a given.
Quote from: captainelectra on August 16, 2013, 01:12:41 PM
If the government wantd to make a "quick win", I would suggest going down the London Overground route and operate all routes on a concession basis, which seems to be working.
Isn't that essentially all the franchise model is ie a type of concession? I'm not sure I understand why there would be a difference - you say concession, I say franchise... :D
Cheers, Mike
Quote from: OwL on August 16, 2013, 09:11:31 AM
What boggles my mind is why we are privatised. A model that really is not working or should I say benefitting the UK tax payer/public?
Because the conservative government of the 1980s believed in 'free markets' and that they fixed everything by magic. They privatised a whole pile of things that turned out to be a good plan and several that turned out to be a disaster (unsurprisingly enough those that are natural monopolies - rail, water, gas, electricity, bus services)
Quote
All this nonsense about EU rules telling us to do so.........
If I remember correctly both SNCF, NS , DB, SNCB are still state owned and running a better and cheaper service compared to the majority of UK rail companies.
The EU rules were the fault of the British. We tried to infect the rest of Europe with our disaster. The other nations (notably France and Germany) recently ensured the regulations got gutted rather than tightened. Many of the EU rules we female dog (changed by forum) about were actually created by the British governments (and civil service) in the EU because they knew they couldn't get it through their own parliament. "Brussels washing" is standard policy technique all over europe nowdays.
Northern Ireland btw still has a state owned rail service and Network Rail is effectively a state owned company. Scotland and Wales are both trying to work out if they can de-privatise their passenger services.
Alan
Quote from: red_death on August 16, 2013, 11:19:06 AM
On other rail systems - I think it is convenient sometimes to think the grass is greener, but close scrutiny may not bear up. Of the two systems I have most experience of: SNCB a lot of the stock is pretty jaded and nowhere near as nice as much of ours, furthermore they must have massive costs in unused stock which sits around during the day and is only used for peak services. SNCF - go outside the TGV network (which is excellent and cheap) and things aren't very rosy at all with large parts of the country unserved or poorly served.
The purpose of a train is to get you from A to B on time and preferably at a reasonable price. My experience of mainland Europe is that they do just that.
You are wrong about unused stock. Unused stock has a relatively low cost except under a broken franchising scheme where you have to lease all your trains at vastly overinflated prices. British Rail could run relief services because they had older stock parked up. When summer came you just gave it a service and a clean up. Most of the costs on rolling stock are mileage based. Park it in a siding and its cheap.
Quote
My feeling is that the desperation of the Tories to get the railways privatised has left us with lots of disconnected thinking eg TOCs v ROSCOs v infrastructure instead of joined up thinking
That was actually not the fault of the tories but the civil service. John Major actually talked at length about how he wanted to simply privatise the railways as a single unit on the basis the competition was road and air and at various other proposals that the unelected powers then blocked.
Alan
Cheaper rail ? About as likely as Janet Street - Porter being the next Bond girl.
And don't mention the Edinburgh trams !
These ?
THE DEMISE OF THE EDINBURGH TRAM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nMwT_aYgM#)
:smiley-laughing:
As a resident of Edinburgh (well, just outside...) I have decided to adopt a simple approach to the trams debacle, which has political infighting and points scoring all over it...
I like trams.
I want to see trams.
Let's have trams.
It has to be an improvement over facefuls of diesel exhaust...
And a tram to the airport appeals much more than a bus.
As a frequent visitor to Auld Reekie (which I like) I can appreciate Luke P 's remarks and hope that
the project gets completed,though I don't think it will be to the same extent as originally planned.
It's just that it has been a fiasco of monumental proportions carried out by amateurs and few , if
any will admit to blame.
Quote from: NeMo on August 16, 2013, 08:44:30 AM
And you probably don't understand how airline fares work either, but that's the model they're after.
Umm, perhaps not, but I thank you for your extensive reply. I bow to your superior understanding !
But my chum who lives in Edinburgh frequently visits me ( near Bristol) and he either flies or drives !
So that says summat as well :)
Or does he not understand rail fares either ?
So basically what you are saying is that the rail companies have not effectively marketed their products in a way that dumbos like me (and my chum) can understand and take advantage of ?
Hahaaaa. What a fail of marketing !
Quote from: Agrippa on August 16, 2013, 02:42:45 PM
Cheaper rail ? About as likely as Janet Street - Porter being the next Bond girl.
Lol!
Hold that thought,
I've had my say,
I'm outta here :) :)
Ah, my point wasn't that you (or I for that matter) are dumb, but rather the fares system is deliberately complicated so that it allows for lots and LOTS of different fares for any one journey.
