Northern Rail

[andyhinch]

yh, don't.

I don't get the warning or don't bank on the timetable ?

 

[bluethrunthru]

I've been trying to sort train times out to east Didsbury, I basically get a warning saying don't count on it.

Hell of a way to run a train service eh? Don't try and get to the lakes - annoyingly when David Brown the head honcho of Northern Rail had it put to him on Northwest Tonight when he said they hadn't abandoned the lakes for 2 weeks they were running a replacement bus service and Roger Johnson said isn't it ironic they were better at running a bus service than a rail service Brown actually had to suppress a snigger. Absolute disgrace.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

I don't get the warning or don't bank on the timetable ?

bank on the timetable.

 

[bluethrunthru]

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was succeeded by John Major as leader of the Conservative Party at the end of 1990. The Thatcher administration had already sold off nearly all the former state-owned industries, apart from the national rail network. Although the previous Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson had advocated some form of privately or semi-privately operated rail network, this was deemed 'a privatisation too far' by Thatcher herself.[10] In its manifesto for the 1992 general election the Conservatives included a commitment to privatise the railways, but were not specific about how this objective was to be achieved.[11] The manifesto claimed that "The best way to produce profound and lasting improvements on the railways is to end BR’s state monopoly.”

Facts

UK rail privatisation has created passenger growth

• Growth in rail passenger journeys is driven by three key factors that have nothing to do with train operating companies: longterm growth in GDP, changing commuting patterns as employment has concentrated in major urban areas, particularly in London and the South East, and increase in motoring costs.
• The 59 per cent increase in passenger growth on the UK railways has also been stimulated by the 300 per cent increase in public subsidy since privatisation.

UK rail privatisation has resulted in new investment and innovation

• Over 90 per cent of new investment in the railways in recent years has been financed by public sector body Network Rail, and comes mainly from taxpayer funding or government-underwritten borrowing.
• Genuine at-risk private investment in the railway in 2010–11 lay somewhere in the range of £100m–£380m, with the figure most probably lying at the lower end. In the same year, other sources of income for the railway – public money and the fare box – contributed £10.6bn.

UK rail privatisation has resulted in cheaper and better services for passengers

• Since rail privatisation in 1995 up to 2015, all tickets (regulated and unregulated) have increased by an average of 117 per cent, or by 24 per cent in real terms.
• UK railways are slower and more overcrowded than predominantly publicly owned
  rail services in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

UK rail privatisation is a better deal for the taxpayer

• The cost of running the railway has more than doubled in real terms since privatisation from £2.4bn per year (1990–91 to 1994–95) to approximately £5.4bn per year (2005–06 to 2009–10).
• Official figures show that all but one of the private train operators in the UK receive more in subsidies than they return in the form of franchise payments to the government. In 2013–14, the government contributed £3.8bn to the UK rail industry.
• The top five recipients of public subsidy alone received almost £3bn in taxpayer support between 2007 and 2011. This allowed them to make operating profits of £504m – over 90 per cent (£466m) of which was paid to shareholders.

Grayling wants the East Coast mainline back in private ownership asap.

 

[Fame Monster]

Should be nationalised with the profits being passed onto customers for cheaper travel although I've read that would only amount to between a 3-10% reduction.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Should be nationalised with the profits being passed onto customers for cheaper travel although I've read that would only amount to between a 3-10% reduction.

that would probably equate to no rises for 3 years - commuters would welcome that compared with how they have been fleeced I am sure.

 

[jonmcity]

Travel around the rest of Europe and the trains are cheap clean and reliable. UK just the opposite.

 

[DontLookBackInAnger]

Most of my life I worked for the railways both in the UK and overseas, I now(thankfully) have no connection to them. However I'm happy to answer any operational questions that you might have in regards to such matters.

I would make one point that I think is very important in regards to railways in the UK and privatisation I had the misfortune to work at the tailend of British Rail in the UK and the lack of investment was staggering so when the government talk about how much the railways have improved since leaving the public sector its worth keeping in mind it was off the back of 20 years of underinvestment.

For me the key issue is(and indeed it's something not unique to the UK)is what are railways? are they a business or are they a public service, if you go back to Beeching Report he clearly saw it in dollars and cents and whole communities died. Does the government have a strategic responsibility to provide a sustainable transportation network(be it road rail air sea), or doesn't, if it does is the private sector capable of delivery?

To be honest until we answer these questions and reach some kind of consensus it really doesn't matter if the railway sits in the public or private sectors.

 

[Patientman63]

Most of my life I worked for the railways both in the UK and overseas, I now(thankfully) have no connection to them. However I'm happy to answer any operational questions that you might have in regards to such matters.

I would make one point that I think is very important in regards to railways in the UK and privatisation I had the misfortune to work at the tailend of British Rail in the UK and the lack of investment was staggering so when the government talk about how much the railways have improved since leaving the public sector its worth keeping in mind it was off the back of 20 years of underinvestment.

For me the key issue is(and indeed it's something not unique to the UK)is what are railways? are they a business or are they a public service, if you go back to Beeching Report he clearly saw it in dollars and cents and whole communities died. Does the government have a strategic responsibility to provide a sustainable transportation network(be it road rail air sea), or doesn't, if it does is the private sector capable of delivery?

To be honest until we answer these questions and reach some kind of consensus it really doesn't matter if the railway sits in the public or private sectors.

If this is such a difficult question, perhaps we should just ask the Japanese? Or the Dutch? or the French? or the Germans? These countries (and loads more as well!) seem to have found the answer to the questions you pose.

 

[DontLookBackInAnger]

If this is such a difficult question, perhaps we should just ask the Japanese? Or the Dutch? or the French? or the Germans? These countries (and loads more as well!) seem to have found the answer to the questions you pose.

You could indeed follow a model from elsewhere in the world or develop your own. However, there has to be a commitment to the answer the issue in the UK is that there is no commitment, please don't take it that I'm trying to defend the situation, my point is that fixing it will be really hard, if that's a route we want to take, or we just get by and fudge on from one crisis to the next(which personally is the route I think we will take)