[Closed] Should the railways be nationalised again?

Yes.

i could be horribly wrong, but it seems the state run public transport in Europe in excellent and good value, ours is a mess....

it seems the state run public transport in Europe in excellent and good value, ours is a mess....

How very dare you suggest that they do things better than us.

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Yes.

Outside the TGV/eurostar/thalys etc bookings system, France and italy charge by the kilometre plus or minus a percentage for clearly defined (on the timetables and all over the place) peak travel times. None of this ridiculous cheap advance fares subsidised by stupidly expensive last minute ones. Its a train not an airliner FFS.

Yes.

'No pork meals here' 😆

Ooh! Just remembered I've got a Strawberry Cornetto in the freezer! 😀

(Runs off to kitchen)

Yes, my thoughts exactly.
Amongst the most stupid ideas ever selling it off.

Thing is though, if you look at the history of railways (hides anorak, and slight nasal twang to voice), they were only nationalised for a short period of time. They all started as separate companies with separate lines.

It's one thing that really doesn't lend itself to comercial pressures.
Would be happy to pay £10 a year more car tax and have cheaper rail fares.

It costs me a fraction of the rail fare to drive to sheffield as it does for me and the family to take the train.

[i]I hate the fact that our trainfares are stupidly expensive compared with much of Europe, and that to get a cheap fare requires a deftness of timing normally only held by trapeze artists.[/i]

While I will totally agree with the second statement, please show facts for the first?

My only experiences are that the TGV and DB InterCity services are not what you would call, cheap.

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YES!

But I fear it is too late. We are now soooooooo far behind...

DB, have just bought Arriva trains and Buses along with a freight company, and wrexham and shropshire railways.

So now part of the railways have been nationalised by herman the german in germanland, not the uk.

Yes, then force lots of the lorries off the road network where a rail alternative exists - jobs lost in road haulage would be created on railways & the extra income could be spent on improving railway infrastructure.

Nationalising the railway could seriously impact safety. Continual restructuring and reorganising has occurred since the formation of Network Rail. One of the criticisms of the Hidden Report (after the Clapham crash in the 80's) was of the continual reorganisations that BR would undergo. Lessons have not been learnt, all that has happened before is happening again.

br, to be honest I don't have any facts on this.
I know that in STW land lack of facts does not preclude taking a strong, entrenched view, but to be honest I don't know how our fares compare like for like with the rest of the EU, so its a perception.

I suppose where I come from is that as a car driver who believes in public transport, I think that it ought to be cheaper to train than to drive. I realise this is slightly naive/idealistic, but thats the nirvana I crave.

It's not like the days of British Rail were some lost bygone era of cheap, timely, clean trains.

They were grubby, late, expensive, unreliable.

Perhaps we're just not very good at running trains in this country?

Which in turn is perhaps because if you're important in this country, and could actually make a difference, you go from A to B in a car. Not a train. Or a bus. Or a bike.

Yes, then force lots of the lorries off the road network where a rail alternative exists - jobs lost in road haulage would be created on railways & the extra income could be spent on improving railway infrastructure.

I wonder if there would be the political appetite for this today in these less unionised times.

Part of the political backdrop to privatisation of the railways was to attempt to break the union stranglehold on a national basis, which has worked to a degree.

There was also a drive to get freight OFF the railways and onto private contractors on the roads so that food / fuel / materials etc. could be transported by independent private organisations and ensure the country could run without being held to ransom by the unions.

From an economic perspective it would make sense IMHO to invest in the railways and get freight moved longer distances (say 150miles+) by rail to major depots for local distribution. For this to work would mean a large scale migration of freight onto the railways... should the railway unions then wish to hold the country to ransom (fuel / food / materials) it could do so very easily by organising nationwide stoppages or just targeted action at major junctions on the network.

Nationalising the railway could seriously impact safety.

Please qualify this with some proper facts. Rail safety since privatisation hasn't exactly been great, has it?

Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield, Potters bar- all caused by either trains running red signals, or track failure/poor maintenance. 48 deaths in those 4 incidents alone. All since Privatisation.

British rail was systematically starved of investment for decaades as well - but proivatisation has been an expensive failure - fares are up as is subsidy..

Its one of the places where labour were weak. before the election in 97 when privatisation was happening they should have said we will buy it all back at the same price it is sold for. No one would have bought a franchise.

Then all the money wasted with the mish mash privatised set up could have been spent on infrastructure instead.

It is a scandal that there was no strategic view taken - no one ordered trains for a few years so our ability to build trains was lost.

CHB, weren't you the one who was impressed that all the quangos will be shut down?

luked2 - Member

It's not like the days of British Rail were some lost bygone era of cheap, timely, clean trains.

