This happens locally all the time but all of the trains are Northern. If a stopping service is cancelled the express services are never made to stop even if this means passengers having to wait over an hour for the next train. It used to happen sometimes but just stopped ages ago. And I don't believe your issue has anything to do with companies not talking to each other because I am pretty sure this kind of decision is made by network rail signallers defining the path for the trains.
The specific problem of the Southern staff not knowing what the SouthWestern trains were going to do was definitely a result of the companies not talking to each other. They knew exactly what the Southern trains were doing.
You may be right but as I say, in our current system I think even if they were the same company it wouldn't necessarily help. There's too much rigid contractual stuff and targets that sound good but aren't really customer focused. But it does sound as though the Labour plan will sweep much of that away.
It might end up being botched up, but on principle, all the fucking way YESThoughts about Labours "renationalisation" plans?
Unions hail UK’s rail renationalisation bills as a return to ‘public service’
Separate measures in king’s speech will allow government to take operators into public ownership while Great British Railways is set upwww.theguardian.com
Indeed - although leasing is surely inherently more expensive than owning if you have maintenance in house? All things being equal, of course, like the government-run service being run vaguely efficiently versus cutting out the inefficiencies of lots of separate legal contracts drawn up and interpreted by expensive lawyers plus relatively high private company profits because the contracts largely seem to benefit them.
Wouldn't that largely in theory at least be a question of feeding the timetables and relevant weightings (rush hour times and traveller volumes, prices and distances, connecting services, bus services ...) into a computer and pressing 'optimize' to model the results? Impossible for individual companies but surely has to be if nationalized.
I don't know. But as far as I'm aware the plans (at least initially) don't involve nationalising the rolling stock companies. So this will continue to work in the same way.
True, which sounds like a mistake to me.
Indeed, but you could feed those into the model to try to find the 'optimal' level. That can't be any more complicated than some of the models in software - can't really be far off can it?
Ah the mythical simple fares under the privatized model. Much simpler to regulate if it's one system with one supplier rather than two dozen private companies each with different rules and policies.
..AND profits to make
I'm not particularly trying to argue that the privatised model is better. I am pointing out that the political intentions of the government in charge at any time are hugely more significant than the extent to which the system is privatised/nationalised (and it's never a clear binary choice anyway).
Yes fair enough. Although the political intentions here are surely largely financial so having to build in extra profit for companies will reduce the amount that is available for the railways. That and the fragmentation of the model of privatization that we have.
Again yes fair enough if a central body can co-ordinate it all.
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No it isn't. As you can see from interference by central government the last few years.
No it isn't what?
Well, that's just something that can be argued about endlessly, because neither side of the argument can really prove anything.I'd still argue that the privatized model still adds fat that can be trimmed without affecting service levels or employment conditions. We may or may not differ on this point though
What what?
"The underlying services are provided by a mixture of wholly owned subsidiary companies (principally London Underground), by private sector franchisees (the remaining rail services, trams and most buses) and by licensees (some buses, taxis and river services)." says Wikipedia
I shall assume you are just tilting at windmills as usual, unless you can be bothered to explain what point you are trying to make.
More tilting at windbags. As anyone with a quarter of a wit will have gathered, I meant it isn't properly managed and regulated as a complete system.
You said that central government can interfere with it. Central government can interfere with pretty much any organisation. So what's your point? My point was about the way it's managed and regulated, which is different from the way National Rail is managed and regulated.
