For most of my career, I have been a regular user of Britain's railways and in particular the line from Bristol and South Wales to London. Over the last 30 years I have seen prices rise far more quickly than inflation, levels of customer service fall and journey times increase.
Back in the late 80's I could still get a direct train from Bristol Parkway to London Paddington which would take an hour, now the quickest service is scheduled to take 1 hour 30 minutes and when I was last using it regularly, the timetable was merely there for decoration :mad:
A lot of the problems associated with the railways in the UK are, IMO, due to the fact that they were privatised. If British Rail had received anything like the subsidy that the private rail companies have enjoyed then we'd have a better service at a lower cost - both to the taxpayer and rail user.
The worst problems were due to the privatisation of Railtrack, the cost-cutting and incompetence that resulted and culminated in a series of incidents which resulted in a fistful of money being thrown at the problem and trains running more slowly ever since. The situation was somewhat remedied by bringing ownership of the track back into public hands.
Now the government is proposing that track and trains are run by a joint company but everything changes when the franchise is renewed. I'm not a railway expert, just a user, but even I can see a load of problems with this:
As the saying goes, "this is no way to operate a railway" :mad:
http://ift.tt/2h0XCJP
Back in the late 80's I could still get a direct train from Bristol Parkway to London Paddington which would take an hour, now the quickest service is scheduled to take 1 hour 30 minutes and when I was last using it regularly, the timetable was merely there for decoration :mad:
A lot of the problems associated with the railways in the UK are, IMO, due to the fact that they were privatised. If British Rail had received anything like the subsidy that the private rail companies have enjoyed then we'd have a better service at a lower cost - both to the taxpayer and rail user.
The worst problems were due to the privatisation of Railtrack, the cost-cutting and incompetence that resulted and culminated in a series of incidents which resulted in a fistful of money being thrown at the problem and trains running more slowly ever since. The situation was somewhat remedied by bringing ownership of the track back into public hands.
Now the government is proposing that track and trains are run by a joint company but everything changes when the franchise is renewed. I'm not a railway expert, just a user, but even I can see a load of problems with this:
- Investment will not be on a national basis, instead it will be silo-based with little or no incentive to improve inter-operability
- There will also be incentive to "sweat the assets" handing the track back in the worst possible state at the end of the franchise period
- There will be no incentive to invest in the the rail infrastructure across franchise periods - all investments will therefore necessarily short-term
- We already have a ridiculously complicated railway system with three levels, train operating companies, rolling stock companies and rail infrastructure companies - we're now adding vertical splits too
As the saying goes, "this is no way to operate a railway" :mad:
http://ift.tt/2h0XCJP
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2gg2utx
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