They were grubby, late, expensive, unreliable.

Perhaps we're just not very good at running trains in this country?

The private train companies receive FIVE TIMES more taxpayers money than British Rail received (the only exception was BR's last year, when the government poured money into it to make it juicy for privatisation)

If BR had received that amount of government investment, then the service they provided would have been totally different.

The BIG difference between the railways in Britain and say in France, is [i]investment.[/i] BR had decades of underinvestment at exactly the same time as France was pouring money into it's railways.

The answer [i]is not[/i] simply nationalisation, but nationalisation coupled with proper investment and democratic accountability.

How about just paying Eddie Stowbart to run it (they have there own rail stock now for running fruit across europe)

I need to go to London village next week, it will £185 on the train plus a hire to get to the station. Or i get drive all the way for a tank full of juice.
I'll go on the train because its the componies money and i can have a kip.
But if it was my own money........

pjt201, is there a QUANGO looking after the railway customers? If there is its $hit.

Lack of appropriate investment on the railways has been an issue for as long as I can remember. We were still building steam engines with 50 year life-spans in the 1960s when we should have been electrifying, they all got thrown away in 1968. We developed high-speed trains in the 1970s ahead of most other countries and then dropped it and sold it to the Italians who now sell it back to us. Probably the last significant strategic investment was the channel tunnel.

Having said that the biggest problem the railways face today is lack of capacity, so the high fares don't seem to be putting off rail users. And anyone who remembers BR wouldn't want to go back there (although that may solve the capacity problem - who wants to travel on a dirty train with no guaranteed arrival time?).

Been saying this for years, a privatised rail system is counterproductive when the aim should be to get people on the train and out of the car. We should renationalise the utilities while we are at it!

There's a great book called Eleven Minutes Late about this, well worth a read. Basically it concludes that we're buggered - the reason european railways are so good is mainly because they were state designed, so they go sensible places. Although it is quite scathing about the crazy waste of money that is privatisation, nationalisation now probably wouldn't help that much either.

speshpaul, thats exactly my point!
I went to an M&S environmental conference in march. Cost the company £231 from leeds to kings cross.
To be honest, next time I would be tempted to drive the night before and stay in travel lodge at Heston West.
I know its the companies money, but my principles stop me wasting it.
[irony not lost that I would be doing this to an environmental conference]

is there a QUANGO looking after the railway customers? If there is its $hit.

So you think getting rid of the Office of Rail Regulation (I can't for the life of me work out why they didn't call it Offrail) is what is needed to make the railways more efficient, cheaper, and safer ?

Interesting suggestion.

Good lord there is one!!

Plenty of directors too!!
:
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.76

Surely between them they should be able to ensure an efficient, cost effective, safe railway system that ensures value for money compared with the car on my driveway.

er....no!

[I do of course realise that they are trying to control companies they don't own, so are to a large extent impotent, but I don't want to fund their impotency and would rather it go to funding a nationalised railway].

I really don't want this thread to be about quangos, but I had a look at this:

on page 5 there is the following statement:
[i]1.5 Our responsibilities do not, however, give us the authority to set or enforce the terms
of franchises under which governments buy passenger services from the private sector,
or regulate fares charged to passengers. [/i]

So here we have a body for the railways that has no authority over who gets the contracts, why they get the contracts, or what they charge!

I understand they "enforce" health and safety, but most organisations manage to do that out of statutory obligation.

Anyhoo, back to the topic...would they be better privatised and how do we achieve that if so?

They were grubby, late, expensive, unreliable.

So you don't use the trains much? I find that they are still suffering from these maladies.

And as Ernie says, they receive more subsidies now than they ever got as a nationalised industry.

Renationalise essential services, i.e. utilities and transport. Oh, and stop the disasterous selling off of the Royal Mail.

Coyote, I agree with you.
Royal Mail is a tricky one, been left to get crap for a long while with massive pension obligations. Thats going to cost the tax payer whatever happens.
I would rather it stay in state control if it worked well though.
However I know that no taxpayer in the UK has obligations for DHL's pension deficit.
All the posties I know are hard working and good folk.

Definitely renationalise. Current system is a nonsense. Worst example of this I've heard recently was something where a couple were fined for getting off their train a couple of stops earlier! Whatever happened to the idea of travelling by any reasonable route?

yes it should

I agree with TJ that Labour failed on Transport. I rememeber Prescott said all the right things on question time about providing atractive alterntives to using cars, then they did very little.

If labour really got stuck into funding proper state infrastructure in an efficient manner, and took the green/environmental agenda forward in a considerate way then they might get my vote again.

Big choices like national networks of road and rail, and NHS and green policies have to come from a strong, fair government.