I believe it's all to do with marketing. What something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it. If you have 700 seats on a train, you could suppose that there'll be 70 who'll be willing one top price, 70 who'll pay another slightly lower price, and so on. By making some cheap seats available you catch one section of the market, but you don't want to sell all the train at the cheapest price because you could make lots more money selling to people who'd be willing to pay more. For some trains you wouldn't want any cheap seats being sold because that train runs at a time of highest demand. The problem for most customers is that they want to travel at periods of high demand (like Friday evening out of London) rather than low demand (3 AM on a Saturday morning pretty much anywhere).
So anyway, to cut a long story short, it's the same thing in hotels as well as airlines. In hotels there's a nominal "rack rate" for room X on night Y, but in reality you'd often sell it at some discount from that depending on demand. That's how all those online offers for hotels work. Of course you don't sell all your rooms at that night, but only on nights that you aren't busy -- half price is better than no price at all. Weekend nights and summer holidays you'd charge peak rate, but mid week in November, perhaps rather less.
Cheers, NeMo
Quote from: RChook on August 17, 2013, 02:12:28 AM
Quote from: NeMo on August 16, 2013, 08:44:30 AM
And you probably don't understand how airline fares work either, but that's the model they're after.
Umm, perhaps not, but I thank you for your extensive reply. I bow to your superior understanding !
The fare system was insane under British Rail as well - it's merely got worse because they've been able to vary them this way and that a bit from the British Rail basis but not simply overhaul the lot.
Many European mainland countries have a much simpler system which is basically
rate per mile + additions for 'express' services/sleeper/etc + additions for peak hours
which eliminates much of the complete insanity
Alan
Quote from: NeMo on August 17, 2013, 08:22:03 AM
What something is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it.
Ok yes I think I see where you are coming from (but you didnt get here by rail, ooops, sorry, couldnt resist!;) )
But I think my essential point was that I have neither the time nor inclination to play their pricing games.
I have a car anyway, needed here this far out in the sticks so the capital amortization and other fixed cost dont figure, so I'm left comparing cost to get to the rail, cost of rail, cost of getting from rail to destination and lost time whilst engaging all those functions !
AND a great bonus is that I can call in at friends or shops intermediat with just a small change of direction
Sorry, I'll just continue to jump in my car when it suits me till rail travel becomes so economic that I cant resist it ! Some hope, LOL!
I can see great advantage for mass commuters to to get to their place of work, but that is a commercial decision, why should I pay for them via my taxes. Commuting should be privatised, totally.
(is this getting a bit too political ? then I shall desist , lol !)
/rant ;)
I did look at changing from driving to work to travelling by train.
drive door to door is around 20-25 minutes, and I arrive at work / home dry.
by train - 10 minutes walk to the station, 10 minute train ride, change, wait, another 10 minute train ride, 15 minute walk from station to work. total without cancellations, leaves on the line etc around 45 minutes.
finish a night shift on sunday morning, and you'll hang around for nearly an hour before you can get a train.
cost of petrol was about £20 a set of shifts, and I could leave for home when I got relieved, no rushing to catch a train at a set time, or wait around for ages for the next one.
cost by train was around £40 a set of shifts, took ages longer, and would probably get me to work wet / cold.
I know you have to factor in road tax, insurance, depreciation, but that's there whether I'm driving the car or not.
so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.
and I would imagine there are tons of other people in the same situation as me.
unless you live where the railway wants you to, and travel to where they want you to, and to all intents when they want you to [ie commuters on very overpriced routes at peak times] the railways are not interested.
and as for the idea that the passenger pays today for the railway to then improve services in several years time [when no doubt they'll then increase the fares again because of the improvements in stock etc] is just obscene.
it would not work in any other situation.
they would need to improve their product or service, and then charge more for the better service, not expect the user to pay for the improvements before getting them.
what happened to the idea of firms investing to improve their products or services, rather than holding their customers to ransom while making huge profits which are not invested.
rant over
Quote from: class37025 on August 18, 2013, 02:00:09 AM
cost of petrol was about £20 a set of shifts, and I could leave for home when I got relieved, no rushing to catch a train at a set time, or wait around for ages for the next one.
cost by train was around £40 a set of shifts, took ages longer, and would probably get me to work wet / cold.
I know you have to factor in road tax, insurance, depreciation, but that's there whether I'm driving the car or not.
so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.
Couldnt agree more !
And that is one reason why goods delivery exited rail way back in 50/60s
So why should we in the sticks continue to subsidise bankers (and others ) commuting ? Lets not
yet get into the monstrosity (Victorian thinking) of HS2!
or put it another way, what is it with this fixation with railways
? ooops ! Wrong forum ;) lol!
Quote from: class37025 on August 18, 2013, 02:00:09 AM
so overall, it's cheaper, more convenient, quicker, and more flexible to drive than use the train.
