JayMac
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« on: April 25, 2024, 00:43:20 » |
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The Labour Party have broken cover on their plans for the railways. They will nationalise all TOCs▸ as and when their contracts end. However, they have no plans to nationalise the RoSCos. Rolling stock will remain in the private sector. www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68889345Shadow Secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh is due to make the announcement today, 26th April 2024. Excellent news. Of course, the tories have poured scorn on the plan. Saying it is pointless and uncosted. We are over three years on from the Great British Railways announcement, and nearly six years since the Williams review was announced, and only at the stage of a draft bill, with legislation unlikely before the general election. They can find the money for new and interesting ways to kill people (£2.5bn for 'defence' announced this week). And can find parliamentary time to force through expensive and unnecessary legislation to send refugees to a tinpot dictatorship. Yet, sorting out the railways in a timely manner is beyond their wit.
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« Last Edit: April 25, 2024, 02:36:31 by JayMac »
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"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the rest of the day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
- Sir Terry Pratchett.
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infoman
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« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2024, 06:41:16 » |
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and nothing will change,
will we go back to the "old days" of when all services waited for a late running connections,within reason?
and accountability for delay minutes will be done away with.
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IndustryInsider
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« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2024, 07:39:14 » |
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and nothing will change,
will we go back to the "old days" of when all services waited for a late running connections,within reason?
and accountability for delay minutes will be done away with.
Good to see some actual commitments from Labour. I doubt a huge amount will change, but GBR▸ does desperately need to happen ASAP as we currently have the worst of both worlds. Delay minute accountability won’t change much IMHO▸ . All the privately owned freight and open access operators will still be running (probably more of the latter), who will need compensating if the agreements they have are breached. Not too many crumbs of comfort offered to the unions either.
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To view my GWML▸ Electrification cab video 'before and after' video comparison, as well as other videos of the new layout at Reading and 'before and after' comparisons of the Cotswold Line Redoubling scheme, see: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/IndustryInsider/
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grahame
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« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2024, 08:24:57 » |
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and nothing will change,
will we go back to the "old days" of when all services waited for a late running connections,within reason?
and accountability for delay minutes will be done away with.
Who knows? We are in a different world. Over half a lifetime ago, when I was in my first youth, I travelled a lot by train, including on a number of lines (but far too few) that closed soon thereafter. Trains were infrequent and slow and sometimes perverse and I can't remember there being the problems we have / here about these days with overcrowding on them, nor with missing connections. Stations like Slaggyford and Tumby Woodside come to mind - intermediate calls on quiet trains with few passengers getting on or off. Chasing sheep with a DMU▸ in the first case; people just groaning at all the stops from Firsby to Lincoln on a summer Saturday train taking holiday makers home from Skeggy. And the train when it got back into Haltwhistle just sitting idle waiting for its next run a number of hours later. In our different world, these lines have gone. Other lines and stations, though, have broadened their services whilst at the same time slimming down the infrastructure sometimes too much and making staff and rolling stock utilisation so much more "efficient" that all too often there is no longer the capacity to cope with events out of the ordinary. And so things like trains waiting for connections don't simply leave the arrival at a branch terminal a bit late - these days they bounce back on the return service too. And service frequency increases mean that in many cases the wait for the next train in any case is far shorter than it used to be. There ARE times that services wait, but they are few and far between. The frustration we feel in coming home from London to Melksham and waiting for the next of 9 trains per day (i.e. onto a service that remains a poor frequency) is - well - frustrating (!!) but thank goodness that the 22:30 last train does wait a few minutes if the London express that connects with it is a few minutes late. And it can do do because there are no onward connections or next duties to be covered. In contrast, a delayed service Melksham to London is no problem - sure, if the connection fails at Swindon there is going to be another train a few minutes later. Not sure how much this is changed by who runs the trains and how delays are analysed. Perhaps what's needed is a modern vision that invests in making the service reliable rather than stretching resources to their extreme, and providing the resource to handle the resulting confidence in rail and its further growth as an integrated service which is environementally good and a pleasure for its customers to use. Who manages that modern railway, who runs the trains, who sets the strategy from where the tactics become clear is irrelevant provided that the are committed to the public transport network as something that's a natural and loved part of everyday life.
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Coffee Shop Admin, Acting Chair of Melksham Rail User Group, Option 24/7 Melksham Rep
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a-driver
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« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2024, 17:25:39 » |
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However, they have no plans to nationalise the RoSCos.
And they’re, unfortunately, the biggest profiteers in the industry and are probably rubbing their hands with glee at this Labour Party plan!
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IndustryInsider
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« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2024, 18:31:39 » |
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I don’t see how you could nationalise the RoSCo’s.
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To view my GWML▸ Electrification cab video 'before and after' video comparison, as well as other videos of the new layout at Reading and 'before and after' comparisons of the Cotswold Line Redoubling scheme, see: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/IndustryInsider/
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infoman
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« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2024, 18:40:19 » |
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Oh how I recall seeing all those ten coach sets sat in west Sidings (just after Parson Street train station) (Monday to Friday))
All "disappearing" for the weekend and most returning Sunday night into Monday mornings.