They should nationalise M6 toll road too and price it as if they understood elasticity of demand - dopy Aussies running it at the moment keep bumping prices up and wonder why no one uses it

Been saying this for years, a privatised rail system is counterproductive when the aim should be to get people on the train and out of the car. We should renationalise the utilities while we are at it!

+1.

Short termism is ruining the country(we are about to go through another bout of it), Other major economies recognise that to attract inward investment and keep business in the country is to have good infrastructure. Not only just railways, but cost of living, house prices etc.

Railways should be non-profit, providing a cheap reliable service to the economy where the money is made, and not the idealogy of if it doesn't make money, it's no good that has gripped this country for the last thirty years.

To the delight of our lefty chums on here (TJ, Effin Scaley, BigButDimmerBloke to name but a few), I have to say privatising the public transport network has been an unmitigated disaster!

Where I live, we have allowed our council to yellow line almost the whole of our town now and as a result, TFL have seen an opportunity to fleece local commuters by increasing the parking charges by a whopping 49% (from £3.70 a day to £5.50). This is on top of the increase in fare prices! If you go to Tesco, you get free parking if you buy products instore, so why should a season ticket holder pay to park? I am old enough to remember when staion car parking was free.

The line i'm on lost a good ten miles of functioning track almost 20 years ago because that bit at the extremities of the network wasn't making enough money. Even now, people drive a few stops down the track to get cheaper fares and cheaper parking. If the fares from the end of the line hadn't been punitively high, the line would have had a lot more passengers. So everyone is driving part of their journey which totally defeats the object of having public transport - STUPID!

Taking a train anywhere usually costs more than driving, despite the continued reaffirmation by the "greens" that tell us trains are more eco friendly. It's a lot cheaper if you know how to play the system, like booking well in advance, or booking tow separate tickets with a stop/start part way between your destination. It's mind bogglingly confusing and patently unfair. Ultimately, people vote with their feet and this is why our roads are clogged.

I can fly to Spain and back for less than I can buy a train ticket to Cornwall. So don't tell me a train is a green option!

The whole network has become a run down overpriced mess int ehpast tow decades, but it's operators make a good living by fleecing commuters who have no alternative means of transport.

Transport infrastructure is a vital enabler for economic growth and ongoing prosperity and should therefore be under full public control, not subject to market forces and shareholder appeasement.

Yes, nationalise it!

Well. I wasn't expecting that.

Yes - over priced, p*ss poor service. Mind you, they'd under fund it so it would still be crap. 🙁

so why should a season ticket holder pay to park? I

That's Capitalism, darling, and your beloved Free Market as envisaged by your Queen Maggie!

I don't drive. Why should I subsidise your car parking?

The line i'm on lost a good ten miles of functioning track almost 20 years ago

Let's see, that would have been under... yup; the Tories! 😆

Embrace Socialism. You know you want to...

Trains, gas, electricity, postal service, water, health service. None of these should be in private hands. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a knob.

I cannot disagree with Spaceman.

Thank you Elfin, hopefully others will recognise the strength of our arguements!

sod cant be bothered.

Yes.

I've said this before but I know people who work on the railways and the level of waste and inefficiency is absolutely shocking. It might not be any more efficient if nationalised but there wouldn't be people creaming off profits at every level.

Ok dumb question time and a bit off topic....why do we have water companies, surely the managing of this precious resource should be in the hands of government.... Is it really something we should be looking to make a profit/loss from?!

Ok dumb question time and a bit off topic....why do we have water companies, surely the managing of this precious resource should be in the hands of government.... Is it really something we should be looking to make a profit/loss from?!

THAT woman, the one we don't talk about, sold off OUR regional water and sewerage system for purely ideological reasons back in 1989.
She was actually opposed, not only by the media and both opposition parties but even by some members of her usually supine, spineless cabinet of chinless non-entities.

She got this;
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the most sycophantic and extreme of her cabinet acolytes to do her dirty work for her on this occasion.

Water prices went up by 50% in the following eight years.

And now, the bitch is back, as the saying goes:
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TandemJeremy - Member

<snip> no one ordered trains for a few years so our ability to build trains was lost.

Well... while I agree with the sentiment on the rest of your post TJ, this last little bit is not quite true. Thankfully, we do still make trains in this country... although depending on the governments spending review, we might not for much longer!

The problem is lack of funding going back to the 50's and 60's and constant change and restructuring of services and ownership. What we need is President Mitterrand as PM and hopefully he'll force things through.

And let's be honest about the wonderful private sector for once. Wouldnt it be great if all public services fell into private hands and ran with the efficiency and ease of use as our train service. ;o) Blows Cameron out of the water that one.