In many cases, yes.
Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances. That is what railways do best, and it's still what they do best. With minimal intervention from government, freight of this type remains profitable and privatisation has more or less worked well here.
If you stand at a station on a major main line, you'll likely see quite a few block freight trains carrying just one type of good (or containers) being moved from one location to another. Rail handles this sort of thing competitively with road haulage, which is why rain freight is doing so well. Moreover, just as privatisation was meant to do, the locomotives hauling otherwise similar freight trains could come from one of several different companies.
On the other hand, mixed goods trains were a hassle for railways, uneconomical to handle at the goods yards at every station, and only carried at all because government forced them to do so. This was because of something called the "common carrier" requirement that meant railways had to carry whatever was asked of them, however small and trivial. Hence cattle trucks, pigeon vans, and goodness knows how many different boxes and sacks stowed away in those 12-ton vans.
As for passenger transport, that was always dicey in terms of economics. The big routes with express trains can be profitable because they're a lot like block freight trains: a large amount of something, people, being moved from one place to another very quickly; but a lot of secondary lines that stop all over the place to drop off a few people at a time operate at a loss. Because of that, many shorter trips will be served by infrequent trains, so they aren't always convenient. The need to minimise financial losses means tickets will be proportionally more expensive, so these sorts of trips aren't cheap. Basically, the best bargains are on profitable lines because those are the ones railway companies can afford to "give away" at times of low traffic, hence your £10 returns between London and Manchester, albeit not during peak hours and by advanced booking only.
In any event, travelling by train has never really be cheap, and even if the ticket price seemed lower in the past, don't forget that your taxes were subsidising that (including, of course, car tax and petrol duty, so in a sense motorists were subsidising, and continue to subsidise, train travel).
Most of my commuting is done by train and bus. In fact I'm only just learning to drive, aged 42. If you live in or around London, cars are a bit of an expensive luxury and you can get around car usage very easily. Now I'm married and living out in the country, learning to drive is a bit more important. But I do enjoy train travel, and if nothing else, train travel has other benefits beyond cost, including being more environmentally friendly (though this aspect is sometimes overstated by "greens" that are hostile to cars on principle).
Cheers, NeMo
Quote from: NeMo on August 18, 2013, 07:49:40 AM
Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances.
No they were not.
Railways were invented to move all sorts of stuff more rapidly from A to B than by horse or canal and in the early days of rail many of the lines carried a wide mix of goods and passenger services.
The very earliest railways came out of plateways and thus from edged waggonways many of which were tolled and took any traffic from any merchant whose waggons were with the specifications laid down by the company operating the waggonway.
It wasn't until 1803 that the notion of a "public" tramroad obliged to serve all customers emerged. The first approved being the Surrey and the first in operation being in Llanelli.
The early railways operated on the same principle. In the beginning the Stockton and Darlington had a variety of operators and actually ended up buying out the rights of various horse drawn operators as steam improved and they became a nuisance.
Several early railways were built primarily and profitably for passenger traffic - the North London Railway by 1863 was a commuter railway running through braked fixed formation trains on a clockface timetable that wouldn't look out of place today. Likewise while the Metropolitan considered freight part of its business most of the underground did not. An unfortunate mistake for modern congested London.
Note that
- the government meddles intensively in both road and rail freight (even extreme fans of the private sector like Thatcher did so)
- all but one of the main 'private' operators isn't in fact private. Your freight is hauled by DRS (the UK goverment), EWS (The German government) or Freightliner (actually a real company)
Mixed goods is a complicated story. For far too long the state set tariffs on freight. In the early days this was needed as most railways were basically monopolies. Unfortunately they didn't adjust those tariffs sensibly which meant that as handling costs rose (mostly due to wages) the railways were forced to charge bogus amounts. It reached the point that stuff was driven down the motorways and then offloaded into trains for the final local delivery. Had they not messed this up then the same would have occurred as in telecoms where there was a gradual shift in fixed line costs from distance to end points (ie your mileage went down and your per item cost went up). Had that been done right then there would have been a far more optimal balancing.
(The same btw is happening now and destroying the Royal Mail - politicians never learn)
Prior to nationalisation all the big four companies saw themselves as transport companies not railway companies. They owned bus and coach services, they owned air services. They were not naïve and were trying to integrate road, rail and air despite the broken government inflicted tariffs. In 1928 the government had another meddle to stpo the railway companies owning the bus companies to ensure competition. By 1933 the railway companies owned things like Pickfords (which is why it ended up nationalised for so long). They owned Railway Air Services (except the LNER). They owned chunks of Thomas Cook.
Nationalisation broke this completely by splitting all the rail parts off from the road freight parts from the passenger coach services. More broken state meddling with good intent.