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JayMac
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« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2024, 20:24:13 » |
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I don’t see how you could nationalise the RoSCo’s.
It could be done very slowly. Whenever a tender for new rolling stock is made the stock could be purchased by GBR▸ . However, I suspect the RoSCos will want some guarantees from the next government, including a promise that GBR will not buy their own stock in the future.
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"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the rest of the day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
- Sir Terry Pratchett.
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Trowres
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« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2024, 22:06:34 » |
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However, I suspect the RoSCos will want some guarantees from the next government, including a promise that GBR▸ will not buy their own stock in the future.
What would the RoSCos do if they didn't receive that guarantee?
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JayMac
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« Reply #9 on: April 25, 2024, 22:31:32 » |
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Take their toys and go home?
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"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the rest of the day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
- Sir Terry Pratchett.
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TaplowGreen
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« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2024, 07:59:23 » |
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I'm pretty neutral on this although a little confused that many on these pages constantly bemoan the fact that the Government exerts too much influence over the day to day running of the railway but now express approval that they will have much more control going forward. Can someone set something out, perhaps in bullet point form, how this proposal will benefit customers? I'm thinking in terms of services, reliability, capacity, infrastructure, cost, efficiency but avoiding ideology? Many thanks!
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Witham Bobby
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« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2024, 10:01:49 » |
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I'm pretty neutral on this although a little confused that many on these pages constantly bemoan the fact that the Government exerts too much influence over the day to day running of the railway but now express approval that they will have much more control going forward. Can someone set something out, perhaps in bullet point form, how this proposal will benefit customers? I'm thinking in terms of services, reliability, capacity, infrastructure, cost, efficiency but avoiding ideology? Many thanks! I'd say the list would be a short one Nationalised industries, in their heyday, rarely achieved the advertised potential. Maybe investments would be planned, and even started, but some crisis would come along, and The Treasury would just cut back the funding, leaving the project falling short or not happening at all. Plus ca change If anything is under the control of politicos, the only things that matter are the electoral cycle and the headlines. And that applies whether the thing being controlled is in public investor or private hands. Politicos are far more interested in their careers and in having control, than they are in making life better for the fools who elect them
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Noggin
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« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2024, 11:29:54 » |
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Certainly with FGW▸ /GWR▸ , I always thought that the current set-up made for a fairly effective balance of powers.
GWR have to keep the trains running, the punters and the employees happy, whilst balancing the books.
GWR can't do anything too silly if they want to keep on operating services, the DfT» are protected from doing anything too silly by GWR.
My concern is that in the event of a central Government-controlled railway, the "difficult bits" tend to get sacrificed to sacrifice the high profile / politically sensitive bits. So West Country lines will be left to rot for want of a few million here and there whilst billions are poured into a shiny new lines for the Labour voters of Liverpool and Manchester to keep Andy Street et al off Keir Starmer's back.
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Mark A
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« Reply #13 on: April 26, 2024, 13:47:53 » |
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I'm pretty neutral on this although a little confused that many on these pages constantly bemoan the fact that the Government exerts too much influence over the day to day running of the railway but now express approval that they will have much more control going forward. Can someone set something out, perhaps in bullet point form, how this proposal will benefit customers? I'm thinking in terms of services, reliability, capacity, infrastructure, cost, efficiency but avoiding ideology? Many thanks! I'd say the list would be a short one Nationalised industries, in their heyday, rarely achieved the advertised potential. Maybe investments would be planned, and even started, but some crisis would come along, and The Treasury would just cut back the funding, leaving the project falling short or not happening at all. Plus ca change If anything is under the control of politicos, the only things that matter are the electoral cycle and the headlines. And that applies whether the thing being controlled is in public investor or private hands. Politicos are far more interested in their careers and in having control, than they are in making life better for the fools who elect them It was different times, and so-called renationalisation doesn't imply that the times are returning: is there a bit of a hat-tip owed to British Rail that Intercity was working and was it covering its costs too? Also, Regional Railways was being developed in interesting ways, starting to enhance inter-regional passenger services in a way that was providing very positive returns and attracting passengers new to rail (and in the west, ok, it did not make money but at least we still had the anglo-scottish west country sleeper with a steady 50000 passengers per annum). And driver route knowledge was presumably not so much shackled to individual TOCs▸ and in some cases single routes, lending rail services more resilience. Mark
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Red Squirrel
Administrator
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Posts: 5226
There are some who call me... Tim
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« Reply #14 on: April 26, 2024, 14:07:33 » |
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I'm pretty neutral on this although a little confused that many on these pages constantly bemoan the fact that the Government exerts too much influence over the day to day running of the railway but now express approval that they will have much more control going forward. Can someone set something out, perhaps in bullet point form, how this proposal will benefit customers? I'm thinking in terms of services, reliability, capacity, infrastructure, cost, efficiency but avoiding ideology? Many thanks! Nigel Harris (late editor of Rail magazine) and Richard Bowker (formerly head of SRA» ) explain it fairly well, I think. You'll need half an hour to spare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLTxYZPEo3U
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Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.
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