So it's important to remember
- The railways were in the road freight and coach businesses. Indeed the GWR had done things like replace some passenger services with a bus when it made more economic sense
- It's silly to look at the early days of the railways compared with today. In 1860 the alternative to the railway was a horsedrawn coach. It wasn't until the end of WW2 that diesel or petrol based road vehicles were actually reliable.
(and the government flogged off lots of war surplus lorries just post war thereby bu**ering up things even more by combining broke tariffs with state funding the road freight industry)
What has happened since then is containerisation which revolutionised all sorts of handling - especially shipping. That keeps your handling costs way down but at the cost of higher per milage bills (as you are paying to move metal boxes round and round without delivering the box)
The other reason any simple analysis is flawed is externalities. The commercial value of many rail links isn't the train fares, it's the vast money saved on more road building, compulsory purchase and demolition of paths through towns and cities, pollution, deaths, crime etc...
Block freight makes good money, but if you look at the USA you'll see that most US traffic is not block freight, its mixed wagons. High speed rail can also make good money. The intensive commuter network probably would make reasonable money too if someone removed the overhead of all the franchise nonsense.
It was always regional rail in BR days that lost money hand over foot but even chunks of that were beginning to turn around by privatisation, both as numbers rose and as the infrastructure got vastly more efficient - centralising signalling, using things like hydraulic points, electronic radio tokens, cctv based level crossing monitoring and so on.
Entertainingly we are now going back to the 1920s model sort of. Transport for London and 'Overground' and the like are integrating transport the passenger side of things the way the big four were doing. The proposals for giving other cities more control are much the same.
We have some other problems too - much of the network is maintained to very high standards and required to be by all sorts of over-reaching legislation. There isn't a good process for saying 'this is a 25mph freight only link for god sake get a clue'
(EWS for example reckoned they could save a ton of money on such freight only end links if they were allowed to maintain them directly and manage them in an appropriate manner)
Alan
Quote from: EtchedPixels on August 18, 2013, 02:41:43 PM
Quote from: NeMo on August 18, 2013, 07:49:40 AM
Remember that railways were invented to move large quantities of a single good (specifically, coal) from one place to another across medium to long distances.
No they were not.
I stand corrected!
Quote from: EtchedPixels on August 18, 2013, 02:41:43 PM
(The same btw is happening now and destroying the Royal Mail - politicians never learn)
How so? I don't really understand why Royal Mail does badly when the amount of stuff being mail ordered is going up all the time! I've never had so much stuff delivered to my door in my entire life!
Cheers, NeMo
The Royal Mail is obliged to do door to door delivery of mail that is bulk processed by other parcel and courier type commercial businesses, and at extremely low prices.
Quote from: RChook on August 18, 2013, 01:21:40 AM
I have a car anyway, needed here this far out in the sticks so the capital amortization and other fixed cost dont figure, so I'm left comparing cost to get to the rail, cost of rail, cost of getting from rail to destination and lost time whilst engaging all those functions !
AND a great bonus is that I can call in at friends or shops intermediat with just a small change of direction
A common temptation (to ignore the costs) but still incorrect.
Quote from: RChook on August 18, 2013, 01:21:40 AM
I can see great advantage for mass commuters to to get to their place of work, but that is a commercial decision, why should I pay for them via my taxes. Commuting should be privatised, totally.
Regardless of the politics you are forgetting the social utility of rail travel, or the impact of having X commuters dumped on the road etc. If you could present a convincing case looking at all the economic, social and environmental factors then we might be able to evaluate whether your statement is fair or not. Given that commuting is largely on the well-used lines I doubt you are subsidising those parts of the network very much, as historically it was the regional operations which needed subsidising...
A lot of the cross country operations are now very successful. British Rail ran few services and used hand me down stock as it was seen as a necessary evil and loss maker.
Virgin for all their faults realised that running a crap service with ancient stock might be the cause not the result and from that the voyagers and the regular cross country services were born. They actually wanted to run on a 15 minute pattern with short trains but Railcrack couldn't deliver that.
The fact most voyagers are stuffed like sardine tins is a testimony to how successfully they turned around the services.
Likewise other poor irregular services were turned around with regular decent services. The Birmingham cross-city services being a fine example. When I was young Sutton Coldfield was an hourly (at best) slow trip in a cold damp empty DMU. Now its about every 8 minutes, electrified and busy.
I do agree with other commentators on that fact trains don't make sense for everything. Some of the routes that were lost make vastly more sense as coach and bus services and a well loaded coach is actually very good on carbon footprint, if not so good on particulates.
Another awkward problem is that there is some evidence that trains are now way more popular because the fares are higher. They priced a certain class of people off the train which made the better off use them.